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On Moral Superiority

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Re: On Moral Superiority

#31

Post by bpyne »

locopati wrote: post #22
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric... That is one thing that America excels at -- propaganda. Along with some other so called "democracies", it can at the same time install brutal regimes, kill and start wars all over the world _and_ somehow mentain its relatively stable propaganda image as a "peacemaker", "example of democracy", "human rights advocate" and so on. An…

I suspect some of the political upheaval in America is growing from the disjunction between American ideals with American reality (taking many forms of expression - Tea Party, nativism, corporatism, escapism, back-to-the-land movements, localism).

What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?

Re: On Moral Superiority

#32

Post by rbanffy »

forinti wrote: post #5

As a Latin-American, I laugh at the notion that the US have any sort of moral authority. In fact, many communist movements in LA actually came to be in response to oppression administered from Washington; if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US and the only people who would help were in Moscow, then your best bet would be to become a communist, just as the Croats cozied up to the Nazis in order to get rid of…

> if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US

Be careful. The US had a lot to do with Latin-American right-wing dictators, but a lot of what is said these days is propaganda from left-wing larval dictators trying to create a patriotic response to an external "threat". Chávez in particular, seems to be considering delaying the upcoming elections by declaring war.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#33

Post by rbanffy »

jargon wrote: post #23
forinti wrote: post #5

As a Latin-American, I laugh at the notion that the US have any sort of moral authority. In fact, many communist movements in LA actually came to be in response to oppression administered from Washington; if you had a nasty dictator propped up by the US and the only people who would help were in Moscow, then your best bet would be to become a communist, just as the Croats cozied up to the Nazis in order to get rid of…

I was reading a book about Roads that talks about roads from brazil to the pacific. The author mentions a story about seeing a teen in South America, Venezuela iirc, wearing a t-shirt with bin laden's picture on it and the author asked the kid why he is wearing the shirt. The teen says, "Because he is a defender of the world's poor." Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? Is…

> Is this how people in South America see the war? Rich people killing poor people? > Is bin Laden the new Che in South America?

No way. And, BTW, only angry teens wear Che t-shirts these days.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#34

Post by borism »

gyardley wrote: post #21

A nonsensical screed, since the nations of Western Europe have also been the targets of radical Islamic terrorist groups. For example, what should the Danes have done to prevent the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan in 2008? What heinous action did they commit to lose their 'moral superiority' like the Americans? Since there's no Danish Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib to point to, might I respectfully suggest the re…

there's a simple reason for attack on Danish Embassy and you must be perfectly aware of it.

I was in a moderate islamic country when the cartoons were published and shall I say it was not a comfortable feeling when communicating with locals.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#35

Post by borism »

bpyne wrote: post #31
locopati wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect some of the political upheaval in America is growing from the disjunction between American ideals with American reality (taking many forms of expression - Tea Party, nativism, corporatism, escapism, back-to-the-land movements, localism).

What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?

back-to-the-land is probably what it says - "back-to-the-land"

localism is probably communitarianism

Re: On Moral Superiority

#36

Post by rdtsc »

patrickk wrote: post #29
rdtsc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America's supposed moral superiority depended quite a bit on believing the rhetoric... That is one thing that America excels at -- propaganda. Along with some other so called "democracies", it can at the same time install brutal regimes, kill and start wars all over the world _and_ somehow mentain its relatively stable propaganda image as a "peacemaker", "example of democracy", "human rights advocate" and so on. An…

A video about the CIA's covert wars in the 3rd world (six million dead): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8gKQGmoao

Thank you

Re: On Moral Superiority

#37

Post by astine »

loxs wrote: post #14
te_platt wrote: post #12

So the Soviets under Stalin murdered 10's of millions before 1950 but maintained moral equivalence with the United States until JFK was elected? I guess I have a different sense of morality.

You know, things like nuking whole cities do count when measuring moral. Not that USSR was highly moral, just the opposite. USA was not too moral that days.

While from my armchair perspective I disagree with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they at least were under the auspices of ending a much larger war. Stalin's massacres had no such justification. The two acts are incomparable.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#38

Post by locopati »

bpyne wrote: post #31
locopati wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect some of the political upheaval in America is growing from the disjunction between American ideals with American reality (taking many forms of expression - Tea Party, nativism, corporatism, escapism, back-to-the-land movements, localism).

What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?

I see young people buying farms as a form of back-to-the-land. Localism seems to capture eating locally grown foods & buying locally made goods. Not saying these are real movements with web sites and books about them, just words to capture trends.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#39

Post by jerf »

bad_user wrote: post #11
jessriedel wrote: post #3

Is this worth reading? I stopped after the ridiculous claim that "If you can pay peanuts, you can produce tanks and ICBMs that cost peanuts." I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts. Likewise, the US had objectively more economic power than the USSR, and, assuming that the USSR had to…

If those hunter-gatherers are amongst the world's top scientists, then of course you can produce tanks and ICBMs for peanuts. And USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources ;)

Wealth and money aren't the same. They're related, but they don't freely interconvert, and are generally people overestimate the degree to which they are related.

Building ICBMs requires not just money, but wealth. Infrastructure, the ability to divert your smartest people to building ICBMs because they aren't needed to solve "the food problem", ability to create a system where smart people can become educated, etc.

Communism is a system in which the government basically has all the money, but it isn't very good at producing wealth. Wealth is produced by the aggregation of countless little local decisions and communism is absolutely terrible at making those local decisions. So even though the government basically has all the money, it was in a system that didn't have a lot of wealth.

The USSR had plenty of scientists and natural resources, but they were embedded in a system that couldn't produce enough wealth to compete. The US ultimately, for all the sound and fury surrounding the military expenditures of the 1980s, was building its military out of the leftovers of its budget. A much less wealthy system couldn't even keep up with a fraction of the wealth the US had, regardless of how much money it may have controlled.

Re: On Moral Superiority

#40

Post by rbanffy »

te_platt wrote: post #24
loxs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, things like nuking whole cities do count when measuring moral. Not that USSR was highly moral, just the opposite. USA was not too moral that days.

You know, things like making a decision between ending a hellish war by killing millions or by killing hundreds of thousands (was there another option?) is terrible thing to have to do. Making a calculated political decision to murder millions just isn't in the same category. I don't want to justify any of the wrongdoings of anyone based on "the other guy is worse". I also don't accept that the United States was mora…

> making a decision between ending a hellish war by killing millions or by killing hundreds of thousands (was there another option?)

There are always options. The simplest argument to be made is that, at most, nuking one city would probably suffice. There was little need for nuking the second one. Next, one could, conceivably, nuke a landmark instead of a city, prove the destructive power of the device and, still, spare a lot of lives.

No. Nuking 2 cities was more a weapons test than a way to shorten a war.

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