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It’s so exhausting having to live through this ridiculous propaganda war. Everyone seems to suck here, but there’s so much finger pointing. The people on the US

by nxc18 6y ago

It’s so exhausting having to live through this ridiculous propaganda war. Everyone seems to suck here, but there’s so much finger pointing. The people on the US side of the isle seem to be especially frantic now that it’s abundantly clear they dropped the ball about 100,000 times (underestimate) and trashed their economy in the process. Can we stop pointing fingers and just take a break ffs? Everything China does the US does, sometimes with variations in degree but most often just with a different label (occasionally with different timelines, but it’s hard to take seriously the idea that US 70 years ago should just be off the hook while we roast China).

jimmaswell 6y ago
I feel like I'm in the Twilight zone seeing these kinds of equivalencies made online. "China does organ harvesting and brutally supresses the entire populace's rights and did Tiananman Square and arrests and interrogates you for criticizing the police but we had internment camps in WW2 so look in a mirror and stop talking about China" ..no, I'm not going to "stop roasting" China just because my country, like every country, has an imperfect past. At best that's a defense mechanism to feel smug about being silent on crimes against humanity. Criticize the American covid response all you want but spreading this false equivalence that sounds deep unless you think about it is outright dangerous and a shameful disservice to the citizens of Hong Kong and everyone else impacted by the Chinese government.
- nxc18 6y ago
  Yeah, there’s lots of bad on both sides. Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that made headlines, but most fly under the radar. We also just killed 100,000 people, minimum, through deliberate incompetence, so there’s that. Technically it’s the past, but in practical terms it’s the present. I’ll remind you that Tiananmen Square was quite a while ago. Rights are relative, people in China don’t have them, people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money. In broad strokes it’s better in the US, for now. I personally like to count the foreign deaths and foreign intervention when evaluating countries-the US really likes interfering with our neighbors, and kills lots of people in the Middle East - 200,000+ innocent civilians. But they’re foreign, so they’re not really people, right? https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-w... I won’t even begin with the non-lethal interventions, or more subtle interventions like giving arms to authoritarian regimes and/or terrorists. But I guess China spies, so that’s really bad. It would be terrible if they stole the NSA’s idea and interfered with network equipment. They do like stealing IP. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... The US does a disservice to the world by not being better in the present. We can’t hold China accountable when we don’t hold ourselves accountable.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    > people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money Complete hyperbole. Squint as hard as you can but the poorest minority in America is still better off than almost anyone in China. Yes we have a racial profiling problem but on the whole we have our rights much more than "kind of sometimes." Yeah, we have an incompetent administration this time around. At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. Last part is a total non sequitur and would make as much sense flipped around.
    - bildung 6y ago
      > At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. For some definition of "real elections" - the voting suppression techniques employed in the US are study material in politics courses in other democracies. * gerrymandering * not allowing for remote votes by letter * having votes on days that are not free for working people - this is interesting because many other democracies used that to discourage working class people to vote, e.g. Germany in the late 19th century. But most countries now mandate that votes have to fall on either sundays or national holidays. * (Edit:) Felony disenfranchisement - this in combination with the war on drugs is a very effective way to strip voting rights from minorities, e.g. this isn't even visible in voting turnout comparisons between countries. And the techniques work: The US has one of the lowest voting participation rates of all OECD countries.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
nickff 6y ago
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis... More to the point, you're engaging in whataboutism, and the fact that one group acted poorly a few generations ago does not excuse current behaviour by another group.
- nxc18 6y ago
  The internment camps are still in living memory fwiw. I don’t know if it’s whataboutism so much as recognizing that China is back to business and the US really isn’t, China published the genetic sequence and made substantial contributions to fighting the disease while the CDC was busy producing faulty test kits, and the US has been systematically undermining the global health system while trying to put blame on the WHO (actively forfeiting our influence there). I don’t think it makes sense to shit on China for doing a better job than the US at taking care of it’s people (except minorities, but the US isn’t exactly a model there either). Just to clarify, I’m not about excuses, but I can’t support hysterically pointing fingers when we aren’t even attempting to get our own house in order.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    > better job than the US at taking care of it’s people (except minorities, but the US isn’t exactly a model there either). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protes... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests... What is America doing to minorities that tops all of this?
    - nxc18 6y ago
      * 30+ years ago, but ok. I’ll raise you slaughtering college kids protesting Vietnam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings * China releases their own report. http://download.xinhuanet.com/english/Human%20Rights%20Record%20of%20the%20United%20States%20in%202018.doc http://download.xinhuanet.com/english/Human%20Rights%20Recor... (Note: I don’t actually think China is better than the US overall, they are far worse, I just don’t like the implication that they differences are of kind, rather than degree) * organ harvesting is clearly bad, but it’s hard to argue it’s worse than plain murder given lives are saved in the process. The Chinese report on US human rights helps answer your last question.
tarsinge 6y ago
The first part of your comment is my sentiment watching this from Europe. I disagree with the second part though.

