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Comment by t-3 | Hacker News Reader

Nobody outside NATO buys the whole "Mr Justice F. Eagle" shtick anyway though. People inside the US have been raised on anti-China for hundreds of years (yellow journalism never died) and are ready to accept anything to stop the "bad guys" from winning.

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Hundreds of years! A feat for a nation only 250 years old. Particularly considering the panic about Chinese immigration - the first real anti-China event in US history - dates to the latter half of the 1800s.

Also, the “yellow” in “yellow journalism” != the slur “yellow” as in “yellow peril.”

And finally, your conclusion - “[Americans] are ready to accept anything to stop the ‘bad guys’” - would still be a parochial ignorance, as well as ironically biased, even were it not so shakily premised.

Very few countries have any power to control external influence on a social media platform. They don't have much ability to create or distribute a local solution so they have to import one. So when you say those outside NATO don't buy the whole shtick, part of that is they don't have the luxury to do so. They almost have to import such things or just not have them.

People don't buy the shtick because they've been getting their resources stolen, their people bombed, and their governments couped over and over and over again, not because they don't have their own home-grown social media (pretty much everywhere does, it's just not as popular and doesn't make as much money). Pretty hard to believe in the pure heart and good intentions of Uncle Sam by looking at his behavior during the Cold War era or the unipolar moment (ie. within living memory).

I think it's actually harder to believe in bad intentions of people than good intentions. The former makes me miserable, the latter makes me grateful.

So yes, the US government has done a lot that has hurt other people, it has also done a lot that has helped other people. I think we choose whether we want to believe people care about us or don't. I choose to believe they do.

not really true, the china bad all-out propagandizing is actually pretty recent

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