[refurb]

So you're suggesting that the US, since it's guilty of human rights violations, should just be silent when it sees others countries commit human rights violations?

I think that's absurd.

There isn't a country on this planet who hasn't committed some human rights violation in its past.

By your logic, nobody should ever call out human rights violations...ever.

A far better approach is to judge a country by its actions in totality. Yes the US commits human rights violations, but it also has courts where victims can seek restitution, a free press to talk about such violations, free elections where voters can choose leaders who work against human rights violations.

To compare the US and China and say "well they're both guilty of the same sins" is, frankly, bizarre.

[glenstein]

Right, that's classic whataboutism, and it uses an inch of U.S. abuses to sweep away a mile of abuses by China. Those things just don't exist in a logical relationship of justifying, absolving, or forbidding analysis of one another. Their relation, if there is one at all, would be an and relationship, not an or, and certainly not an xor.

Even a person fully invested in talking about U.S. human rights abuses and categorically disagrees with the idea that China has ever done anything wrong, you would hope that such a person wouldn't try to use the one topic to derail the other.

[trasz]

This above has a name: "American Exceptionalism".

[glenstein]

I'm not sure I understand, but I like to think I was actually making a full-fledged point about the fallacy of covering for abuses by ignoring them and pointing to other abuses. Do you disagree? How can I state that point to your satisfaction without you labeling it as American exceptionalism?

[trasz]

Except nobody was suggesting to ignore them and point to other abuses - we are talking about the idea of how this kind of problems cannot occur in Western societies, because society can do things. They do, society can't do anything, and I provided an example.

[glenstein]

If that were the case, you've still misdiagnosed my point, which was still not a point about American Exceptionalism. That is, even if I was wrong to suggest this was an instance of ignore X, because what about Y, pointing out that such a thing is fallacious would not be an instance of imploring people to indulge in American Exceptionalism.

But, I don't believe I was wrong, I believe you're just confidently incorrect. You entered a thread about one subject, changed the subject to something else, and unless you were offering it as a complete non-sequitur (which you should be clear about), you were suggesting an appropriate response to criticism of China was to ask people follow you on an academic detour to a vague and largely nonresponsive point that left behind most of the previous subject, presumably because you believed that such an exercise represented forward motion in the conversation. So I do think you really are doing the "ignore that, what about this" exercise, and that is what people mean by whataboutism.