by nxc18 6y ago

jimmaswell 6y ago

I feel like I'm in the Twilight zone seeing these kinds of equivalencies made online. "China does organ harvesting and brutally supresses the entire populace's rights and did Tiananman Square and arrests and interrogates you for criticizing the police but we had internment camps in WW2 so look in a mirror and stop talking about China" ..no, I'm not going to "stop roasting" China just because my country, like every country, has an imperfect past. At best that's a defense mechanism to feel smug about being silent on crimes against humanity. Criticize the American covid response all you want but spreading this false equivalence that sounds deep unless you think about it is outright dangerous and a shameful disservice to the citizens of Hong Kong and everyone else impacted by the Chinese government.

nxc18 6y ago
Yeah, there’s lots of bad on both sides. Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that made headlines, but most fly under the radar. We also just killed 100,000 people, minimum, through deliberate incompetence, so there’s that. Technically it’s the past, but in practical terms it’s the present. I’ll remind you that Tiananmen Square was quite a while ago. Rights are relative, people in China don’t have them, people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money. In broad strokes it’s better in the US, for now. I personally like to count the foreign deaths and foreign intervention when evaluating countries-the US really likes interfering with our neighbors, and kills lots of people in the Middle East - 200,000+ innocent civilians. But they’re foreign, so they’re not really people, right? https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-w... I won’t even begin with the non-lethal interventions, or more subtle interventions like giving arms to authoritarian regimes and/or terrorists. But I guess China spies, so that’s really bad. It would be terrible if they stole the NSA’s idea and interfered with network equipment. They do like stealing IP. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... The US does a disservice to the world by not being better in the present. We can’t hold China accountable when we don’t hold ourselves accountable.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  > people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money Complete hyperbole. Squint as hard as you can but the poorest minority in America is still better off than almost anyone in China. Yes we have a racial profiling problem but on the whole we have our rights much more than "kind of sometimes." Yeah, we have an incompetent administration this time around. At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. Last part is a total non sequitur and would make as much sense flipped around.
  - bildung 6y ago
    > At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate. For some definition of "real elections" - the voting suppression techniques employed in the US are study material in politics courses in other democracies. * gerrymandering * not allowing for remote votes by letter * having votes on days that are not free for working people - this is interesting because many other democracies used that to discourage working class people to vote, e.g. Germany in the late 19th century. But most countries now mandate that votes have to fall on either sundays or national holidays. * (Edit:) Felony disenfranchisement - this in combination with the war on drugs is a very effective way to strip voting rights from minorities, e.g. this isn't even visible in voting turnout comparisons between countries. And the techniques work: The US has one of the lowest voting participation rates of all OECD countries.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

nickff 6y ago

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis... More to the point, you're engaging in whataboutism, and the fact that one group acted poorly a few generations ago does not excuse current behaviour by another group.

nxc18 6y ago
The internment camps are still in living memory fwiw. I don’t know if it’s whataboutism so much as recognizing that China is back to business and the US really isn’t, China published the genetic sequence and made substantial contributions to fighting the disease while the CDC was busy producing faulty test kits, and the US has been systematically undermining the global health system while trying to put blame on the WHO (actively forfeiting our influence there). I don’t think it makes sense to shit on China for doing a better job than the US at taking care of it’s people (except minorities, but the US isn’t exactly a model there either). Just to clarify, I’m not about excuses, but I can’t support hysterically pointing fingers when we aren’t even attempting to get our own house in order.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  > better job than the US at taking care of it’s people (except minorities, but the US isn’t exactly a model there either). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protes... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests... What is America doing to minorities that tops all of this?
  - nxc18 6y ago
    * 30+ years ago, but ok. I’ll raise you slaughtering college kids protesting Vietnam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings * China releases their own report. http://download.xinhuanet.com/english/Human%20Rights%20Record%20of%20the%20United%20States%20in%202018.doc http://download.xinhuanet.com/english/Human%20Rights%20Recor... (Note: I don’t actually think China is better than the US overall, they are far worse, I just don’t like the implication that they differences are of kind, rather than degree) * organ harvesting is clearly bad, but it’s hard to argue it’s worse than plain murder given lives are saved in the process. The Chinese report on US human rights helps answer your last question.

tarsinge 6y ago

The first part of your comment is my sentiment watching this from Europe. I disagree with the second part though.