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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

Im in China myself and I dont mind if it's a lab leak, better than saying we re degenerate Pangolin eaters :D

However, it's hard to be too trusting of the US, I want to believe them but they just shot 3 balloons in hysterical panic that were just their own weather balloons just because we sent 1... so sometimes they seem to be wrong and we should keep an open mind.

The best would be that a bat shat on a pangolin a lab worker ate before going to work, he sneezed around and contaminated all his colleagues who spread it around and poom: wild bat + pangolin traffic + lab leak all together lol Now that we can all agree, what has changed ?

Surely we re not agreeing that China was making weapons or leaked voluntarily, so beyond us being weasels unable to accept we screwed up, not sure why we drag on: we ll never say we screwed up, the US will never entirely accept we didnt screw up, what then?

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> However, it's hard to be too trusting of the US

The question is not whether to trust the US [government] in absolute terms, the question is whether the democratically elected US government that is bound by the rule of law, strong institutions providing checks and balances and the Freedom of Information Act can be trusted more than the autocratic Chinese communist party that is accountable to absolutely no one.

> The question is not whether to trust the US [government] in absolute terms, the question is whether the democratically elected US government that is bound by the rule of law, strong institutions providing checks and balances and the Freedom of Information Act can be trusted

No. Where were checks and balances when a coup attempt happened? Or before that, when a sitting US president committed multiple crimes, including influence peddling, and got away with it? Or when Guantanamo was established and random people were kidnapped and tortured because of their name or watch? Or when the US president decided to murder a US citizen without due process? Or when it was decided to implement dragnet surveillance of the whole Internet? Or when it was decided to spy on allies? Just because we later learned about some of those transgressions doesn't in any way make the US government and it's various entities trustworthy. Yes, it's better than the authoritarian regime in China, sure, but that doesn't equal actual trust.

The communist party is as accountable as the CIA. It works the same way, handwave a little national security here, assassimate a little critic there. The CIA is not Chinese.

But, Im not saying the department of energy is the CIA, Im saying it s made of the same american citizens who can fear us sometimes to the point of sending million-dollar missiles towards canadian weather balloons, see ? It's a matter of belief for me: are they objective and we screwed up, or are they hysterical and we dont know really? A democracy can absolutely elect lunatics if the population is afraid, as well.

Im certainly not saying the communist party is better, so not sure why you brought it up. Maybe part of the general hysteria, you think criticizing the US is a sort of patriotic duty for me or something, and Im like a red communist spouting Mao like a demented on the streets... but we can be anti communist in China and not impressed at all by the US general performance.

they shot the balloons as theater to show they are tough on balloons after the political opposition started hassling them about the balloon, I wouldnt call it a panic

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