COVID19 and boycotting Chinese made

[Alphaville]

Deleting a thread because it's critical of China? What is this, China? (jk)

maybe let’s pay attention to the the sweeping removals of inspectors general happening right under our noses?

[jacob]

As usual, my issue is not in what is being discussed but how it's being discussed. To reference the third point in an earlier post about posting ethics, this is about playing by the rules of the game, which is to entertain a very wide Overton window rather than serve as an echo chamber (e.g. MMM forums, apparently) or a battlefield (e.g. the Washington Post or FoxNews comment sections). One of those rules is to play the ball and not the man. You can be critical of policies, habits, or aspects of the culture, but being critical of individuals for holding such positions destroys the game. Blanket invective about an entire group is correspondingly worse.

[Jean]

@Jacob
This position you have taken here and on other occasion (obviously because they are an important part of your moderating policy) seems to be completly negating the possibility that group could have non compatible interests or goals. I truly believe that most forum members are aware that if someone makes a blanket statement about an entire group's goals, many individuals (or even most) within that group don't actively pursue that goal, and that a a group is more than the sum of the individuals within it. Acknowledging those percieved and/or factual opposite interests is a prerequisite to discuss which behavior from individual within or outside of the group are participating to it, and how they could be altered to possibly avoid a "stupid" confrontation.

edit: This south African man Spent most of his life in China and made a video on that subject. It won't give a definitive answer, but it gives a lot of insight : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_pcpN9iL4

[Jason]

maybe let’s pay attention to the the sweeping removals of inspectors general happening right under our noses?

To paraphrase my original post, "an honest appraisal of Chinese government is in order. As is our's."

[Alphaville]

To paraphrase my original post, "an honest appraisal of Chinese government is in order. As is our's."

the problem here is illustrated by the very structure of your sentence, where china takes precedence and “ours” comes up as an afterthought.

this at a time when our own government uses the “china china china china china” line to point away from its own lack of responsibility while it removes the people in charge of the honest appraisals.

sure, the chinese government is awful and antidemocratic. but projecting all awfulness and antidemocratic things onto them is precisely the mechanism used to distract from our own awful and antidemocratic tendencies which are taking root as we speak.

frankly, there’s nothing i can do about the chinese government, so i find it rather futile to contribute to that particular distraction. attention has its limits, and we could be paying attention to voter suppression within our own antidemocratic government instead, but oh, china china china china. fine, take chinaa as a given and let’s move on to things we can actually fix.

[Jason]

Well, the virus came from China, so in this particular instance, China does take precedence in a simple cause and effect manner. There is both an "us vs. them", in the sense that national sovereignty is the high priority when discussing international relations, as well as a "them as well as us" in sense that we are not without fault. That being said, there is a Chinese container of cheap, false assumptions moored in your logical port including but not limited to the fact that they are a rising power in an ongoing, complex political and economic relationship that just became more complex. If this was 1941, would you say "I can't do anything about the Japanese government, we need to remain solely focused on how FDR is changing the basic concept of US government" despite the fact they just bombed us? The world just doesn't work that way. US issues of governance and Chinese issues of governance are at times mutually exclusive but at others times, they are not. And in this instance they are not. We're in business with them and knowing who you are doing business with is essential to thinking about business.

[CS]

At this point I think the biggest danger to the US is from our own government.

There will always be some problem/issue/crisis that needs a capable response -- truly. The question is how will we meet it. Are we going to have a government for the many or for the few? That answer decides just about everything else.

[Alphaville]

Well, the virus came from China

i thought the virus came from nature by way of bats

[jacob]

@Jean - Sure. To set up a [European] soccer analogy, I see three different ways of resolving a conflict.

1) On the playing field with rules that govern the play. We can discuss conflicts like which goal the ball should ideally go into, but the conflicts need to be resolved within the game structure. For example, we can not insist on different rules for us compared to the opposing team. We do not break rules in order to win the game. We don't go for the man instead of the ball. Online, this is how I like this forum to act, because it makes it possible to get better at playing by playing many different teams.

2) In the fanclub where our team is always right and the other teams always suck. Here we can be outraged when the other team commits a penalty against us and let it slide when one of our side gets away with an infraction. We use the game to live out our emotions and feel part of something, like a cult. Online, this is more like an echo chamber where there's only one valid opinion (Thou shalt not have other gods than index funds). Here it is not about learning (anything beyond the scripture) as much as it's about mutual support. Also some of these fanclubs can form around hating another fanclub instead, but at the fanclub level, they don't act on it. This brings us to ...

