U.S. Politics: Death and Tax Cuts

[Conflicting Thought]

11 hours ago, DMC said:

Don't give me that bullshit on Canada and the UK.  EVERYONE is afraid of people that don't look like them.  The more people come in that don't look like them, the more they're gonna be pissed off at their government.  That's how it works - for every country - and why I don't give a shit about the self-righteous ideological meanders of some Canadian.  Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Yes every one is afraid, but sometimes there are spikes in that fear, like germany in the 30s and 40s or america, and some european countries right now. 

It is very interesting to see how some of you seem to need to justify or internalize in some ways, the things america has done. If you go to other countries (specially countries victims of US interventionism) youll see that the things James has said are non controversial, but maybe you dont care about that. 

There is something i am curious about, i've seen it in a few of your posts. Why do you feel the need to point out that james arryn is from canada? What's that have to do with anything? 

[Bonnot OG]

35 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Yes every one is afraid, but sometimes there are spikes in that fear, like germany in the 30s and 40s or america, and some european countries right now. 

It is very interesting to see how some of you seem to need to justify or internalize in some ways, the things america has done. If you go to other countries (specially countries victims of US interventionism) youll see that the things James has said are non controversial, but maybe you dont care about that. 

There is something i am curious about, i've seen it in a few of your posts. Why do you feel the need to point out that james arryn is from canada? What's that have to do with anything? 

Trying to tell James his opinion is worthless on American politics and or he doesn't know what he is talking about because he isn't from here. 

I'd say someone not from the US is a better person to ask an opinion about the US than someone from the US. They aren't as attatched, and they aren't dealing with a nationalistic US news source when seeing info about how the US operates.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

@James Arryn If you're not going to answer my question (and I assume now that you're not), I have to say, it is a bit disingenuous to nose your way into a discussion as a way of criticizing what you perceive as a general attitude of American exceptionalism, without actually addressing the topic under discussion or pointing out how and where you think I'm wrong or that I'm expressing the American attitude you seen to find so unbearable.

Pointing at the body count without acknowledging the massive difference and scope and reach is kind of reminiscent of a Fox anchor talking about how so many more white people get shot by the cops every year. You're ignoring context. I've been plenty critical of the way my county manipulates children into fighting immoral wars just to keep the economy churning, but that doesn't make them the moral equivalent of a strong-arm group like Al-Qaeda that pushes a bronze-age, theocratic ideology at the tip of a sword.

[Ice Queen]

2 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Yes every one is afraid, but sometimes there are spikes in that fear, like germany in the 30s and 40s or america, and some european countries right now. 

It is very interesting to see how some of you seem to need to justify or internalize in some ways, the things america has done. If you go to other countries (specially countries victims of US interventionism) youll see that the things James has said are non controversial, but maybe you dont care about that. 

There is something i am curious about, i've seen it in a few of your posts. Why do you feel the need to point out that james arryn is from canada? What's that have to do with anything? 

American here. I have several Canadian friends, including a few Americans who married Canadians and moved there, so I love to get their perspective on a lot of things.

There's no denying that our foreign policy since WWII has sucked, and caused a lot of death and destruction around the world. It's short-sighted and arrogant. We've laid entire countries to waste and taken their resources. We've enacted regime changes all over the world, and interfered in the economic systems of countless nations (particularly South America) to the never ending detriment of their people. We've perpetrated coups, violated international law and committed human rights abuses (including recently right here at home).

No American should deny this. We talked about Vietnam yesterday. Anybody know why we were there in the first place?

We suffer from a delusional belief in our own exceptionalism (which is nothing more than imperialism), not helped by the fact that most Americans have never been out of their little bubbles. They've never traveled abroad--hell, some of them have never even left the neighborhood they grew up in or their home state. They have no perspective, no understanding of the world beyond our borders. They listen to and watch American-centric TV and radio. It would never occur to them to look at BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, or any other foreign news source.

