There are lots of (self-?)justifications that make for technically correct explanations, but which kinda don't mesh with what is actually seen during the actual arguments.
the thread started with discussing the benevolence of british imperialism, so china being brought up has to be treated warily, and that was the general appeal of my post, then further sectioned into components.
the fact that you went in so mad is tiring. i'm not trying to trick you, i'm trying to explain the principles of a basic rhetorical context that you seem to not grasp. i don't have an adversarial relationship with you, and you need to chill the f out. you read like the conspiracy board meme as to how i'm supposedly trying to trick you.
It's a bit like the very lenghty essays about identity and its importance, that suddenly end up irrelevant and are dismissed and ignored as soon as said identity happens to be a traditional white background.
and if you want to make this comparison, it's similar to a discussion on eg being a black woman or whatever, and then some guy shows up and says doesn't matter because white men, then they're succinctly and justifiably treated with suspicion. there are actual real problems with this, of course, but as to the
fact of this thread, the question was irt british influence on us national development and problems with seeing colonization as benevolent as such. it's such a nonsequitor.
i also don't want to read too much into this, but it bluntly just sounds like you've been burnt by the left in general and then take this as an opportunity to air random grievances.
Impact and relative strength ? We have seen barely a few posts ago someone ranting about Sweden, Denmark and Netherland as a colonial powers. Yeah, I'm sure Turkey and Saudi Arabia are too weak and irrevant, but Sweden, Denmark and Netherland aren't.
please lecture me about the danish position irt greenland here. i don't mean it in a mean way. i'm actually curious, i'd unironically really want to see what that would look like.
What one can actually control and "it's not what we're talking about" ? These are actually even more telling and revealing.
it's not. you're looking for duplicity. but again, lefties generally have a problem of being too honest.
Your own wording pretty much says it all :
"I'm not a chinese citizen, I'm a citizen of a NATO country"/"it's about domestic policy questions"
Yeah, fun fact, you're also not a citizen of USA and have no influence on the domestic policy of the USA. Posters from the USA also don't seem to mind making long essays and giving long lessons and talking about the responsibilities of European colonial nations, despite being also neither citizen nor having any weight (and most often not being affected) related to the domestic policies of said nations. So somehow you know and recognize it and talk about "sphere" then.
And this talk about "sphere" feels just like a cop-out to be able to selectively cherry pick which country can be blamed or not blamed (fun fact, Turkey IS downright a NATO country, Taiwan and Japan ARE part of the Western sphere, and the latter was probably both the single worst and most recent colonial power in it).
this is kind of word salad to me, taking a simple concept of affliation and taking it to the extreme. you're entering this exchange with such bad faith, insistent on treating my outline as suspect.
first, for the record, as with literally any other country you've mentioned, leftists do not ignore japan's horrors.
so, i think my outline was unclear. i don't think it's that's wholly on me because you're hellbent on fighting me as a Sneaky Leftist, but - let me rephrase the basic principle of affliation when it comes to these things being brought up.
as a danish citizen, i'm more related to the danish sphere the japanese. i'm more related to the european than the japanese, and it's a tossup whether i'm more related to the american than the european fwiw (denmark seems to want to further ingrain itself as a us vassal, following recent policy). other relations also have a certain closeness and/or distance irt my identity and influence. the us has a much higher military presence in denmark than turkey does, and my voting behavior is more intricately tied to both us and danish behavior than japanese. affliation is a
gradient, not a
binary; or it's at least tiered. and you went straight to big picture, and stopped just before we are technically all humans.
again, not sure how much it's my own fault for poor clarity
i like thinking abstractly and going bigger picture; sometimes it's useful and sometimes it isn't. i often have a hard time telling when it's good or not. however, you entered a conversation about the benevolence of colonialism and the subtext (sometimes explicitly called out) and basically went off that nonwhite people are just as bad, because humans are bad, and look at all these leftists being all sneaky-like about it. you zooming in to describe how i'm being duplicitous or revealing is ridiculous, as you lack self-awareness altogether as to the flow of the discussion - where you're jumping in sideways to be a useful idiot. of course, you aren't actually an idiot - naturally - your abstraction about human behavior is correct (and the left, surprise, thinks so as well); we all know that you're very well-read. you've just lost the trees for the forest, if that idiomatic reversal makes sense. whatever you post during a discussion has rhetorical utility, and i'm not sure you understand what yours has right now.
