And if something did maybe happen, it's the CIA's fault
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Americans will post a meme about Tianimen Square while eating a Chiquita banana.
Americans can, and will, openly discuss this stuff, and think badly of their government for it, and won't get in trouble with the government for doing so publicly.
Tell that to the college anti-war protestors getting beat by police for literally using their first amendment right to protest and speak, and NOT blocking movement to classes at all.
Let's never forget that Jerry Seinfeld paid counter protesters over the genocide protest at UCLA.
https://www.newsweek.com/jerry-seinfeld-wife-donates-pro-israel-ucla-rally-1895409
Yes, I was going to say that Kent state would be a more apt comparison. But this isn't the issue at hand. If I go into a thread discussing Kent, the US over throw of Guatemala, etc. I am just saying I choose the evils of the US, and am here to whatabout China as a deflection. You can tell me all this stuff, that I am already keenly aware of, and it still does nothing, but miss the point.
This is an english meme about the one event in Chinese history that gets repeated in english-speaking spaces over and over and over again. This isn't attempting to make an argument to a Chinese audience. Why shouldn't we draw comparisons to similar things in the US? What else would we talk about? Just a whole thread of "yeah, that's bad" again and again? For every time this gets trotted out?
if you have nothing to say on the subject, don't say anything. This goes both ways. If someone is talking about, say, Kent state, and admonishing the US, and all you have is we may have shot a couple college kids, but in China they ran a bunch over with tanks, just fucking move on, and don't comment. These additions aren't valuable.
Or, maybe, bring up the point you make here? Like discuss the specific concept of the english speaking world spreading that as a meme at this point. That would be way more valuable a contribution than, yet another, whataboutism.
Tell that to Chelsea Manning.
Sure, the US is mostly freer with information than a country that is unabashedly authoritarian. But ask Ron DeSantis what he was doing at Guantanamo, or the CIA what they did in Latin America. If you don't think the US hides plenty from its citizens, you haven't been paying attention.
Our Tianimen Square was Kent State, or maybe the MOVE Bombing, or all of the documented police violence against protesters and marginalized people. Fat lot of good it does that we can talk about them when nothing changes.
I think it makes more sense to hold our government to account than point out the flaws of people we don't like.
I don't recall Kent State protesters killing anyone.
Yes, I was actually going to say that a more apt comparison would have been Kent state.
If the subject is Kent state, or the US para-military manipulation of south America, and all you do is come into the comments whatabouting China's bullshit, you are there because you sided with the US, over China. This is what is happening here, in reverse. You can tell me all the long history of shit, that I already am keenly aware of, that the US have done. You are still missing the point.
Well, sort of.
Many of us pretty much do this every day. And we have massive protests about it as well. We're often not empowered to change much, though. We do what we can, when we can.
Yes, that is the unfortunate state of reality. I am worried we a getting to that impasse where all diplomatic avenues for change have been shut down. This leaves violence as the option at hand.
What makes you think fighting against the US military is an easier or more practical solution than protesting, exactly?
I didn't say it was. Protesting has been getting no where. We were burning shit down, and holding police stations hostage, for police reform. Here we are, a few years later, and we have more cops, less accountability, more money per cop spent, few to no structural changes for dealing with mental health issues, and homelessness, less security for the fourth amendment, less transparency, a backlash to the first amendment, etc. Our protests against genocide do nothing, but get people beaten, and put in jail.
It is not easier to fight than it is to protest, but if protest is pointless, as all other avenues for change are becoming, the options left are fighting, or supplication. Hopefully people will start actually taking voting seriously. Big election, vote for the lesser evil. Local election, vote for change. It is how the minority GOP is able to hold this death grip on the government, if you need proof it works. If we can't organize to get more of the majority of people who don't vote, to do so, we will have no diplomatic venues left. If those who do vote don't start taking the movements of the right far more seriously, the right will kill our power to affect change through the vote If we do affect critical change, and it brings out a government stifling of voting power, we will be similarly fucked. Once we have shown all diplomatic efforts to be ineffective, it is fight, or submit.
