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Whataboutism is just plain dumb. One country doing bad things in no way justifies any other country doing bad things. Especially when there is broad agreement amongst most people that both things are bad.

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I think geogra4's tone was of a kind with the post to which he was responding, which seemed to be asserting that only "modern democracies" (which there appear to be a scant few of these days) could "play ball," and that therefore China is, I guess, disqualified from participating in the world economy?

This is deeply subjective obviously: It didn't strike me as "whataboutism," but more a refutation of what seemed like a moral-political superiority complex. Devopyl's comment expressed this old-fashioned view; very reminiscent of the 80s and 90s, for me, and I think geogra4's balloon-popping was well in order.

We may have different definitions of "whataboutism" as well :)

The GP is calling for consistency. Calling out “whataboutism” does not make that an invalid point.

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