You're wasting your time trying to explain this to somebody who uses the derogatory "USian" to describe his supposed fellow countrymen.

What? It's not derogatory. It's just shorter and in some ways better specified than 'American'. I also used the word 'American' in the same post! Just didn't feel like writing the whole thing out the second time. -_-

I don't care either way, but generally the term is used in specific context where the writer feels "American" would be too imperialistic as it excludes all others that live in the Americas. It devolves into debates about whether the US "stole" the demonym. Right or wrong, it's going to trigger some people.

Seems short sighted given Mexico is officially the United States of Mexico.

So we need the A in there.

USAian.

Sounds cooler too because https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Saiyan

It is derogatory. Virtually no Americans call themselves "USians". It's nigh unpronounceable (it sounds like "US Asians") and only seen on the internet in the context of somebody with an axe to grind against America (as above.)

pleeeeease don’t do this. i was born here, i’ve lived here my whole life: i’m an American, or a USian, or any other label you want to use that marks me as a US subject/citizen. i really don’t want to be burdened in keeping up with which identifiers people use for me are supposed to be offensive v.s. neutral, especially when it doesn’t impact the meaning of the post. online communication is hard enough as is — don’t make it even more complicated.

And then you have people who suddenly must say Ukraine instead of The Ukraine, or must say Turkiye instead of Turkey and definitely don't even try to use any of the blue demonyms for any other country, but for Americans, yeah call "them" whatever... such hypocrites.

idk maybe i was called both “retard” and “nerd” in the same sentence as a child too many times that slurs just confuse me more than they offend me.

USian has a self-evident meaning: a person of the US. it’s certainly more clear than “American”: a phrase which i struggled with for years as a child because i learned about continents and geography before i learned about countries and genealogy, and hence had to un-learn some of the associations i made with the word early on (despite having been born/raised in the US!)

USian lacks a strong connotation for the vast majority of speakers at present. i’d like a chance to explore it as an alternative label at least for describing myself. as demonstrated by neighbor comment about “yankee” or “ham radio”, it’s the recipient who grants power to a slur — not the speaker. so if you’re a USian like me then get over yourself: don’t deny yourself (or me) the opportunity for a better label.

> or must say Turkiye instead of Turkey

That's not going to make anyone happy. It's Türkiye.

Because the country is called Ukraine not The Ukraine. You wouldn’t say The Germany, would you?

USAmerican is what I use to make it clear I don’t mean Canada or Mexico or Latin America. Some people don’t like it, because they think it’s unnecessary as most people assume you mean the USA, others don’t like it because they think the US is the center of everything so how dare you attempt to be inclusive of other non US American countries.

The last time people tried to use a derogatory term for Americans - Yankees - the Americans adopted it as their own.

Some people you just can't insult.

That's our... superpower.

Yup. Oddly enough, it's anyone's superpower should they choose to wield it. The next time someone calls you a bad name, give it a try.

It's impossible to insult someone who refuses to be insulted.

The American spirit burns awful bright.

I assume 'USian' is not a commonly use term and could be interpreted as "American of Asian decent" or similar.

But from your clarification it seem you simply meant American without any further qualifications.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

China isn't even a friend to the east. At least that's the impression I get from my Korean, Thai, Viet, and Japanese friends.

As a Japanese (specifically Japanese-American, but details), I will affirm that China is not a friend to the east.

So? The west is not a friend of China as well. And US has downright militant rethoric agains China.

The US and Europe brought China into the WTO, gave it most favored nations trading status, transferred trillions in technology, and financed the modernization of the country. Pretty good friends, IMO. But it is not been reciprocated, and is now going bad. The crushing of the democracy movement in Hong Kong was a wake up call as to the intentions of China going forward.

> But it is not been reciprocated,

How was it not reciprocated? Whole western world benefited from the cheap Chinese labor for more than a decade.

I'd say we helped them economically and they helped us economically. When it comes to politics we don't see eye to eye. As for Hong-Kong they are introducing their politics there. Nothing we can do about it. And we are doing exactly nothing about it.

US openly calls China an enemy in their politics. US sees China like North Korea sees US. China just wants to have their own politics without western interference. It's nasty and bad politics but it's theirs.