Look, I agree with everything you just said, but I don't think you've really thought about the implications of how you first said it. Our options are find a way to make peaceful protesting and voting work, fight soon and definitely lose, or wait until the US is collapsing, fight then, almost certainly start the most deadly war in all of human history, and still have a pretty high chance of losing. As much as it has been frustrating and unproductive so far, the first option is still the best for a whole bunch of reasons. Saying that protesting is useless and we'll have to fight is not a good idea. Maybe it will come to that, but we should be doing everything we can to prevent it, not egg it on.
I said I worry we will get to that point, not hat we are already there.
I am VERY aware of what can happen in concerns to violent revolt. I grew up with a father who consulted NATO countries on how to maintain infrastructure to supply aircraft engine rooms in foreign, and forward operating bases. I probably know more than 99.9% of the people on this network exactly how dire a fight with the US military could be like.
Unless they are whistle blowing something important
That is not the same as as the subject at hand, I have already addressed this, multiple times, down further. A more apt comparison would have been Kent State. Which was something that was immediately put on the news.
If you do anything that threatens the powerful in the USA you will be cracked down on just as hard. Your example, Edward Snowden, or even the union wars in Appalachia. All are just as forgotten in US public mind as Tianman Square.
I still see Snowden in the news, and see the information of his documents discussed in mainstream media. Even if it was forgotten, people arern't being swept away by the feds for talking about online, and on tv.
Because it can no longer affect real change.
So it can in China?
I didn't say it couldn't in China. I said it happens just the same in America.
Except you brought up the release of classified documents, not discussing something that happened out in the open, in front of the media. Tiananmen Square is not like Snowden leaking documents. What is more comparable is the Kent State massacre. However, that was immediately everywhere, and no one went to prison for reporting it. Where as you can still go to prison over publicly discussing Tiananmen today.
Is it bad that that whistle blowers, working government intelligence, are treated as criminals? Yes, yes it is. The fact that this is the whataboutism you jump to, for discussing Tiananmen Square, rather than Kent State, is telling though. You can't match the reaction to the similar crime. You have to select a completely different government crime to have a similar reaction. Now tell me, how does China treat people who whistle blow government secrets?
Not sure what I am what aboutism here.
All things that had the chance of prompting real change and our government squashed it just as hard.
Yes, I know, I am aware of what the US does that is bad, and why. You are responding to a thread that originated from a post about Tiananmen Square, and then a whataboutism response focused on the US. Your continued commenting on things the US did bad are just additives to that. Instead of discussing the wrongs brought up by the post, you are choosing to simply go "but the US did bad too!" Hell you could even have discussed how the constant pushing of Tiananmen, to the point where it is now meme status, and the consequences of it, and you would have added value to the conversation. Instead you choose to simply bring up bad things the US did, that a lot more people are aware of, than your comments lead me to believe you realize.
So if the subject of Tiananmen Square, where the CCP shot, and drove tanks over, student protesters, in public, while various media watched, then instead of allowing the conversation about it to be had, cut off any public discussion of the event, outright denies it happened, and imprisons, and worse, people, to this day, over talking about it, and your response is to talk about a situation where someone leaked classified intelligence documentation, and was treated a criminal for it, instead of something similar to the subject at hand, Tiananmen, like the Kent State masscre, what is the point? Seriously, other than someone said something bad about China, thus I am going to say something bad about the US, what did you intend to do? We all know the US does awful shit, all the time. Make a post about Snowden, there are tons of them on Lemmy. It is a subject spoken of regularly. On those threads we shit on the US for it. Do you go on them and bring up bad things China has done? Do you only do it to defend non-western countries, or, at least, just to divert attention to the evils of the west instead of the subject at hand?
The west does horrific things, and, surprise, so does everyone fucking else. China has a horrific history of inhumanity, and, if not for the US founded, NATO super structure, that gives its military physical reach everywhere on the globe, China, and other BRICS countries would be doing the same, had they the money. Russia, the R in BRICS, is unquestionably in an active attempt to colonize other countries, namely Ukraine. China is pushing its borders as hard as it can, and I do not just mean with places the UN says it owns, but are autonomous, like Taiwan. Whataboutisms are simply diversionary tactics, and not actual rebuttals to anything.
And making Dole pineapple upside-down cake with Imperial Sugar.