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submitted 5 days ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml

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[+] m_f@midwest.social -9 points 4 days ago

My point is that the real hard-to-swallow pill for people like OP is that China is not a magical place where everyone just sings kumbaya all day. China is just like any other country comprised of humans that has existed ever, and would do the same things the US is doing now if they could. The only reason this meme is in any way accurate is that China can't realistically drop bombs like that, otherwise they would. Tankies like OP will defend imperialism all day long, as long as the imperialists say "Death To America!". If the US poofed out of existence today, there would be a power vacuum quickly filled by exactly the same sort of people that are dropping those bombs in the meme.

So I guess my question is "What's the point of pretending that China is any different?"

[-] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

That's just a thing you made up to justify not feeling bad, there is no reason to believe that anyone else would act the same way.

[+] m_f@midwest.social -7 points 4 days ago

To be blunt, have you read a history book? People have been killing the outgroup in brutal struggles for power since time began. Are you aware of the phrase "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"? It comes from the Siege of Melos in 416 B.C.

I don't like it, but that's the way the world works, and has worked forever. Criticizing people in power for their actions is good. Saying "if only this other country was in power, things would be different" is foolish.

[-] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

To be blunt, have you? If you had you would know that even among empires not every one behaved with the same level of bloodthirstiness every time. The leap from "people have been violent forever" to "therefore they must be the maximum amount of violent at all opportunities" is totally unsubstantiated.

Sure, what they can get away with to achieve their goals is one factor in how countries behave. But it is totally absurd to suggest that a country's culture would have no impact on the approach they take to foreign affairs. It has dramatic impacts on all their other laws and ways of doing things, by what possible crazy coincidence would foreign policy always be totally identical regardless of culture?

So yeah, things would be different. Way back in this discussion you snarkily characterised a straw man arguing that things would be perfect and people singing kumbaya, but nobody (here arguing against you in this thread) thinks that. This meme is about dropping bombs. We have substantial real world evidence that China does not prefer to take that approach. The USA absolutely does prefer to take that approach, even when other options would be more successful.

[-] m_f@midwest.social -3 points 3 days ago

I'm not saying "therefore they must be the maximum amount of violent at all opportunities". Can you point to any period in history in which empires were just chill and sung kumbaya all day long, though?

We have substantial real world evidence that China does not prefer to take that approach.

We have zero evidence that China would not take that approach in a world without Pax Americana (as much as I think the term is silly, it's a convenient shorthand). We do have a lot of evidence that China is a normal country like everywhere else and pushes their interests where possible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strategy