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US Politics: Locked, Loaded, Fired Up and Capitalized


Kalbear

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6 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

Of course! The US was supporting Franco just like Hitler was before we started killing one another.

Vast majority of Americans are unaware that Germany declared war on the U.S. ( upholding their treaty with Japan) rather than the commonly held view that the US jumped into the fight to stop Nazis/save Europe/fight for freedom. There were literally years gone by and those options were rejected. Had Hitler never declared war, there is very real doubt that the US enters at all. Contrary to another myth, FDR was not doing everything he could to get the US in, but rather was constantly playing for time, keeping his options open, trying to defer a decision to the point one wouldn't be necessary. And I mean, this is even during the Battle of Britain, when that's all that was left of 'free' Europe. Had Hitler not had his Alpine come-to-Jesus moment and decided he could outdo Napoleon, the odds are the war kinda peters out, with Germany basically owning Europe, the U.K. significantly weakened but never actually vanquished, and more of a series of brushfire needing outing rather than a continued conflagration. Anyways, getting back, the US's self-mythos plays a pretty significant role in it's ongoing blindness to how/if it could 'happen here'.

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31 minutes ago, WinterFox said:

 

 

The arguments against the people I've quoted seem more and more like intellectual appeasement of the worst kind as the year progresses. 

At what point does refusal to endorse action to prevent the rise of genocidally motivated authoritarians become complicity in their inevitable crimes?

I think that moment approaches even now.

I hear you. 

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1 hour ago, Mexal said:

I'm shocked that people in this thread are essentially arguing for a civil war. Lord help us all. The fall of the US is going to be swift at this rate.

 

The internet has given people with crazy ideas a voice. That's how they were able to cobble up a couple thousand losers who were willing to march in the name of white supremacy (despite ironically being the dregs of society regardless of race), and that's where you see people convinced we should literally go to war with the "alt-right."

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10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

A major cause of death in the War of the Rebellion was dysentery. More died in captivity, of disease, than on the battlefield -- and those battlefield deaths were enormous.

https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties

This is true in pretty much every War before antibiotics, and even most since.

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15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Tell it to the communities like Ferguson.

Yep, I remember well when the authorities opened fire on peaceful protestors and massacred at least 379 people and probably more. Oh, no wait that was the Amritsar Massacre.

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 Moreover the orange monster is far worse than Churchill.

Churchill was key to the war against actual Nazis and he's rightly lauded for that but he was an unrepentant Imperialist with all that goes with it. Also, unlike Trump, he was actually intelligent and capable so many of the unpleasant policies he advocated actually happened. Off the top of my head he was responsible for the Black and Tans in Ireland, was Prime Minister while the Kikuyu were getting rounded up and put in detention camps in Kenya and he advocated dropping gas on rebellious areas in Iraq, although it's not entirely clear whether it was actually done or not.

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10 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Yep, I remember well when the authorities opened fire on peaceful protestors and massacred at least 379 people and probably more. Oh, no wait that was the Amritsar Massacre.

Churchill was key to the war against actual Nazis and he's rightly lauded for that but he was an unrepentant Imperialist with all that goes with it. Also, unlike Trump, he was actually intelligent and capable so many of the unpleasant policies he advocated actually happened. Off the top of my head he was responsible for the Black and Tans in Ireland, was Prime Minister while the Kikuyu were getting rounded up and put in detention camps in Kenya and he advocated dropping gas on rebellious areas in Iraq, although it's not entirely clear whether it was actually done or not.

Not even sure if 'unrepentant' is strong enough...'celebratory'?

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5 minutes ago, sperry said:

 

The internet has given people with crazy ideas a voice. That's how they were able to cobble up a couple thousand losers who were willing to march in the name of white supremacy (despite ironically being the dregs of society regardless of race), and that's where you see people convinced we should literally go to war with the "alt-right."

Yup. Social media is speeding up the deterioration of society and has for years now.

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1 hour ago, Mexal said:

I'm shocked that people in this thread are essentially arguing for a civil war. Lord help us all. The fall of the US is going to be swift at this rate.

How messed up is the USA when people can seriously equate prosecuting a tiny violent minority with a civil war?

Are people so convinced that all conservatives are so full of hate? Do people have so little faith in their country? It is one of the few that has shown it can function fine with putting significant fractions of certain demographics in prison.

