|
Farecoal posted:They tried to keep him from gaining power, by bombing the poo poo out of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and killing roughly 400,000 civilians. Why would they support someone they considered a communist? Because the enemy of my enemy is totally my friend forever. See also: Hussein, Saddam; Bin Laden, Osama; and Zedong, Mao. (admittedly those last two are more we-funded-the-people-who-funded-you as opposed to we-funded-you-directly, but the principle stands. America's kind of bad at this whole meddling in Asian politics thing.)
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2012 02:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:02 |
|
|
Ogmius815 posted:This is a genuine fault line between liberals and socialists. Liberals believe that democracy itself is a worthy goal. Socialists are only interested in democracy insofar as it produces outcomes that they like. thank you, William F. Buckley's column on the assassination of Martin Luther King what insufferable arrogance, for this damned socialist to claim he knew better than the people of Alabama, eh
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2019 05:21
|
|
|
hekaton posted:I think you could sidestep a lot of the issues regarding comparing atrocities and whataboutisms if you could create a stat that reflected the average amount of inhumanity performed by a state of size X over the last Y years, and then try to measure your state of interest against it to determine the Warcrimes Above Replacement, or WAR stat, for any given government at any point in time. Fun idea, but unfortunately it just moves the underlying conflict to a different arena. The objection between partisans is not that their side's atrocities are more excusable than other sides'; as the origins of "whataboutism" can attest, the objection is to having their atrocities discussed at all. If it helps, imagine a chinese partisan who has come up with a snappy neologism with which to dismiss Americans saying "and you are purging Uyghurs" as irrelevant to the Party's accomplishments. Present such a person with your algorithm, and they will promptly start arguing their side's score is inflated by baseless ideological criteria introduced by opponents. And the worst part is they might not even be wrong!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2022 20:02
|
|
|
A Russian troll farm posted:While a good idea, it would almost certainly be administered by a NGO think tank that would give America a rating of 2.3 (goody good boy), more problematic NATO allies like Turkey a 15.7 (sometimes naughty), and all US geopolitical enemies would be in the 75-100 range (Hitler zone) The funny part in efforts like these is always looking at Saudi Arabia. Miraculously, this warmongering Sunni dictatorship powered by oil revenue and slave labor always ends up significantly more on the side of the angels than the rest of its regional cohort. There are advantages to funding every think tank in DC.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2022 20:18
|
|
|
Observe that in the same post, when the Americans do it, it's 'showing the flag.' When the Chinese do it, it's 'credible threats of armed force.' Standards are difficult things.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2022 01:57
|
|
|
Regarde Aduck posted:* please note definitions of "free" and "fair elections" may differ depending on exact political environment, levels of corruption, phases of the moon, level of corporate influence of populace by media apparatus and economic status of the individual particularly in the case of Taiwan, where the providers of Free And Fair Elections (tm) spent a very long time propping up a military dictatorship by killing anyone who proposed to politically oppose it from within there are areas where you can honestly claim American behavior is irrelevant to discussion of China. the island America used as the last available spot to retreat their failed puppet warlord during the Chinese Civil War, and the regime we ordered instituted there? not one of them.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2022 16:31
|
|
|
ronya posted:specifically 'under what conditions' - given that the PRC has a declared intention to use force to prevent independence, do respondents have the will to resist it - would Taiwanese continue to want independence if their quality of life became significantly worse by doing so. Polling in favour of the status quo is a weak indicator for predicting responses to (possibly unilateral) change also, it's tricky because Taiwan is, itself, a result of that option. it's difficult to operate a puppet when there's already someone else's hand in there.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2022 18:14
|
|
|
Spoke Lee posted:What part of China's covid response requires Uighur concentration camps? what an odd question. did someone suggest it did?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 17:38
|
|
|
not sure I follow you on that logic. the american concentration camps for undesirable ethnic groups don't appear to have improved their covid response at all. between that and the strong performance of other SE Asian countries in handling the pandemic, 'authoritarianism' appears wholly disconnected from the issue of whether your government thinks it should try to protect you from Covid.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 18:06
|
|
|
and as soon as I see someone saying the uighurs need to be locked up to stop the spread of covid, it will be a relevant observation?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 18:16
|
|
|
rapidly coming around to the view that the word 'authoritarian' is the flip side of the joke 'when government does a thing, that's socialism, and the more things government does, the more socialist it is' seriously, outside of privatization, is there a single government action it doesn't describe?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 18:21
