refenestrator

That's true, but if it ends there, then it's not a vital matter of self-defense for us. Honestly, not even that important in terms of balance of power provided we get that TSMC plant up in Arizona first.

What it IS, is a grievous insult to our insistence on being the last word in international affairs.

As of right now, there's no battlefield. China's official doctrine has been non-interference in other nations since Mao and they've mostly stuck to it with a few aberrations like a 30 day war in Vietnam.

Xi has been pushing the limits internally and maybe one day that turns external but people here are talking about pre-emptive cold war.

EDIT: diplomatic recognition is a purely symbolic move, and in this case the symbol is a middle finger to China. I'd argue the upsides are limited, but I was more objecting to the general theme of china hawkishness that points towards a new cold war.

What happened when we finally left Vietnam? Absolutely nothing, that's what. Lot fewer people dying from napalm.

We had to support one-way helicopter rides under Pinochet and contras gunning down nuns? Or else the soviets win?

If it's about national pride and staying on top, fine, but don't tell me it's human rights with that record. The Chinese haven't acted with force outside of what they consider their soil/sea in like 40 years. Xi is pretty worrying but until he starts doing that, let's not agitate for killing a bunch of people just in case.

That's really easy to say when it's not you or your kids on the front line.

Beyond just Taiwan, the last cold war kept the third world in a constant state of proxy war between the major powers, costing millions of lives in the short-term and delaying development in the long term.

Worth considering if you're in favor of more of that in the name of human rights.

The tagline "objective, nonpartisan and insightful" on 'World Affairs' really brings it home.

The Chinese government obviously has its own propaganda, but being anti-China is objective and nonpartisan in the US. It's not taking sides, it's just the natural state of affairs, the entire media thinks so, both kinds of it.

> specifically China related content

But from which angle? Pro- or anti-?

I don't think it's likely that most/any HN commenters are paid trolls, there are lots of Chinese and Americans in this industry that will naturally have different perspectives.

The capital was Philadelphia while Washington was president. Philly had a law that slaves who resided there for a year were freed, so Washington established a rotation system to make sure he had slaves around for help but didn't have to free them.

It's do-nothing bullshit.

Do good on top a foundation of fundamental injustice? I'm sorry, do you have any other foundations laying around? I surveyed 5000 years of written history and couldn't find any.

The options are try to do some good or don't.

I'm with you on the advisory part.

My impression is that it's all about negotiating the interaction without winding up in a contest of your rights vs them doing their job. If it goes that way, it seems like "this guy was being a real asshole, boss" is all it takes from the officer for justification.

I guess, on the advisory front, tips on non-escalatory language are probably the biggest win.

This is a good take and probably covers 2/3 of liberals, actually, thanks.

You know overtime is time and a half, right? Cops aren't worried about OKRs, if they're on patrol then whatever they do in a day is their job. If there's additional must-do work, hey, overtime hours.

Stop resisting! That's it, we're taking you in for public obtuseness and resisting arrest. Yeah, yeah, you can make a phone call at the station, stop resisting.

Sounds like you have never been in a spot when resources were scarce and you can't afford to keep around people who are nice, but useless.

Everyone's a humanitarian when the sun is shining.

Worth reflecting on how the John Birch Society looks in retrospect, now that you mention it.

Prophets, or paranoid fools? Are we looking back and saying, gosh, we should have listened to them, that damn Jane Fonda ruined America.

The 'useful idiot' part that I replied to.

Wow. So, what, I have to vote Trump now? That won't be happening but always interesting to hear different perspectives.

If all of my policy preferences code as progressive but I think Kendi and the white fragility lady are jackasses, what does that make me then under your definition?

I'm not trying to let anyone off the hook, just describing the dynamics as I see them.

I identify as a cultural moderate for that reason. This stuff is all divorced from actual politics, economics or governing, it's purely cultural.

It became 'plausible' based on fashion -- the evidence didn't change at all. Which is even crazier.

There's an interesting dynamic here where imo the silent majority of progressives don't buy his approach and think it's counterproductive, but any lone soul who says so is called out, which side are you on here anyways.

So this guy gets to represent himself as a spokesman for the movement and nobody really wants to contradict it under their real name.

The strongest signal here is US ally vs adversary. Everything else is fluff in comparison.

Saudi Arabia does not get called illegitimate, but Cuba does.

Pinochet was 'legitimate'.

It also ravaged the third world continuously over that time while we fought proxy wars.

Cultural sensitivity, you mean. If it mispronounced a random non-icon's name everyone would chuckle and forget about it.

Pattern matchers don't understand culture, so this is gonna be a hard-coded workaround or intentional distortion of dataset to try and achieve the hard-coded workaround.

Because dead is dead. If you can't read, who cares what the declaration of war said.

It's counterinsurgency in both cases, attempting to modernize a tribal Muslim society in hopes of improving security from terror attacks.

You are aware there were terror attacks in Urumqi?

There are differences between their style and ours, the re-education camps vs the drone bombs. Maybe there's an argument about freedoms vs deaths. But Americans clearly do not actually give a shit about Muslim lives, it's just a political talking point. 300k dead in Yemen with our weapons doesn't even make the news, Afghanistan barely cracked the news for a decade, etc etc.

How many Americans were baying at the moon to invade Iraq and now they're the world's greatest humanitarians about Xinjiang?

FYI, putting in heavy partisan asides in comments hurts credibility with neutral readers.

I think you're confusing the DNC and campaign server hacks with Hillary's personal server she used while at State. No indications her personal server was hacked: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-ha...

Sorry, I thought you were trying to understand why Chinese people might be happy with their government after you add it all up. If it's just cold war arguments and demonization, I can't help you with that.

Consider, even if you're that hardcore about it, 'know your enemy' has some value. They understand us but we don't understand them, and sometimes it's willful on our part. We'd rather tell ourselves a story.

Hillary didn't get hacked, it was one of the other people in her circle who got phished. John podesta I think?

Anyways. Yeah, phished. Maybe it's super secret agents or maybe it was a teenager from 4chan.

It's not a fantasy, money isn't even unbacked paper anymore, it's bits in a database column.

Fun fact, if you are not a US citizen, you have no 4th amendment rights against seizure of your data. No judge or legal process necessary beyond a blanket executive order.

There's those qualifications and spin I was asking for.

China is bringing economic development, secular institutions and women's rights, in a heavy handed way, whether the residents want it or not, with minimal regard for costs to those residents. It's the exact same thing as we've been doing, minus a fig leaf of democracy.

In neither case is the word genocide or ethnic cleansing appropriate, body counts don't support it. But it's especially rich to level the accusation 5 seconds after our 20 year war ended.