Zhouran wrote:There is no such things as "friends"
You'd think that since you probably don't have any? Only way I can see it being plausible. Since you probably have friends, though, it's probably a "lie".
Zhouran wrote:or "good guys" in the real world.
Yeah I'm sure a 1950s-60s Hitler was vastly better an alternative than Khrushchev's or Brezhnev's USSR.
If you want to be edgelord pseudo-Hobbesian about it you should support "my group" over "their group" which is how you'd define "good" and "bad" in this case. It means the same thing. The PRC is ethnonationalist and America isn't, which is an important distinction, but ethnonationalism is literally a core framework of Australian policy so maybe it should just build a huge wall around the entire continent IDK. Keeps the brown boat people out and keeps the bleeding heart Americans and British with their "civic nationalism" out too.
Then Australia can become something like a white PRC: makes stuff, has lots of minerals, and is policy oriented towards racialism. It fits the pseudo-Hobbesian viewpoint that "no one is good" by being "just as bad" but it still loses the "everyone is equally awful" edgelordism because of "in-group bias" on account of "most Australians are white folks". Anyone who is white would still prefer Australia as the "good guys" over the PRC "bad guys" because Australia welcomes them and PRC doesn't, because they're both ethnonationalist. It's not terribly ideal but the idea that people have some sort of "impartial humanity" ingrained into them is wrong and highly counter-intuitive. It results in a lot of cognitive dissonance when you have to try to tell yourself that you care about "some people five thousand miles away" as much as "people who live next to me" because it is literally not true at all.
The PRC is just not ashamed to admit that unlike the West. The impartial beneficence of utilitarianism misses that part of basic human brainwork. Given that JSM was born in 1906 and "in-group favoritism" (a winner of the IgNobel Prize if ever) wasn't coined until 1906, it's not hard to see why a simplistic idea as "everyone should be given worth" is wrong. It's hard to accept the notion that you might be part of the group of the who is "ignored for being dumb/wrong/whatever" I guess. So "impartiality" was invented to cover people's asses because accepting a moral system where they're objectively worse off for the benefit of superior people is actually really hard for most everyone.
Unfortunately we must suffer for impartiality now. Until philosophy can reconcile "egalitarianism" with "humans can be objectively rated as superior/inferior in particular areas" anyway. Which may never happen.
What you really mean to say is "good guys" and "bad guys" are subjective viewpoints. Which is a completely meaningless thing to say. A bit like saying "the sky is blue" or something and expecting it to carry some practical worth.
Zhouran wrote:>He thinks being anti-PRC is pro-US
You think you have any other choice. The reality is "which guy I tag along with on weird foreign adventures" mb. But Americans speak English and Chinese will make you speak Mandarin. Or simply take your land from you in an ironic twist.
Your KGB sympathies are showing!
But really the West needs to just launch a sneak attack on Russia and PRC and destroy despotism's nuclear arsenal. Take a few hits maybe but it will survive. Then establish UN trust Territories over the former lands of the PRC and Russia. Use the United Nations like God intended (as an economic and military apparatus towards federating the Democratic World for its coming war with Despotism) and plant the Four Freedoms in the irradiated soil of Yangtze Delta and the Duchy of Muscovy.
tl;dr But really America needs to double its defense spending at least and double its armed forces size. And NATO needs to stick to 2-2.5% commitment. It's the only way we can fight a two front war against the Chinese and Russians tbh. Or rather a one and a half front war, since Europe is held by Poland who can bloody the nose of the Russians anyway and America can barely fight two small wars at the same time god forbid an actual war with a really big country like France or something.