7 ms·

One of the long term consequence of legally dismantling our Constitution (which is the US equivalent to "company values", both in terms of how often they are in

One of the long term consequence of legally dismantling our Constitution (which is the US equivalent to "company values", both in terms of how often they are invoked and by how often the same people ignore them) is that it dramatically reduces our soft power on the world stage. Right now China is engaging in textbook "secret war" with Hong Kong as well as a variety of other human rights abuses. It used to be that we, the U.S., could speak up, and have dozens of allies rush to our side on the principle that we are to be trusted. Consider how shoddy the evidence for justifying Iraq was, and the fact that most countries still chose to send their troops with ours. Our word used to mean something. But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? Backdooring encryption is just another attack on our basic freedoms. It is crazy that at a time we should be touting our values as proof they are objectively better compared to our competitors', we are also trying to take them apart and bring us down to the same level as our competitors. It's like a vast cargo ship encountering a dinghy, and the captain tells the dinghy "you need to change your construction materials, you're shooting yourself in the foot by making poor choices" while his crewmen are hard at work drilling holes into the windows below deck.

pietroglyph 6y ago
> Our word used to mean something. > But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? But we’ve had things like this for a long time. The police have acted like they do for generations, we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II, and we’ve always done a variety of other reprehensible things (propping up brutal dictators, destroying native civilizations, institutional racism of every possible flavor.) Frankly, I’m shocked that our word ever meant something.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II I study WW2, and it's important to be factual. The correct term is internment camps. Japanese-Americans usually lost their property, but the purpose was to locate them in central locations, not to re-educate or liquidate them, as our enemies did to the Allies. For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. I think using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons. However, the US did rebuild the world economy after WW2, mostly to prevent it from becoming aligned with the Soviet Union. Most of the world's national borders are descended from WW2. As leading historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, "[WW2 was German and Japanese soldiers machine-gunning unarmed civilians by the tens of millions.]"
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Victor Davis Hanson says a lot of things, including that Iraq II was a good idea - he was a minor but still fairly significant public relations voice in the neoconservative bloc that pushed that war into existence, to the enormous detriment of US interests in the Middle East and worldwide. As a classicist he's tolerable, if no more than that; in any century where the years count up instead of down, the man seems entirely at sea.
  - p_l 6y ago
    That's what concentration camp is for. To concentrate and control. There were separate death camps (sometimes combined) that involved direct train-to-killing-field pipelines, and most concentration camps involved work in horrible conditions, but that's because of further goals above relocation.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      Not in the US.
      - wan23 6y ago
        That some concentration camps in other countries were also death camps is entirely the point. They are not the same thing, but they're just one step removed. In fact, thousands of people died in the American camps even though there was not an official policy of extermination.
        jstarfish 6y ago
        Camps are a very whitewashed aspect of US history. Look at the forced marches and internment of Native Americans, POWs at Andersonville or anybody unfortunate enough to be in the custody of Joe Arpaio. We have a nasty habit of creating scenarios where death is an inevitable consequence without it being the official policy.
        Stupulous 6y ago
        From some light research, it looks like 120,000 Japanese-Americans were put in these camps for 2-3 years and 1,862 died. In the country at large, if I'm reading this [1] right, 1,459,000 people died outside of the camps in the US, which had a population of 136,700,000. That's a ~1% base death rate per year, which would account for ~2/3 of these deaths in a year. This could be investigated further; was the average length of imprisonment less than a year, were the causes of death different than in the larger population, did economic conditions and racism increase the base death rate among Japanese-Americans in the first place, was the age distribution different among those the US bothered to move to camps, pushing their base rate lower? Evidently people died because of these camps, and it is incredibly likely that many of those deaths were racist hate crimes committed by US employees on US citizens. Even that aside, it was very much wrong it imprison innocent civilians on the basis of their race. 'Thousands died' does seem like a substantial overstatement when the only number I can find is less than 2,000 (it's from the US, so it may be biased). Probably a few hundred died as a result of these camps, mostly from disease. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf
- necovek 6y ago
  It's called media manipulation: US government has perfected a way to manipulate knowing and unknowing media outlets to spill out the news that serves their goals. Unsuspecting public just goes for it, especially since it's all too easy too fall into the self-righteousness (look at those nasty people doing that, they are nothing like us). Internet was a tool that allowed all sides to be equally heard (the fact that it was abused to disseminate fake news supports that claim even more), so only now it's too obvious what's going on. Oh, and other governments and organizations are catching up quickly with the same practice.
kiba 6y ago
But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? It's called having protestors in the first place. China wouldn't let you hear about it, or all you get is distorted information, which means you don't know what's going on in their society.
- beardedwizard 6y ago
  Like our protests?
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    Like our protests if the internet was heavily censored too
- monocasa 6y ago
  You don't think China has protestors? They protest on a scale not seen in the US, with 2010 having 180,000 "mass incidents".
  - seppin 6y ago
    They aren't allowed, is the point. You can be disappeared for speaking against Xi. Any comparison is a false one.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      They absolutely are allowed.
      - seppin 6y ago
        OP's point is that protests happen in rural areas outside the central government's control. They are very much not allowed and usually crushed when found. > They absolutely are allowed. So you and I can go to tiananmen square tomorrow for a healthy protest and drum circle?

