U.S. Politics: It's Torture

[LongRider]

Here is a link to the folks who keep the 'Doomsday Clock'.  http://thebulletin.org/

from their press release; 

Quote

In the statement about the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board notes: “Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change … This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a US presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change …The board’s decision to move the clock less than a full minute — something it has never before done — reflects a simple reality: As this statement is issued, Donald Trump has been the US president only a matter of days …”

 

[sToNED_CAT]

9 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

If you want to make an honest discussion about the violence at Trump rallies,  both siderism and conspiracy theories about they were paid! don't cut it.  Since that won't happen from you, I'm out.

It is so incredibly difficult to prove such things that you should be happy I was able to provide one undercover video. It's a miracle actually, these things do not come out, especially not without investigation by authorities. And "violence on Trump's rallies" is such cute biased term. It can include absolutely everything, including this.

[Jo498]

To my knowledge people were taught about the atrocities of fascism, stalinism etc. in Western schools often ad nauseam. The problem is that they usually were taught this in the spirit that these were "Others", tempi passati, and WE (who are on the right side of history) would NEVER sink to something like that. (Or only if there were *really* good reasons to start wars and torture people, e.g. weapons of mass destruction.) That is, the historical factors behind it, more generally the large scale lines and oscillations of history, the banality of evil etc. were not taught well. That's why Adorno said something like that he was not afraid of new fascists in the guise of fascists, but dressed up as democrats (not in the sense of the US party).

[LongRider]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It is simply that most of the time in the US when people talk about "socialism" or "communism" they are thinking of the Marxist/Leninist model. That's what is taught.  

^^^^^This so  much.  Really, Americans have it pounded into their heads that socialism is really bad and terrible and every thing wrong.  Hard to really uncover the facts about modern socialism sometimes.

[sToNED_CAT]

3 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Here is a link to the folks who keep the 'Doomsday Clock'.  http://thebulletin.org/

from their press release;

I just fail to see (even if you include climate change in calculation) how the world can be more dangerous now than during sixties for example when there was almost real nuclear war, numerous conventional ones (including direct confrontation between two nuclear powers USSR and China!), MLK and Kennedy's assasination, whole 1968 "revolutions", riots etc.

[Savannah]

9 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

To my knowledge people were taught about the atrocities of fascism, stalinism etc. in Western schools often ad nauseam. The problem is that they usually were taught this in the spirit that these were "Others", tempi passati, and WE (who are on the right side of history) would NEVER sink to something like that. (Or only if there were *really* good reasons to start wars and torture people, e.g. weapons of mass destruction.) That is, the historical factors behind it, more generally the large scale lines and oscillations of history, the banality of evil etc. were not taught well. That's why Adorno said something like that he was not afraid of new fascists in the guise of fascists, but dressed up as democrats (not in the sense of the US party).

Speak for yourself, some states that suffered vastly from Soviet aggression turned quite social. 

[Jaxom 1974]

13 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

I just fail to see (even if you include climate change in calculation) how the world can be more dangerous now than during sixties for example when there was almost real nuclear war, numerous conventional ones (including direct confrontation between two nuclear powers USSR and China!), MLK and Kennedy's assasination, whole 1968 "revolutions", riots etc.

And that is why you fail.

 

[Einheri]

16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The right/left paradigm is a circle, not a line. Go far enough left and you get Stalin. Go far enough right and you get Hitler. And those guys have a massive mutual respect, at least before June 1941 (and even Stalin was heard to lament afterwards that Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany could have still achieved "great things" together if Hitler hadn't invaded).

I think both of these models illustrate very well how similar the far right and far left really are. Heck, it was and still is not that uncommon to see members of these movements switch from one side to the other  (though more so from communist side to far right/nationalist side than the other way around).

[Werthead]

20 minutes ago, sToNED_CAT said:

I just fail to see (even if you include climate change in calculation) how the world can be more dangerous now than during sixties for example when there was almost real nuclear war, numerous conventional ones (including direct confrontation between two nuclear powers USSR and China!), MLK and Kennedy's assasination, whole 1968 "revolutions", riots etc.

We've had "almost real" nuclear war quite recently between India and Pakistan (including Indian generals suggesting that India could absorb multiple nuclear blasts killing tens of millions of people when Pakistan cannot) and multiple states, including the incredibly unstable North Korea, gaining access to them.

