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Comment by francoisfeugeas | Hacker News Reader

Excuse my French but that man is a piece of shit. Victim blaming at its finest and a totally uncalled for, totally irrelevant, very misinformed political opinion.

I do realize I'm on HN and this is not the place to discuss this, but I had to react as this hits a nerve (obviously).

If you think the French welfare state is a production of our current socialist government, newsflash: it's not. As for France being a paradise for immigrants, we can't even get the Syrians refugees to come here to fulfill the quotas Europe imposed on us.

I can't find any more words to say how disgusted I am by that comment.

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Did he blame the victims? or do you really believe that the french government is the victim? and not the citizens of paris.

"I think the French government is as responsible as ISIS for this"

He did blame the victims.

France is a democracy. The French government has been elected and represents the people of France.

Plus all the things he refers to are not especially the doing of our current government. I do not like our current president or the current ruling party, but come on...

"France is a democracy"

But that does not mean they're a victim, if you're a french citizen who elected a government that then went on to do ABC that does not mean that you as a citizen supported that.

"represents the people of France"

What does that mean though? does that mean that if a government that i elected goes on to do awful things, represent me?

Governments do horrific things their citizens don't support from time to time, i don't think that the US government represented all americans when they decided to drop atomic bombs in 1945.

I'm not going to debate on how democracy works or doesn't work, you totally disregarded the second part of my comment anyway.

I'm not aware of any atrocities committed by our current government.

[edited after cooling down]

> i don't think that the US government represented all americans when they decided to drop atomic bombs in 1945

Offtopic but I wish this historical meme would die. Atomic bombs were probably the most humane option that was on the table; if you want to talk about atrocities America inflicted on Japan, let's talk about firebombings.

atomic bombs the most humane option? ... Could you elaborate on that?

If they invaded the island still in war, more than 20 millions would die as they thought Hirohito was an God.

Dropping the bombs to scare the japanese empire saved tons of lifes.

Since backing off the war completely wasn't a realistic option, they basically had a choice between nuking Japan until it surrenders, or prolonging the war on land and sea, and the latter was estimated to take much more lives on both sides.

I'm not saying that the US chose to go with the first option out of altruistic reasons, but dropping the atomic bombs wasn't an atrocity compared with the usual firebombing, and saved a lot of lives that would be lost if the war continued.

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