Comment by drb91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drb91 | Hacker News Reader

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Oh come on, neoliberals aren’t much better. They’re two feet to the left of the right wingers when it comes to surveillance, policing, funding the military & pro-military nationalistic rhetoric, with industry hands in their pocket, and their own hands in the media. The seeds for fascism, authoritarianism, and cults of personality are well rooted in the senior offices of congress on both sides. It has been ripe for abuse and we have seen only a small bit of this in 2016.

Pinning any change here on trump is like blaming the crash on a pilot who took charge after the engines already blew. There is little to no recognition of the abuses of federal government in the government itself, and not for a while.

If any authoritarian power rises, it will be because the democrats are too busy shoveling their shit out of view to put up any real fight. Just look at how blame for a mediocre-at-best platform was shifted to russian propaganda, as if it could have possibly moved the needle more than the hundreds of millions of “legit” propaganda spent by the democrats, as if Bernie Sander's continued popularity doesn't point to a way to strong support in the future that they continue to reject for more unpopular, centrist, neoliberals.

I think the issue is that Trump and the State department are not going to do anything about a strongman in China. Trump likes strongmen and hasn't doing anything to curb Duerte, Putin and now Xi in China.

Well, that may be true. I'm not sure what another state department might have done in this position against Xi, though; this is a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage either.

> I'm not sure what another state department might have done

The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy. It's believed that people with freedom and opportunity become vibrant trade partners and allies, not enemies in war. Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

That historic policy is widely believed to have given the US enormous influence, as people generally feel favorably towards others whose central goal is freedom and opportunity for all.

The current State Dept (including the Secretary of State) and other leading government officials have openly forewarn support for human rights. The Secretary of State said making money is more important (which fits the approach of many in the oil industry, and he was CEO of Exxon). Others deemphasize it for no given reason, and advocate even eliminating the State Dept in favor of military power.

> a continuation of politics that hardly offered Obama straightforward leverage

A lack of straightforward leverage is pretty normal for international relations; it's the sea in which diplomats swim. Almost every great thing that has been accomplished in that field was done in that environment.

> The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy.

Rhetorically; the substance is less consistent.

> Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

There is basically no empirical evidence for this popular claim (the relative rarity of democracy-on-democracy war does not require any more than the small proportion of potential historical pairs of nations that consist of two democratic nations to explain it.)

>> > The US State Department, and the entire US government, has for generations made human rights central to US foreign policy.

> Rhetorically; the substance is less consistent.

Agreed, but the results are incredible on the scale of human history. Under Pax Americana, look at the amazing spread of liberty and democracy, and of prosperity, to people worldwide.

But yes, more should have been done. Too often the U.S. sacrificed others, on large scales, to narrow interests.

>> Democracies don't start wars against other democracies, as an historical rule.

> There is basically no empirical evidence for this popular claim

It's hard to prove a negative through evidence, but can you cite and exception? And looking at the obverse, progress in international peace and cooperation, have non-democracies ever achieved anything like the EU or NATO? Remember Europe before democracy.

> It's hard to prove a negative through evidence

No, it's not, in the usual scientific sense of proof rather than some absolutist one; you show the expected incidence of the inhibitory effect did not exist, and then show that the actual value (either by surveying the whole universe of concern or a random subset) is below that expected value to a degree that makes it improbable that it occurs by chance, while controling for other known sources of variability.

> but can you cite and exception?

Sure, if you use a definition of Democracy that isn't so narrow that the expected number of wars if democracies on both sides isn't far less than one, you will also find lots of actual wars between Democracies. Even if you ignore wars where the only pair of democracies are a separatist group and the unit they are separating from (e.g., the American Revolution), there are plenty (War of 1812, for instance, or more recently some parts of the Yugoslav Wars.)

Wikipedia has more discussion and examples:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_democra...

> have non-democracies ever achieved anything like the EU or NATO?

Yes, non-democracies have created both continent-spanning multi-national supergovernments like the EU and wide regional military alliances like NATO.

In fact, they did both long before democracies did.

It would be great if you could cite some examples. The American Revolution and War of 1812 clearly are not ones; the UK was not a democracy. The wars in the former Yugoslavia are a stretch; those were at best very nascent democracies.