The chances of MAD and the end of humanity may be lower than in the 1980s (but rising as the US and China become more antagonistic, and Russia becomes more antagonistic towards Europe), but the chances of someone letting off a small nuclear weapon somewhere, leading to at least a regional conflagration, is massively higher. And because the global population base is so huge now, a "regional conflagration" between two neighbours could quite easily kill more people than WWII in a very short span of time.

The American president is also an absolute idiot on this front. I know people used to call Reagan, Nixon, W and others idiots which was pretty overblown, but this guy really is a moron. Reagan came into office talking about how he absolutely loathed and hated nuclear weapons and wanted to get rid of them, and acted to that end (whilst talking tough where necessary). Trump has come into office saying, in a very baffled tone, "Why don't we just use them?"

There is also the simple danger of overpopulation. Our food supply and chain becomes more and more strained as more people join the population. It would take worryingly little to snap it and lead to mass starvation in many areas (we've already had enormous famines in Ethiopia and North Korea in the last few decades, and many more around the world). The world population has doubled since just 1965, which is itself a huge danger. It's also very hard to protect such a huge population from a global pandemic (the last time we had a really devastating one in 1918, the population was one-sixth what it is now) or the impact of a really huge natural disaster (a supervolcano or even a fairly small asteroid strike).

[Rippounet]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Reagan came into office talking about how he absolutely loathed and hated nuclear weapons and wanted to get rid of them,

Uh, no. That's Reagan 2, starting around 1983. 1980 Reagan was something else, and his distaste of nuclear weapons was more muted at first. There's a reason why he scared the shit out of so many people in first years in office.

[Mexal]

Fun fun. Support the US or else. This will play well.

 

[TheKitttenGuard]

4 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Fun fun. Support the US or else. This will play well.

 

Sounds a Spicer moment and reading what her boss gave her.

Sad

[Werthead]

Quote

we’re taking names.

They don't need to. They're written on the plates in front of each ambassador. There's probably a publicly-available seating plan somewhere.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, sToNED_CAT said:

What do you want? Honest admission of wrongdoing from these guys? Even the fact that those guys were stupid enough to talk about such tactics to undercover operative is a miracle. The video is edited and O'Keefe is partisan, true,  but the guy clearly said they do these things (sending people to cause conflict to opponent rallies). Were all these people Democratic operatives? Maybe yes, maybe not. But the probability is pretty high.

And those 2 guys were fired/resigned. So there must have been at least something true in these videos.

The stories about paid provocateurs was planted by a guy who thought it would be funny to run an ad asking for people to attend and disrupt Trump rallies. Iirc, the ad stated payment would be  $3,500.

Right after the election there were interviews with him, after he outed himself,  saying "OMG, I was personally responsible for the election of Donald Trump! It was a joke! Honestly! I thought the MSM would pick up on the ads and it would open discussion!"

The  s.o.b. was an effing nitwit.

[Ser Reptitious]

5 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

My problem is not with Spencer getting punched. As you observe, people are subject to violence all the time. This is terrible but unremarkable.

My problem is that otherwise reasonable and soft-spoken individuals cheer this.

How would you feel about a Hamas person advocating that all Jews should be driven into the sea getting punched in the face?

[Gertrude]

There is a press conference with May and Trump happening now - it's a weird dynamic. I don't know how to describe it. She offers cover for him, takes cues from him and at one point confirmed with him that he was 100% behind NATO per their discussions. Like she wanted to pin him down. It's just ... it's creeping me out.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

We've had "almost real" nuclear war quite recently between India and Pakistan (including Indian generals suggesting that India could absorb multiple nuclear blasts killing tens of millions of people when Pakistan cannot) and multiple states, including the incredibly unstable North Korea, gaining access to them.

The chances of MAD and the end of humanity may be lower than in the 1980s (but rising as the US and China become more antagonistic, and Russia becomes more antagonistic towards Europe), but the chances of someone letting off a small nuclear weapon somewhere, leading to at least a regional conflagration, is massively higher. And because the global population base is so huge now, a "regional conflagration" between two neighbours could quite easily kill more people than WWII in a very short span of time.

