4 ms·

US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible whilst simultaneously threatening every single citizen

US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible whilst simultaneously threatening every single citizen with, essentially, removal from society, if they speak against the chosen narrative. No country is innocent, some are, however, free (moreso, at least, enough to matter, enough to choose if the need arises).

stelonix 5y ago
Those movies are more often than not glorifying such embarrassments, which make them propaganda. As an analogy for China & the US, you can say one of them is Orwellian while the other is Huxleyan. They're both oppressive, but it's about time to stop pretending only coercion is bad; propaganda is everywhere in american media and it's the same tactic used by autocracies in the 40s: spin everything you do as "us vs them they evil" and dehumanize anything your foes do as "they evil not free genocide". People who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths are the same to dismiss the Iraq war with millions dead; calling it what it was, a genocide, will never even pass by their brains. Double standards.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  First, now sure I follow how Orwell glorifies these embarrassments, because I think it's the exact opposite. Second, the USA/EU is not perfectly innocent wrt to propaganda, but still... it could be much worse.
  - stelonix 5y ago
    Subjective comparisons are really useless on a debate eg. "I think USA/EU are bad but China is worse" while someone else will say exactly the opposite. You'll then say "he's blinded by propaganda" and the other side will say the same. If the debate is in a western website, you win, if it's in China, they win. That's a flamewar shitshow, not a debate. The Orwell/Huxley comparison wrt the way China/America respectively enforce their narrative. China is through crackdown of dissent, coercion, while the US is through propaganda that paints everything America does as righteous, inherently good, altruist, selfless... You only have to look at the output of Hollywood or modern videogames to see such an obvious fact. Of course, if you're the target of state propaganda, it'll be hard to decouple what you've been fed your whole life as truth from geopolitical interests. Being an outsider I can see the bullshit in both governments, but the one I'm worried about is the one which has been belligerent since I was born and much before that.
    - asimpletune 5y ago
      Yeah, I mean you're basically saying if someone is so inclined they can approach any question from a perspective of bad faith, and never recognize any merit to a theoretically valid argument. I don't think that problem in general can be solved, even if we eliminated propaganda or otherwise. No one can make anyone agree with someone, even if they're right. That being said, I can still ask questions and say what I think and see what happens. I'm legitimately open to being wrong, in fact I'd love to be. Also, I'll just add this briefly, I didn't say anything about China. I just said it could be much worse. That could come from my own people (I'm from the USA).
      - stelonix 5y ago
        I believe discourse/debate on the internet are broken. I'll go as far as saying internet forums have failed because they're still text-only, moderation is still upvote/downvote-only and people are not obligated to add citations for what they claim. We're left with finding forums where people are more rational and less biased, which is why I frequent HN. Still, the problem can be alleviated imo if we level up the way internet forums work.
        asimpletune 5y ago
        You and me are doing it right now! Respect and setting a good example at the end of the day I think succeed. I can't prove it, but I take it as a matter of faith I suppose. O and yeah, you're right, these kinds of issues aren't so much of a problem face to face. Our emotions are like little ASICs that just kind of grease the wheels of social friction. Evolutions... crazy.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  Indeed. If I recall correctly, movies which use US Military equipment are often required to work with/be reviewed by the Pentagon: [0] https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/Blog/article/2062735/how-why-the-dod-works-with-hollywood/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/Blog/article/2062735... [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-military-movies-20110821-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-mi...