We think very highly of ourselves, and we probably shouldn't, unless we're measuring ourselves against third world countries. A lot of countries, Canada included, beat us on almost every metric that counts, from life expectancy to education to quality of life. We're very close to becoming a third rate banana republic ourselves. It's time we looked in the mirror and accepted that.

[Jo498]

Unfortunately a banana republic with immense economic power (if mainly as a consumer) and nukes... you should not accept it but do something against it.

[Kalbear]

17 hours ago, DMC said:

Yeah, anyone that thinks the average American thinks torture or killing civilians is cool or passe can go fuck themselves.  Grow the fuck up.  You have zero understanding of American political behavior, and are just clearly just whining like Jace or Kal.

 

Seriously, what the fuck did I do here? I made a comment a few days ago which you quoted and agreed with and stayed out of it, and I'm being dragged for it? 

Fucking hell man. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Seriously, what the fuck did I do here? I made a comment a few days ago which you quoted and agreed with and stayed out of it, and I'm being dragged for it? 

Fucking hell man. 

LOL.  Seriously sorry, don't know why I dragged you into it.  Fucking hell man indeed.

[Bonnot OG]

Yea, so if anyone on here. if you can and are comfrotable doing so, arm yourselves. Learn how to defend yourselves. This isn't a fucking joke. These are the words of a fascist given the go a head to his cult base of fascists to be violent if needed.

Trump: If Democrats win the House "they will overturn everything that we've done and they'll do it quickly and violently, and violently, There's violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people."

[DMC]

55 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The problem for DMC, perhaps? is that he's never been anywhere and only goes to bars?

You seem really involved with mischaracterizing what I said without addressing my actual posts.  I'm sorry, I'm just not that into you.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

2 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

We suffer from a delusional belief in our own exceptionalism (which is nothing more than imperialism), not helped by the fact that most Americans have never been out of their little bubbles. They've never traveled abroad--hell, some of them have never even left the neighborhood they grew up in or their home state. They have no perspective, no understanding of the world beyond our borders. They listen to and watch American-centric TV and radio. It would never occur to them to look at BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, or any other foreign news source.

We think very highly of ourselves, and we probably shouldn't, unless we're measuring ourselves against third world countries. A lot of countries, Canada included, beat us on almost every metric that counts, from life expectancy to education to quality of life. We're very close to becoming a third rate banana republic ourselves. It's time we looked in the mirror and accepted that.

While I agree with most of this, I would add two things that I think acknowledging might make people a bit less defensive.

First, none of this is in any way unique to America. Almost every nation or state which attains a position of regional or global dominance becomes characterized by imperialistic tendencies and a nationalistic sense of self-importance. And the other thing that's worth pointing out is just which countries have supported and benefited from American imperialism throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Because really, when we say "American" imperialism, we're talking about a coalition of mostly white countries mostly comprised of North America and Western Europe.

I think the problem with American exceptionalism isn't so much that it exists, but that it's turned toxic in recent decades. I mean, it used to be kind of a progressive principle, in a macro sense. When tens of millions of people were being killed by in Asia and Europe by fascism and autocratic communism, Americans had this kind of chip on their shoulder, a desire to prove to the world that, yes, our way is better. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, as we've become the single dominant global power, there's been this kind of ideological stagnation within the United States where American exceptionalism has come to be characterized by things like power, wealth, and privilege, rather than by opportunity, democracy, and equality.

Instead of shitting on American Exceptionalism, I think progressives need to reclaim it. We need to say that, yes, this county is uniquely exceptional, and the reason we are is because we're not a monolith. We're a nation made up of Africans, and Asians, and Europeans, and Latin Americans, and Pacific Islanders, and people of every kind of background imaginable. Our last President may have been exaggerating when he said that nowhere else in the world is his story possible, but he wasn't wrong in the sentiment. A member of a marginalized class of people attaining the highest political office in the nation is not, if you look at government on a global scale, at all common. It really is almost exceptional in fact. I think we should take that expression back, so that instead of Eisenhower, McCarthyism, and Red Dawn, American Exceptionalism makes us think of Obama, Pussy Hats, and Hamilton.

