Seems like they usually leave out the "also" because apparently two things can't be bad at the same time. Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where only one thing is bad? I expect it'd be simpler, at least.
Except they’re nowhere nearly comparable. The US is pretty bad but China is an authoritarian state with internet censorship and state-controlled companies.
The “America also bad” argument feels like a mass murderer saying “well you stabbed a guy 10 years ago, you’re no different!”.
Go look up to see what China did during the great leap forward and cultural revolution. They killed about 30 million of their own people. I would like you to post a source proving that the United States murdered 30 million of its own people within the past 150 years, as well as persecuting tens of millions of people and sending millions of children from cities to be reeducated with forced labor on camps after being separated from their parents. Hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were murdered for being... Intellectuals.
The only thing that comes close was slavery and the Japanese internment during world War II. However, slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, and during the Japanese internment families were generally kept together and they were not forcibly reeducated.
"Please tell me a time when.this country did terrible things b-b-but only in this certain half of the country's existence!! Otherwise it's cheating!!1!"
Conveniently chose a time right where you can ignore the Slavery and the Trail of Tears (% population wise that was just as bad). Not to mention the mass Native American "reeducation" and ripping them away from their families to get a "proper white education"
Every government has done terrible things. The US, China, and Russia are among the worst. We can argue about what is "worse." But that is completely subjective. China literally just did much of what the US did, but on a larger scale 150 years later and with different technology.
Arguably Russia was the worst of them all, but literally all 3 are bad. America pulled itself out of that era and into corporate indetured servitude era of corporations committing genocides and coups in other countries. Personally I think that China is worse than the US and Russia dwarfs both of them, but just because one is maybe marginally worse doesn't mean the other wasn't/isn't bad.
I mean that’s the point of the comment. Any conversation about China’s shortcomings necessarily turns into “but US also bad” as if that’s proving a point we don’t already know. This is Lemmy, not the CPAC convention. We’re probably all pretty on board with nuanced positions on the evils of imperial states
Imagine thinking that people are opposed to post-scarcity economics, and not the whole "let's kill everyone who disagrees with us until we achieve such conditions"
The one they replied to may have been criticizing "whataboutism", but it could also be (mis)interpreted as implying the USA has not had similar problems.
But who hasn’t killed their citizens in a simple misunderstanding? Or, if that doesn’t work, America Also Bad! \s
Well, the citizens they killed were literally firing on them and killed around 150 soldiers. Meanwhile the military for the most part did not have guns. Not saying it is justified even then to use military force on striking workers, but a hell of a lot more justified than western media claims. Oh yeah, and literally no college students died that day, as well as nobody within a mile of Tianenmen Square.