  - thesuitonym 5y ago
    AFAIK there's no requirement to work with the DoD, but if you want DoD consultants they want a say in the movie.
- oolonthegreat 5y ago
  AFAIK there was (still is) huge public backlash after it became apparent that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Ofc you can argue that this reaction was too late and maybe even insincere (since public support was very high in the beginning of the war).
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Two that come to mind are The Big Short and The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Two movies in a rich fabric that give me no confidence in the reality of consequences of bad behaviour that my parents drilled into me since I was born. Both movies give me the impression that no lessons have been learned by either experience.
- someguydave 5y ago
  There is no way you can truthfully say that the US went to Iraq to murder an ethnicity. Flagged.
  - stelonix 5y ago
    I'm still waiting for the incontestable proof China is trying to get rid of Uygurs. No, a known anti-China source such as Adrian Zenz being propped up by adversaries of China does not count. If you have the slightest understanding of discourse, you already know this: you don't get a biased source to report on the subject they're biased about.
    - someguydave 5y ago
      If you are not in the US, and you are not in Europe (this article is blocked there) which continent are you on?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      It seems unreasonable to require that all bad information about China come from previously neutral sources. Is Zenz an anti-China source because he's "biased", or because he's reached a reasonable evidence-based conclusion that the Chinese government is very bad?
- Cupertino95014 5y ago
  > people who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths Whoa, some paid CCP propaganda there. How about this: Allow international human rights groups and Western media access to the Uygurh areas? Allow the topic to be discussed openly on the Chinese internet? Until the CCP does that, it's better advised to just suppress the story. Like it's doing now.
titzer 5y ago
I have yet to see a feature-length film depicting Trump the way, e.g. Oliver Stone's "W" or Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" depicted Bush. Trump's crimes are buried in a mountain of...other crimes, and the atmosphere is so thick with bullshit that investigating facts is to tempt a firehouse of political hate of epic proportions. I think certain topics are virtually suicide these days.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  I think that's just a case of not enough time having passed. There's probably so much material to sift through.
Aunche 5y ago
One "feature" of democracy is that it doesn't matter whether people speak out against something. You just need 51% of people to agree with you, which can come from manufactured consent, and you can accomplish all the evil deeds you want all the same. If you try to do anything thar actually threatens the government's operations, you're treasonous and can be punished accordingly.
GordonS 5y ago
> US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible In some ways, I think this can actually serve to make people believe that real events were fictional - after all, movies are generally fictional or at least with a good dose of artistic license. I also must point out that some western governments will go to extreme lengths to bury bad actions as deeply as possible - if it wasn't for leakers, there are a whole host of Western war crimes and atrocities that would never have surfaced to the public. Even when they do, government and media propaganda machines are very efficient at convincing the general populace there is nothing to see here. We like to berate China and others for bad actions (rightly so), but in many respects Western governments are appalling hypocrites.

