Then of course there's the church pastor who told his congregation how God would protect them all, and God didn't protect him. We love these stories...
Alternatively, God did protect him by giving him a brain with which to think like a sensible human being, and a handful of medical experts giving out public advice on how to best avoid the virus. After all, that's what most of us are using for our protection! But like the old joke about the man stranded on his roof in a flood sending the rescue helicopter away, he was waiting for the mighty hand of the Primary Source himself to reach down from heaven and pluck him out of trouble.
Anyway, I was thinking more of the spreading of fake memes on social media and stuff like that, not hacking computers.
You specifically mentioned Wikileaks acting as a third-party distributor/front for releasing Russian-hacked data, so it seems obvious you were thinking of it.
Then of course there's the church pastor who told his congregation how God would protect them all, and God didn't protect him. We love these stories...
Alternatively, God did protect him by giving him a brain with which to think like a sensible human being, and a handful of medical experts giving out public advice on how to best avoid the virus. After all, that's what most of us are using for our protection! But like the old joke about the man stranded on his roof in a flood sending the rescue helicopter away, he was waiting for the mighty hand of the Primary Source himself to reach down from heaven and pluck him out of trouble.
Alas, it would seem that God forgot to provide him with the Instruction Book on how to use his brain...
A sad story, though, and I doubt if he'll be the only one to suffer the consequences of his own folly.
There are many links on the internet showing that interference in elections is common. The unique thing currently is only that the USA was target of detectable foreign interference. This link cites systematic capture of elections and related meddling in other countries elections by America, you will find many others. Is this about exceptionalism?
The other point is that large international corporations do the same and they have laws on their side in the USA as far as I understand it. I also do not understand why legal corporate interference is not a problem but foreign government interference is. At least the foreign governments may advocate for people.
I do not accept that there is a problem domestically if there is no problem when it is done to other countries.
There are many links on the internet showing that interference in elections is common. The unique thing currently is only that the USA was target of detectable foreign interference. This link cites systematic capture of elections and related meddling in other countries elections by America, you will find many others. Is this about exceptionalism?
It's more about your assertion that (certain selected groups of) American voters deserve to be disenfranchised because of past actions (sometimes long past) of the American government, sometimes before those voters were even born.
I do not accept that there is a problem domestically if there is no problem when it is done to other countries.
So because there's sometimes corporate or foreign government interference in elections, domestic ratfucking is okay? Or, more succinctly, Medgar Evers had it coming? I disagree.
I have never thought that anyone should be disenfranchised. Ever. But acknowledge that there is extensive motivation to do it. We hear how these in power, I think it is mostly the state level in the USA, can do that very thing, i.e., all the stories about making it difficult to get registered to vote, the closing of polling stations and reducing hours of voting, redrawing election maps. I equate that sort of election interference with corporate election interference and with foreign election interference. Because it is all election interference. It doesn't matter much if the interference is made legal by a law, or that a group of people have the right to do it if it subverts democracy does it?
TL:DR your link. It said assassination. That's as far as I got. I don't support any of this, if that is what you call "rat fucking". But apparently they are things which are done when you want to influence an election. Why would anywhere be different? Why would Canada, UK, Russia, USA, anywhere be different. I equate domestic with international.
From which there are three consistent moral positions one can adopt:
1) The US should stop interfering with them and nobody should interfere with the US;
2) All's fair in espionage, so the US tries to interfere and they try to stop the US and vice versa;
3) The US lets them interfere with the US and the US is entitled to complain if the other countries don't allow the US to interfere with them.
I don't think you'd maintain that it would be wrong for the Russians to oppose US interference, which means you're either advocating 1 or 2. Both mean that US officials ought to be taking steps to prevent foreign interference.
I have never thought that anyone should be disenfranchised. Ever.
Bullshit! Your whole argument is that Americans shouldn't care about election interference because some other Americans might have done something similar in the past.
But acknowledge that there is extensive motivation to do it. We hear how these in power, I think it is mostly the state level in the USA, can do that very thing, i.e., all the stories about making it difficult to get registered to vote, the closing of polling stations and reducing hours of voting, redrawing election maps. I equate that sort of election interference with corporate election interference and with foreign election interference. Because it is all election interference.
