I Lost My Past (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#171

Post by dang » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

fraktl wrote: post #30

gostsamo wrote: post #25

[flagged]

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Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It only takes us further into hell.

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Edit: your recent posts to HN have been breaking the guidelines repeatedly and egregiously. We ban accounts that abuse this site that way. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've posted good things in the past, but please review the guidelines and return to that in the future.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#172

Post by dang » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #19

[flagged]

This is the worst sort of generic, predictable ideological tangent that we're constantly asking users not to post to HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). It's completely against the site guidelines, as you'll see if you review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The problem is not that it's wrong—it's that it's repetitive and tedious, and usually turns nasty. We don't need to go around the same boring merry-go-round for the millionth time here. Please don't post like this to HN.

Here are some additional explanations that may help:

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Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#173

Post by shrimpx » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:17 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #113

shrimpx wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably have a decent point to make, if only you bothered to hone in on it. Sure you can say some people won't work for Google because their conscience prevents them, but you can't reasonably compare getting rich by working for Google to getting rich by getting your friend arrested because they read a book or listened to a radio station... If you have a point to make, make it.

Most (almost all) party people back them didn’t get anyone arrested, they just did their jobs in power plants, schools, and cheese factories, just like they would in the west. Same as googlers today. Sure, some did evil things. Again, just like in the west it’s easy to make money by hurting others. My point is, the perceived difference between those is really just the narrative, the way they are being described in po…

You’re unfairly revising the communist history behind the iron curtain in order to make a biased anti American point. People went to jail for reading certain books or attempting to listen to foreign radio stations. Poets would be under watch, threatened and forced to write pro-party poems. People would get picked up by agents for being non denominational Christians, and would “reappear” again weeks later beaten and 20 lbs lighter. There was nothing resembling rule of law; Justice was meaningless. There was no market and services were primarily bribe driven. (They still are; old habits die hard.) If you wanted to fix your abscessed tooth in the “free health care system” you better come up with two cartons of Kent and a box of Nescafé. It was all in plain sight with no pretense of a “system” at work.

Yes the USA has corruption, Justice has inequality problems, free speech is not always free, etc., but the problem with your perspective is that it’s binary instead of looking at the gradient. You’re like “the USA has corruption, and iron curtain had corruption, therefore they’re the same”. That’s dishonest. The USA has a functioning system of Justice that protects substantial individual rights and freedoms. Just because it’s not perfect doesn’t make it equal to the abject lack of Justice and freedoms in iron curtain dictatorships.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#174

Post by refurb » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:30 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #147

refurb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? Because they had a bloody war they couldn’t actually deliver what they promised? I mean we’re nearly 50 years past their victory? When are they going to “enact the American rights Ho Chi Minh showed so much admiration for”?

> Wait, what? Because they had a bloody war they couldn’t actually deliver what they promised? They delivered on independence from colonial powers, and on gaining self determination. No small feat! I'm not sure what you believe they promised. Vietnam was devastated as a country. The land itself, and the people. Countless Vietnamese were killed, far more than whatever the US lost in the war. The US did a number on the…

That’s a pretty impressive rewriting of history! Ho Chi Minh admired the US then shortly after taking power his government exacted brutal land reforms even the hardliners had to call out as “going too far”.

You’re doing an awful lot of hand waving to explain why Vietnam still doesn’t enact the freedom “they admire so much”. Your claim that Ho Chi Minh’s “disappointment from lack of US support” is the reason why Vietnamese still don’t have those rights rings pretty hollow.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#175

Post by refurb » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:32 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #154

refurb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, but look at the country today. Apparently they didn’t admire it that much.

If you admire someone and they turn out to be a bully, just maybe you change your mind. The US has a history of this - Castro wooed the US too. His party didn't even describe itself as socialist until years after the US slammed the door in his face and the Soviets didn't. Once the Soviets had bought him, Castro made concession after concession that he could have made to the US instead.

Or, stay with me here, they were just saying what they thought would help them get power?

To claim Ho Chi Minh or Castro would have been freedom loving leaders is laughable.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#176

Post by refurb » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #150

refurb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Of course Ho Chi Minh would win - there were no free elections in the North (100% of votes went for him!) and substantial support in the South. I wouldn’t call that a fair and free election. Yes, and I agree the US supported the French materially and with advisors. But South Vietnam was no longer a colonial power. The French were gone and the Vietnamese called the shots (not without foreign influence,…

> Of course Ho Chi Minh would win - there were no free elections in the North (100% of votes went for him!) and substantial support in the South. I wouldn’t call that a fair and free election. False. The US own internal documents stated they believed Ho Chi Minh held enormous popular support, especially in the countryside. They cancelled the elections and instead propped up a bloody dictatorship. Nothing natural abou…

Oh sure, he had a lot of support. But it was entirely clear the North was not going to allow any free vote. They had already purged any opposition long ago.

