Hacker News Reader

Comment by OldFatCactus | Hacker News Reader

little hyperbolic and a tad too smug I think. I believe history will be a little kinder, all things considered.

Look at current encyclopedia articles covering these topics [0][1][2][3][4][5] and see for yourself what sort of facts are headed for the history books. Parent is being very gentle on our neoconservative, neocolonialist, fascist, disappointing legacy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_Group

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

You can find just as many atrocities and missteps of the law by scrutinizing other 1st world countries. The West as a whole benefits from the system that America has created and protects. History books will give just as much a shit about this era as they have any other and while America has the most dirt on her face, nobody is clean.

That's not where your original goalposts were; you were talking about historical retrospectives of the USA in particular. You've now shifted to whataboutism [0] in order to try to minimize the USA's misdeeds. Meanwhile, I've already shown you what's in existing encyclopedic materials covering recent USA history. What, precisely, do you think I've failed to articulate or contextualize? Do you think that the USA's torture, war crimes, and mass surveillance are somehow excusable merely because other states also commit such atrocities?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

No, sorry, my original comment wasn't super clear. I only meant that, in the context of world events of this era, history won't overly scrutinize the USA while it seems to be a generally Western problem. Not interested in getting into a back and forth pasting Wikipedia articles, sorry dude

Reply on news.ycombinator.com