I find it concerning that you simply brush aside the horrible mistakes the US has made in almost all the continents (except maybe EU). This bias makes it hard for the rest of us to consider you seriously.
>but comparing the actions of a democratic country that promotes rule of law globally...
No one appointed the US to be the world police. It doesn't need to promote it's flawed ideas of "rule" to rest of the world. The US on a basic level lacks the comprehension needed to understand a multipolar, multicultural world, and often ends us messing things for the worse in most of the cases. The mess in Afghanistan/Syria/Libya etc is just one of the recent examples.
Indeed, there is no way to appoint someone to be the global police officer, the U.S. took that upon themselves sometimes to the benefit, sometimes the detriment of the rest of the world and itself (as you can see by just how much pushback there is on both the right and the left in America about America's role in the world). I just don't agree that it's been net negative.
Isn't the Libya mess started by France?
I think you can blame Europe's colonial empires for that. As well as the two world wars started from European in-fighting that left the USA mostly unscathed.
Are you aware that most of the world sees the US not as a country that promotes the rule of law but the one country that's the biggest risk to world peace? It has been like that for many years.
The US completely ignores and shits on every single rule it claims to uphold the very moment it becomes inconvenient to keep following it.
As for the US completely ignoring rules that it claims to uphold, I strongly disagree as you can see by WTO rulings that are unfavorable to the US. If you want to argue that the US set these organizations up post-WWII and they're unfairly supportive of the US I can agree with that but a blanket statement like yours is just incorrect.
Also, we are well past the stage where the misdeeds of countries/groups don’t affect the broader world. A virus that originated in a small town has affected much of the world for the last 18 months. A single ship that got stuck in a canal for 10 days has the power to affect global commerce, Etc etc
Nationalism and jingoism don’t hold as much meaning as they used to.
From an outside perspective, no one is buying the US propaganda around the oil wars any more than people are buying Chinese propaganda about their camps.
China being arguably worse doesn't evict the US from the category of destructive superpowers.
I think there's value in being honest about that.
I just disagree as to whether the US is truly a 'destructive superpower' - I personally believe that the country has been a net good for the world, even if sometimes its actions had negative consequences. Under American leadership post WWII the world has gotten richer, lives longer, and has fewer conflicts as a whole. Would this have happened without US leadership and instead under Soviet rule? Maybe, but I'm pretty skeptical.
Very good example to look for, indeed.
Is this the bar to pass in order to be allowed to collect any kind of data from any person around the world?
On top of that I really doubt this is a topic you're ready to defend beyond massively downplaying what one side has done. Just between the US global spying revelations, their treatment of black citizens, and the civilian casualties of their "war on terror" it should be very clear that there's no moral argument that the US can make in front of most of the world. And indeed, believe it or not, for the majority of the world the US is to them what China is to the US.
Let's not lie to ourselves, both US and China engage in the same kind of "superpower tactics", and both are past the point where they can point fingers at each other or anyone else. You're defending one because the other is worse. Does this really matter when you have the choice of "both are plain wrong"? Somewhere in China there's a regular citizen insisting the opposite, and looking from afar both are equally biased and wrong.
RE global spying - everyone does it, this is the age we live in and I don't really care. EDIT (I responded too strongly here. I do care somewhat but not as strongly as I expect most in the HN audience do)
RE treatment of black citizens (I'll extend this to basically everyone except white and some model minorities: Of course, this is awful and the US has a terrible track record. But again, if you take the worse the US is doing (say basically government officials killing black people with little reason or repercussion) it still pales in comparison to what China is doing to Uyghurs.
RE "War on terror": Yeah, that it a total moral failure and debacle, no argument there.
You dodged the question. "Better" means nothing when we're talking about two really bad choices. There's a world of difference between good and better. If "better" was enough we'd all poke out one eye because it's objectively better than poking out both. But I think we can agree that they're both very bad options.
When someone says the US has been collecting DNA data for years justifying it by "China is doing bad stuff" adds nothing to the conversation. Neither should do it.
> this is the age we live in and I don't really care.
