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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
In Vietnam it's hard to say that we lost purely because of political will. The Viet Cong were basically wiped out after the Tet Offensive and we were hammering North Vietnam pretty hard with bombs. The only step we didn't take was a land invasion of North Vietnam. The failure in Vietnam was in building a resilient South Vietnam that could stand on its own feet for more than 2 years after we pulled out. Any nation that remotely had its shit together should have been able to withstand a badly-battered NVA. It was a failure of alliance work.
Define "collapsed". Split into two (or more) parties?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The folk who actually aren't bigots kind of had their eyes opened this election and I could see them abandoning the GOP to try and make some more room in the democrat tent.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?![]()
And South Vietnam had this attitude "U.S. sempai will save us," and Nguyen Van Thieu was an awful president.
All that suggests is that Democrats might adopt the corporatist, centrist position, which would leave no real room for side parties — the left and right would have too little in common to form the necessary coalition to unseat the middle folks. So the only reasonable outcome there is a de-facto one party system.
Of course, that isn't going to happen, because the idea of "Democrats left" and "Republicans right" is too deeply ingrained into our social consciousness. Even if the parties are only cosmetically different, this notion will persist. It's identity politics for most people, not issues politics.
edited 19th Jul '16 8:15:31 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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The GOP's position is rapidly becoming untenable due to demographics changes, as attempts to reform the party into something compatible with the modern era have been met with fierce resistance from their base, in spite of the party boss's efforts to remain relevant.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-2016/
edited 19th Jul '16 8:21:17 AM by CaptainCapsase
Yes, but there is no comparable party to take over the vacuum on the left. We're likely to see an increasingly fringe Republican Party and a Democratic Party that pushes towards the left (not the right) as their opponents lose political viability.
Authoritarianism is enabled by voter apathy. If Republicans crash and burn and there's only one viable governing party, then the degree of disaffectation with the status quo will determine the volume of any contradictory voices.
But that's not where we stand now. The GOP may be turning from a governing party to an insurgent party at the national level, but it still has a commanding lead in state politics and has the power to keep making things miserable for a huge number of people for a long time.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
I'd argue that authoritarianism tends to crowd out the left-right axis as authoritarian tendencies increase; hence the observed similarities between self proclaimed extreme left and extreme right governments; despite the diametrically opposite rhetoric, in terms of policy they tend to be quite similar. (the horseshoe effect)
edited 19th Jul '16 8:34:41 AM by CaptainCapsase
Potentially, but I've also heard the other way around (that far-right totalitarian regimes are just communism by another name). I'd argue that extreme forms of government are alike for the simple reason that extremist ideologies (Anarchism, Anarcho-Capitalism, Fascism, Communism) tend to be The Unfettered which greatly shapes how they behave in practice.
That's crazy talk, everyone knows Jesus was a white guy. And American. Also, he was pro-gun.
Let's not, because Trump is talking about it like she wrote it herself.
""There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech," Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, said Tuesday morning in a CNN interview. "Certainly, there's no feeling on her part that she did it," he said. "What she did was use words that are common words.""
God, there was a time I would've agreed with that. One of my favorite military quotes comes from General Sherman from the American Civil War. "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
Which I'm sure is exactly the direction these guys are coming from. Like, I can see the logic train. "If we'd just hit Iraq full-force with everything we had, we could have curbstomped them into submission in a week, laid a U.S. flag over our new territory, and rode home with the spoils of war!"
As a Republican and a patriot, I spent years arguing those very same ideals, framed through the narrative that we have to look out for America first. One of the right's favorite self-delusions about the Iraq War is that the reason our economy went to shit was Democrats crippling our ability to just hit 'em hard and win big for America. U.S.A! U.S.A! HOORAH!
But those rules of engagement exist for a reason. We can't have our soldiers gunning down civilians in the streets, pulling women out of their homes and raping them, or any of the myriad of war crimes that are already being committed even with the rules in place. It's a select minority responsible, #NotAllSoldiers and everything, but encouraging this behavior can only make that number increase when we're supposed to be trying to make it go down.
War IS cruelty. General Sherman was right about that, at least. No matter how we try to pretty it up, war is cruel, it is harsh, it is a brutal nightmare from which many will never awaken. But that cruelty should never extend to civilians. They're just trying to live day by day. They never asked to be part of it.
edited 19th Jul '16 8:40:07 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.https://charlierose.com/episodes/28464?autoplay=true
Everyone watch this interview with Hilldawg.
Six minutes in and she's already on fire.
New Survey coming this weekend!

As if the ROE aren't already hilariously liberal.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?