Whataboutism is your best defense, and a poor attempt at that?
Equating the two is hilarious. Even so I’m not excusing all the bullshit the US has done.
At least I can say the US has done some terrible shit without getting arrested or killed. Try saying anything bad about Russia or Putin in Russia.
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
Again, try saying anything bad about Putin or Russia in Russia. At least I can speak freely and scream from the rooftops about the shitty parts of the US. Go ahead.
no, he didn’t leak shit, he published leaked information what the hell.
and you can only do that right now because the ruling class isn’t concerned about possible socialist revolution, I advise you to read up on the 1st and 2nd Red Scares!
(also, who fucking cares if you can complain about something if you can’t actually change the situation???)
Damn thats crazy, the shit that might hurt the state is illegal(and therefore presumably justifiable to punish) while you get to do all the intellectual jerkoffs you want with no effect on anything?
Real lucky you get to live in freedomland.
At least I can say the US has done some terrible shit without getting arrested or killed.
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
Do you see how these two statements cannot be true at the same time?
At least I can say the US has done some terrible shit without getting arrested or killed
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
so I gather from these two statements that the first is incorrect
At least I can speak freely and scream from the rooftops about the shitty parts of the US
Someone’s never heard of the Free Speech fights.
You can and will be jailed just for saying shit, if people start to listen to you and you’re saying the wrong shit. Your “freedom of speech” is as worthless as used toilet paper the moment a judge decides to issue an injunction against you i.e. the strikes in Harlan County in the 70s had judges jailing people for using the word “scab.”
Also fun fact I learned today, remember the Kent State Massacre? People were ordered to apologize for being shot just to get compensation, which only covered legal defenses. Land of the fucking free, lmao
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
When your life is made illegal, what’re you gonna do, liberal? Roll over for the bourgeois state like a good boy?
Rooftops are generally a good place to speek freely, even in an oppressive country.
Try speaking about US atrocities at work. If you lose your job, you’re not free.
Leaking confidential information, as damning as it may be, is illegal.
The definition of right and wrong is always what is legal, that’s why when the ruling class buys political power through lobbying and other corruption, the ruling class becomes more legally right in whatever they want to do!
Whataboutism is just a rhetorical device trolls try to use to create a double standard for themselves and everyone else when faced with the fact that their side does all the same things they accuse others of. Meanwhile, imagine being such an utter ignoramus to be unaware of all the political violence that US does.
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
No, it’s because two wrongs don’t make a right. You can point out shit the US has done all day and I’ll probably agree with you. But it doesn’t make what Russia did okay.
Yeah whataboutism is fucking removed. It’s no excuse or justification. It’s shit.
the problem isn’t necessarily pointing out the problems with any particular country, that can be done as a legitimate discussion, what gets really fucking annoying is when people only talk about the problems with a certain country and then when questioned, are like “Oh, no! We also hate it when America does this thing! We’re just talking about X country right now!” when that’s clearly false. like, you say “Fuck China for having mass surveillance” on reddit and you get 100k upvotes, 20 platinum awards and some dude’s firstborn son, whereas if you say “Fuck America for having mass surveillance” you’ll get “Hm, well, you see, this is a complicated topic, because on the one hand…” or even just “Yeah, but it’s nothing compared to China though!”
the problem is also when what you’re talking about is necessarily a comparison because no action exists in a vacuum free of context. if I say “The US is an awful, imperialist country that has invaded all these nations, and NATO has also invaded and destroyed nations, and we should not support them even if Russia is doing a bad thing because Russia’s death toll is so much lower than the West’s” then all I would get on most lib platforms is “That history doesn’t matter! What matters is the here and now, when Russia is doing a bad thing and NATO currently, at this precise moment in time, is not! Bad things are bad things! You can’t wave them away through context!”
but the question isn’t “Is Russia doing a bad thing”, I don’t think anybody would deny except the most fervent Russian nationalist that Russia has done at least some bad things in Ukraine, the question is “Who should we support in this war” and so the fact that NATO and the US has killed tens of millions of people within the lifetime of the current president and doomed hundreds of millions more to backbreaking labor in mines and plantations and sweatshops, and Russia, well, hasn’t, is a perfectly pertinent point to make when asking who to support. This is also why liberals are so utterly gobsmacked when third-world countries don’t come out against Russia, because they have been on the receiving end of this campaign of carnage that the US has wrought around the world and so, logically, think Russia is the lesser of two evils. can’t they see that Russia is evil! can’t they see that Putler is the devil doing a genocide!? they must be brainwashed by Russian disinformation propaganda! we must up our efforts to spread Correct Information!
When your own country does the same and worse you have no moral high ground to criticize others, nor does it accomplish anything. As the saying goes, people living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Americans should focus on fixing their own country instead of playing world police.
Fun fact, the origin of “whataboutism” was its use as the phrase “whataboutery” during the Troubles in Ireland as the Irish accused the British of atrocities only to be dismissed as “whataboutery”
Weird how it’s always used as a thought terminating cliche to prevent criticism of the dominant empire, huh!
Good thing it only works on idiots like you
Again, since you’re reading comprehension sucks…
I’m not the one dismissing what any country has done. I’m saying they should both be held accountable.
The fact that the comment I was originally replying to was using that justification goes along with what you just said… which is pointing out what someone else did is no justification for any action. They both should be taken for what they are and judged accordingly.
I’m gonna try to follow your logic in good faith. If both Russia and the US should be held accountable for their crimes, then who should actually hold them accountable?
NATO is the international arm of the US military and it has committed war crimes over its entire decades of existence, some of the most recent ones in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. If the US is to be held equally accountable for their actions as the RF should be, then all NATO operations should be held under the same scrutiny.
So by this logic how can you support a NATO in it’s actions in Ukraine. Before Russia invaded, NATO was supported the bombing of the Donbass and the destruction of that region. If the US and NATO has a history of destabilizing regions through warfare for the benefit of the US, how can any of their actions be justified?
