Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[drogulus]

I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. You seem to think I'm arguing about something completely different from what I'm actually arguing about.

     I thought you were arguing about how we performed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whether other countries supported our efforts or opposed them, and how support and opposition should cause us to reconsider policy and influence its future direction.

     

Let me repeat: there was widespread support for the US going to Afghanistan. There was not nearly like the same support for going to Iraq (though my own government at the time did support it). There was a reason for the difference in support.

     Ah, I understood you.

[drogulus]

The Arabs/muslims had huge cities and high culture in the middle ages, both "based on" previous Persian culture but also e.g. in Kairo or Cordova. Far more urban and "urbanized" than anything in Europe at that time (although maybe not than India or China).

     My point about Muslim revolutions of purity is how they destroyed this highly promising phase of their history. There are various versions of how and why. Some have the Crusades in them, and afterward colonial imperialism. I'm unsatisfied with this. It takes away too much agency from people who almost conquered all of Europe, threatening to do so as late as the 17th century when they reached the outskirts of Vienna. If Arab Muslims can't reconcile with secular modernism, if they insist on having revolutions of purity century after century, I judge something other than manipulation by outsiders is at the root of it. All of the agency is not belong to us imperialist devils. They had their own empires, a number of them, to take responsibility for their own cultural evolution.

[kishnevi]

Actually, a lot of those 269 million guns weren't used. Period.

You're talking about absolute numbers. I was also discussing relative ones. While we're talking numbers, let's discuss how a gun bought "for protection" will only achieve that purpose 1 time in every 23 uses. The other times it will be used for murder, suicide, sheer accident, or used against the owner by the person they thought they needed protecting from. A very recent study showed that owning a gun actually increases many risks associated with home robbery.

We should also apply your math to Muslims. There are over a billion of them who didn't kill anyone in 2013.

I do apply that math to Muslims.  One of the many reasons I would not vote for Trump or Cruz.

[kishnevi]

How much do you know about pre-1979 Iranian history/politics? Do you think such ideology sprung out of thin air? I don't. I think it's just one of the cycles of exactly what I was just talking about, about the USA getting involved in other parts of the world... and then being terribly shocked and surprised when it blows up in their faces because people don't like what the USA was doing. Revolutionary Iran didn't hate the USA on a random whim, it hated the USA because the USA supported the Shah and it hated the Shah.

This is the great mystery in why the USA seems incapable of leaving well alone. There are so many USA interventions that simply haven't advanced USA interests, and have created further and often greater disasters. It wouldn't be such an issue if the USA had demonstrated its skill in doing these things, but so often you've just made things worse.

Take Afghanistan, for example. Many people actually supported US action in Afghanistan. But instead of doing the job properly, the US government at the time got completely distracted by Iraq and allowed the situation in Afghanistan to fester. Meanwhile Iraq was drastically weakened as a country, essentially splitting into 3 sections.

You seemed to be saying US was fixated on Iran, and caused problems thereby.
I am saying the fixation really runs the other way. 
Your assessment of Iraq and Afghanistan is perfect imo.

[drogulus]

WASHINGTON (AP) — America's substantial support for NATO, both in money and military aid, has long been a source of frustration for U.S. leaders, and some have questioned the organization as a throwback to the Cold War era. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, in interviews this week, suggested the U.S. should scale back its role in NATO nearly seven decades after the North American-European alliance was launched in the aftermath of World War II. Complaining that the U.S. is spending too much money on NATO, Trump said the financial burden must change.

     Trump is a dolt. The financial burden is where it needs to be for Europe to escape its responsibilities they way they like, and mostly, the way we like. What better way to escape responsibility is there than to say, for example, NATO is a front for American fillintheblank, an awful thing. How's that work if they pay for it? The last thing Europeans want is to render explicit the bargain they've struck and are determined to continue to strike until we no longer serve their purpose.

[André]

      Yes, it's very strange. Sometimes I wonder about how in the ME the Americans are hated for supporting Israel, and how Muslims want us to help them remedy the situation. If only we understood their plight! Why would it matter if people in a faraway country understood your plight? Why are we supposed to help people in trouble? I mean I know why, but why do so many people around the world with varying attitudes think it's perfectly reasonable to expect the U.S. to do some big important thing to make the world better?

     Most of the world isn't asking for rescue at the moment, and we aren't always rescuing. But if they ask, they ask us, and if it's provided, we provide it. We even provide food and medical supplies to people who hate us. That might be a little irritating in a humiliating sort of way. Again I understand this and have no trouble explaining how self interest and wider interest have evolved over centuries. How to explain it with fairly unimpressive and largely emotive ideas commonly held, you can't. That's mostly good guy bad guy stuff with no structure in it.

