Honestly the China scare mongering is borderline hilarious. The US has literally attacked two countries this year in the span of weeks and is blockading another causing needless deaths. Not too mention the last 50 years of US imperialism making the world a worse place for everyone, except to benefit the few (doesn't benefit Americans, only capitalists).

The idea that China is worse than America is laughable. LMK when China invades 5 countries in a span of 20 years unimpeded by anyone else in the world and maybe I'll be scared.

Until then it's quite clear how consumers benefit from actual competition and it's not because of the US.

Also you saying you trust the US when they just threatened to invade Greenland (a threat so credible that Denmark was planning a full scale resistance against US troops).

Sorry but the curtains are truly coming down and the US will become one of the most hated nations in the world while 100s of millions will needlessly starve and die because of the actions of Americans that simply don't give a fuck.

FWIW, I'm not just talking about Trump either. Democratic politicians are just as much to blame, they champion corporatism and imperialism as much as Republicans and the only issues D leadership seems to have is that the "right process" wasn't being followed.

I say this as someone who is a literal democratic operative within the party.

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glenstein 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

One party authoritarian dictatorship with no free speech or democratic elections and no civil rights movement seems pretty bad to me. No amount of whataboutism is ever going to compete with that.

It also seems like clashes with India, every southeast asian country with internationally recognized territory rights in the South China sea, the forcible takeover of Hong Kong, arming and economically supporting Russia, Pakistan and Iran are bad, and the increasing probability of a hot war to take over Taiwan should count as bad, perhaps the most urgently dangerous threat to global peace in the 21st century.

The United States track record post WW2 is a complicated combination of monstrously immoral Kissenger and Bush style overthrows of democracies and genuinely valuable maintenance of a post WW2 democratic order focused on things like free speech and human rights. I stay with full sincerity that in the decade plus that I've been here on hn seeing whataboutism as a strategy for defending China, I'm yet to encounter anything that feels like a sincere engagement with United States role in the world as a combination of positives and negatives, it's always flatly one-sided messaging that feels like it's aimed at a favorable audience that already agree rather than like it's sincerely attempting to persuade.

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Hardwired8976 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Cool that you completely ignore the US economically and militarily supporting Isreal

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shimman 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Your first sentence describes the US for the last 40 years. One corporate party that passes legislation to benefit the elites while there are no counter civil rights movements where US citizens are literally less free than they were 10 years ago.

The US was birthed as a white ethno-national colonial state. It required 20% of the population to be held in bondage while denying suffrage to 80% of the population. It took 100 years + a civil war before slavery was ended, and it took nearly another 100 years before every American could truly vote. Not because it was the "right time" either, go look at how the women's suffrage movement started. They were fire bombing factories and capitalists.

The propaganda surely runs deep, but something tells me you're too rich to really suffer so congrats I guess. I'm sure many wish they could trade places with your privilege. I bet those that will suffer from needless starvation or lack of medical care due to US imperialism would really like to trade places too.

Sorry but these boogey man acts fall flat when you look at how hostile and anti-human the US government has become over the recent decades. You can't blame this on one person, the system was always rotten and a course correction will happen. You just better pray it's the right people directing the ship.

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matchbok3 3 days ago | parent [-]

Please take your virtue signaling somewhere else. This is a tech forum, not a grandstand for your slogan-ridden, college freshman diatribes.

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shimman 3 days ago | parent [-]

Sorry that it makes you uncomfortable to realize that slavers built this nation and enforced their will on the majority of the country by creating a government where elites control the country through minority rule. I bet you think the 3/5's compromise was just good governance too right? That's pragmatic centrism we desperately need in modern times!

If it makes you feel better I'll also include this in the help text of my next neovim plugin.

	▲	matchbok3 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Throwing around slogans from your freshman 101 class won't help solve the problems you profess to care about.

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avazhi 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did you miss the part where Iran spent the past 50 years promising to develop nuclear weapons and then use them on both Israel and America, or do just choose to conveniently ignore that when you go on rants like this? In one of the last rounds of talks before the war Kushner and Witkoff offered Iran free nuclear fuel in perpetuity in exchange for the weapons grade uranium and got turned down, so clearly the Iranians weren’t just bluffing.

This war could have been handled much differently and better, but acting like America attacked Iran for no reason is laughable. It is in fact America’s inexplicable reticence to kill Iranian civilians that is the reason this is going on for this long. America could have ended this in a few days if it had stopped worrying about being criticised by the rest of the world that hates it anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...

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jst1fthsdys 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Did you miss the part where Iran spent the past 50 years promising to develop nuclear weapons and then use them on both Israel and America

The Ayatollah had a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. You are just making things up.

