Okay. OKAY. I guess we’re meant to post our fringe-ass opinions, the ones that are most likely to make people angry, thus testing your ability to remain polite?
Here goes:
I, as a human being who cares about engaging in politics, am not in any obligation to have an opinion about China, or Russia, or Ukraine, or any of those other countries. They are far, far away. There are big serious problems right here, in my country, that take priority. And besides, it’s hard enough to know truth from propaganda for things that are close, imagine for things that are far away.
And even if I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are in these distant foreign conflicts, I do not have the power to do anything about it.
If I were to don my tinfoil hat for a paragraph or two, I feel like the constant bringing up of this or that foreign country whenever one attempts to discuss the politics of their own country is a deliberate trick to muddy the waters. I could be talking about stopping the privatisation of public services in Brazil and people on Reddit would be going “But what about <totally unrelated human rights violation in the other side of the globe>”
And even if I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are in these distant foreign conflicts, I do not have the power to do anything about it.
the most immediate contention most people would have that comes to mind is whether or not this assertion is accurate, particularly if you live in the united states or another country in which the country’s foreign policy is (more or less) determined by democratic elections. you can quibble with however small or large the influence actually is, but i think most people would agree that even as an individual you have some ability to influence the foreign policy of such countries (we didn’t start the war on terror or eventually leave afghanistan in a vacuum, after all) and therefore you do actually have the power to do something, it would simply be a matter of mobilizing to achieve it.
Yeah I guess what they call “whataboutism” is a mask many people wear and turns every converation into a sterile chicken fight.
But instead of this thing being created and orchestrated by evil forces, I think it has more to do with people not being educated to have constructive conversations on the internet (the thing I’m trying to be here is supposed to be a sort of training to contrast that): a lot of people when they have nothing to say about a given topic feel the need to assert some kind of verbal dominance and whataboutism is one of the most used mechanism.
As a wise person said, for me it’s easier to believe that people carry ignorance rather than malice.
Okay. OKAY. I guess we’re meant to post our fringe-ass opinions, the ones that are most likely to make people angry, thus testing your ability to remain polite?
Here goes:
I, as a human being who cares about engaging in politics, am not in any obligation to have an opinion about China, or Russia, or Ukraine, or any of those other countries. They are far, far away. There are big serious problems right here, in my country, that take priority. And besides, it’s hard enough to know truth from propaganda for things that are close, imagine for things that are far away.
And even if I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are in these distant foreign conflicts, I do not have the power to do anything about it.
If I were to don my tinfoil hat for a paragraph or two, I feel like the constant bringing up of this or that foreign country whenever one attempts to discuss the politics of their own country is a deliberate trick to muddy the waters. I could be talking about stopping the privatisation of public services in Brazil and people on Reddit would be going “But what about <totally unrelated human rights violation in the other side of the globe>”
the most immediate contention most people would have that comes to mind is whether or not this assertion is accurate, particularly if you live in the united states or another country in which the country’s foreign policy is (more or less) determined by democratic elections. you can quibble with however small or large the influence actually is, but i think most people would agree that even as an individual you have some ability to influence the foreign policy of such countries (we didn’t start the war on terror or eventually leave afghanistan in a vacuum, after all) and therefore you do actually have the power to do something, it would simply be a matter of mobilizing to achieve it.
Yeah I guess what they call “whataboutism” is a mask many people wear and turns every converation into a sterile chicken fight. But instead of this thing being created and orchestrated by evil forces, I think it has more to do with people not being educated to have constructive conversations on the internet (the thing I’m trying to be here is supposed to be a sort of training to contrast that): a lot of people when they have nothing to say about a given topic feel the need to assert some kind of verbal dominance and whataboutism is one of the most used mechanism. As a wise person said, for me it’s easier to believe that people carry ignorance rather than malice.
Solid opinion.