President Donald Trump's Final Days...

[laberbacke]

A new Pew study conducted among citizens of 25 nations shows how far and abruptly confidence in the President of the United States and a positive view of the country have eroded since Trump's election:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2018/10/01/...ng-key-allies/

[ball7]

Originally Posted by leinad27

Can you believe this guy. Now he's imposing shotgun weddings on gay
diplomats. What he won't do to placate his base. Truly a born again ass
kisser

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/01...ials-gay-lgbt/

[laberbacke]

Originally Posted by ball7

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/01...ials-gay-lgbt/

Do Americans ever have one of these "are we the baddies" moments?
I've always found this ability to whitewash everything both impressive and terrifying.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by leinad27

Can you believe this guy. Now he's imposing shotgun weddings on gay
diplomats. What he won't do to placate his base. Truly a born again ass
kisser

He'll have to back down. You can't dictate these kind of terms to foreign diplomats. Push this sort of thing & other countries can start arresting our foreign service personnel as spies.

[ball7]

Originally Posted by laberbacke

Do Americans ever have one of these "are we the baddies" moments?
I've always found this ability to whitewash everything both impressive and terrifying.

Off course not.

[laberbacke]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

He'll have to back down.

I've heard that a lot over the last three years. He's done the unthinkable time and time again since then, and paid no political price whatsoever for it.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by laberbacke

Do Americans ever have one of these "are we the baddies" moments?
I've always found this ability to whitewash everything both impressive and terrifying.

Some of us are all too aware of it, but the GOP characterizes us as traitors and socialist radicals. Note that the Congresswoman for my district, Barbara Lee, cast the lone vote against the authorization of the use of military force against terrorists in 2001. She felt that if Congress was going to let President Bush put us on a permanent war footing, a debate should be held first.

Some of us actually understand why Iran might feel that it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against an attack either by Israel or the United States. Some of us actually believe that the United States is presently the greatest threat to world peace and the security of other nations. And that was before we recklessly elected an insane clown as president.

[laberbacke]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Some of us are all too aware of it, but the GOP characterizes us as traitors and socialist radicals. Note that the Congresswoman for my district, Barbara Lee, cast the lone vote against the authorization of the use of military force against terrorists in 2001. She felt that if Congress was going to let President Bush put us on a permanent war footing, a debate should be held first.

Some of us actually understand why Iran might feel that it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against an attack either by Israel or the United States. Some of us actually believe that the United States is presently the greatest threat to world peace and the security of other nations. And that was before we recklessly elected an insane clown as president.

As you said: Some. The United States has killed about 30 million people since the end of World War II, a number higher than the Nazi regime's death toll - albeit stretched over a far longer timeframe, and driven largely by mercantile goals instead of racial ideology.


What's remarkable and unique compared to those other mass-murdering nations - the aforementioned Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China - is that these murders were carried out by subsequent governments, all of whom were democratically elected and legitimized. There's thousands of free press outlets that people can use to inform themselves about what their government is doing, there's the right to assemble and protest, freedom of speech and so on, benefits of citizen's agency that the subjects of these dictatorial regimes didn't have.


This is the first truly democratically legitimized empire in human history.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by laberbacke

As you said: Some. The United States has killed about 30 million people since the end of World War II, a number higher than the Nazi regime's death toll - albeit stretched over a far longer timeframe, and driven largely by mercantile goals instead of racial ideology.


What's remarkable and unique compared to those other mass-murdering nations - the aforementioned Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China - is that these murders were carried out by subsequent governments, all of whom were democratically elected and legitimized. There's thousands of free press outlets that people can use to inform themselves about what their government is doing, there's the right to assemble and protest, freedom of speech and so on, benefits of citizen's agency that the subjects of these dictatorial regimes didn't have.


This is the first truly democratically legitimized empire in human history.

Aren't we the first since the Roman Republic? I do worry that just as acquiring an empire ended the Roman Republic, the same will happen to us.

By the time Eisenhower warned us about the "military-industrial complex" it was already too late. Political neophyte that he was, he let the Dulles brothers and other corporate saboteurs send us farther down the path of empire and create the permanent war machine. Of course, it didn't help that we were confronted by Stalin and his heirs that made it easy to justify the paranoia that drove the arms race for the next 30+ years.

I keep telling y'all that our "free press" is mostly devoted to entertainment with a dose of propaganda thrown in. Plus our people are only half bright and being drugged. Americans are still generous and warm hearted and would be horrified if they really understood what the government was doing.

[Rogerbh]

Originally Posted by laberbacke

Do Americans ever have one of these "are we the baddies" moments?
I've always found this ability to whitewash everything both impressive and terrifying.

There was a PBS series on the Vietnam war decades ago. It showed an interview of a US serviceman who had been an advisor for South Vietnamese troops - the film looked contemporaneous to the war. He said most of the troops he taught were not interested in anything about war. Only three were extremely interested/motivated to learn everything they could from him. The day before they were to graduate, they defected to the Viet Cong. I still remember him staring into the camera stating how when he was in school he had learned about the "Red Coats" who imposed the will of a foreign power on his people. They were only thrown out of the country after a long and bloody war. The defection of these three nice, eager Vietnamese made him realize that he was a "Red Coat" in their country. His look of astonishment was, to say the least, interesting.