There is an ideological conflict coming. Authoritarian regimes are cropping up all over the world. Some places, like China, it comes with a wink and a nice Ronald Reagan-ey smile, and other places it rolls in like Joe Pesci in Casino, a strongman under the guise of protecting you. The latter is how we got Trump. This conflict is coming and the first real battle is going to be at the ballot boxes in November.

21 minutes ago, DMC said:

Who drinks cosmos?

I drink 'em while I watch it.

[maarsen]

2 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

American here. I have several Canadian friends, including a few Americans who married Canadians and moved there, so I love to get their perspective on a lot of things.

There's no denying that our foreign policy since WWII has sucked, and caused a lot of death and destruction around the world. It's short-sighted and arrogant. We've laid entire countries to waste and taken their resources. We've enacted regime changes all over the world, and interfered in the economic systems of countless nations (particularly South America) to the never ending detriment of their people. We've perpetrated coups, violated international law and committed human rights abuses (including recently right here at home).

No American should deny this. We talked about Vietnam yesterday. Anybody know why we were there in the first place?

We suffer from a delusional belief in our own exceptionalism (which is nothing more than imperialism), not helped by the fact that most Americans have never been out of their little bubbles. They've never traveled abroad--hell, some of them have never even left the neighborhood they grew up in or their home state. They have no perspective, no understanding of the world beyond our borders. They listen to and watch American-centric TV and radio. It would never occur to them to look at BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, or any other foreign news source.

We think very highly of ourselves, and we probably shouldn't, unless we're measuring ourselves against third world countries. A lot of countries, Canada included, beat us on almost every metric that counts, from life expectancy to education to quality of life. We're very close to becoming a third rate banana republic ourselves. It's time we looked in the mirror and accepted that.

During the 70s, backpacking through Europe was the in thing for young North American adults who either were just starting or finishing school. One thing US kids learned really quickly was to put a Canadian flag on their backpacks and try to pass as Canadian, as Americans were treated with derision. Just saying. 

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Watch what? 

Cosmos 

[S John]

18 minutes ago, maarsen said:

During the 70s, backpacking through Europe was the in thing for young North American adults who either were just starting or finishing school. One thing US kids learned really quickly was to put a Canadian flag on their backpacks and try to pass as Canadian, as Americans were treated with derision. Just saying. 

I really think this is one of those claims that has entered urban legend territory.  Maybe a nugget of anecdotal truth, but trumped up over time.  I have been all over the place and never been treated with derision because I was American and that includes during the Bush era and also recently right after Trump got elected.  And aside from one shady situation in Indonesia (one of my own making) I have never claimed to be anything other than American to anyone.  Mainly because I don't want the motherfuckin' Canadians getting credit for all the times that I've been a polite and gracious guest in other countries.  

One of the more interesting takeaways of travelling for me was how good people in other countries usually are about separating people from their government.  I actually don't think Americans are as good at that because it's easy for Americans to only ever be around other Americans.  I have been worried at times that I'd encounter some negativity abroad, but almost everyone I've ever met, everywhere, seemed to have a pretty firm grasp on the fact that, really, we're all just fucking plebes and we don't get to make the rules.  

[DMC]

9 hours ago, Rippounet said:

So a discussion bloomed over whether the late Senator McCain should be seen as human or not. And somehow, it moved on to how we should see war veterans generally speaking, which is something I personally find slightly more interesting.
From a moral perspective, it's a highly loaded question, because it involves two moral frameworks that are often mutually exclusive.

McCain's death had nothing to do with the discussion I was involved in - even in an indirect manner.  I said my piece about McCain dying in the last thread that's now locked, and I really don't care about the argument that resulted.

