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Re:U.S. Stood by as Indonesia Killed a Half-Million People, ... by freeflight on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @02:38PM (#15501734)
It's a moot point considering that in a slightly different world we'd be talking about the crimes of Raegan and some other US presidents in exactly the same way.

It's only a crime because a victor chose to label it so, a different victor would have labeled a different thing the crime, it's all quite arbitrary in the end.

Phillip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle is a very interesting thought experiment in that regard.

As enjoyable and gripping as the Amazon show might be, having the same show set in our reality would mean you'd be rooting for a couple of Neo-Nazis trying to revive the Third Reich. Would such a show still be as enjoyable to us? I doubt it.

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Re:U.S. Stood by as Indonesia Killed a Half-Million People, ... by freeflight on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @03:20PM (#15502096)
> The differences are pretty clear

No, they are not, they are only a matter of definition and framing. You defined who's worse by the number of people killed, that's one way to do it but not the only one, it also leaves a lot of wiggle room with "indirect people killed", that's where all objectivity breaks down.

Case in point: Your local hardcore communist would argue that the global capitalistic system is not just killing magnitudes of more people every year, it's keeping the remaining ones literally enslaved for life.

The moment you think it's as clear-cut like that, that's the moment you should question your position because the reality is never as clear-cut or convenient as that. It's naive to assume that the reality in which we live is the "good one" where always and only "the good guys" win and that's why we can talk about the bad guys being the bad guys, but that's exactly what you did there with your allusive "Raegen presided and encouraged the advance of human civilization and these other guys did just want to see the world burn".

Like it's something that could only happen because of Raegan and all alternative outcomes, not involving Raegan, are automatically assumed to be worse or not possible at all. I for one can imagine a number of alternate realities where Raegan would never have been the president, where the US lost the cold war, and we'd still be sitting here arguing just like this but in a slightly different setting, but "human civilization" could have advanced nonetheless.

Some of these alternative realities could be "worse", others could be "better", but I'd say the vast majority of them would be rated as "normal" for people living in said realities because without being able to experience these alternative outcomes it's pretty much impossible to build a frame of reference which ones of them are actually the "best" or the "worst".