[rangerelf]

You're being willfully dense, I do not believe it's up for debate.

Governments that public force to kidnap, torture, murder, "disappear" their own citizens, are bad. Plenty of examples to go around, both historically and currently: China, Russia, México, North Korea, Belarus, the balcans, plenty of African governments, etc.

It shouldn't matter that "34% of my neighbors" want me sent to a concentration camp, personally I wouldn't want to end up there.

The example you're giving, the whole "it really depends on people's views, ..." is a bad government.

And the truth is that it's easy to be a good government: don't be bad.

Edit: fixed a word.

[jbstack]

Ok, so how do you categorise a country like Norway (typically viewed as a "good" country by most people) which knowingly invests money from its sovereign fund into companies which are linked to the Israeli military which (in many people's view) is currently causing genocide and widespread starvation?

At what point does the "good" cross over into the "bad"? Is it ok that having a highly regarded government comes at the price of dead children? How about the sizeable group of people (e.g. in the US and Israel) who don't believe there is any genocide at all? Doesn't that make the whole thing subjective?

[groggler]

No.. If one follows that absolutism then people deserve nothing better than the worst government anyway because of social slippery slopes like the popular worship of Charles Manson.

There are obviously a lot of dimensions and clusters within those dimensions and we can't always say exactly which nationalist fascists to beat to death with hammers for the global good, but we can say Norway is a bit removed from them.

[pkphilip]

If you go by examples like that then there are a number of nations you cannot support at all - consider for example that China has the Uyghur concentration camps, US has Guantanamo Bay and now the new prisons in partnership with El Salvador. Belgium got away scottfree with their genocide in Africa, Turkey carried out a genocide in Armenia, France still collects fines from its previous colonies etc.

[chuckSu]

You’ve got quite a list of examples there. In 2025 that list of examples should include the US and Israel

[themaninthedark]

Try earlier than that for the US:

>In 2015, the Guardian revealed Chicago Police had allegedly employed torture and days-long unlawful detention at the secretive “black site”-like Homan Square facility

And the federal government knew and participated.

>“When we’re doing joint operations with the federal government, it’s generally — it’s under the supervision of an Assistant U.S. Attorney and they’re merely using our facility because it’s more convenient."

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/03/15/feds-used-chicago-black-s...