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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Global Terrorism Thread this way folks.[1]
X3 Terrorist attacks don't give Trump votes, there's no actual evidence of that theory being real.
edited 14th Jul '16 5:00:59 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI honestly can't imagine a single VP pick that Trump could make that I wouldn't call tainted with a version of "Original Sin".
"Trump picks Bernie Sanders as his VP!"
Great, that still means TRUMP AS POTUS.
Unless Trump kicks it, or is somehow proven to do something so heinous that it's Nixonian in scale, we still have TRUMP AS POTUS.
Well, hopefully if we get President Trump, the two parties will pull their shit together and find something to impeach him over. Unfortunately, that still leaves us with President Pence, who is still a climate change denier, plus he's pro-life and anti-gay marriage, two things that Trump rarely talks about, and which many (myself included) think he's telling boldfaced lies about his actual position on.
Of course, the fact that Pence has actual experience in governing still makes him infinitely better than Trump.
edited 14th Jul '16 5:06:07 PM by CaptainCapsase
Impeachment wouldn't do much, you'd have to convict him of a Felony with sufficient (de)merit to remove him from office once found guilty.
Which, unfortunately, means finding something serious. The fact that he'd have done that serious thing would in and of itself be a travesty.
When the 20th Amendment comes into play, we're already nipple deep in poo-poo lake.
Edited to fix my stupid. Unfortunately stupid is unfixable.
edited 14th Jul '16 5:09:15 PM by OblongReality
@ the person who suggested laughter: What's there to laugh about? Human misery is spread all across the globe and there is a non-negligible chance that two evil, know-nothing bigots are the president and vice president of the United States come November. I don't know what else to do but panic.
@ Silas: I hope you're right. I've been cutting down on doomsaying, but still...
Because panic does nothing good. Panic is always your enemy.
If you don't want someone in charge of a country, educate yourself and others as to why it'd be a bad plan for them to be in charge. Take part in the democratic process. If you don't live in that country, you can still speak to those who do and help them understand why the negatives outweigh the positives.
If it happens anyway? Laugh. It helps reduce the fear and panic response inherent to human beings, and once you're done laughing, go back to educating yourself and others. More communication, not less, is always the best answer when dealing with politics.
@The Handle (and tangentially Ambar)- Wanted to clarify something from my post. When I commented that it was a mistake to not intervene in Rwanda, I didn't mean it in the sense of denying responsibility.
What I meant to get across is that it was a moral decision to intervene in Serbia and an immoral one not to Rwanda. In both cases, there was undoubtedly some calculation of national interest that played into the decision to intervene/not intervene, but there was also the moral reaction against genocide (which was still a factor in terms of Rwanda although it unfortunately wasn't enough), and in the case of the lack of action in Rwanda, getting "burned" in Somalia and yes, probably racism too.
But the thing is, just as people have a lot of different considerations, so too do politicians (because they too are people- which shouldn't be a controversial statement). Treating the actions of decision-makers as entirely based on rational self-interest presents them depending on the circumstances as worse or better than they actually are.
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Yep, Boris Johnson is now our Forign Secretary. My joke is that it's so that people don't try and flee the UK, as doing so would put them in Boris' domain. To drag up back on topic, he's the guy who said Obama hated the UK due to being half Kenyan and the British Empire's history with Kenya.
edited 14th Jul '16 6:01:14 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
That makes about as much sense as painting me as hating the British due to my being partly of Irish ancestry. When in truth, I don't know diddly-squat about Ireland, and I have just as much English, Scots, and German heritage.
edited 14th Jul '16 6:13:21 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.EDIT: Now there's a sad attempt at making the Greens seem more important
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@Antiteilchen
There's no such thing as a foolproof method. And almost any deployment of violence that isn't followed up by some sort of on-the-ground effort at helping to restructure, will fail in the long run.
That being said deploying overwhelming force against a target that is powerless to hit back tends to have an effect, at least short term. People who are totally defenseless and who are aware that it is their current leader that is the cause of them being targeted will often—not always, but often—respond by removing that leader. This goes double if that leader's hold on power is relatively shaky, or if there are other grievances the populace already has with the leadership.
I'd also note that the reason why the Blitz didn't work—since you referenced it as an example of this strategy failing—is because the British could hit back. The RAF was a largely modern, well-trained, professional air force and was able to down a lot of the bombers. Whenever the British saw the wreckage from one of those bombers, or the statistics for bombers down printed in the papers they knew they weren't helpless. In contrast, the Serbian air force might as well have not been there against NATO, which amplified the feelings of helplessness on the ground, and eventually caused the results that were wanted.
@Sci-Fi Slasher
Amazingly I never said all of Sanders' voters were armchair warriors. I said a good portion of them were, which means that your one vote is meaningless to my overall point. I didn't say that "no one voted for Sanders" (which would be an inane claim given he got 45% of the vote). I didn't say "Sci-Fi Slasher didn't vote for Sanders" which would explain you needing to point out you did (you and a number of others in this thread alone voted for him less I miss my guess). I said a sizeable portion of his most diehard online supporters didn't vote for him, and used that to make a larger point about the Internet activist community (this started with a discussion of the defunct Kony 2012 movement, remember?) and how talk online, doesn't always—if ever—translate into real action. Handle then tried to defend Sanders' campaign results at which point I noted that his campaign was nothing to write home about.
Short version—I tangentially brought up Sanders while making a point about the success, or lack thereof, of a four year old Internet movement, so as to better examine both within a larger context. Hardly beating a dead horse—or any sort of horse for that matter.
I didn't tar the entire Sanders fanbase. That you think I did might say some things about your view of the world. Many of the people who were the most rabid about Sanders online, did not turn out to support him at the primaries and caucuses. That is a statistical, polled upon reality. That doesn't mean that nobody voted for him (again that would be an utterly inane thing to say), or that everyone who voted for him or supported him is a spineless keyboard warrior who couldn't back up their support in the real world. It means that a not-insignificant portion of his fans met that description, and that his campaign suffered for it. Just as many other Internet movements did.
A shill is almost by definition paid. The accusation carries with it connotations of and associations with bribery. It's also of course just an utterly inane and insulting thing to say. The comparison to Solipist Owl—whose account did literally nothing but bash Clinton in this one thread—was both hyperbolic and even more insulting (given I'm a troper in good standing active across numerous forums and pages). Seriously, if your reaction to the statement that "a not-insignificant portion of the online Sanders fans didn't vote for him" is to start screaming about people being Clinton shills, you might want to check your sense of offense. And your sense of etiquette while you're at it.
@Silas
I could understand making Boris Johnson ambassador, since that would get him out of the country and away from everyone else. Foreign secretary though? That just seems, well, insane. Is to really give a final "screw you" to the EU you guys are leaving?
edited 14th Jul '16 6:24:30 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
It just feels morally rempugnant to use a strategy, that only works on people who are already agreeing with you to some degree. I mean, the only populace who would "deserve" (ignoring children, dissidents etc.) to be targeted are the one's it doesn't work on.
Even though it works, I can't understand why you would condone targeting civilians. That's almost cartoonishly evil.
As Spock once said, "I was not attempting to evaluate the moral implications of it."
If you can think of a better way — one that actually works — we're all ears. Otherwise, Combat Pragmatism is the SOP.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.

@I Love Dogs
I recommend laughter. Most other reactions tend to be negatively self-reinforcing.