The General US Politics Thread

If anything, diversity helped him since it made the white people so riled up that they'd gladly latch onto anyone who promises to protect their privilege and knock all those "uppity" others down a peg. Promising to undo everything the only non-white president ever did is a huge bonus to his crowd. Even the parts that weren't open neo-Nazis.

The word "multiculturalism" is kind of tendentious in America. Even liberals like Kennedy propagandist Arthur Schlesinger was critical of it.

Officially, America is supposed to take no attitude for or against culture. And exactly what American society is hard for people to accept or define. The critic Harold Bloom wrote a book called "The American Religion" where he mentioned how Americans always so themselves as different, as apart from Europe, and that sense of independence makes American communities quite fragile. American Christianity is different from European Christianity, American Protestantism is different as is American Catholicism.

But culturally how can America not be multi-cultural. I mean the original Boston Tea Part, unlike the paid-and-bought-for Kochheads, wore Native American dress, the Bald Eagle was the symbol of the Iroquois, and the Great Seal of the United States is a Masonic Pyramid complete with the All-Seeing Eye, which isn't any conspiracy theory just basic The Enlightenment symbols. And musically, everything was made by African-Americans...blues/jazz/ragtime/country/rock/soul/rap. Hollywood was more or less a haven for immigrants and other rejects who couldn't get regular work or admissions into proper colleges.

Trump indicates he will not take the daily intelligence briefing

Other World Powers are going to milk this dumbass' incompetence for all its worth.

That's neo-monarchy right there...Kings Robert Baratheon or Aegon Unworthy who didn't attend small council meetings in ASOIAF, and decided he'll slack of instead, So its basically up to Mike Pence or Maester Pycelle to do the boring stuff.

And you know who slacked off Intelligence reports...Dubya Bush, and that led to 9/11.

So how likely is a war with Iran at this point?

I think we'll know for certain within a year.

Very, very unlikely. Russia and Iran are besties...and if it is the case that Russia is blackmailing Trump and the GOP and that it has puppets like Exxon-guy as State-Sec, and Michael Flynn of Russia Today...then John Bolton can froth at his mouth all he wants, it won't be happening.

I mean from the global situation, Russia making the US Presidency its compliant little cyka is probably good for the geopolitical situation. Domestically, and for the sake of liberal governments however, it's an awful situation, but one they brought about themselves with the NATO Expansion and encouraging that coup d'etat in Ukraine.

I mean anyone who knows anything about geography knows that attacking Iran is bananas...attack the only non-Israel stable state in the Middle East with sound institutions for no reason than revanchism for the Hostage Crisis? Attacking Saddam was crazy enough already, so crazy they had to create the whole WMD thing which it wasn't the CIA presenting intelligence as the Trumpists are spinning...it was the Bush administrating misusing and exaggerating evidence, and which some parts of the CIA went along with.

And isn't Russia interested in selling them more modern equipment? So if they attack a more well equipped force than the embarrassment that was the Iraqi Army at the time...

Welp.

If they do get shored up with S-300 systems you can kiss any sort of an easy war goodbye. There's no way to get through those kind of defenses without taking serious losses.

The problem is whether or not Trump is smart enough to know that.

Isn't that what stealth bombers are for?

Now I'm not trying to downplay the disaster that an Iranian war would be, but I'm sure they have some contingencies to take out S-400s, let alone a generation older SAM sites with minimum losses.

edited 11th Dec '16 10:52:21 AM by Jasaiga

We do have plans on how to get through. All of them involve taking huge losses.

There's just no real way around it, we haven't fought anyone even remotely at our tech level in decades. People have forgotten that in a war against a roughly equal opponent you will come out with 30+% losses and that's considered a strong victory.

edited 11th Dec '16 10:56:29 AM by LeGarcon

That sort of thing has me concerned that Trump will think it's easier to just nuke them and be done with it.

If given the choice, I'd rather Trump invade Iran several times over than him nuking it.