> In one of the last rounds of talks before the war Kushner and Witkoff

No, they didn't. They lied and sabotaged the talks. The diplomacy, much like right now, was to misdirect Iran. Which is why they refuse to negotiate now.

> America could have ended this in a few days

Ahh, the fascist delusion. Violence overcomes all.

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avazhi 4 days ago | parent [-]

Not that you care, but for others that might, the nuclear fuel offer was reported by the NYT and other outlets, including The Economist, that can't in any way be accused of pandering to the Trump admin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...

> At one point, they offered the Iranians free nuclear fuel for the life of their program — a test of whether Tehran’s insistence on enrichment was truly about civilian energy or about preserving the ability to build a bomb. The Iranians rejected the offer, calling it an assault on their dignity.

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shimman 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, why would Iran reject an offer from a government that tore up previous agreements, had their leaders assassinated, had sanctions inflicted upon them for decades, and even had chemical weapons used against them provided by the same government that wants to make a deal with them now? Why would they reject such an offer from obviously good faith actors, are they stupid?

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avazhi 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Yes, why would Iran reject an offer from a government

Because they were trying to get nukes so they could use them against Israel and America, as they've promised to do for decades. I believe the Americans did what is called calling one's bluff.

The ayatollahs were never a serious government. FAFO, as they say.

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shimman 3 days ago | parent [-]

Every country on this Earth will now seek nukes because of the actions we see on display. Nuclear proliferation is the only way to practice sovereignty, and nuclear proliferation will surely lead to the destruction of humanity as it becomes increasingly unlikely that a nuclear exchange won't happen sometime within the next 10,000 years.

FA and FO indeed. Oh and dedollarization is now something that may happen within 5 years and not like 50 years. Oh and 100s of millions will needlessly suffer and die because of these actions, but seeing how little you value human life in your other comments I'm going to stop myself here and wish you a good existence.

	▲	3 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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shimman 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

LOL I'm sorry but I can't believe people whole heartedly swallow such propaganda.

"but tHeY PLANn3d for 50 years!!11!" HAHAHAHA.

Have a good life dude.

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scottyah 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So you're good with the takeover of Hong Kong and what they're doing with the Uyghurs? I think you're getting a pretty biased feed of news. I'm not saying China is the devil, but the trite "USA bad because [overhyped recent news]" is a crazy take. There's plenty of bad stuff that has been done by Americans you could have called out.

	▲	shimman 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Not really as I am a commoner and don't really benefit with whatever happens. I'm sure the executives at Walmart or Google care, but this will never impact the lives of 99% of the US population. I'm more concerned with police brutality, US born children suffering induced poverty by the elites, women that are forced to either die or be jailed for seeking medical treatment, the legalized torture of children that happen to be not straight, the suffering of 100s of millions of Americans failing to get medical treatment, the creation of concentration camps, a masked police force that isn't being held accountable, ignoring due process while torturing people into compliance. I'm concerned with how we let people that profit off of misery and mass death, because that is surely coming back to haunt us. 2025 proved how easily things can get worse, and humans in general do not have a good imagination when it comes to seeing how worse things can continue to get. What I do care about is the rising authoritarianism inside the US. The US was literally birthed as a white colonial ethno-national state that could only exist because it held 20% of the population in bondage. A strand of evil this nation has never gotten rid of and has allowed to multiple and propagate around the world. The most evil sides of human existence all seem to find their way point back to the US constitution or US customers, a document written by slavers to uphold slavers and empower the elites over the population, from Apartheid South Africa to genocide by Israel + US leaders to the Nazi regime itself. We are mired in a disgusting history and have never accounted for the horrors we wrought upon the world because the elites wanted to make more money. We never truly were held accountable to the death squads we support across South America or how we forced US marines to fight for corporate interests in the banana wars. We destabilized entire nations, 100s of millions of people, then act shock when it comes home to roost. Do I really have to go over the history of the last 40 years too? Sorry man, go read a book. Absolutely pathetic that Americans don't even know their own history. You should absolutely read it because a large portion of this earth are going to suffer massive consequences due to US imperialism and we're going to be on the receiving end of it for the rest of our short lives. Sorry man but you have the crazy take. The US was only a consistent force of good when FDR was in-charge and the New Deal coalition held majorities in both houses of Congress for 60+ years; but we also see their follies in Vietnam + Cambodia (fun fact, children still born in those countries with birth defects due to the highly inventive American weapons (it's okay they had well paying jobs)). --- People truly don't understand that US foreign politics is done to solely benefit the elite + rich, while everyone else suffers (yes even US civilians, we're the ones that will get violence inflicted upon us not the elites). Wake up.