Hacker News Reader

Comment by jplr8922 | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you. A month ago I found myself in a debate about the moral equivalency of the US empire vs CCP. My opponent seems to think that any form of power is equaly bad and that the goals and intent does not matter. Therefore, US and China are ''both equals''. I fail to understand how can this form on one-sidedness can come from...

View on HN

What matters to normal people are the results. When you bomb their houses, cause ruin, starvation, mass displacement etc. etc the victims do not give a shit about your "noble" goals. To them you are just as bad if not worse.

If you study the US empire’s clandestine coups and embargoes and the resulting mass casualties, it’s a valid debate. I still think the US is the slightly lesser evil at the moment. The bigger point is that none of this should be happening. Saying “well your side is worst” is a moral misdirection. Rather, there should be mutual agreement that these are atrocities that need to end.

Agree. But we have a United Nations and international courts... so countries violating human rights themselves are setting a defensible precedent for others.

It’s not whataboutism or moral misdirection, it’s about fairness: how come you are allowed to do far worse things, but I am not allowed to do this?

This applies to human rights, climate change, foreign aggression... This is actually the issue we (the world) need to solve.

Classic false equivalence. Compare US democratic and republican parties. While they both have their issues the modern D party versus the R party is a clear winner. One supports the general welfare and has humane policies while respecting the will of the majority while the R party recently tried to install a fascist leader over the votes of the majority of the country, the same leader which also tried to have Congress removed from power by sending his demented minions to attack the Capitol building.

There's a lot I disagree with in your comment so let me offer my perspective:

1. I don't think Trump was actually "fascist". That word has lost all meaning, and has been used as an empty political attack for nearly a century. George Orwell literally wrote back in 1946, "he word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’." (https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...)

2. It is completely legal to challenge election results, and both parties don't just blindly accept what you're calling the "will of the majority" when it affects their own power. Democrats have challenged election results many times in the past, for example in Bush versus Gore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore) in the 2000 presidential election. They also did the same in 2004 and again in 2016 (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/democrat-republic...). Even right now, during this very election cycle, there is a case where Democrats are challenging election results for a House seat, with Pelosi's support (https://time.com/5950292/iowa-congress-election-rita-hart/). Additionally, although most of Trump's cases were never heard and dismissed on procedural grounds, he has actually won 2/3 of the cases that were actually heard by the court (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/exclusive-accurate-...).

3. Trump did not send his "minions" to attack the Capitol building. The transcript of his speech on January 6th (https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-sav...) explicitly calls for a peaceful march and protest. Twitter's own blog post announcing and justifying their ban of Donald Trump's account (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...) does not provide any clear evidence of Trump doing this. All it has are vague opinions and hyperbolic claims like trying to suggest that Trump's plan to not attend the inauguration is somehow a "glorification of violence". Keep in mind that there were tens of thousands of people in DC attending Trump-related events and rallies on January 6th. There were thousands even just in front of the Capitol. Only a few hundred actually went past the barriers. Let's also not forget about Democratic politicians encouraging a capitol riot of their own back in 2018 (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kavanaugh-protesters-arrest...) - it didn't receive the same coverage in news media but was a very comparable incident, and resulted in Capitol police arresting hundreds.

I wouldn't argue that they are equals, but consider that the people you talk to might not care for the stated intents ("we will bring peace to the middle east because we're altruists"), but rather the obvious results ("we've removed stabilizing strong-men and now we have open chattel slavery back in Libya").

China is doing lots of shady stuff, and they too claim that it's for the best -- only in this case we (as in most people outside of China's sphere of influence) ignore the claims and look at the moves as as power plays with a PR narrative. The people you talked to might do the same for US actions.

Genocide isn't "shady stuff" it's fucking genocide.

I was referencing things like their grab of Tibet, power projection in the South China sea, projects in Africa etc. Please don't try to read everything in the worst possible interpretations.

Tibet wasn’t a genocide?

No, Tibet wasn’t a genocide. Xinjiang isn’t either. It’s extremely bad and unjust, but it ain’t systematic slaughter of a race either.

Let’s not stretch the meaning of genocide.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com