Capitalism certainly has flaws, but if you think the "oppression" in the US or western Europe is in any way comparable to that under the major fascist and communist regimes of Stalin, Mao or Hitler, I'm not sure what to say. We are from different planets.
sailingbythelee
joined 1 year ago
The underlying ideologies are different, but I suspect the common feature the commenter was referring to is the practical tendency of both fascism and communism to develop into a totalitarian state.
How is that a false equivalency?
Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires
A great power can usually defeat it in the conventional military sense and take the cities, but no one can rule it long term. And many have tried. In that sense, Afghanistan is possibly the greatest blow to American exceptionalism ever.
The Chinese could probably do it using the totalitarian tactics they're using on the Uighers, including gradual replacement of the population with ethnic Han Chinese. But...yuck, hopefully that'll never happen.
The US "won" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rather quickly and handily, but they lost the subsequent peace. Turns out that's the hard part.
Has anyone here read any persuasive articles or books explaining why Japan and Germany accepted and flourished under US occupation but Iraq and Afghanistan did not?
Haha, good point. I stand corrected. :)
A new UH-60L is around $10-$20 million depending on avionics and weapons, and I am under the impression that even an old 1990s A-variant would still cost upwards of $2 million.
One example: https://www.hangar67.com/aircraft-for-sale/turbine-helicopters/sikorsky/uh60a-black-hawk
What are you even talking about?
That's really inappropriate.
According to NOAA, the ocean was originally not very salty but became saltier over time as rivers eroded the land and delivered the dissolved minerals to the ocean. At the same time, salts crystallize out of the water and are deposited on the ocean floor. This input and output are now more or less balanced so the ocean is not getting saltier. Apparently, this salt cycle involves about 4 billion tons of new dissolved salts being added to the ocean each year and about the same amount being deposited from the water to the ocean bottom.
So, why aren't rivers salty? Apparently, it is because rivers carry only a small amount of salt and are kept fresh by constant rainfall, whereas the ocean has been accumulating salt for the last 4 billion years.
Lakes that don't drain to the ocean, like the Dead Sea, can get salty over time, just like the ocean.
It wasn't me that brought up capitalism. We were talking about forms of government (fascism and communism) and then someone else said, WhAt AbOuT CaPiTaLiSM. That said, there is quite a bit of overlap in practice between economic and governmental systems. But I digress.
I agree with you that authoritarianism is bad. That was my central point, in fact. Comparing fascism and communism is not necessarily a "false equivalence" insofar as all of the major 20th century examples of both converged on authoritarianism.
As for oppression, I'm not going to argue that no one is oppressed in the West. But I will stand by my assertion that the scale and degree of oppression under Mao, Stalin, and Hitler (the largest 20th century examples of communism and fascism) is not comparable to what trans people may be experiencing in some Texas town.
As for indigenous people, yes, historically the scale of the original genocide is certainly comparable to the communist and fascist regimes of the 20th century. However, it is also important to remember that over 90% of the indigenous people died naturally of diseases they had no immune defense against. It was inevitable given the level of medical technology of the time, much like the plague in Europe. The starlight tours specifically are shameful but actually illegal for the police to do. Those are not state-sanctioned actions, unlike Stalin's pogroms or Hitler's concentration camps. A better example for your case would be the residential school system, which was both state-sanctioned and very oppressive.