And it's all okey-dokey with you, apparently. If anyone has ever done anything similar in the past that legitimizes the practice in perpetuity. That principle should make your thread on torture interesting reading.
TL:DR your link. It said assassination. That's as far as I got. I don't support any of this, if that is what you call "rat fucking". But apparently they are things which are done when you want to influence an election. Why would anywhere be different? Why would Canada, UK, Russia, USA, anywhere be different.
Again, your assertion that it's okay to disenfranchise voters if voter disenfranchisement has happened at any point in the past is at odds with your claim that you "never thought that anyone should be disenfranchised". You can't be pro-election-tampering and anti-disenfranchisement.
Most electoral systems take a different approach and limit voting (and other forms of electoral participation) to their citizens. There are practical reasons for this. With a population of 1.4 billion China could run away with any election its citizens were allowed to vote in.
You're mixing issues aren't you? Disenfranchisement of voters with foreign election interference.
You are misrepresenting what I think. I think that American complaints about Russian interference are special pleading, appeal a double standard, about exceptionalism. I don't think any country should interfere with other countries' elections. I just find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it.
And now you're going off on torture? Perhaps you believe that it is okay to torture like occurred via the Bush 2 presidency in the USA? I don't accept torture by any one ever. And I also think it is not okay for the USA to opt out of the ICC (international criminal court) about it. But I don 't think I want to discuss torture further.
You're mixing issues aren't you? Disenfranchisement of voters with foreign election interference.
Not at all. All election interference is an attempt at voter disenfranchisement. Plus I think we're at the point where we can't definitively say that Russian hacking of various election systems didn't lead to anyone's disenfranchisement. The best that can be said at this point is that there's we have not uncovered direct evidence of it happening, which is very different from being able to say it didn't happen. Maybe the GRU likes poking around in the computer systems of various state election boards purely out of curiosity and they make sure to put everything back where it belongs when they're done, but simply assuming that they do so seems like a sucker's bet.
You are misrepresenting what I think. I think that American complaints about Russian interference are special pleading, appeal a double standard, about exceptionalism. I don't think any country should interfere with other countries' elections. I just find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it.
Then why do you endorse election interference designed to disenfranchise American voters on the basis of the actions of past American governments? You can't say that American's shouldn't care about election interference and then pretend like you do care about it. Or I guess you can but you should be prepared when someone calls you on this inconsistency.
And now you're going off on torture? Perhaps you believe that it is okay to torture like occurred via the Bush 2 presidency in the USA?
No, but that's your standard, isn't it? That if any country ever engaged in torture/election interference then you "find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it". Maybe I just don't have your sense of humor about such things, or your belief in collective punishment for past wrongs committed by a group/organization. Like how it's okay for the Taliban to torture American PFC Smith (hypothetical) because the CIA tortured some Afghanis fifteen years ago. And that it would be "rich" if PFC Smith objected to his treatment.
You're all over the map on this. Apparently it's a deserved comeuppance if some American voters in a key precinct of Detroit believe the meme "Elections are next week. Remember that Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote on Wednesday." because the NSA might have interfered with a Central American election forty years ago, indicating your endorsement of collective payback. You even find it "rich" and humorous. But you draw the line at collective payback in the form of torture. That seems inconsistent.
You're mixing issues aren't you? Disenfranchisement of voters with foreign election interference.
I'm pretty sure you said you thought domestic attempts to influence elections were equivalent to foreign attempts to do that.
I think that American complaints about Russian interference are special pleading, appeal a double standard, about exceptionalism. I don't think any country should interfere with other countries' elections. I just find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it.
If the primary sentiment expressed was condemnation of Putin, or people were justifying US behaviour abroad you'd have a point. But what people are condemning is failure of US authorities to stop it.
I think that the USA is open to criticism about its meddling in other countries' electoral processes and governments. I think blanket criticism is likely to miss the mark. I also think that the likes of John Pilger and his acolytes are prone to both exaggerate the extent of US wrongdoing, and to see wrongdoing where none exists. I think it is good advice to take accusations of US meddling with a grain of salt when propounded by figures like Pilger on the far left of British, Australian and perhaps Canadian politics. I'd include people like Noam Chomsky in the list of individuals to approach with skepticism, but I hasten to add only when they make allegations of bad behavior by the US. I'm not saying they are wrong in all cases. I'm saying that they are unreliable when they recount stories that back up their world view.