So are you arguing that South Korea is a “completely artificial, incompetent and repressive” country? It was also a dictatorship after the war for about 20 years. But Vietnam still is today after 50.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#177

Post by refurb » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:39 AM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #160

refurb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. I’m not sure what your point is? And your comment about “free will” is telling. How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today? The only difference is it’s Vietnamese elite that control the masses, not some foreign power.

> And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. I’m not sure what your point is? The liberated themselves from Japanese and then French control, with limited ( some arms) outside help, so that's just false.

False. They never would have liberated themselves from the French unless the USSR won the war in 1949 and funnel support to them.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#178

Post by refurb » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #149

refurb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. I’m not sure what your point is? And your comment about “free will” is telling. How much “free will” do the Vietnamese have today? The only difference is it’s Vietnamese elite that control the masses, not some foreign power.

> And the North would never had existed without USSR and China’s backing. False. Did you know the Viet Minh initially counted with support from the US? When it was an anti Japanese struggle, of course. Initial US assessments even thought the French should get the fuck out; those sentiments were overruled by others in the US, sadly. The Vietnamese struggle was a struggle of national liberation. Aided from the outside…

So you’d agree Vietnam today is in better shape than say South Korea? Or Taiwan? Should the Us have not intervened there?

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#179

Post by bradchris » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:46 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #50

thebradbain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "Communism is evil" is no different than saying "Capitalism is evil" with nothing to back it up. Contrary to maybe-current opinion, Communism and Democracy are not diametrically opposed: the former is an economic policy, the latter a system of government. You can have both, one or the other, or neither all at once. Sure, maybe the governments that tried to implement communism failed on the world stage. Some to…

>Communism and Democracy are not diametrically opposed: the former is an economic policy, the latter a system of government. You can have both, one or the other, or neither all at once. There are examples of market economy without democracy (Russia, Saudi Arabia, and to a degree, China too) but i can't think of any, present-day, example of democracy without a market economy. I don't think these can exist, because on…

Well of course we live in a dollar-denominated capitalist hegemony today, and with globalization as it is anyone who wants to be a part of the world stage needs to put up or shut up, especially with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (which itself had market-based reforms toward the end). But that doesn't meet it _has_ to be that way, so much as that's just the current political happenstance.

Cuba is perhaps an interesting case study – and maybe it would be a lot more successful than it is today if it weren't so heavily sanctioned and embargoed by the United States – given that it's in a lot of ways still in its Cold War era. But it's hard to deny that for all the resources they've been stripped of (and attempted US-backed coups, and a non-mutually-agreed-US military base / prison on their land), that they've found some modern degree of success for what they have: very high education rates due to universal education, universal healthcare that is ahead of US-aligned peer-countries in the Caribbean, a respected culture of exporting medical professionals around the world, developed their own (effective) covid vaccine because the US sanctioned them from receiving any significant doses and now have the highest vaccination rate in the world, rising per capita gdp and household wealth... and they are, technically/in-name and more-so since the passing of Castro, a democracy (though the US government would say otherwise, but in my opinion if you'd consider modern-day Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary, or Poland a western democracy then so is Cuba), and yet also communist in most facets.

Re: I Lost My Past (2017)

#180

Post by the_af » Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #174

the_af wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, what? Because they had a bloody war they couldn’t actually deliver what they promised? They delivered on independence from colonial powers, and on gaining self determination. No small feat! I'm not sure what you believe they promised. Vietnam was devastated as a country. The land itself, and the people. Countless Vietnamese were killed, far more than whatever the US lost in the war. The US did a number on the…

That’s a pretty impressive rewriting of history! Ho Chi Minh admired the US then shortly after taking power his government exacted brutal land reforms even the hardliners had to call out as “going too far”. You’re doing an awful lot of hand waving to explain why Vietnam still doesn’t enact the freedom “they admire so much”. Your claim that Ho Chi Minh’s “disappointment from lack of US support” is the reason why Vietn…

Please stop with the namecalling. Last warning.

> Ho Chi Minh admired the US

Which is a matter of public record.

> his government exacted brutal land reforms even the hardliners had to call out as “going too far”.

This has nothing to do with anything. Please try not to sidetrack the conversation: the Viet Minh and its successors were fighting a struggle of independence, the US could have been their ally but instead chose to turn against them and trash their country, while propping up a dictator so bad they later gave the greenlight for its removal (and whooopsie, his "accidental" assassination). Not to speak of the appalling Phoenix Program assassination campaign whose subtle tactics included, by the admission of its practitioners, listening to tips about alleged VC, knocking on the door, then wasting whoever answered it.

Doesn't seem so freedom loving to me!

> Your claim that Ho Chi Minh’s “disappointment from lack of US support” is the reason why Vietnamese still don’t have those rights rings pretty hollow.

Who knows what would have happened had the US supported Vietnam's anti colonial struggles instead of siding with their oppressors. It couldn't have been worse than the unmitigated disaster the US conducted.