9 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Now I wouldn't say this is rare or unique**. But it's really obvious from the outside, when one looks at the way Americans talk of war and war veterans. And it's obvious again when seeing the defensiveness that appears whenever the issue is raised. The problem being, of course, that within the second framework an imperialist power will always be bad, and that no amount of rhetorical (or even real) defense of human rights or democracy will ever compensate for the human misery that it inflicts upon the world. But this is an "inconvenient truth" I think, and it's generally considered pedantic and bad mannered to raise it with Americans.

Oh, gotcha.  That's a tough thing to prove, or demonstrate.  I think the defensiveness you see is fairly reserved compared to if I, say, denigrated the entirety of the French, or whomever.  It's pretty intuitive to defend your own.  The amount of shit the US takes on this board would never be tolerated if it was any other country.  It's a radical hypocrisy - which I don't mind until it verges into our voters.  Then I'll speak up until someone tells me otherwise.

[Liver and Onions]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

During the 70s, backpacking through Europe was the in thing for young North American adults who either were just starting or finishing school. One thing US kids learned really quickly was to put a Canadian flag on their backpacks and try to pass as Canadian, as Americans were treated with derision. Just saying. 

I thought that was more of a thing during the Bush years. I do remember apologizing to European exchange students for the ending of the movie Independence Day while we were all visiting Japan. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

We think very highly of ourselves, and we probably shouldn't, unless we're measuring ourselves against third world countries. A lot of countries, Canada included, beat us on almost every metric that counts, from life expectancy to education to quality of life. We're very close to becoming a third rate banana republic ourselves. It's time we looked in the mirror and accepted that.

And that's just it, we lack the ability as a whole to be introspective. Just look at issues regarding race. Those have been around for centuries and still we haven't fully dealt with them in a meaningful way. It's going to take a lot longer to work out what we've done to the rest of the world particularly in the Western Hemisphere. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Shocker:

Quote

President Trump reportedly floated the possibility of firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to White House aides this month, reigniting speculation over Sessions' future in the Trump administration.

Three administration sources told The Washington Post on Tuesday that Trump has raised the issue again within the past month amid his growing tensions with his attorney general.

The discussion, which the president reportedly had with aides and members of his legal team, ended with his attorneys again convincing Trump to hold off on firing Sessions until the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller is completed.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/404088-trump-privately-revived-the-idea-of-firing-sessions-this-month

I'm willing to bet that if Don Jr' gets indicted, which has been recently rumored, that Sessions will get fired immediately. Thank god Trump is so spineless. The character he played on T.V. would have already fired and arrested everyone involved with the investigation. 

 

Been wondering for a while, we know Trump will throw any of his staffers under the bus to save himself, but would he actually do it to his own kids? I highly doubt he'd do it to Ivanka, but the boys? Maybe....

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

Been wondering for a while, we know Trump will throw any of his staffers under the bus to save himself, but would he actually do it to his own kids? I highly doubt he'd do it to Ivanka, but the boys? Maybe....

He will go nuclear when the investigation begins going after his family.   Would he be willing to sell out his kids?  I don't know.  I suspect yes.

Anyway, on Sessions, he's gonna get fired after the midterms no matter the result.  It's been long enough to look reasonable, and frankly AG's usually don't last too long anyway.  What affect that will have on Mueller, we'll see, but Trump seems resigned to the fact he'll make a report.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

1 hour ago, Liver and Onions said:

I thought that was more of a thing during the Bush years. I do remember apologizing to European exchange students for the ending of the movie Independence Day while we were all visiting Japan. 

This doesn't strike you as a little ridiculous? Christ, Japan was colonizing people decades after most Europeans countries acknowledged how barbaric that part of their history was. As a state they have yet to acknowledge the scope and horror of the war crimes their army committed Southeastern Asia and the Philippines during the 20th century. But while there you feel the need to apologize for a silly movie? Can we have a little bit of perspective here?

[Darth Richard II]

OK Playing catch up here, but um, when did this turn into a sexism discussion? McCain was a sexists dbag in that regards sure but I feel like maybe i Missed a post somewhere?