“Both are bad” is not a serious geopolitical thought. Every real project will have negative aspects, so if you reduce your analysis to declaring something bad for having bad aspects you will never be able to discriminate between, say, the Nazis and the partisans who fought them and liberated their countries and concentration camps.
Or, in this case, being unable to discriminate between the global seat of capital behind basically every single war and an ongoing genocide and a growing power who hasn’t had a war in decades and works to get countries out of IMF debt traps. You prevent yourself and others from seriously contending with how the world works and what place you can have in it.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
It’s important to recognize that when you equate two countries, you tacitly support the dominant narrative. Saying “ABC Bad and XYZ Bad” without doing work to contextualize the extent, impact, and level of “Badness” serves to exaggerate the evils of the “less bad” and understate the evils of the “more bad.” Condemning equally is therefore an unequal condemnation for unequal evils.
guy@piefed.social 1 week ago
See, that's the issue.
Pointing at state A and saying it's bad invokes the response "Well B is by far more bad, if you look at contextualized extent, impact, and level of badness!" thus down playing the bad state A has done.
It's like, A hit X with a fist, but B hit Y with a bat, twice and on the shins, so what A did isn't so bad actually. Instead of just admitting hitting is wrong.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
It’s best to correctly contextualize all bad. Simply saying X is bad if one country does .5X and another does 2X equalizes each into merely “X.”
guy@piefed.social 1 week ago
Exactly! :)