That said, there is now no doubt that there was significant interference by the Russians, and not just on Facebook. The US should be protecting its electoral systems. Why is that so difficult for people to agree with?
The USA sometimes has clear views about the merits of other elections and governments, though that in itself is not what I think constitutes 'meddling' any more than any other person who has an opinion about what the preferred outcome of something would be.
I always remember the case of Palestinian elections, which were always warmly supported as a notion... until the Palestinians elected Hamas. Various countries (not just the USA) had to tread a very careful line.
Talking in generic terms about 'interference' and so on really doesn't get you very far unless you can articulate clearly what kinds of attempts to influence others to have the same opinion are acceptable, and what kinds are not. Because electoral processes are fundamentally about trying to influence other people. Politicians are trying to get us to vote for them, and it's certainly the case that lots of other organisations are trying to influence the vote.
Multinational corporations, for example, are perfectly capable of having a view about a policy that they do or don't want to see implemented, and throwing their weight around accordingly.
We can obviously draw the line and say that anything which involves not actually counting the votes that people made is unacceptable. Spreading fake information, though? Well, plenty of other people are busy spreading it, so I'm not totally convinced we should single out foreign governments and say it's not okay when they do it, given the quality of political ads in general.
Rick Bright, the former director of the Federal Agency charged with the development of the vaccine has been transferred (read fired) to another job. He claims he was a casualty of (t)Rumps ongoing war with the science community. story here.
I understand he was very critical of Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine, which we now know may have caused more deaths at VA centers compared to just regular standard of care. Trump now denies he promoted hydroxychloroquine. Why doesn't this surprise me?
I hope the self-righteous judges of America will keep in mind that there are people here who think we should NOT be the cop of the world, and should NOT be meddling in other countries' internal affairs. We just aren't in a position to make our beliefs on these issues into policy.
Amen, mt. I've thought, for a long time, the US should spend many years (maybe 100-150) focusing on tending to itself, getting its own act together, etc. Forgive all loans to other countries, particularly to poor/struggling ones. (Kind of like the Jubilee movement.)
And *possibly* pull back much of our longtime, overseas military presence--at least, give the host countries the option of telling us to vamoose.
Amen, mt. I've thought, for a long time, the US should spend many years (maybe 100-150) focusing on tending to itself, getting its own act together, etc. Forgive all loans to other countries, particularly to poor/struggling ones. (Kind of like the Jubilee movement.)
And *possibly* pull back much of our longtime, overseas military presence--at least, give the host countries the option of telling us to vamoose.
I would say that, at least in South Korea anyway, there is not a lot of support for an outright US withdrawal, despite the impressive-looking protests you see on the news sometimes. I think Trump probably realizes this, and that is why he figures he can play hardball with Seoul over cost-sharing on the bases. This in turn plays well with his fan-club back home, who are the kind of people who think their country keeps troops overseas as an act of pure altruism, so how dare those ungrateful foreigners ask us to pay for them?
Amen, mt. I've thought, for a long time, the US should spend many years (maybe 100-150) focusing on tending to itself, getting its own act together, etc. Forgive all loans to other countries, particularly to poor/struggling ones. (Kind of like the Jubilee movement.)
And *possibly* pull back much of our longtime, overseas military presence--at least, give the host countries the option of telling us to vamoose.
Another amen from this corner. And if South Korea and others still want us around, maybe something modest can be worked out. Let's get our own house back into shape. The problem is, that's what Trumpeteers think he's doing.
Once this ghastly incubus is gone, THEN the US could indeed begin to rebuild itself, and the rest of the world would breathe a sigh of relief.
This is part of the problem; regarding Donald Trump as some kind of aberrant outlier in American politics. He's not. He has a lot of personal aberrations and dysfunctions but politically he's fully representative of the Republican Party and everything it's been moving towards for the past forty years (at least). I don't get how people can ask how the party of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich became a collection of bigots, imbeciles, and grifters. To ask the question is to answer it.
Once this ghastly incubus is gone, THEN the US could indeed begin to rebuild itself, and the rest of the world would breathe a sigh of relief.
