> The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue.
First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war.
That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because all countries fall into the latter group. Of course there are differences in the quantity and degree of lying and unjustified violence that your scheme glosses over--the idea that no country is better than say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Maoist China serves only gives rhetorical cover to the worst offenders/offenses: "who is Canada to criticize Nazi Germany considering its track record of unjustified violence against its own native population?". This is the worst kind of race-to-the bottom rhetoric.
Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. are what happens when we start putting a rating on lies, justice, murder, etc. Yes, these are the extremes. But that doesn't justify a slippery slope that isn't - yet? - one of these historical extremes.
"Oh. Our lies and murders aren't as bad as {insert culture panic button here}" continue to work well for the elites, not so much so for the rest of us.
How about we put a cultural / sociopolitical price on say the USA's three-quarters of a trillion DoD budget? Certainly there's plenty of injustice that could be addressed with that type of $. But instead we buy into the status quo narrative?
That's not working. The point is, let's get our own house in order, instead of manufacturing a narrative that is bold-faced, shameless, hyprocricy.
You're framing this as a dichotomy between slippery slopes. We must either pretend that all sins are equivalent and thus give cover to the worst sins or we must use the fact that some sins are worse than others to allow the "better" side to backslide. The obvious alternative is to hold all parties account according to the severity of their guilt, and demand that everyone does better. In other words, the guilt of one party doesn't absolve the other or (as children understand) "two wrongs don't make a right".
First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war.
That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because all countries fall into the latter group. Of course there are differences in the quantity and degree of lying and unjustified violence that your scheme glosses over--the idea that no country is better than say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Maoist China serves only gives rhetorical cover to the worst offenders/offenses: "who is Canada to criticize Nazi Germany considering its track record of unjustified violence against its own native population?". This is the worst kind of race-to-the bottom rhetoric.