> if you use a definition of Democracy that isn't so narrow ...

The word has a meaning; these aren't narrow definitions any more than saying 'Manchester United isn't a basketball team' depends on how narrow your definition is of 'basketball'.

> The American Revolution and War of 1812 clearly are not ones; the UK was not a democracy.

At what point precisely did the Westminster system, one of the more common models of modern democracy, become a democracy?

Note that the later you peg and the more narrowly you define “democracy” to justify it, the more you make the case that there have been so few democracies that, given the actual historicsl frequency of interstate wars and the number of nations available at any time, the number of wars expected to have a democracy on either side is expected to be near zero even if democracy in both sides of a dyad does nothing to decrease the probability of war between the countries.

(Also note if you claim it's not a democracy because it had territories unrepresented in the national government despite the form of government being democratic, that has the same effect—and even rules out the modern US as a democracy, as well.)

The transitioned happened during the reign of Queen Victoria where the monarchy transitioned from a seat of power to a ceremonial role.

This seems deeply, deeply idealistic to me--but ultimately this seems political, so I'll just say my point was that it's not clear what Obama could have done differently aside from save face and keep the state department staffed.

Let's just see if Trump and the State department make any statements condemning these moves and encouraging democratic institutions. Sometimes all you need is a few strongly worded statements that say we are watching. The US has a lot of influence here.

I miss idealism.

> This seems deeply, deeply idealistic to me--but ultimately this seems political, so I'll just say my point was that it's not clear what Obama could have done differently aside from save face and keep the state department staffed.

The facts differ from your claims. All you need to do is look at history, from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Kennedy to Reagan to Bush Jr to Obama and everyone in between. All embraced these things and acted on them.

The current nationalists want to paint it as idealistic, but in fact it has been the mainstream - and very effective - for generations.

What facts? You've just made assertions.

Let's be realistic. China has an economy nearly three times the size of the #3 economy, Japan, at this point. They dominate dozens of aspects of global trade and commodities. They're a nuclear power, and clearly the world's #2 military (and persistently trying to close the gap with the US).

So, do what about Xi exactly? Nothing. There's absolutely nothing Trump or Obama could or would be able to do about Xi's power grab. Obama would have issued a PR about concerns of this or that, and it would have been meaningless in actuality (other than making a small number of people feel slightly better for a minute).

China has been authoritarian-heavy in one form or another for most of the last 300 years or so of modern history. Smacking them on the nose about it isn't going to accomplish much. It'll work about as well as it has with Russia over the prior century.

An organized global response would probably dampen ambitions. In fact it's unlikely this would have happened except for in the current situation. There are a lot of ways to wield influence effectively.

Economic partnerships could be formed with the nations that surround China, especially the nations that could potentially restrict China’s access to global shipping. It would force them to spend huge amounts of capital on railroads to maintain control of their connection to the greater world.

All of the surrounding nations would agree with your accusation of authoritarian tendencies from China and would eagerly align themselves with each other and the US in order to level the playing field between them and China.

Another thing that could be done is to shame them on the international stage into adopting policies that restrict their ability to pollute, and subsequently slow their growth.

China listens, and stops importing western recycle trashes to protect its environment, and the western countries panic.

Tangentially: Is there a way to draw a line between this kind of comment and (IMHO) productive ones, in order to make enforceable, effective rules?

The comment adds no knowledge to the discussion - I'm no wiser after reading it - and is inflammatory, risking further derailment of the discussion. Mostly it communicates the emotional state of the commenter, in regard to this issue, when the comment was written.

There are times and places to do that, but they are very common and we also need the other kind of interaction: A very important problem is how to have substantive, valuable discussion of public affairs, and I'm searching for a solution.

This. Obama radically expanded the surveillance state as did Bush and arguably Clinton abided it even if he didn't outright affect it in the same way as his successors. I'm not going to make the statement that the Chinese surveillance state is wrong, because in this instance I think it's irrelevant to the greater point that its execution is a totally different beast from the government surveillance that takes place in the USA. Whether or not one party in the USA is worse than another, neither is comparable in this context to the CPC.

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