This is part of the problem; regarding Donald Trump as some kind of aberrant outlier in American politics. He's not. He has a lot of personal aberrations and dysfunctions but politically he's fully representative of the Republican Party and everything it's been moving towards for the past forty years (at least). I don't get how people can ask how the party of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich became a collection of bigots, imbeciles, and grifters. To ask the question is to answer it.
Yeah, and even the guy who actually was considered a relative moderate at the time, GHW Bush, was still the man who ran the Willie Horton ads, sent Clarence Thomas to the SCOTUS, and regarded flag-burning as an evil so great as to warrant a constitutional amendment negating the First.
Up in Canada, it has also become fashionable to idealize the generation of conservatives who were active from about the late 60s to the early 90s, as so much more moderate than the "reformatories" who rose up afterwards.
Problem is, while some of the old-style Tories have indeed offered critiques of the new gang, luminaries like Davis, Clark and Mulroney never come out and say that people should vote for anyone else but the Conservatives.
It's interesting that some of you want America to confine itself to domestic affairs. If I recall correctly, there was a long period where that was the prevailing policy, and the UK and others were begging it to get involved in world issues.
IMHO and IIRC, the US got involved on the world stage way too soon in its development. (Don't remember details.) I've long felt that the US is partly like a kid who's had too grow up too fast, was traumatized, and is busy acting out the hurt and anger. Needs therapy, a 12-Step program, and healing. Better for everyone concerned.
I don't want to see the USA returning to that outlook. In one sense, it cannot avoid the responsibilities which flow from its global economic prominence. There was a saying that if the US economy sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. With the rise of Chinese economic power, it may also now be true of the Chinese economy. There's a real poignancy at this time in using health metaphors for the global economy, but I guess you see what I mean.
But for the USA and China, and maybe other mega-economic blocks, with great economic power comes great economic responsibility. Exploitation of that power for purely national reasons (e.g MAGA) is in the end damaging both to the exploiter and the exploited. That's the real issue.
I hope the self-righteous judges of America will keep in mind that there are people here who think we should NOT be the cop of the world, and should NOT be meddling in other countries' internal affairs. We just aren't in a position to make our beliefs on these issues into policy.
People began to frame American foreign policy in this way after the USSR collapsed. Indeed, I think it does characterise American intervention in the 1990's, up until 9/11, when things changed again. I sometimes drift into America World Police mode, in my evangelistic fervor. But before the shit hits the fan, I want America standing with me to prevent international conflict, and here I am thinking of China.
This week, Australian and American warships performed joint military exercises in strategic areas of the South China Sea. Vietnam recently protested the Chinese setting up permanent administrative centres on islands it has built in territory Vietnam claims. The Philippines also protested about similar buildings on islands China built in that countries territorial waters. Both protests were shrugged off.
American presence and interest in this area is critical in limiting the Chinese approach to this little-by-little game it plays in the South China Sea. Without it, I fear what China would do. Whenever our politicians criticise China, for instance, China rebukes us and calls us puppets of the Americans. Most recently, this happened when we called for an open and transparent investigation into the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. We, and the rest of the world want to know exactly how this virus started. We want to examine the facts. But apparently, we are meddling in Chinese internal affairs.
There is a real risk that if America retreats into itself, East and South-East Asia will be independent of China in name only.
It's interesting that some of you want America to confine itself to domestic affairs. If I recall correctly, there was a long period where that was the prevailing policy, and the UK and others were begging it to get involved in world issues.
That's only true if you consider "domestic affairs" to include fighting expansionary wars of conquest against Native Americans and Mexico and "world issues" to mean "European international politics".
IMHO and IIRC, the US got involved on the world stage way too soon in its development. (Don't remember details.)
Assuming that "the world stage" once again means "European international politics", then yes, neither France nor Great Britain was very tolerant of American efforts at neutrality during the Wars of the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars. Unsuccessfully attempting to thread this needle led to the U.S. fighting a naval war against France, an embargo that mostly hurt America more than anyone else, and a war against Britain that led to the White House getting put to the torch. But "got involved" is phrase that relies way too much on the passive voice. Even if you're not interested in European inter-state politics the world stage, the world stage is still interested in you.
Now tRump is claiming he was being "sarcastic" when he was recommending ingesting disinfectant to deal with the coronavirus.
I watched that segment. What I saw was a man in total decompensation. I was surprised his medical experts did not walk out of the briefing, or the press hit him heard with questioning (though I would admit, it would have just accelerated the decompensation more).
No, Mr (ahem) President, at your level in this crisis, there is no room for sarcasm. You have to speak the truth, which you have never done since the beginning of your presidency.
You need to be removed, and the sooner the better.
I don't know about decompensation, but when he couldn't find the word for "brain" or "intelligence" it reminded me immediately of my mum's attempts to conceal her Alzheimer-induced aphasia, and for the first time in a long time, I wondered about that again for Trump.
I don't know about decompensation, but when he couldn't find the word for "brain" or "intelligence" it reminded me immediately of my mum's attempts to conceal her Alzheimer-induced aphasia, and for the first time in a long time, I wondered about that again for Trump.
My thoughts too. I remember there were some many rumours about this a couple of years ago that it was mentioned that Trump had been tested by his doctor and had ‘aced’ the mini memory test. Shortly afterwards my mother also did well at the test, even though there were other indicators that she did have dementia. She has vascular dementia rather than Alzheimer’s and with that memory isn’t necessarily badly affected at first but logic and reasoning is. Trumps understanding seems to be shot and I’ve seen in the Guardian his advisors are suggesting he doesn’t do all the briefings from now on, so they must be aware too.
Without linking to the whole article, Wikipedia says that 'Decompensation may occur due to fatigue, stress, illness, or old age', one or all of which conditions could be attributed to Trump.
Comments
Alternatively, God did protect him by giving him a brain with which to think like a sensible human being, and a handful of medical experts giving out public advice on how to best avoid the virus. After all, that's what most of us are using for our protection! But like the old joke about the man stranded on his roof in a flood sending the rescue helicopter away, he was waiting for the mighty hand of the Primary Source himself to reach down from heaven and pluck him out of trouble.
You specifically mentioned Wikileaks acting as a third-party distributor/front for releasing Russian-hacked data, so it seems obvious you were thinking of it.
And why do you consider "fake memes" more important/relevant than attempts to hack voter rolls and voting machine companies? The latter would seem like a much bigger concern.
Alas, it would seem that God forgot to provide him with the Instruction Book on how to use his brain...
A sad story, though, and I doubt if he'll be the only one to suffer the consequences of his own folly.
The other point is that large international corporations do the same and they have laws on their side in the USA as far as I understand it. I also do not understand why legal corporate interference is not a problem but foreign government interference is. At least the foreign governments may advocate for people.
I do not accept that there is a problem domestically if there is no problem when it is done to other countries.
It's more about your assertion that (certain selected groups of) American voters deserve to be disenfranchised because of past actions (sometimes long past) of the American government, sometimes before those voters were even born.
So because there's sometimes corporate or foreign government interference in elections, domestic ratfucking is okay? Or, more succinctly, Medgar Evers had it coming? I disagree.
TL:DR your link. It said assassination. That's as far as I got. I don't support any of this, if that is what you call "rat fucking". But apparently they are things which are done when you want to influence an election. Why would anywhere be different? Why would Canada, UK, Russia, USA, anywhere be different. I equate domestic with international.
1) The US should stop interfering with them and nobody should interfere with the US;
2) All's fair in espionage, so the US tries to interfere and they try to stop the US and vice versa;
3) The US lets them interfere with the US and the US is entitled to complain if the other countries don't allow the US to interfere with them.
I don't think you'd maintain that it would be wrong for the Russians to oppose US interference, which means you're either advocating 1 or 2. Both mean that US officials ought to be taking steps to prevent foreign interference.
Bullshit! Your whole argument is that Americans shouldn't care about election interference because some other Americans might have done something similar in the past.
And it's all okey-dokey with you, apparently. If anyone has ever done anything similar in the past that legitimizes the practice in perpetuity. That principle should make your thread on torture interesting reading.
Again, your assertion that it's okay to disenfranchise voters if voter disenfranchisement has happened at any point in the past is at odds with your claim that you "never thought that anyone should be disenfranchised". You can't be pro-election-tampering and anti-disenfranchisement.
