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Comment by siracusa23 | Hacker News Reader

Is this about numbers? Or the fact that both countries did something horrific?

How about how many wars the Americans started? How many people killed, left without homes? How about the fact that Americans bombed the Japanese? Why can't people accept that bad is bad no matter who does it or how many times they do it.

This is not you vs. me, democrats vs. republicans, conservative vs. liberals, Russia vs. US, it's not the divide and conquer of the American propaganda.

I'm not defending the USSR, Europe or US. I'm saying all are bad and all of them have done horrifying things, the only thing we can do is to hope that we can become better. And this can only be done if we stop saying "oh but he did it worse/first, mom" but understand that we need to do better.

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Killing one person is not as bad as killing one hundred people. Saying "both countries did something horrific" is denying your ability to draw distinctions between things which is the same thing as denying your ability to think. I don't know why you would voluntarily give up your ability to think.

> How about how many wars the Americans started? How many people killed, left without homes? How about the fact that Americans bombed the Japanese? Why can't people accept that bad is bad no matter who does it or how many times they do it.

No one is arguing that Americans never do anything wrong.

> I'm not defending the USSR, Europe or US. I'm saying all are bad and all of them have done horrifying things, the only thing we can do is to hope that we can become better. And this can only be done if we stop saying "oh but he did it worse/first, mom" but understand that we need to do better.

Saying that all countries have done horrifying things is facile. The idea that, in order to "do better," we have to first convince ourselves that killing millions of people by forced labor is the same as kidnapping 3000 people and torturing them is bizarre. It's all-or-nothing nonsense. The fact that no country is perfect does not mean that no country is better than any other country.

This argument didn't start because someone said "rendition was okay because the gulags were worse". It started because you objected to the statement that the USSR was much worse than the US.

I see that I have made you upset, you started attacking me, it was not my intention.

I'm a bit confused about your comments, since it would be comfortable to think that you are "trolling", but the fact that you are upset is clearly a sign that you believe in what you are saying.

My guess is that you are young and above average intelligence, I'm sure that you can look things up on Wikipedia, I'm old and not so sharp anymore, so I'll also look things up, hopefully we can all get better educated on what all these countries did.

Writing in English is hard at this time of the night, so I'll sign off, I wish you the best.

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