And it just happens that this selection cover only white people countries, and all of them - which makes for amusing debates when the accusations of colonial white supremacy are leveled at people who were the ones under colonial occupation during their own lifetime, and I'm absolutely not going to even pretend to consider the idea that how often it's forgotten might simply be a coincidence and not a very revealing aspect of the mindset behind it.
the thread started by relating between brits and british colonies in the us and that legacy. africa was brought up quickly then for good reason, but the people involved in actually writing the constitution were very white, which was kind of the crux of a confused discussion. then someone started rambling about the benevolence of portugal, and now you go off that we haven't brought up
enough how all the melanines are evil too. it's all very tiring.
It's not what we're talking about ?
Actually, yes it is. The discussion was precisely about the impact of colonization on countries and the responsibility of the colonizer - nothing specific to a country, or even a restricted set of country. Also, there was talk about UK at first, but it then also went to speak about Portugal and Spain and French colonies too, so clearly not just a singular country. What magically shields other colonial powers/empires to be included in the comparison ? Especially noticeable as it affected vassals from overlapping time and space - but it seemingly only counts when it's an European (i.e. "white") doing it, regardless of when.
you're mixing the number of factors as to why leftists don't talk about china and/or thread relevance. i'm not saying china isn't relevant, i'm saying that in the specific situation of it being put up for discussion should be rightfully treated with suspicion, and you're being the devil's advocate for a number of posters that ... well, mark this as [x], so more on that below.
You're trying to cast it as using China (and focusing so exclusively about China, another non-coincidence) as whataboutism to poison the discussion, but that's just a blatant attempt at deflecting the reality that there is plenty of tangents taken, and they all feel acceptable... until it stops concerning white colonizers. So yeah, I call it as I see it, there is just a constant reccuring pattern here.
i was focusing on china because the vast majority of interjections - akin to the one you're doing right now - is WHAT ABOUT CHINA.
Notice that I'm not defending any sort of "benevolence" anywhere. Powers try to conquer others, there is no benevolent intent, it's just wanting power (as much as the people making the "mission civilisatrice" their motto might even have bought their own pretext, they certainly were coincidentally hard at work making sure it was their own side that was doing the seemingly thankless work rather than the other guy). But it's just ubiquitous to powerful states, it's nothing specific to the carefully curated list of the only colonial powers that are allowed to be discussed before starting to pretend it's not what is the subject about - and as such the moral lessons fall flat, for being so obviously and hypocritally selective.
so [x] here. you're, personally, discussing real power structures at a bigger picture of how dominant powers function. you're, yourself, making a realist appeal as to human behavior and international policy. this is all fine. but you're being showered in likes from people that
did defend colonization as benevolent in this very thread. they
like that you equivocate power structures as something that just happens because then
they get to. also the left being sneaky or hypocrites or clueless or whatever
fwiw i talk with a bunch of the posters here in different channels because we're all so ancient on this website. and privately, outside having to maneuver the constant aneuryism of white jingoists who poison the well, there is a
tremendous amount of worry if not overt hatred as to the behavior of
all of the countries you've mentioned. (save mongolia, because... i mean, lol what) what you're calling out here as duplicitously lacking is literally present in all leftist environments i'm aware of. it tells me more of your lack of ability to read rhetorical contexts and functions of points, why someone would ever be wary about whataboutism when discussing the cruelty of the british empire.
on a true, real level, we all have propensities for being colonial bastards, as humans. yes, you are correct, you are a realist in a good way. but, in the context of this thread, when the melanine comes up, you need to ask yourself whether it's brought up because it's sad that europeans couldn't do it anymore, as that's why the left doesn't generally engage with it. you are either wholly unaware or wholly indifferent to this context, and i can't help you in either way other than explain why.