3) As hooligans on the street. Here we just use the existence of the game as a way to pick a team, so we can fight other people from another team. We do this because we like fighting and somehow beating up on other people or even getting beaten gives us meaning. Online, this is like the comment section on social media or various media outlets, where some spend hours just trolling for fights trying not to learn but rather "own the tards" from the other side.

Ultimately, the soccer universe contains all these expressions. I just want the forum to be in the form of (1). There are plenty of other places on the interwebs to pursue (2) or (3) if that's your thing, but (1)s are rather rare these days. In particular, this means no "lets own the tards"- and no "lets hate on the other teams"-behavior is tolerated. If I allowed that it would quickly drown out that actual game on the field.

[Jason]

i thought the virus came from nature by way of bats

I agree. In the same manner I believe the World Trade Center collapsed due to fire.

[Alphaville]

I agree. In the same manner I believe the World Trade Center collapsed due to fire.

i’m trying to agree on a common premise here so that we can get to the rest.

unfortunately we seem to be talking at cross purposes here.

your world trade center comparison seems to imply something like “china” (the people? the government?) planned and plotted to fly plane-filled viruses everywhere so they could destroy everyone, or something along the same inflammatory metaphors.

if you could be more precise in your condemnation other than “the virus came from china” maybe we could get some sort of common ground on the facts and proceed from there.

[horsewoman]

Funnily enough, I listened to a hidden brain podcast yesterday where an (American) historian said, the "Spanish flu" is a misnomer... It actually was the "American flu" because it started in some American army camp and got spread over the world by American soldiers. But the US had a better marketing department than Spain, apparently. I wonder if anyone contemplated boycotting or suing the US then...

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/23/82006621 ... man-nature

[jacob]

Kind of how syphilis (likely from America although that seems to be disputed) is called the French Disease by the Italians; the English disease by the French; the Christian disease by the Muslims; and also the Spanish disease, the Polish disease, and the German disease... due to various invasions and animosities at some point in history.

I mostly feel sorry for the newborns who are currently being named Corona or Covida.

[Jason]

if you could be more precise in your condemnation other than “the virus came from china”

I see no reason to engage in a Talmudic discussion over primary and secondary causes in this situation. If you want to get into a semantic debate over "the virus came from China" on a thread on an esoteric retirement board as opposed to just applying the common, general understanding of the statement as agreed upon by the entire population of the world, then I believe you are just trying to make some facile point of which I have no interest but suspect is some sophistry trying to validate why JLF should delete this thread.

[horsewoman]

I mostly feel sorry for the newborns who are currently being named Corona or Covida.

One of my side hustles is machine-embroidering baby names on towels and pouches. Making fun of the monstrosities parents saddle their children with is an additional perk of the job. I'll keep you posted when the first "Corona" baby towel is ordered :)

[Jason]

People forget parents were naming their kids after typewriters before this happened.

https://time.com/5826972/tom-hanks-typewriter-letter/

[Alphaville]

I i believe you are just trying to make some facile point of which I have no interest but suspect is some sophistry trying to validate why JLF should delete this thread.

ah, belief.

i don’t want him to delete this thread.

i just want to focus on facts and what is actionable, rather than feed into the proliferation of fnords.

[ZAFCorrection]

@Jacob

The problem with your soccer analogy is that the players usually have some kind of greater force to keep them more-or-less honest. The US and China are the greatest powers. Conversely, a number of powerless countries are often trying to get some kind of international brownie points by following international law to the letter precisely because they have no power.

@alphaville

Is there a PC way to indicate that the virus originated in a system that was spatially colocated with the national boundaries of a country commonly known as China and that that country's government was the first government to encounter it? Maybe I just answered my own question.

[jacob]

@ZAFCorrection - Insofar the conflict is covered on this forum, I am the greater force

[Jason]

(@) Alphaville

You already stated you believe there is no point thinking about the Chinese government responsibility in this event. I believe it is essential and I explained why. At that point, you began analyzing the semantics of a sentence I wrote, as opposed to refuting the reasons that I believe the argument is essential i.e. a pre-existing, complex economic and political relationship with a country that demonstrated questionable policy implementation before and after the event that renders the pre-existing relationship even more difficult to navigate and which any diligent party would find necessary to reassess due to said questionable activity. This does not negate US responsibilities nor does it demonstrate racial animus towards the Chinese people. It's just common business practice.

If you want to be Fnord of The Rings, that's your business. But this event will shape global trade policy for years to come. That's a fact upon which many things will be actionable irregardless of what you are trying to amateur sleuth from the statement "the virus came from China." Turning this discussion into a discussion about whether this discussion should actually be happening is not the original point of the discussion (as I understood it) it nor will it impact the actual policy discussion going forward.