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:And Augustus never styled himself Emperor? or, elsewhere in europe and considerably closer to us in history, did Angela Merkel proclaim herself Holy Roman Emperor, when she entered her second decade of rulership? term limits are an interesting subject, with arguments for and against them, but any time you see someone in NATO grousing about how their absence is prima facie evidence of a government not to be trusted, you know you are not talking to a serious person.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 21:27
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:Can't help but notice that this is "what about Germany" rather than any affirmative claim about China whatsoever when the original question posed is "what about Imperial Rome" comparisons are bound to happen, yes.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
Acebuckeye13 posted:I do think some of the posters in this thread have taught me a lot. For instance, if I'm ever charged with murder, I'll know to say "How come no one's talking about Ted Bundy? Seems strange to talk about any alleged murders when Ted Bundy was just going around killing people." "but what about the monstrosity of our enemies" not only -can- be used to justify murdering anyone who gives a member of the American armed forces bad vibes, it was publicly deployed in the last six months as the official explanation for why noone who liquefied a car full of kids being driven around by an aid worker should be subject to any punishment. you are not describing a wild hypothetical, you are describing the world as it currently exists.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 17:30
|
|
|
Kalit posted:Why are you trying to conflate authoritarianism with imperialism? One deals with central control of a government on its citizens, typically enacted by how the government is structured. The other deals with how a country interacts with other countries, typically enacted by policies. How do you define authoritarianism and imperialism? this is an interesting point that lays out the problem with "authoritarianism" discourse, incidentally tying it back to the "oriental despotism" line from earlier. this poster understands that both Authoritarianism and Imperialism are things, and that they are bad, but feels a need to separate the two out. they understand that under both systems, a central authority circumscribes the rights of its subjects on behalf of some larger agenda. but in their view, when central authority preemptively justifies this by decreeing a class of humans subaltern thanks to the place of their birth, that's not -authoritarianism-, it's -imperialism-, and thus a wholly distinct phenomenon. authoritarianism is a concept that encompasses literally any government action the speaker disapproves of, and as such ends up serving more as a Rorschach test than any kind of term of art. everyone can agree Authoritarianism is bad, and that their enemies are Authoritarian, and that their preferred system is not Authoritarian. the crimes their preferred system of government tends towards are some other, lesser term. exemplified beautifully in this case, where long as you do it to foreigners, it's not authoritarianism.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 17:59
|
|
|
Kalit posted:Please tell me where I stated that authoritarianism is bad? I separate out authoritarianism and imperialism because they are two different things. the larger point I am making is that authoritarianism is an utterly useless term except for as a gussied up 'government bad.' by the definition of the term, imperialism is authoritarianism. immigration policy is authoritarianism. police brutality is authoritarianism. food and safety regulations are authoritarianism. military dress codes are authoritarianism. mods probating you? quadruple authoritarianism. but you do learn something interesting by seeing where people try to carve out their little exceptions from the all-encompassing authoritarianism umbrella, and your argument that treating foreigners as a subaltern undeserving of the same rights as people in the imperial core wasn't capital-a-Authoritarianism served as an excellent example of the problem. because when -my- preferred system of governance does it, it's not Authoritarianism. it's some other, lesser crime. for reasons. if you have ever gotten into an argument with a libertarian, you may recognize this as the classic 'it's not coercion when private industry does it" two-step.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 18:31
|
|
|
Kalit posted:It’s only a useless term in that sense if people don’t use it properly. Like literally any other word/term in a language. Maybe you should focus more on trying to correct the usage of this term to help educate people who are using it incorrectly? what did you think this was? the term's modern usage dates back to the original PR push to make libertarianism a thing. a person uses it perfectly when they describe things they want to attack as Authoritarianism, and things they want to defend as not Authoritarianism because [those people don't count/that's not technically repression/those aren't really rights anyway]. it's only when someone tries to pretend there is some less vacuous meaning of the term that it is misused.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 18:46
|
|
|
Kalit posted:What are you even talking about? I know that fear mongering lead to misuse of the term authoritarian. And you used that same fear mongering definition to attack me in a post when I was trying to clarify the differences between imperialism and authoritarian and then I pointed out that there is no difference. imperialism is a subcategory of authoritarianism achieved by shouting "this doesn't count because we don't consider you citizens" before you do it. your post was part of a long, honorable, and in the beginning well-funded tradition of claiming 1. governments you disapprove of are authoritarian 2. governments you approve of are not authoritarian, they're this other, more excusable thing. authoritarian is a term whose sole function is to fearmonger about governments you disapprove of being able to do things. it does nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:06
|
|
|
Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:and then I pointed out that there is no difference. imperialism is a subcategory of authoritarianism achieved by shouting "this doesn't count because we don't consider you citizens" before you do it. well, to correct myself, it's usually shouted afterwards, it's rare for imperialists to bother with justifications other than "we're pretty sure we can get away with this" beforehand. wave hello, The Collected Actions Of General Chiang Kai-shek In The Chinese Civil War it's an amazing story if you dig into it, despite all the poo poo he did he was genuinely a voice of reason compared to his paymasters across the ocean. there were some absolute blood-gargling psychopaths who swore the only reason America lost China was we weren't willing to 'unleash chiang' to really show those filthy peasants what was what. people who still remember the 2016 primaries may remember some inane trivia involving Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and the "sword of Shang"? that was based around a Bush family dinner table joke, Bush the elder cracking wise about the nutcases who'd spent the 50s and 60s swearing that once we finally Unleashed Chiang all America's problems would be solved. Kalit posted:Once again: where did I say I disapprove of the CPC? Where did I say I approve of governments that aren’t authoritarian? I don’t think of authoritarianism itself as good or bad. Stop trying to push your assumption onto me. name a way to impose your will on a subject nation non-authoritarianly
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:19
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:There's a whole host of reasons this is problematic, not the least of which is the value of a favorability poll of people who's entire access to information is curated by the people you're asking their opinion of. ...is there any nation on the face of the planet this problem does not apply to
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:28
|
|
|
Kalit posted:It’s a strong central government, most likely empowered by its structure. And I don’t know if I’d say it’s “useful” in an every day type of sense. But I think if you’re going to talk about it, it’s useful to understand what it means and not claim that imperialism is the same thing. a strong central authority, empowered by its structure (the majority agreeing to do so) decides to restrict the rights of other people, on the grounds this serves the central authority's purpose, and you say this is not authoritarian. do you begin to understand what I mean, about how authoritarianism is a useless term?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:32
|
|
|
Kalit posted:We’re not a global government though? So no, I don’t understand what you mean? an authority has decreed a group of people that have no input into its decisions are now subject to whatever restrictions that authority decrees. and you do not consider this authoritarian.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:37
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:Yes, most of them, because once again you don't get to round up "has influence on" to "has complete and direct control of" and act like they're the same. quote:There's a whole host of reasons this is problematic, not the least of which is the value of a favorability poll of people who's entire access to information is curated by the people you're asking their opinion of. curation does not require absolute control, as you are well aware. consider the curation of the message Americans were fed about Afghanistan, right up until we were forced to leave. it was just... more difficult, to get your hands on some information. there were things that government considered more helpful to let people know than others. places it was considered more useful to focus people's attention. there were things you could say that would hurt your career, and things you could say that would help it. twenty loving years we spent losing in afghanistan, killing and dying for nothing, but you ask the American people how we're doing in Afghanistan, and right up until the day of the evacuation they would have told you 'we're winning, just not as fast as we'd like." the Chinese do not have the absolute control that haunts your nightmares, but as your own experiences demonstrate, a government does not need that to massage reality into a version more amenable to its aims.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:47
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:Not when those people are external to the current sovereign. Imperialism does frequently beget authoritarianism, but that does not make them the same. why. it's still a central authority restricting the rights of people subject to that authority. what part of where those people made the mistake of being born makes their suppression by a central authority not authoritarian.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:49
|
|
|
Kavros posted:Authoritarianism is not a useless term, it's just that the latest strategy in responding to credible and valuable criticisms of the CCP's institutional cruelty and growing cultural authoritarianism is to handwave the very idea of authoritarianism and suggest that it is the latest meaningless term that doesn't mean anything. is it authoritarianism when a central authority decrees the rights of people subject to it must be restricted on behalf of that authority's aims, and does this change when the people in question are foreigners.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 19:51
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:Curation absolutely requires full control, and the idea that the US government curated all information people received about the Afghan war is frankly laughable given the coverage almost single-handedly sunk Biden's approval last year. with any such exercise there comes a point the dam breaks, and the consequences can range from dire to the populace just shrugging their shoulders and moving on. but remember: you started down this path because you were skeptical of Chinese poll numbers about how good their government was doing. when you polled the American people on Afghanistan, right up until the day of the withdrawal, how many of them said "we are still winning." and what explains this curious disconnection from what you know the reality was, if not the curation of the information they were receiving.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 20:01
