Hacker News Reader

Comment by fierycatnet | Hacker News Reader

Why is HN gets political like Reddit these days?

Because tech is political. Always has been.

Tech is not, and never has been, political. Just because some people are obsessed with politics and feel the need to insert it into every facet of their life, does not mean we all do. Most of us just want to discuss cool computer stuff, not have fights about politics.

> Most of us just want to discuss cool computer stuff

Most of us have the comfort of living in a place where bombs and missiles do not fall on our heads. It's a very privileged position.

But not all of us. Some of us live in a country that has been attacked and the civilian population there is being bombarded on a regular basis by an aggressor country. The natural reaction is to stop funneling money to that aggressor country.

That's not "political".

One tends to become much more political once bombs start falling on their head. The rational response is to stop paying for those bombs, in direct or indirect ways.

There's nothing political about not wanting to contribute to the aggressor in a terrible war.

Without any more qualifiers, that could be any large country on Earth. Except, maybe, for China. I don't remember them going around invading other places.

Okay do you want to add qualifiers or just accept my point because Russia's invasion happens to be the most bloody and pointless war currently and in the past 40 years?

You should be able to remember China invading other places historically. Recently, of course, China doesn't compare to Russia or the US in terms of direct conflict. On the other hand, they're the country that is the most vocal about an imminent occupation.

Do you want to discount Israel's invasion of Palestine because it has been going on for longer than 40 years?

> should be able to remember China invading other places historically

Can you help me out by clarifying the time and the country they invaded? I remember China being constantly invaded by others, hence the building of the Great Wall of China. They also had a navy at some point exploring the world, but then stopped and never really colonized any place as far as I know. Of course, I don't remember the entire history of China by heart, so which place did they invade and when?

I know it’s fashionable to change the topic to Israel whenever China or Russia is being criticized, but here are some numbers for perspective:

Deaths in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: ~600,000 Total deaths in Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948: ~200,000. So Ukraine is definitely bloodier.

The area occupied by Russia in Ukraine is 20x the size of Gaza + the West Bank, and is 5 times the size of Israel itself.

Russia is 775x the size of Israel, so unlike Israel-Palestine fighting over a small piece of territory to live on, Russia’s war is far more pointless.

The original comment was about "not wanting to contribute to the aggressor in a terrible war", which necessarily will bring up Israel, who the USA is generously spending billions of dollars on year by year.

How many billions of dollars has the USA given to Russia since starting the war?

Everybody draws their line somewhere. For some, it's Russia. For others, Russia and Israel. For other, perhaps also the United States -- but we don't all have to agree about the specific line. However, we should not fall into whataboutism and just do nothing, because it's difficult to define a line. There are aggressors (like Russia), where things really are quite clear.

Just like any other conflict involving large nations, the bad guy is only ever clear to the local propaganda machine. And after the fact history tends to be written by the winner.

Truth is the first victim of any war.

That's a very indefensible claim you have made. If making international relations the focal point of the discussion is not political, then nothing is.

I guess of you're going to describe a meaningless war of aggression as "international relations" you've decided it's geopolitics rather than crime. I can't really help you there, sorry.

Because virtue signaling

Reply on news.ycombinator.com