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Comment by jand | Hacker News Reader

I do not think that the actions of a 3rd party should be influencing our decisions regarding the standards we apply to ourselves.

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A huge amount of smart people in the U.S. seem to completely forget this when it comes to China. Everyone's so effectively brainwashed to think that China = bad that you can't even start any type of complex conversation about such a multifaceted topic.

It's because China regularly does things that Western countries simply don't do.

For example right now we have an Australian citizen who is being held for no reason and with no ability to purse it through the judiciary because there isn't one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/asia/china-australi...

Or you know that small issue of the mass-genocide that is happening in Xinjiang.

This is what I’m talking about. You just give for granted that America = good, China = bad. Should we start listing everything the US has done since the Vietnam war that has never been regarded as genocide (although it was) and nobody has ever paid for? Or all the other shenanigans American administration and agencies have been continuously involved with?

Out of the top of my head:

- guantanamo bay and waterboarding.

- toppling all sorts of South American sovereign government when the CIA would see fit.

- Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia from 1970 to 1975

- occupying foreign territory with the intent of making war on terror while seizing natural resources and destabilizing entire regions in the Middle East

I’m just saying: savior and champion of the free world my ass. Which is why the US should not be reserved any benefit in comparison to China when it comes to human rights and freedoms. We’re talking about a Western society LITERALLY built on slavery, whose entire prison system has been conceived as a continuation of forced labor.

Once this is settled, and the idea that America in inherently superior to China from an ethical standpoint is set aside, well then maybe we can properly talk about geopolitics.

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