|
|
|
Kalit posted:Who is this “central authority” you keep referring to? The US? The EU? China? Jeff Bezos? you're the one who came up with the scenario, not me. a central authority, vested with its power by a true democratic process, says "hee hee haw you foreigners are gonna get it." you proclaim that to be not authoritarianism, because the authority in question was granted the ability to do so by a democratic vote. i disagree with the premise that "it's okay because this group of our subjects doesn't really count as people" makes something not authoritarian!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 20:06
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:You're going to have to define what "winning" Afghanistan means and cite some sources that back you up that most people thought it was happening. as long as you're retreating to "well, yes, the American government does curate public opinion, but not as bad as I think the Chinese do" i'll consider the point made. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 20:35
|
|
|
Kalit posted:For the nth time, authoritarianism is a form of government. It’s not a term that you get to define based on your assumptions of my political positions (with your inference of me not caring about non-citizens) let's use this one, it's a fun one. Limited political pluralism, realized with constraints on the legislature, political parties and interest groups. -yup, our subjects don't have a say in any of our actions, they're our foreign subjects, after all. definitionally, political constraints are being placed to prevent them from having a voice in what is done to them. Political legitimacy based upon appeals to emotion and identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems, such as underdevelopment or insurgency." -yup, the legitimacy of the government is, in your hypothetical, at least partially based on the government's willingness to combat those darned foreigners who are not amenable to the regime's aims. Minimal political mobilization, and suppression of anti-regime activities. -the first one here wasn't something we covered, but let's grant that the vote to go subjugate the foreigners had high turnout. as to the second, well, we can safely assume that any foreigners attempting to resist the regime's firm hand will be dealt with promptly. otherwise government is failing to respond to the will of its people, another authoritarian mark against it. Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, which extends the power of the executive. -pause to appreciate the ill-defined term 'ill-defined executive powers' but sure, we didn't explicitly call that out in the process. we can assume that the vote to go subjugate the brutes fully delineated all powers that whatever executive body tasked with bringing them into line will be empowered to use going forward. hilariously, if you concede that foreigners are also human beings who have rights, the only government that CAN avoid being proclaimed authoritarian by this definition is a single global government that claims all people as equal partners in governance. otherwise, you're limiting political participation to the Elect, who decide where the lash is to be applied to maximize the regime's power, and the Subaltern, who are to be the lash's recipient. imperialism is distinct from this paradigm if, and only if, we refuse to interrogate the premise "foreigners don't count as people."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 20:50
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:That's... not at all what I just said. what was the American people's response to us retreating from Afghanistan, and why. were they not aware that we had been bleeding out to no end there for over a decade at that point? why? how? did the lies they believed coalesce out of the aether, or were they given voice by people with names, ranks, paid positions, and careers that could be harmed if they had told the truth instead? what terminology would you use for the process by which a government mislead its people in a direction more amenable to its aims, if 'curation' is too coarse a term.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 20:53
|
|
|
Koos Group posted:It's possible I'm not understanding what you're saying here, but wouldn't fully self-determined nation-states also avoid being authoritarian in the same way as a global government? Since there'd be no power over foreigners? yes. but as soon as one of them starts trying to subjugate another one, this rule breaks. one of our non-authoritarian states is now decreeing that there is a class of people who get to make political decisions within it, and a subclass that does not, in the name of accomplishing the greater goals of the first class. authoritarianism, as a descriptor, is broad to the point of unusability. this is not an accident, as the term was invented by a bunch of libertarians trying to reframe any advocates for government regulation as being fundamentally the same as Hitler.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 21:09
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:You're the one who is using Afghanistan as an argument, why don't you tell me, and this time actually provide some evidence. if it is your stance that the American government did not lie to the public about how the war in Afghanistan was going, that, too, is a point where I'm willing to let the conversation rest, as I feel my point has been made.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 21:12
|
|
|
Kalit posted:Ohhhh, my bad, I see why we keep talking past each other. You don’t even understand what a government structure is and how its laws only affects itself/its citizens (unless illegally enforced by threat/force). Here’s another link that might be more helpful before you dive into that previous one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government a government's structures and laws affect far more than its own citizens, Kalit. you are well aware of this. the pretense that they do not is useful exclusively for disregarding atrocities by saying foreigners aren't really people.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 21:15