Agree 100%. It’s amazing people actually believe this. They’ve built unlimited shit for us for next to nothing whine innovating ways to make it cheaper and we knowingly buy more while complaining they aren’t liberal enough. Meanwhile a far greater percentage of their citizens are happy with the country compared to anywhere in the West.

I know this is a couple days ago, but they haven't reciprocated by opening their markets to our products. If they are going to take over manufacturing, and largely block US software, tech, and services, then all we get is a depleted manufacturing base and temporary cheap goods stimulus.

You said as if it was out of the goodness of their hearts and not because they wanted to access the cheap labor market of China. The west would not have their living standard as high as today if it wasn't for China.

If it hadn't gone to China it would have gone elsewhere. China wasn't the only country with poor people at the time.

The reason China got picked was because we wanted to reduce the power of the Soviet Union. The US policy during that time was all about stopping Soviet/Communist expansion and the thought was that we could bring China into the western world through monetary means. It was never about cheap labor. The US actively traded away it's own monetary assets for national security in that era. It wasn't about making money.

The American geopolitical plan for China in the 20th century was not unlike what happened with Japan, South Korea, Germany and most of SEA post-WW2: Invest in their economies and bring them to modernity based upon free and democratic western societies, therefore creating friends and allies.

And to America's credit, it mostly worked. Japan, South Korea, and Germany are now friends of the US and the west and are irreplacable economical powerhouses. SEA didn't get quite as advanced, but they at least aren't hostile to western ideals.

China, on the other hand, saw the game being played and outplayed us. They took all the resources we "invested" in them to further their own ambitions, and cared not for cooperation or mutual friendships. They saw free real estate and fucking took the entire bank and stole the rest.

It's long past due we, the west, reassessed our approach because China is not going to become our friend no matter how much we invest in their prosperity (and consequently due to their nature our demise).

> Japan, South Korea, Germany

You listed countries that were dominated by US military what in at least two cases led to destruction of pre-existing setup there.

If anyone thought they'll be able to repeat it in China without invading it first was silly. So noone thought that.

US "helped" China to get access to their cheap labor. While maintaining a fasade of being hopeful it will bring in democratic peaceful transformation. I think Germany was more honestly hopeful that trading with Russia will democratize it than US was with China. US needs an enemy to excuse its military spending. Smart people in US knew that US basically grooms China so it becomes one. After all "terrorists" can only be made into a boogymen for a very limited time given their inaptitude.

China didn't get into WTO until 2001 while USSR ended a decade before that.

Do you think China would have hesitated to shoot down an American "weather" balloon, the size of three school buses, if it entered China's airspace? I doubt it would have been allowed to float for thousands of miles before being downed.

That's because China does not value human life as much as the US. The reasons for not engaging it sooner were stated publicly.

We were aware of it when it was over Montana, which is a very sparsely-populated state. Is it really that hard to shoot something like this down over such a territory? I have no way of knowing, but I'd think they could bring it down without risk to human life. The main thing I'd worry about is that it might have some sort of unannounced payload that would be spread widely if it were exploded mid-air. But I didn't hear anyone talking about the risk of biological/chemical weapon possibilities as the reason to not bring it down sooner.

It’s not only the balloon you have to worry about, it’s the missles you shoot at it.

Look at it this way:

The US launches rockets primarily from Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg AFB so they spend minimal time flying overland as they fly out to sea. This is so failures or aborts pose as little risk as possible to people on the ground.

China launches rockets from inland and have dropped failed and aborted rockets on its citizens on the ground numerous times.

So yes, it is "really that hard" to shoot something down without causing collateral harm on the ground. And yes, China gives less fucks about human life than the US does.

How would you know what’s on the balloon before you shot it down.

> US has downright militant rethoric in defense of the independent nation of Taiwan*

Fixed that for you.

Remind me which independent nations US unilaterally defended with militant rhetoric and to what effect?

> Remind me which independent nations US unilaterally defended with militant rhetoric and to what effect?

Sure. Taiwan, anyone in NATO, South Korea, etc.

The effect thus far has been that none of these nations have been invaded.

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Scotty79, I'm already checked out of this conversation; it's unlikely to be productive for anyone.

Yeah. Me too. It never was productive.