Yeah, because US haven’t been ripping off anybody. And no US company has ever had close ties to the government %]
It is the British Empire.
The Saudis wouldn't even be in power if it weren't for the British endorsing them after the First World War.
https://spartacus-educational.com/SPYbsc.htm
>Roald Dahl was assigned to work with Drew Pearson, one of America's most influential journalist as the time. "Dahl described his main function with BSC as that of trying to 'oil the wheels' that often ground imperfectly between the British and American war efforts. Much of this involved dealing with journalists, something at which he was already skilled. His chief contact was the mustachioed political gossip columnist Drew Pearson, whose column, Washington Merry-Go-Round, was widely regarded as the most important of its kind in the United States."
But it is the exact correct response to a statement that "X is uniquely bad". People like you forget this obvious distinction and just use it as a general insult to shut down conversation.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
When someone brings up information isn't in fact comparable or relevant, the reasonable thing to do is to explain why it isn't, and give the other person a chance to respond. It's natural for people to disagree about what's relevant in an argument—that's part of having a disagreement in the first place. Trying to close off discussion so only your side's examples count as admissible isn't good discourse. Being first to raise a topic doesn't confer power to control the conversation.
Perhaps the more helpful broader point, though, is that all these canned arguments are repetitive and therefore low-quality. They're like slapping a sticker on something rather than engaging with it. Because of that, they make threads worse and more predictable. People tend to respond badly and strike back, rather than continuing in good faith—and it's easy to see why, because labels like "whataboutism" express dismissiveness.