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:I feel like you have very studiously avoided making a concrete point. You said up until the point of withdrawal polling showed Americans believed we were "winning" the Afghan war, and this was evidence that Americans only source of information of the subject was curated by the government. Is this or is this not an accurate characterization of your argument? if we're agreed that the American government engaged in a decades-long program of lying to the American people about Afghanistan, resulting in 44% of the population believing we were holding steady or winning in a fight we were losing, losing so hard that we lost a hearts and minds competition with the loving Taliban, then we agree on the point of substance! the American government is eager, willing, and up until the moment of withdrawal was actively engaged in lying to its population in order to try to paint itself in a more positive light. which provides a powerful case study for the statement there is no country on the face of the planet where opinions favorable to that government cannot be discarded with "well, that's probably just because they buy the government propaganda."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 22:52
|
|
|
Kalit posted:Whoops, thanks for catching that. Here’s what I meant to say: oh, but it can! it is -wholly- within a government's power to pass laws that impact other nations' citizens. for example, when a government establishes that if you belong to an undesirable ethnic group within its borders, and do not have citizenship, the government can choose to do whatever it would like to them. it can establish whether or not its soldiers committing indiscriminate slaughter in other nations is a crime, or something that should instead be celebrated. it can establish whether its citizens enslaving children in other nations is a violation of its principles, or something it views as a laudable exercise in innovation. each of these actions involves a central authority deciding what is to be done to those who have no representation within that authority, and unsurprisingly to any scholar of authoritarianism, the generally arrived-at conclusion is "since they aren't really people they can eat poo poo, and maybe we can use them to do work citizens don't want to do going forward."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2022 23:06
|
|
|
...is it, though? as this thread has gone over in the past, "some rando says" has proven to have serious problems as a way of asserting what's going on in China
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2022 17:25
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:But Taiwan is not a colony, in fact its the original Empire. So, again: shut the gently caress about Russia in this thread, and stop trying to sidestep the issue of your hot takes not being welcome in the UvR thread. you have personal experience in what the term is for a country that exists by virtue of the US propping up a local strongman in the name of projecting its geopolitical power through it, and whose continued existence is reliant on its overlord's ongoing political and military support, which it achieves by offering that overlord a controlling interest in its trade and military policy. Afghanistan was an imperial colony, Iraq was an imperial colony, and unless you are arguing some real Qin dynasty bullshit where Chang Kai-Shek somehow passed down the Mandate of Heaven, there is a term for what Taiwan is, and that term is 'colony.' in fairness it's doing a lot better than several of our other ones, though. Americans used to be better at this game, I guess.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2022 18:42
|
|
|
therobit posted:A colony requires political control and settlers my dude. and in all three of these, taking a public position against the power of our client strongman was a great way to have an American soldier knock on your door to ask you to please reconsider your stance on the issue, with varying degrees of politeness. conveniently, the strongman issues these foreign enforcers a series of nice little enclaves, in good strategic positions, from which to help the locals with administration! and of course he meets with the overall commander of those enclaves on a regular basis, to make sure no friction has developed between them, and any complaints from his people regarding their overseers can be quickly smoothed over. sorry, man, the price America pays for following the British model is that the word they used for it applies to us too.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2022 18:57
|
|
|
Kavros posted:How do you define a vassal state? a simple, functional definition: do they have the ability to meaningfully differ from their overlord on any matter of foreign policy without having their leash abruptly pulled back, followed by a gasping "what we meant to say was we agree completely and will do as requested, please do not replace our leadership with a leadership more amenable to your aims, thank you" as an example, North Korea is a vassal state of China, and Japan is a vassal state of America. vassals are not -entirely- without leverage; overthrowing them is frequently a messy and inconvenient process, and that gives them some leeway in dragging their feet in answering their overlords' demands. but their political leadership understands that their choices in foreign policy are limited to how high to jump when the boss says "jump."
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2022 00:13
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:02 |
|
|
therobit posted:Your definition leaves out the crucially important tributes of grain and cattle to be offered in tribute each year. in the modern era we have replaced this with a number of thoroughly useless fighter jets the vassal is expected to purchase. how many f-35s is Canada up to now, and when do you think they will be used for anything other reducing the surplus population of Canadian fighter pilots
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2022 04:13
|
|