On Whataboutism

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. This is a concept a majority of people were taught. (At least where I come from) This is a thought process that is ingrained in people that brings hypocrisy to the forefront when critiquing other people. It is useful to see when you are being lied to, or where double standards exist. There are also many people who use whataboutism as a pejorative to assuage talk of double standards. Not every single thing exists in a bubble and therefore you should not look at every single thing on its own merits. 

Here is an example. Joe Rogan recently was talking with Tom Papa and he was discussing the scenes he was seeing out of Ukraine. An apartment building was bombed and literal old ladies, or what used to be old ladies, were in pieces. Torso in one area, legs in another. This is the part of war people like to ignore, because it makes it harder to root for war. So people ignore it and continue to champion a military response from the United States. The issue of nukes doesn’t even come into the thought process for too many people. How does this fit into whataboutism?

The United States bombed hospitals, apartment buildings, Mosques, and any other thing they felt like with virtually no recompense. Bombs made in America, dropped by planes made in America, piloted by Americans have caused more devastation and murder of children, men, women, and little old ladies than most Americans even realize. They don’t want to know. Cognitive dissonance plays into every decision. So when they see these scenes it becomes easy to fall into the binary of us good, them bad. 

There is a meme of an actor dressed in a German uniform that simply states “Are we the baddies?” and the answer is yes. Russia are the bad guys, but if you reject binary thought, so is NATO. So are the United States.  Simply pointing out that America has also done atrocities of which they defend and fail to apologize for, doesn’t mean someone is defending Russia. In fact it’s the opposite. It’s saying Russia and American, when it comes to how they use their military, are very similar. This should be a wakeup call, not a reason to point and yell “whataboutisms” while rejecting the point with a simple gesture. I’m tired of people calling for U.S. involvement, but I’m honestly more perturbed at the lack of a desire to understand instead of picking a team. The more you understand the less likely you are to root for anyone involved. Ukraine, Russia, NATO and the U.S. are all the baddies. No one is right, and the whataboutisms are the key to understanding that. 

In Liberty