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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The GOP has a new agenda web site
. I am sort of afraid of what kind of nonsense it will most likely contain.
@mantle: The US electoral system does not offer a free choice, so that's more or less an academic question.
Anyway, I feel this whole discussion is more or less an argument about semantics; I disagree with the notion that necessity makes an action (morally) right; it is perhaps the correct choice, and isn't morally wrong, but it's not something that should be celebrated.
edited 6th Jun '16 8:15:56 AM by CaptainCapsase
Who's celebrating it? We're just not agreeing with you that all politicians are monsters.
@Captain Caspase
For Carter's so-called complicity in East Timor to be deliberate would fly against who he was, not as a person—we'll leave that out—but as a president. Carter cut aid to Pinochet. He cut aid to The Process. He cut aid to Stroessner. He cut aid to Somoza. He did what he could to get Operation: Condor shut down. That these nations had previously been strong US allies was not something he took into consideration. That many of the people in his own administration wanted support for them to continue was something he actively fought against. He wanted to dissociate the USA from states with human rights records like that, and that was what he proceeded to do.
So, for Carter to continue support for Indonesia knowing the full details of what was going on in East Timor would be out of character for his foreign policy. "They're helping us fight Communism" is not an argument that typically went anywhere with Carter, as evidenced by him telling Pinochet et al where to get off. If Carter has all the information, he has little reason to back Indonesia.
The CIA, conversely, had reasons to mislead him. As an institution the agency was wedded to containment theory. It viewed most of those Latin American dictatorships that Carter was distancing himself from as bulwarks against Communism. For them to decided to protect their investment in Indonesia by lying to Carter—or at least withholding information—is entirely in-character for the agency as an institution suffused on every level with anti-Communist paranoia.
Carter himself says he was given bad information on Indonesia and East Timor. If this is the case then he's not only not guilty of deliberate malice, but your accusation of negligence falls flat too. You don't get prosecuted for acting on what you had every reason to believe was accurate information, and the worst of the CIA's blunders and lies during the Cold War only came to light after the Soviet Union fell.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:21:18 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Aye. It is a pretty serious bit of First World privilege to make that claim. Most people liking having the conveniences that government provides, like consumer safety, police, and welfare, to name a few.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Article on the newest Jon Oliver bit
. Thought people might enjoy it.
edited 6th Jun '16 8:50:32 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
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I'm not quite arguing all politicians are corrupt per say, rather that they exist as part of an institution that makes it more or less impossible to avoid being faced with a choice where all outcomes lead to significant suffering, and at that point, I don't think you can really call yourself a good person. You aren't really a bad person either though, and monster was definitely overstating things.
@Ambar: Alright then, I'll concede that Carter did what he could to restrain the worst examples of American foreign policy, and for that, I'll applaud him. But the fact that Carter ended up being absolutely crushed by Reagan in the subsequent election is a strong case for him being the exception that proves the rule; he tried to do the right thing, and look where it got him.
edited 6th Jun '16 8:58:00 AM by CaptainCapsase
It's also becoming increasingly apparent that this is more of a disagreement about semantics than anything else. In political news not related to the impending presidential elections...
Uhhh...
So how about that TPP? I'm not against free trade on principle, but many of the provisions put into these agreements are rather questionable.
"But the fact that Carter ended up being absolutely crushed by Reagan in the subsequent election is a strong case for him being the exception that proves the rule; he tried to do the right thing, and look where it got him."
That's a little reductionist. Carter suffered as much from bad luck as he did from being too nice, plus he had to endure a bad economy and a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy who, in an act of what can only be described as megalomaniacal stupidity (and I'm saying this as a Massachusetts man and a fan of Ted Kennedy), decided that splintering the base was a great idea. You also can't rule out Republican collusion with the Iranian government, judging from the timing of the release of the embassy hostages. But, had the American public given him a chance, he would be remembered differently, but the American public, like all people everywhere, chose what looked good, instead.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'm not quite arguing all politicians are corrupt per say, rather that they exist as part of an institution that makes it more or less impossible to avoid being faced with a choice where all outcomes lead to significant suffering, and at that point, I don't think you can really call yourself a good person. You aren't really a bad person either though, and monster was definitely overstating things
I think everyone can agree there are flaws in government. The issue is, as Fighteer said, a lot of the complaints do come from a position of First World privilege. And every nation state with a presence on the world stage and internal policy will, by definition, have choices that can result in suffering to a degree. I don't think that's avoidable. I don't quite think it's fair to automatically decide people who join that system, many who fight to make things better and safeguard the rights of others, are automatically not good people because they have to work within frameworks long since established.
Moreover, there is no "fix" to the system, revolutionary or otherwise. Governance is about making decisions that trade off harm to some for harm to others. It's literally unavoidable. If you decide that anyone having once made such a decision is "corrupt" and no longer fit to govern, you abandon the concept of governance in its entirety. It's a Pollyanna-ish level of willful ignorance.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There are gradations of wrongness. For example, Idi Amin was worse than Jimmy Carter. Once you accept that gradations are possible, then you bear the responsibility of picking people to govern who do the "least harm", by whatever criteria you choose to designate. To declare them all equally complicit in wrongdoing is to throw up your hands and abandon your responsibility as a citizen.
It's just fortunate that you live in a country where you have the luxury of letting other people vote for your leaders, without worrying too much about whether it'll affect your personal security.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:44:18 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a 'public service'.
And honestly, this is not a country that is in any shape for a revolution. Most people are simply not interested in that.
There are ways built into the system to enact change. It might be difficult to do, but it's possible. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why this year is the one we absolutely need a full on uprising...at a time when the pendulum has been swinging left and we are in a much better place than we were eight years ago. There is a great deal we still need to fix, but that's an argument for keeping down the right path and continuing to push for the right things, not deciding everything is corrupt and blowing it up.
One of my greatest criticisms of the Sanders campaign is that listening to him speak, you'd A. think Bush was still President, and B. imagine that Republican ads are going to be quoting him gleefully come campaign season.
EDIT: Reading Holder's statement: Chicago (CNN)Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a "public service" by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents.
Don't find much objectionable about this statement. I'm no Snowden fan, but the debate's been a good thing to have. I think he gets too much slack for releasing things that had zero to do with his stated goal and were unequivocally not unconstituional or against the law whatsoever. That's the kind of thing you face penalties over.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:46:47 AM by Lightysnake
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That's basically what I'm saying; 'There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
edited 6th Jun '16 9:45:37 AM by CaptainCapsase
No, there are mostly just people. Some are better than others, but most are trying to do a job as well as they can that's frequently thankless and carries with it an overwhelming burden of responsibility. You want those people, not the ones who gleefully abandon responsibility to do whatever crazy thing floats through the ether into their brains.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:46:55 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
It's easy to lump these guys together into one giant mass. When you start examining them as people this becomes harder. Can you say this about people like Russ Feingold? Henry Waxman? Elijah Cummings? John Lewis, a genuine living hero?
This also promotes losing sight of the big picture, and the serious, tangible differences between 'the sides' that have a capacity to affect peoples' lives. Just ask women living in red states who might require an abortion (or have birth control covered by healthcare) how that can work out.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:49:02 AM by Lightysnake
You are certainly not offering anything practical as a solution. Idealism is great, but your ideas have to touch on reality at some point to be of any use.
edited 6th Jun '16 9:54:53 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Do you mean equally horrible consequences for all courses of action? Because if not, how a leader decides which consequences are more acceptable than others tells you about them. All courses of action having equally (or even similarly) horrible consequences is generally a hell of an assumption.
edited 6th Jun '16 12:37:07 AM by Ghostninja109