Most electoral systems take a different approach and limit voting (and other forms of electoral participation) to their citizens. There are practical reasons for this. With a population of 1.4 billion China could run away with any election its citizens were allowed to vote in.
You are misrepresenting what I think. I think that American complaints about Russian interference are special pleading, appeal a double standard, about exceptionalism. I don't think any country should interfere with other countries' elections. I just find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it.
And now you're going off on torture? Perhaps you believe that it is okay to torture like occurred via the Bush 2 presidency in the USA? I don't accept torture by any one ever. And I also think it is not okay for the USA to opt out of the ICC (international criminal court) about it. But I don 't think I want to discuss torture further.
Not at all. All election interference is an attempt at voter disenfranchisement. Plus I think we're at the point where we can't definitively say that Russian hacking of various election systems didn't lead to anyone's disenfranchisement. The best that can be said at this point is that there's we have not uncovered direct evidence of it happening, which is very different from being able to say it didn't happen. Maybe the GRU likes poking around in the computer systems of various state election boards purely out of curiosity and they make sure to put everything back where it belongs when they're done, but simply assuming that they do so seems like a sucker's bet.
Then why do you endorse election interference designed to disenfranchise American voters on the basis of the actions of past American governments? You can't say that American's shouldn't care about election interference and then pretend like you do care about it. Or I guess you can but you should be prepared when someone calls you on this inconsistency.
No, but that's your standard, isn't it? That if any country ever engaged in torture/election interference then you "find it rich that when it happens the other way around, that so much is made of it". Maybe I just don't have your sense of humor about such things, or your belief in collective punishment for past wrongs committed by a group/organization. Like how it's okay for the Taliban to torture American PFC Smith (hypothetical) because the CIA tortured some Afghanis fifteen years ago. And that it would be "rich" if PFC Smith objected to his treatment.
You're all over the map on this. Apparently it's a deserved comeuppance if some American voters in a key precinct of Detroit believe the meme "Elections are next week. Remember that Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote on Wednesday." because the NSA might have interfered with a Central American election forty years ago, indicating your endorsement of collective payback. You even find it "rich" and humorous. But you draw the line at collective payback in the form of torture. That seems inconsistent.
As the recent Senate report [PDF] indicates, those aren't entirely separate questions. Hence the current discussion.
Heavily redacted, I see.
Heavily redacted so you don't see.
If the primary sentiment expressed was condemnation of Putin, or people were justifying US behaviour abroad you'd have a point. But what people are condemning is failure of US authorities to stop it.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
That said, there is now no doubt that there was significant interference by the Russians, and not just on Facebook. The US should be protecting its electoral systems. Why is that so difficult for people to agree with?
I always remember the case of Palestinian elections, which were always warmly supported as a notion... until the Palestinians elected Hamas. Various countries (not just the USA) had to tread a very careful line.
Talking in generic terms about 'interference' and so on really doesn't get you very far unless you can articulate clearly what kinds of attempts to influence others to have the same opinion are acceptable, and what kinds are not. Because electoral processes are fundamentally about trying to influence other people. Politicians are trying to get us to vote for them, and it's certainly the case that lots of other organisations are trying to influence the vote.
Multinational corporations, for example, are perfectly capable of having a view about a policy that they do or don't want to see implemented, and throwing their weight around accordingly.
We can obviously draw the line and say that anything which involves not actually counting the votes that people made is unacceptable. Spreading fake information, though? Well, plenty of other people are busy spreading it, so I'm not totally convinced we should single out foreign governments and say it's not okay when they do it, given the quality of political ads in general.
I understand he was very critical of Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine, which we now know may have caused more deaths at VA centers compared to just regular standard of care. Trump now denies he promoted hydroxychloroquine. Why doesn't this surprise me?
And *possibly* pull back much of our longtime, overseas military presence--at least, give the host countries the option of telling us to vamoose.
I would say that, at least in South Korea anyway, there is not a lot of support for an outright US withdrawal, despite the impressive-looking protests you see on the news sometimes. I think Trump probably realizes this, and that is why he figures he can play hardball with Seoul over cost-sharing on the bases. This in turn plays well with his fan-club back home, who are the kind of people who think their country keeps troops overseas as an act of pure altruism, so how dare those ungrateful foreigners ask us to pay for them?