This is the product of a severely compromised education system. Opinions are fed to people rather than formed by careful analysis. And usually end with an "I don't care" when at a loss for words.
> Of course global spying is bad but [I don't really care]
> Of course the treatment of black people is awful but [I don't really care]
> Of course the war on terror is a moral failure but [I don't really care]
When your only moral benchmark is China do you actually have a defensible position when doing some things they also do?
I don't appreciate the personal attack about the education system and myself being affected by it. I said what I meant RE global spying, I can back up my reasoning with a much longer argument but I didn't think it was that important or necessary.
I don't understand your points about the last two (treatment of black people and war on terror). I thought it was pretty clear I thought those were awful... also not to get too personal but I am part black and grew up in a small rural area, don't think I don't understand what exactly racism is.
It was the top of my comment but I'll help you out also with the background, although it leaves me with the strong impression that you neither read it, nor are willing to actually have a worthwhile conversation.
OP>>> this is exactly how the rest of the world feels about US-based companies harvesting dna data for years
YOU>> The US isn't actively committing genocide against a specific ethnic group right now
ME> Is this the bar to pass in order to be allowed to collect any kind of data from any person around the world?
You're justifying why everyone else should be OK with the US to collect DNA but not for China because "genocide". So tell me, is that the bar you have to pass to collect DNA data from around the world or any similar effort? So you tell me how either of these countries is entitled to do it. Is everyone else bound to lower the standards and necessarily use the lowest bar to judge a matter?
The problem is some people would justify eating a baby because China ate two. That's an easy way to make all the wrong choices and justify all the wrong things: China does even worse. Will you accept any abuse from US leadership as long as it's not outright genocide?
"I will 100% die on the hill arguing that the US is a better global actor than China. Should the committing of genocide be the bar? No, of course not, but it's the most egregious example I could think of that demonstrates what a bad actor the CCP is."
My friend, you read that "this is exactly how the rest of the world feels about US-based companies harvesting dna data for years" and came up with something that looked like a justification of why exactly it would be different for the US. You pointed out China's genocide. But if that isn't the bar (at least because both countries fail it) then why bring it up at all? For China to be compared to the US it's a step up. Not so much the other way.
If you analyze the world through a narrow slit you miss that whatever chasm you see when you look at China, most Europeans see when they look at the US. So collecting all that DNA data is unacceptable for any country, certainly not any of the superpowers.
All the worse that with that background you decided to respond to OP's statement with "but here's a thing China does worse". Looking at what they do better would yield some insight, looking at what they do worse, especially in the context of justifying something bad, is like saying "because water is wet".
But since you brought it up, I have probably been strongly involved in high level policy making and international politics in multiple European states and institutions with quite some success for longer than all but a potential handful of people on HN. If it's one thing that I know it's that if it looks like the knee jerk reaction of the usual internet comment, it didn't come from people who've been too long, if ever, in that setting. It simply doesn't bring any value, it doesn't shift a perspective, it doesn't re-frame anything. Your choice of reference says a lot about where you see your starting position. That's like going into a negotiation by saying you don't know the value of your goal. Even if I'm sure you already thought of that, try to sit on it for a bit longer.
It’s incredible people are ready at the whistle to defend China on here and turn every article about China into a US vs China moral olympics.
Neither. Did you know that answer? Even if you are incapable of seeing it now, the world has more than 2 choices. But if that's your entire horizon I can imagine why you'd think one is good. It's like making a top of your favorite books after reading just two.
> people are ready at the whistle to defend China on here
And if the previous view didn't make it painfully clear you're ill equipped to argue this point in a civilized or productive fashion, your followup is to accuse anyone who disagrees with you as "a dog to defend China".
Son, I've seen this bullshit tactic for many more decades than you've been alive. I've had to live under most of the scare tactics you can imagine. I've had to live with people trying to shut me up by calling me a "capitalist subversive" on one side of the map, or a "red" on the other side. While then just as now those people were invariably the uneducated, at least back then most had little choice in that matter. You have no such excuse.