The American president is also an absolute idiot on this front. I know people used to call Reagan, Nixon, W and others idiots which was pretty overblown, but this guy really is a moron. Reagan came into office talking about how he absolutely loathed and hated nuclear weapons and wanted to get rid of them, and acted to that end (whilst talking tough where necessary). Trump has come into office saying, in a very baffled tone, "Why don't we just use them?"

There is also the simple danger of overpopulation. Our food supply and chain becomes more and more strained as more people join the population. It would take worryingly little to snap it and lead to mass starvation in many areas (we've already had enormous famines in Ethiopia and North Korea in the last few decades, and many more around the world). The world population has doubled since just 1965, which is itself a huge danger. It's also very hard to protect such a huge population from a global pandemic (the last time we had a really devastating one in 1918, the population was one-sixth what it is now) or the impact of a really huge natural disaster (a supervolcano or even a fairly small asteroid strike).

100% agree, but you missed a huge component: cyber warfare could easily lead to nuclear warfare, among several other horrible outcomes, it's far more likely to occur in the modern era. 

[protar]

The conference was a load of fluff basically. May pretty much refused to talk about trump's...problematic (to say the least) policies, even when directly asked to. A bit concerned that trump even felt the need to talk about british sovereignty in his opening statement? Was our sovereignty in question before? All the usual spiel about having a great relationship with mexico, being for the working people. The usual lies. 

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, sToNED_CAT said:

It is so incredibly difficult to prove such things that you should be happy I was able to provide one undercover video. It's a miracle actually, these things do not come out, especially not without investigation by authorities. And "violence on Trump's rallies" is such cute biased term. It can include absolutely everything, including this.

Just to be clear, James O'Keefe has been shown to be making these things up for the purpose of riling you up. 

We also have the person responsible for posting the craigslist ad about wanting protesters being shown as fake - by Fox News of all people, who wanted to believe him. 

Also, for the record @Happy Ent - I am 100% in favor of violence against those who would internally threaten liberal democracy, and I don't particularly care about the specific creed. There aren't a whole lot of communists in the US openly advocating ethnic cleansing, there aren't a lot of Islamic fascists here either, but I'd be happy if either of them got punched too. 

[Toth]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

To my knowledge people were taught about the atrocities of fascism, stalinism etc. in Western schools often ad nauseam. The problem is that they usually were taught this in the spirit that these were "Others", tempi passati, and WE (who are on the right side of history) would NEVER sink to something like that. (Or only if there were *really* good reasons to start wars and torture people, e.g. weapons of mass destruction.) That is, the historical factors behind it, more generally the large scale lines and oscillations of history, the banality of evil etc. were not taught well. That's why Adorno said something like that he was not afraid of new fascists in the guise of fascists, but dressed up as democrats (not in the sense of the US party).

The problem is: Teaching their wrongdoings is one thing. Teaching the circumstances which enabled them to rise to power is another. And this is the crucial point. I might be biased because I'm a history student/teacher. So there is a definite bias about the people I'm surrounded with. But I also think that it is a part of our German history, the fact that we are constantly working through it and have a high emphasize on Hitler's rise in history classes. With all these factors, nearly everyone I know is terrified by Trump, the ideas he's promoting and the rhetoric he uses. This is not Godwin's Law, this is history.

There is country devided after an economic recession and political change having been halted by the deadlock the democratically elected parties created for themselves, leaving people disillusioned with the people working within the democratic system. Then comes a demagogue who claims to oppose the system and yet works with the conservative. Who uses a rhetoric of hatred and fear that sides with the working class, paints an 'acceptable' enemy that needs to be defeated and offers seemingly simple, clearly populist solutions to make his country 'great again' by feeling superior again. He is hostile to the other parties, free speech and factual evidence, an advocate for economic protectionism, military rearmament and careless threats, he is ridiculed for being a political moron and not being taken seriously at all. And yet the disillusioned masses are craving for change, no matter how destructive it may be. So he gets elected. And from day one starts to shut down government institutions and replaces important positions with his own incompetent and corrupt lackeys.

Of course this doesn't mean that Trump is the next Hitler. It could just mean that he and his Council of Supreme Evil are just clever tricksters, a thoroughly rotten and corrupt bunch that is going to leech off the US for the next few years and then dash off laughing their asses off, leaving the country in ruins and the people hopefully a little wiser. That's my most optimistic take on things right now. The pessimist take however...