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by dundarious 1527 days ago
I don't think that matters really. First, I don't see the point in doing moral rankings. If I live in the US and the US does a bad thing, that's what I should care most about (up to a point). Even if I thought, "well, my morality points ranking shows China's worse", that shouldn't affect my political decisions in the US, where I can influence US decisions but not Chinese ones.

But sure, if I have to pick which country to live in, on this metric I'd probably pick the US (we're smoothing over some extremely significant internal problems in the US here, but not directly comparable to Xinjiang, so OK, let's side-step them for the moment).

But that's a pretty selfish view. Good conditions at home don't justify imposing awful conditions abroad. To think so is literally imperial logic. I realize using phrases like "imperial" induces eye-rolling in some, but it's appropriate for the concept we're discussing here. The US's cold calculating cruelty is perhaps less obvious, but it undoubtedly impacts far more lives and deaths. So while I won't weigh in on whether the US is an empire (don't care), if you buy into the logic that "we're only evil abroad, at home we try to be nice", then that is imperial logic.