It's a very strange, but classic relationship. In french there is a saying and a story about the 'pot de terre et le pot de fer' travelling together (that's the glass jar and the iron pot as road buddies). Obviously one is at a natural disadvantage, even if the iron pot means no harm.

That old story is often used as a metaphor in foreign policy. Unless the iron pot travels with another iron pot (Russia, China), it is more likely to do more damage than good, even with the best of intentions. And obviously, an iron pot from the Trump Iron Works would probably travel alone...

[drogulus]

It's a very strange, but classic relationship. In french there is a saying and a story about the 'pot de terre et le pot de fer' travelling together (that's the glass jar and the iron pot as road buddies). Obviously one is at a natural disadvantage, even if the iron pot means no harm.

That old story is often used as a metaphor in foreign policy. Unless the iron pot travels with another iron pot (Russia, China), it is more likely to do more damage than good, even with the best of intentions. And obviously, an iron pot from the Trump Iron Works would probably travel alone...

     The book I linked to has a lot about the iron pot nature of the kind of policy the maritime power undertakes, and the unrealism of American expectations of its efficacy. Mead is quite critical of the way good intentions are deployed and how Americans often misread the situation. The book concentrates on foreign policy as it has developed in the English speaking world and the special circumstances of world and sea power.

[André]

Remember populist-demagogue Toronto Mayor Rob Ford ?  He was the laughing stock of North America. He died of cancer this week, aged 46. Nothing to do with this thread except this: just like Trump, his statements, quotes and edicts were of the moment, instant kodaks of the populist mind set of an uncultured egotist. What kind of legacy to his country and to the world is that ? 

[Florestan]

Remember populist-demagogue Toronto Mayor Rob Ford ?  He was the laughing stock of North America. He died of cancer this week, aged 46. Nothing to do with this thread except this: just like Trump, his statements, quotes and edicts were of the moment, instant kodaks of the populist mind set of an uncultured egotist. What kind of legacy to his country and to the world is that ? 

A better question is why do uncultured, egotistic, populist and demagogue politicians routinely get elected and reelected? After all, it´s the people who freely vote them into power.

[Madiel]

Because we like to be entertained.

Seriously. I think that people think "I like this guy" and make their vote on that basis, without analysing WHY they like the guy and whether that like correlates to wanting the guy in charge.

[drogulus]

     Wildfire burns about 620 square miles in Kansas, Oklahoma

     Thanks, Obama.

[Johnll]

A better question is why do uncultured, egotistic, populist and demagogue politicians routinely get elected and reelected? After all, it´s the people who freely vote them into power.

It is because weak people find pleasure basking in their roughie and puffie ego juices. I NOMINATE TRUMP FOR GOD!

[drogulus]

A better question is why do uncultured, egotistic, populist and demagogue politicians routinely get elected and reelected? After all, it´s the people who freely vote them into power.

                                                             *
                                                         
     Here's a better better question. Why do people routinely not vote for egotistic demagogues? It seems to have something to do with war and/or severe economic conditions causing a dramatic drop in confidence in the established political order. A Stage I crisis produces a Perot, a Stage II produces a Trump dismantling a major party, turning it into....who knows?

     _{* Do you like my demagogic balloons?}

[Johnll]

It is because weak people find pleasure basking in their roughie and puffie ego juices. I NOMINATE TRUMP FOR GOD!

This is for them who got themselves all empowered up.  This personal opinion before the assembled that working with others is not FEM.

[snyprrr]

I  HAD  AN  AFFAIR  WITH  HILLARY!!






MOIST!

[Karl Henning]

El Tupé put you up to this, didn't he?

[drogulus]

     I swear on a stack of Gödel, Escher, Bach hardcovers I had nothing to do with this!

     More than 5,000 support petition to allow guns at Republican National Convention in Cleveland

     

[snyprrr]

El Tupé put you up to this, didn't he?

There's going to be hell toupee!!

[Karl Henning]

     I swear on a stack of Gödel, Escher, Bach hardcovers I had nothing to do with this!

     More than 5,000 support petition to allow guns at Republican National Convention in Cleveland

     

Gonna be another Love Fest!

[kishnevi]

     I swear on a stack of Gödel, Escher, Bach hardcovers I had nothing to do with this!

     More than 5,000 support petition to allow guns at Republican National Convention in Cleveland

     

They are demanding the GOP put its money where its mouth is, so to speak.  Even Mayor Bloomberg ought to sign that petition.  There is no way the party can say no without further alienating its base.