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24 minutes ago, Mexal said:

620,000 Americans died during the Civil War and that was without modern weaponry. This was also at a time when the government was on the right side of the cause. If this is what people want, I hope they are the first casualties.

A small loss comparatively to the tens of millions who died on slave ships, and the millions who died captive.

Do you think that the civil war was worth it?

Out of curiosity -- what would it take before you decided that a cause was actually worth fighting for in a modern context?

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35 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I hear you. 

I don't. Honestly, if I had to identify one warning word attached to the most bad policy in the last 60 odd years, it would probably be 'appeasement'. Maybe 'freedom' runs a close second. But anyways, the fear of appeasement or a response to the accusation of appeasement has been behind soooo many very very bad choices since. Like the people pushing JFK to get on with WWIII over Cuba. Like Iraq. Etc. 

The irony, of course, is that appeasement itself was a hangover from the lessons the previous Great War had taught people...or so they thought. And in truth, absent an actual Hitler it's a pretty good lesson to learn, War as an absolute last resort.

An interesting alt history debate is this: would the world not have been far better off if the initial German advance (initial action of WWI) hadn't extended so far as to expose their flank for that historic counter attack and the Germans had basically another Franco-German War quick victory?

Think about it...WWI has casualties in the thousands rather than millions. WWII and it's dozens of millions dead doesn't happen. The Cold War with all it's attendant millions of casualties doesn't happen. No Hitler. No Stalin. No Dulles Brothers. No Sykes-Picot. The British Empire takes a blow but doesn't disintegrate as in real life. 

In fact, really the only people who wouldn't ultimately prefer that to what happened are Americans. I'm sure the US still rises pretty high, but it does so without the absolute power vacuum created by an utterly devastated Europe. Anyways, interesting food for thought. 

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10 minutes ago, Seli said:

How messed up is the USA when people can seriously equate prosecuting a tiny violent minority with a civil war?

Are people so convinced that all conservatives are so full of hate? Do people have so little faith in their country? It is one of the few that has shown it can function fine with putting significant fractions of certain demographics in prison.

I was with you until the last line.  Edit, no my mistake. You said 'with' where I assumed you were saying 'without'. As is your argument is a bit more complex but a lot more accurate than what I misread. 

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On 8/13/2017 at 2:22 PM, Seli said:

How messed up is the USA when people can seriously equate prosecuting a tiny violent minority with a civil war?

Are people so convinced that all conservatives are so full of hate? Do people have so little faith in their country? It is one of the few that has shown it can function fine with putting significant fractions of certain demographics in prison.

It’s not so much a case of all conservatives being full of “hate”. I mean there are a lot of conservatives that abhor Nazis and wouldn’t have anything to do with them.

It’s more of a case of conservatives feeling like victims or enabling other conservatives to feel like victims. It’s shit like “Obama gave all the bennies to “those people” or “The real discrimination is against white people”.

Go ahead and murder and jail every Nazi out there. But, as far as race relations, go, I doubt it’s going to do much. The problem runs deeper than that. Richard Nixon wasn’t a Nazi, but he and others knew how to tap into white grievance.

And if you get rid of every Nazi you are going to have some new group out there with some bullshit white grievance.

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7 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

t’s not so much a case of all conservatives being full of “hate”. I mean there are a lot of conservatives that abhor Nazis and wouldn’t have anything to do with them.

It’s more of a case of conservatives feeling like victims or enabling other conservatives feel like victims. It’s shit like “Obama gave all the bennies to “those people” or “The real discrimination is against white people”.

Go ahead and murder and jail every Nazi out there. But, as far as race relations, go, I doubt it’s going to do much. The problem runs deeper than that. Richard Nixon wasn’t a Nazi, but he and others knew how to tap into white grievance.

And if you get rid of every Nazi you are going to have some new group out there with some bullshit white grievance.

Nixon wasn't just tapping it, he was mainlining it. Guy was a hardcore bigot of almost every description. 

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On 8/13/2017 at 2:30 PM, James Arryn said:

Nixon wasn't just tapping it, he was mainlining it. Guy was a hardcore bigot of almost every description. 