stelonix 5y ago

Those movies are more often than not glorifying such embarrassments, which make them propaganda. As an analogy for China & the US, you can say one of them is Orwellian while the other is Huxleyan. They're both oppressive, but it's about time to stop pretending only coercion is bad; propaganda is everywhere in american media and it's the same tactic used by autocracies in the 40s: spin everything you do as "us vs them they evil" and dehumanize anything your foes do as "they evil not free genocide". People who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths are the same to dismiss the Iraq war with millions dead; calling it what it was, a genocide, will never even pass by their brains. Double standards.

asimpletune 5y ago
First, now sure I follow how Orwell glorifies these embarrassments, because I think it's the exact opposite. Second, the USA/EU is not perfectly innocent wrt to propaganda, but still... it could be much worse.
- stelonix 5y ago
  Subjective comparisons are really useless on a debate eg. "I think USA/EU are bad but China is worse" while someone else will say exactly the opposite. You'll then say "he's blinded by propaganda" and the other side will say the same. If the debate is in a western website, you win, if it's in China, they win. That's a flamewar shitshow, not a debate. The Orwell/Huxley comparison wrt the way China/America respectively enforce their narrative. China is through crackdown of dissent, coercion, while the US is through propaganda that paints everything America does as righteous, inherently good, altruist, selfless... You only have to look at the output of Hollywood or modern videogames to see such an obvious fact. Of course, if you're the target of state propaganda, it'll be hard to decouple what you've been fed your whole life as truth from geopolitical interests. Being an outsider I can see the bullshit in both governments, but the one I'm worried about is the one which has been belligerent since I was born and much before that.
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    Yeah, I mean you're basically saying if someone is so inclined they can approach any question from a perspective of bad faith, and never recognize any merit to a theoretically valid argument. I don't think that problem in general can be solved, even if we eliminated propaganda or otherwise. No one can make anyone agree with someone, even if they're right. That being said, I can still ask questions and say what I think and see what happens. I'm legitimately open to being wrong, in fact I'd love to be. Also, I'll just add this briefly, I didn't say anything about China. I just said it could be much worse. That could come from my own people (I'm from the USA).
    - stelonix 5y ago
      I believe discourse/debate on the internet are broken. I'll go as far as saying internet forums have failed because they're still text-only, moderation is still upvote/downvote-only and people are not obligated to add citations for what they claim. We're left with finding forums where people are more rational and less biased, which is why I frequent HN. Still, the problem can be alleviated imo if we level up the way internet forums work.
      - asimpletune 5y ago
        You and me are doing it right now! Respect and setting a good example at the end of the day I think succeed. I can't prove it, but I take it as a matter of faith I suppose. O and yeah, you're right, these kinds of issues aren't so much of a problem face to face. Our emotions are like little ASICs that just kind of grease the wheels of social friction. Evolutions... crazy.
Mezzie 5y ago
Indeed. If I recall correctly, movies which use US Military equipment are often required to work with/be reviewed by the Pentagon: [0] https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/Blog/article/2062735/how-why-the-dod-works-with-hollywood/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/Blog/article/2062735... [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-military-movies-20110821-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-mi...
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  AFAIK there's no requirement to work with the DoD, but if you want DoD consultants they want a say in the movie.
oolonthegreat 5y ago
AFAIK there was (still is) huge public backlash after it became apparent that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Ofc you can argue that this reaction was too late and maybe even insincere (since public support was very high in the beginning of the war).
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Two that come to mind are The Big Short and The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Two movies in a rich fabric that give me no confidence in the reality of consequences of bad behaviour that my parents drilled into me since I was born. Both movies give me the impression that no lessons have been learned by either experience.
someguydave 5y ago
There is no way you can truthfully say that the US went to Iraq to murder an ethnicity. Flagged.
- stelonix 5y ago
  I'm still waiting for the incontestable proof China is trying to get rid of Uygurs. No, a known anti-China source such as Adrian Zenz being propped up by adversaries of China does not count. If you have the slightest understanding of discourse, you already know this: you don't get a biased source to report on the subject they're biased about.
  - someguydave 5y ago
    If you are not in the US, and you are not in Europe (this article is blocked there) which continent are you on?
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    It seems unreasonable to require that all bad information about China come from previously neutral sources. Is Zenz an anti-China source because he's "biased", or because he's reached a reasonable evidence-based conclusion that the Chinese government is very bad?
Cupertino95014 5y ago
> people who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur deaths Whoa, some paid CCP propaganda there. How about this: Allow international human rights groups and Western media access to the Uygurh areas? Allow the topic to be discussed openly on the Chinese internet? Until the CCP does that, it's better advised to just suppress the story. Like it's doing now.

titzer 5y ago

I have yet to see a feature-length film depicting Trump the way, e.g. Oliver Stone's "W" or Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" depicted Bush. Trump's crimes are buried in a mountain of...other crimes, and the atmosphere is so thick with bullshit that investigating facts is to tempt a firehouse of political hate of epic proportions. I think certain topics are virtually suicide these days.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I think that's just a case of not enough time having passed. There's probably so much material to sift through.

Aunche 5y ago

One "feature" of democracy is that it doesn't matter whether people speak out against something. You just need 51% of people to agree with you, which can come from manufactured consent, and you can accomplish all the evil deeds you want all the same. If you try to do anything thar actually threatens the government's operations, you're treasonous and can be punished accordingly.

GordonS 5y ago

> US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible In some ways, I think this can actually serve to make people believe that real events were fictional - after all, movies are generally fictional or at least with a good dose of artistic license. I also must point out that some western governments will go to extreme lengths to bury bad actions as deeply as possible - if it wasn't for leakers, there are a whole host of Western war crimes and atrocities that would never have surfaced to the public. Even when they do, government and media propaganda machines are very efficient at convincing the general populace there is nothing to see here. We like to berate China and others for bad actions (rightly so), but in many respects Western governments are appalling hypocrites.