Another amen from this corner. And if South Korea and others still want us around, maybe something modest can be worked out. Let's get our own house back into shape. The problem is, that's what Trumpeteers think he's doing.
Once this ghastly incubus is gone, THEN the US could indeed begin to rebuild itself, and the rest of the world would breathe a sigh of relief.
This is part of the problem; regarding Donald Trump as some kind of aberrant outlier in American politics. He's not. He has a lot of personal aberrations and dysfunctions but politically he's fully representative of the Republican Party and everything it's been moving towards for the past forty years (at least). I don't get how people can ask how the party of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich became a collection of bigots, imbeciles, and grifters. To ask the question is to answer it.
A collection of bigots, imbeciles, and grifters sums it up, I guess, not only for the US, but also for the UK.
God help us all.
Yeah, and even the guy who actually was considered a relative moderate at the time, GHW Bush, was still the man who ran the Willie Horton ads, sent Clarence Thomas to the SCOTUS, and regarded flag-burning as an evil so great as to warrant a constitutional amendment negating the First.
Problem is, while some of the old-style Tories have indeed offered critiques of the new gang, luminaries like Davis, Clark and Mulroney never come out and say that people should vote for anyone else but the Conservatives.
The Trump administration is like the International Space Station
They're in constant free fall, and they needed Russia's help to get there
I don't want to see the USA returning to that outlook. In one sense, it cannot avoid the responsibilities which flow from its global economic prominence. There was a saying that if the US economy sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. With the rise of Chinese economic power, it may also now be true of the Chinese economy. There's a real poignancy at this time in using health metaphors for the global economy, but I guess you see what I mean.
But for the USA and China, and maybe other mega-economic blocks, with great economic power comes great economic responsibility. Exploitation of that power for purely national reasons (e.g MAGA) is in the end damaging both to the exploiter and the exploited. That's the real issue.
ZING. Perfecto.
People began to frame American foreign policy in this way after the USSR collapsed. Indeed, I think it does characterise American intervention in the 1990's, up until 9/11, when things changed again. I sometimes drift into America World Police mode, in my evangelistic fervor. But before the shit hits the fan, I want America standing with me to prevent international conflict, and here I am thinking of China.
This week, Australian and American warships performed joint military exercises in strategic areas of the South China Sea. Vietnam recently protested the Chinese setting up permanent administrative centres on islands it has built in territory Vietnam claims. The Philippines also protested about similar buildings on islands China built in that countries territorial waters. Both protests were shrugged off.
American presence and interest in this area is critical in limiting the Chinese approach to this little-by-little game it plays in the South China Sea. Without it, I fear what China would do. Whenever our politicians criticise China, for instance, China rebukes us and calls us puppets of the Americans. Most recently, this happened when we called for an open and transparent investigation into the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. We, and the rest of the world want to know exactly how this virus started. We want to examine the facts. But apparently, we are meddling in Chinese internal affairs.
There is a real risk that if America retreats into itself, East and South-East Asia will be independent of China in name only.
That's only true if you consider "domestic affairs" to include fighting expansionary wars of conquest against Native Americans and Mexico and "world issues" to mean "European international politics".
Assuming that "the world stage" once again means "European international politics", then yes, neither France nor Great Britain was very tolerant of American efforts at neutrality during the Wars of the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars. Unsuccessfully attempting to thread this needle led to the U.S. fighting a naval war against France, an embargo that mostly hurt America more than anyone else, and a war against Britain that led to the White House getting put to the torch. But "got involved" is phrase that relies way too much on the passive voice. Even if you're not interested in European inter-state politics the world stage, the world stage is still interested in you.
I watched that segment. What I saw was a man in total decompensation. I was surprised his medical experts did not walk out of the briefing, or the press hit him heard with questioning (though I would admit, it would have just accelerated the decompensation more).
No, Mr (ahem) President, at your level in this crisis, there is no room for sarcasm. You have to speak the truth, which you have never done since the beginning of your presidency.
You need to be removed, and the sooner the better.
His behaviour could become even more weird. To deflect attention or because he’s lost control.
Either way those nuclear codes need removing from his reach!
YMMV, of course.
I’d say suggesting it was sarcasm is a form of decompensation. Wriggling out of reality by any means.