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Comment by dave_sullivan | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree.

Starting with "Well," suggests it somehow negates my point though.

I think "Also" would be more appropriate, which kind of acknowledges the problems in other countries I cited while also pointing out very real weaknesses in America's justice system.

This might seem pedantic, but the common reply I see to "this country does bad stuff" reduces to "well this country does bad stuff too!" It's not a productive argument because it tries to deflect attention and normalize the actions in question. Instead, we should be focusing on how to address all of these issues, because they definitely exist.

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But... your previous post specifically says "China is willing to kidnap people out of Thailand" and goes on to say "I really hope the U.S. never comes close to this".

Can you explain how exactly the U.S. has yet to "come close to" your list? Your post created the very "us vs them" separation you now claim to disagree with. The child post was fairly clearly just answering that statement

And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world. Yes, they are all important; no, it is usually not possible to solve them all at once.

I think the implication is that he sees the things the US currently does as less bad than his own list. I'm not weighing in on the validity of his assessment, but I'm pretty sure that's what he meant.

> Can you explain how exactly the U.S. has yet to "come close to" your list?

Show me a similar incident to the Chinese booksellers thing in America. Or anyone being killed because they represented the political opposition. Miles away.

But that's not even my point. My point is: read the links listed; I'm not traveling to those countries; I hope the world becomes less crazy. That's all!

> And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world

Huh? I posted some links above. People should read them and make up their own mind, in addition to the OP. It's not a "one or the other" kind of thing, not sure why it would be.

>This might seem pedantic, but the common reply I see to "this country does bad stuff" reduces to "well this country does bad stuff too!"

I think it's valid to see things its perspective though, because people who say "we shouldn't turn it into 'yes, but X does this too'" are often using it as an excuse to continue to point fingers only towards one side, and not even the worst acting one...

> the common reply I see to "this country does bad stuff" reduces to "well this country does bad stuff too!"

It's not pedantic if you care about being rational. This act is a common logical fallacy called the "tu quoque fallacy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Why is this a fallacy?

Suppose country A is accused of doing something bad. It's logically irrelevant to that question whether some other country B also has done something bad.

To see it more clearly, take the same fallacy on an individual level. Person A is accused of murdering someone. Is it a valid defense to say "Well, my neighbor Person B also murdered someone, therefore it's OK that I did"? No, of course not. It's totally irrelevant whether someone else -- even the accuser -- has also murdered someone.

Yet making this fallacious counter-accusation is often effective in terms of emotional (i.e. irrational) manipulation of the audience, particularly when they are predisposed against B in some way.

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