Well yes he was. I can't think of an ethnic group he didn't insult at some point. But, the point, is I don't think he can be labeled a Nazi and more importantly he didn't have to be one to take advantage of white grievances.

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18 minutes ago, snowleper said:

A small loss comparatively to the tens of millions who died on slave ships, and the millions who died captive.

Do you think that the civil war was worth it?

Out of curiosity -- what would it take before you decided that a cause was actually worth fighting for in a modern context?

A lot more then one demonstration where a single person was killed due to violence. 

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Posters here might be going a bit too far back into the history books when it comes to accounting for the current racial lunacy.

The civil rights movement was much more recent, and at least part of the time, directly opposed by those in power.  Yet, ultimately, it succeeded. A warped repeat of that seems much more likely than a literal civil war. 

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19 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I was with you until the last line.  Edit, no my mistake. You said 'with' where I assumed you were saying 'without'. As is your argument is a bit more complex but a lot more accurate than what I misread. 

That was an unclear reference to the large proportion of black men in the US prison system. It made sense in my head.

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3 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Seconded. This idea that you're a "mealy-mouthed coward" if you're not down with killing nazis is a 1930's Germany era nazi meme.

"If you're not with us, you're against us". You are adopting the tactics of your ideological enemy if you promote this way of thinking. 

Was this their tactics? Cause my understanding a lot of the Nazis success came from people trying to avoid one side or the other. Remember? "First they came ..."

 

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2 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

I'm glad the ACLU is working against the detention of immigrants.  You know what else the ACLU does?  Defends the rights of nazis.

8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well yes he was. I can't think of an ethnic group he didn't insult at some point. But, the point, is I don't think he can be labeled a Nazi and more importantly he didn't have to be one to take advantage of white grievances.

Those tapes demonstrate a ridiculous amount of casual racism, but if Nixon was a nazi, he sure kept some strange company.

Anyway, I think there's a great discussion to be had about whether these groups should continue to be afforded free speech protection.  I also think an interesting argument can be made to classify some of the groups from yesterday as terrorist organizations and deny them first amendment protection that way.  And I actively support Anti-Policy Brutality organizations.

However, when you start advocating for unprovoked violence, and label others "nazi apologists" just because they disagree on how to adjudicate the first amendment, then it becomes sad, part of the problem, and not worth responding to. 

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8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well yes he was. I can't think of an ethnic group he didn't insult at some point. But, the point, is I don't think he can be labeled a Nazi and more importantly he didn't have to be one to take advantage of white grievances.

Sure, I get you. It's easier to use labels for many. I was one of the first on here raising the fascism fear re:Trump, but imo he's much more Mussolini than Hitler. Anyways, some people's brains...mine included...work by identifying patterns rather than seeking to find or trusting in the judgment of isolated incidental fact. 

Another motivation for my comment is that it's now the first thing that occurs to me when I read or hear Nixon's name, because of the Nixon tapes. Blew me away...not really too much 'new' information...maybe the number of people he wanted killed was a surprise...but the unbelievable amount of wide-ranging bigotry...just floored me. Partly because, w/e you say about Nixon, the man was very intelligent, and intelligent bigots are a source of compete wonder to me. It's almost like I don't believe they can actually exist. I'd almost prefer them to be faking it to appeal to the stupider masses. Because I can't process how intelligence and bigotry can reasonably co-exist in the same brain, not without deep psychological issues.

Because the thing about intelligence is it's intelligent. Therefore your own 'this makes no sense' alarms have to be going off in your head as you're saying things like 'all people of this pigmentation are natural criminals' or w/e. Maybe at best like 100 years ago when pseudosciences like phrenology or w/e, maybe then I can see some people just being intellectually lazy and the old 'a little bit of information is a dangerous thing' maxim...

 

...but now? It truly baffles me. I mean, I think I have a huge blind spot. On the rare occasions I've ever heard people...of any intelligence, anyways...actually say outright racist or sexist or w/e things, my initial reaction is always the assumption they're being ironic. Then, if that proves untrue, I'm like a man meeting Big Foot or Nessie. Like, I'd heard the rumours, but didn't ever really believe intelligent bigots were a real thing. Not really. So, that's where my brain goes now when I think of Nixon. Long story, not much point, I know. Sorry. But it's really a thing for me. 

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