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Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

The argument basically boils down to the conclusion that we must keep our superiority complex to keep us sane. I'd rather have a correct assessment of myself.

The hypocrisy Lincoln is talking about didn't lead his nation to emancipation, they delayed emancipation by over a hundred years. Emancipation was going to happen much earlier otherwise.

There is no claim to moral superiority here. I live in the west and I guarantee you the government has facial recognition trained on me, access to public camera and to my phones' camera any time they please, and access to my voice prints. So I don't see why I should feel superior. I don't like lying to myself.

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But there is superiority; I have a colleague from China who accidentally pulled out their phone to read news while within sight where there was a protest going on.

They were then visited on the weekend for eight hours for intense interviews to make sure he wasn’t involved in the ‘government criticism’. He says this is a regular situation.

If you think this is a routine thing in America, you might be mistaken, but it is very routine in China.

If you don’t think comparing average situations is related at all to average moral differences in political systems, you might be mistaken. I can see how being trained in moral relativism would lead to this conclusion though…

Certainly, the actual act of being visited by your government is something that wouldn't happen in the US.

The difference is that of intent. The US government isn't fine with you protesting because they respect your right to threaten the power of the interests they represent, it's because they know that your protest will do literally nothing to threaten them.

Wheras in China, the government is much more susceptible to being negatively affected for protests.

When push comes to shove, if you actually do threaten the interests of the US Government, you will be killed or exiled. We saw this happen multiple times throughout US history.

In your view, protest never leads to change in America?

In your view, citizens of the US never visit or are visited by agents of some level of government?

In your view, the US government is not the collection of disparate power bases we see but actually a hidden monolithic “they,” with a discrete “intent” that is a composition of unspecified but doubtless nefarious interest groups?

In your view, China’s government is susceptible to radical yet peaceful change because of organized protest?

In your view, China’s government would never suppress organized protest? Or - perhaps - it suppresses protest because it would lead to change, and your view is that this is a more honest tyranny, echoing the Lincoln quote?

In your view, American local and federal governments have never reformed themselves, the variance of state laws, abolition, prohibition, the repeal of prohibition, civil rights and the expansion minority rights all being meaningless mirages? In your view this is because every hint of actual change is met with assassination or exile for some single protestor who matters more than every other?

If I’ve understood correctly, and with respect, I find these assertions absurd.

Protest can lead to change in America, but before it does the American intelligence system starts visiting and assassinating people. This is well documented.

The US government is a collection of a few, not that many, disparate power bases that nonetheless have extreme similarities. Which is why, for example, COINTELPRO was a bipartisan effort.

The Chinese government is absolutely susceptible to radical change because of organized protest. Not peaceful, because violence would get involved, but the disintegration can be put into gear as a result of peaceful protest. I don't see why this is absurd, it happened to the USSR that had a political system that is identical to China.

And yes, the Chinese tyranny is honest, they tell you upfront that they will suppress protest as long as it threatens a few key points, and they generally stick to it.

The American local and federal governments have never done radical reforms without violence or the threat of violence. I don't see prohibition as a radical reform, and neither is the relatively inconsequent expansions of minority rights except for the 60s and 70s, which definitely involved the threat of violence.

I'm not claiming that no change can be done from popular will - neither in the US nor in China, though more can be done in the US. I'm claiming that radical change that threaten the shared interests of the power base will, in both cases, be opposed by lethal force. And they will.

And no, this isn't limited to single protestors. The US National Guard has opened fire and bombed whole crowds in the beginning of the 20th century when organized labour was a threat, and figureheads of protests were and almost definitely still are subjected to intense surveillance and often threats or even actual violence - it's absolutely not a single protestor that is effected, it's everyone in the US.

But yes, if you state the assertions without the necessary nuance they sound absurd. This is a discussion that requires a lot of nuance and it would be nice if we could steelman each other.

On the main but with caveats, I agree with your argument, assuming nuance even where you do not elaborate it.

Our most important difference, I think, is around the significance and value of the hypocrisy of an ostensibly liberal system which nonetheless quietly affords the powerful with easy access to state-backed violence in the protection of their interests.

In my view, the presence of this hypocrisy is an abiding reminder to the civitas of the possibility of stable and positive change. It is the promise that such change will reaffirm, not diminish, the essence of one's culture and tradition. Just as a sinning Catholic retains the possibility of redemption by honoring their professed beliefs, a hypocritical yet liberal society has ready-made the justification and mechanism for reform. The nation may repent from its despotism and is naturally pressured to do so; what tyranny does exist must be hidden and so is neutered.

Take the French: since 1789 they have always managed to found a new, and hopefully slightly better, republic, even after interludes of imperial lunacy or foreign invasion. If you'll permit me to say so, their nation cannot escape from the hypocrisy of ruling by absolutism a people conscious of their own rights. In the extreme, this means violence, but in the smaller battles of society and change this means free protest, politics, voting, and yelling, as in America. Much - most - of the noise is in vain, but not always, and not in the matter of the most preciously held freedoms. To simplify: there, the state sins and fears the discovery of the people; in China the people sin and fear the discovery of the state.

I often feel in discussions like this that I am defending Americans from the charge of ignorance. We speak so loudly of our ideals that we perhaps beg for an insult to our intelligence, just as a common self-righteous blowhard would (hello).

And - by the fact of our empire our leaders' words carry an implicit threat, even when they speak to a laudable ideal. In the subtext I feel I am arguing for the existence of this empire. I feel I am arguing that the empire is a utilitarian good despite the arch-hypocrisy of the tyrannical, violent realpolitik that built it. I am not - though I am sure we would disagree ardently there as well.

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