pietroglyph 6y ago

> Our word used to mean something. > But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? But we’ve had things like this for a long time. The police have acted like they do for generations, we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II, and we’ve always done a variety of other reprehensible things (propping up brutal dictators, destroying native civilizations, institutional racism of every possible flavor.) Frankly, I’m shocked that our word ever meant something.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II I study WW2, and it's important to be factual. The correct term is internment camps. Japanese-Americans usually lost their property, but the purpose was to locate them in central locations, not to re-educate or liquidate them, as our enemies did to the Allies. For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. I think using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons. However, the US did rebuild the world economy after WW2, mostly to prevent it from becoming aligned with the Soviet Union. Most of the world's national borders are descended from WW2. As leading historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, "[WW2 was German and Japanese soldiers machine-gunning unarmed civilians by the tens of millions.]"
- throwanem 6y ago
  Victor Davis Hanson says a lot of things, including that Iraq II was a good idea - he was a minor but still fairly significant public relations voice in the neoconservative bloc that pushed that war into existence, to the enormous detriment of US interests in the Middle East and worldwide. As a classicist he's tolerable, if no more than that; in any century where the years count up instead of down, the man seems entirely at sea.
- p_l 6y ago
  That's what concentration camp is for. To concentrate and control. There were separate death camps (sometimes combined) that involved direct train-to-killing-field pipelines, and most concentration camps involved work in horrible conditions, but that's because of further goals above relocation.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Not in the US.
    - wan23 6y ago
      That some concentration camps in other countries were also death camps is entirely the point. They are not the same thing, but they're just one step removed. In fact, thousands of people died in the American camps even though there was not an official policy of extermination.
      - jstarfish 6y ago
        Camps are a very whitewashed aspect of US history. Look at the forced marches and internment of Native Americans, POWs at Andersonville or anybody unfortunate enough to be in the custody of Joe Arpaio. We have a nasty habit of creating scenarios where death is an inevitable consequence without it being the official policy.
      - Stupulous 6y ago
        From some light research, it looks like 120,000 Japanese-Americans were put in these camps for 2-3 years and 1,862 died. In the country at large, if I'm reading this [1] right, 1,459,000 people died outside of the camps in the US, which had a population of 136,700,000. That's a ~1% base death rate per year, which would account for ~2/3 of these deaths in a year. This could be investigated further; was the average length of imprisonment less than a year, were the causes of death different than in the larger population, did economic conditions and racism increase the base death rate among Japanese-Americans in the first place, was the age distribution different among those the US bothered to move to camps, pushing their base rate lower? Evidently people died because of these camps, and it is incredibly likely that many of those deaths were racist hate crimes committed by US employees on US citizens. Even that aside, it was very much wrong it imprison innocent civilians on the basis of their race. 'Thousands died' does seem like a substantial overstatement when the only number I can find is less than 2,000 (it's from the US, so it may be biased). Probably a few hundred died as a result of these camps, mostly from disease. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf
necovek 6y ago
It's called media manipulation: US government has perfected a way to manipulate knowing and unknowing media outlets to spill out the news that serves their goals. Unsuspecting public just goes for it, especially since it's all too easy too fall into the self-righteousness (look at those nasty people doing that, they are nothing like us). Internet was a tool that allowed all sides to be equally heard (the fact that it was abused to disseminate fake news supports that claim even more), so only now it's too obvious what's going on. Oh, and other governments and organizations are catching up quickly with the same practice.

kiba 6y ago

But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? It's called having protestors in the first place. China wouldn't let you hear about it, or all you get is distorted information, which means you don't know what's going on in their society.

beardedwizard 6y ago
Like our protests?
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  Like our protests if the internet was heavily censored too
monocasa 6y ago
You don't think China has protestors? They protest on a scale not seen in the US, with 2010 having 180,000 "mass incidents".
- seppin 6y ago
  They aren't allowed, is the point. You can be disappeared for speaking against Xi. Any comparison is a false one.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    They absolutely are allowed.
    - seppin 6y ago
      OP's point is that protests happen in rural areas outside the central government's control. They are very much not allowed and usually crushed when found. > They absolutely are allowed. So you and I can go to tiananmen square tomorrow for a healthy protest and drum circle?