Nuke is not a easy choice, even someone as trump can see that, I bet he will threating Iran and Russia and they just wont give a crap about it.

At this point I wouldn't put it past Trump to push us into a war with Iran, and then promptly refuse to believe that we are actually at war with Iran even after thousands of Americans have lost their lives.

It makes no sense and probably won't happen, but the fact I can't conclusively rule out this scenario terrifies me on a very fundamental level.

Unilaterally nuking Iran will more or less mark United States of American an Outlaw nation, the kind of action that the other countriesn on the UNSC will use to revoke their veto and diplomatically speaking, France and China will just cut off all ties.

It will more or less end United Nations since that's the kind of failure it was put on earth to prevent, and it will more or less start the nuclear arms race all over again, with China and Russia, and maybe India spreading its wings to other nations to sell them capabilities to protect them from Evil America.

America would be the only nation to have nuked nations...the first time was kind of lawyered out in a weasel-ish way of the second world war and imperial Japan's threats. But where is the justification for doing this to a peaceful nation like Iran. And yes...Iran IS a peaceful nation by global standards. Far more so than USA. They did evil stuff like sending hitmen to whack people close to The Satanic Verses but even that pales compared to Guantanamo Bay, the Drone Strikes, to Rendition, to everything.

Of course, if Trump wants to scratch his war itch, he might invade and take out Cuba. I doubt Russia and other countries will start a second missile crisis for that. I mean USA and Trump could say, Cuba is like Russia's Crimea, and China's Taiwan...and the Russians and Chinese will shrug and say to the Cubans "Sucks to be you, hernano". I don't want it to happen, I hope it doesn't happen but I think it can happen.

"My war has had the lowest casualties, if you ignore the thousands of FAKE KI As the crooked, liberal media lies about. Sad!"

If Trump tried to nuke Iran, I'm pretty sure the Joint Chiefs would step in.

edited 11th Dec '16 11:31:53 AM by Rationalinsanity

It depends on whether he does it using executive action or not. There's a lot that Obama was able to order the military to do, but to declare an actual, official war declares a vote of Congress. As for ordering a nuke, I'm pretty sure there's steps that are required to be gone through so even if he does have a fit of temper I think people will force him to think; pretty sure that even the assholes he's surrounded himself with don't want to just start bombing people for little to no reason.

So yeah, I think he could order some military action on Iran and be technically correct if he says we're not at war.

Come to think of it, the 2016 election might now be considered the greatest coup performed by Russian intelligence since the Cambridge Five, where the several high-ranking figures of the British SIS were literally Soviet double-agents for years.

It took Kim Philby and his Soviet handlers decades for him to rise up to the top of the British intelligence. Imagine if Trump . . .

The Soviets had successes in America, like Robert Hanssen, the FBI guy...hmmm.

Of course, the thing is we know of Russian subversion more than we do about American intelligence activities. The files of the Old USSR were revealed when the cold war ended...but most of the evil stuff CIA was involved in, remain behind lock and key.

At this point, im going with the most sensible explanation for all this:

HYDRA did it.

Yes, that is my answer to everything happening so far, it make as much sense as Trump being president.

Given how Hydra's whole thing is stirring up needless conflict to dupe the masses into giving away their rights that's not entirely inaccurate. Unfortunately they're fictional. Trump is just an idiot.

The closer parallel is that autocratic and illiberal powers like China and Russia will try to play up and play on democracy's flaws to discredit it (and "look at the idiot they just elected" is in fact part of the rhetoric).

Again, tell me this

Doesn't seem like the rhetoric of an average Trump "rally".

I still say Trump's Sheila Brovlofski (The red-haired woman doing most of the singing), who did this because who her kids repeated some foul language they heard in an R-rated movie they snuck into, going so far as to start a war with Canada to get rid of their sense of humor and execute the offending film's two main stars point-blank, or on the best days Randy Marsh: