[pietroglyph]

> Our word used to mean something. > But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own?

But we’ve had things like this for a long time. The police have acted like they do for generations, we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II, and we’ve always done a variety of other reprehensible things (propping up brutal dictators, destroying native civilizations, institutional racism of every possible flavor.) Frankly, I’m shocked that our word ever meant something.

[necovek]

It's called media manipulation: US government has perfected a way to manipulate knowing and unknowing media outlets to spill out the news that serves their goals. Unsuspecting public just goes for it, especially since it's all too easy too fall into the self-righteousness (look at those nasty people doing that, they are nothing like us).

Internet was a tool that allowed all sides to be equally heard (the fact that it was abused to disseminate fake news supports that claim even more), so only now it's too obvious what's going on.

Oh, and other governments and organizations are catching up quickly with the same practice.

[redis_mlc]

> we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II

I study WW2, and it's important to be factual.

The correct term is internment camps. Japanese-Americans usually lost their property, but the purpose was to locate them in central locations, not to re-educate or liquidate them, as our enemies did to the Allies.

For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii.

I think using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons. However, the US did rebuild the world economy after WW2, mostly to prevent it from becoming aligned with the Soviet Union. Most of the world's national borders are descended from WW2.

As leading historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, "[WW2 was German and Japanese soldiers machine-gunning unarmed civilians by the tens of millions.]"

[p_l]

That's what concentration camp is for. To concentrate and control.

There were separate death camps (sometimes combined) that involved direct train-to-killing-field pipelines, and most concentration camps involved work in horrible conditions, but that's because of further goals above relocation.

[throwanem]

Victor Davis Hanson says a lot of things, including that Iraq II was a good idea - he was a minor but still fairly significant public relations voice in the neoconservative bloc that pushed that war into existence, to the enormous detriment of US interests in the Middle East and worldwide.

As a classicist he's tolerable, if no more than that; in any century where the years count up instead of down, the man seems entirely at sea.

[JumpCrisscross]

> using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons

The U.S. had a global nuclear monopoly for several years. It didn’t abuse it. That’s a hell of a high ground.

[jacquesm]

You are conflating extermination with concentration.

[0134340]

>For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii.

It could also be argued that it made sense to do the same for Germans since we had a minority of Germans siding with Hitler and even holding Nazi rallies before we got involved in WWII. We weren't exactly good arbiters of fairness when it came to race either.