People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know that democracy is generally good, but they also know that a strong central government can also be useful for certain circumstances. Most westerners and HongKongers on Hacker news have a very extreme political view, you just believe "democracy is good"(TM), protesting against the evil Chinese government is good. But can you take a closer look at what is really happening in HK and then decide what you believe?
BTW, I'm neither pro-protester nor pro-police, I think the protest is a result of economic regression in HK. You could also check my comment and posting history to see that I'm not a 五毛党.
Whataboutism is lazy though, and I do find it telling that the go-to argument a lot of pro-China commenters across platforms use is exactly that...
No, it isn't.
> the American Revolution had some type of value even though slavery was still a part of America's history. Therefore, America still provided some value
I never suggested otherwise.
Actions taken by individuals who are employed by the government--especially when such actions are explicitly illegal--hardly count as an abusive government.
> racially targeted drug operations by the CIA/FBI
Got a link?
> ignoring of the AIDS crisis
Allocation of scarce resources in a way that you personally disagree with is not the same as an abusive government.
While private government isn't US government, they are very much interlaced, pair-evolving and authoritarian being governments.
When the justice department does not enact the punishments for the laws they set, it is absolutely government abuse. Authority is authority, and people rarely use it uniformly. All are government action unless actual steps are taken to punish it.
> Got a link?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca... https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...
And then combine that with the sentencing differences between crack cocaine and cocaine (same drug, vastly different punishments). You can also look at the legal treatment of opioids and the origins of marijuana laws (originally targeting mexicans)
http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war
> Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38% were Latino and 31% were black.
Again, the justice department's actions are government actions. Absolutely abuse of citizens.
> Allocation of scarce resources in a way that you personally disagree with is not the same as an abusive government.
Not that scare really, first of all. Secondly, resource allocation is a powerful tool that's literally used to strongarm other countries and across world politics. The action does not define abuse, the effect of the action does (in my book at least). Letting thousands die because it is affecting a minority population is an abusive policy. To take this to an extreme, food is a scarce resource, so if the US made a law saying X people don't get food, that would 100% be abuse. Now that's nowhere near the same thing, but it shows that again, the effect defines abuse, not the action.
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I think the latter two come down to a fundamental difference in the definition of abuse. If you use a literal model of an army physically hurting people then sure. And it's not the exact same thing - nowhere did I say HK = USA. But your first comment got the reaction it did because it appeared to sweep a lot of the US's less than ideal history under the rug for the revisionist "Well post slavery/civil rights everything was great!".