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    Right Wing Non-Savages

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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:36 am

    It didn´t feel like one. Again, I like the cut of your jib and consider you a buddy even when we disagree. Right Wing Non-Savages - Page 4 647736119
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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Oct 23, 2019 3:49 pm

    In fact, that post was absolutely necessary and I honestly can't thank you enough for making it.
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    Post by Duff... Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:05 pm

    Ned Braden wrote:
    ned wrote:something about moral calculus

    yeah...  you aren't wrong. I fully admit that I'm on some Jebediah Springfield shit, but if I didn't have this belief to cling to I'd probably want to off myself even more than I do. Infantile boyscout mentality defines us at our best...   if at all...  but it's something I wish we'd aspire to.

    Ned, you're right about this stuff, and I've long rolled my eyes at the (what tends to be leftist) attitude that America has no place criticizing the human rights record of other countries, or that criticism of our own country that cites our values or beliefs or traditions is inherently hypocritical, largely for the reasons given in that Slate article, and also because it gives fascists here and abroad breathing room to do whatever they want. We absolutely should keep in the front of our minds the ways we as a country have fallen short of our values, but not so prominently that we lose sight of those values or stop fighting for them.
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    Post by WP64 Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:35 am

    Ned Braden wrote:It didn´t feel like one.
    Okay, I'm glad. I obviously consider you to be a friend as well. I think I am just ultra-paranoid now because I've managed to even offend the mild-mannered Duff, which I'll try not to do again by responding to what he just said:

    Duff... wrote:Ned, you're right about this stuff, and I've long rolled my eyes at the (what tends to be leftist) attitude that America has no place criticizing the human rights record of other countries, or that criticism of our own country that cites our values or beliefs or traditions is inherently hypocritical... because it gives fascists here and abroad breathing room to do whatever they want.
    I think the intention of the left isn't just to scream hypocrisy, but to really ask questions about the modus operandi of American military power. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the entire public-facing apparatuses of the American military-industrial complex intentionally deceived the American public over the actual intentions of the most costly military decision and invasion of my lifetime. Honestly, I don't think the consequences and lessons of that ongoing episode of global history have been even partially absorbed by the American public either.

    I take your point, though. It might be true that the absence, or at the very least erosion, of "American ideals" might enable foreign dictators to brutally crackdown on civilian populations without any repercussion. First, that obviously isn't the objective of the critique and if it is an unintended consequence the fault doesn't like with us, but with the people who are tarnished those liberal-democratic values in the first place (which is what, I think, the Slate article does a good job of reinforcing).

    My basic political point is that I don't think this moment should make us feel nostalgic for the previously existing world order. First, because that order has not been radically altered by the mere presence of Donald Trump. In fact, his Administration has a very tense relationship with most of these bureaucratic agencies (major figures within the CIA, FBI, and the U.S. military have all publicly criticized him and his actions). The global role and function of these institutions are going to outlast the temporary disruption of the Trump Presidency. With that in mind, I think it is really important to ask critical questions about the actual purpose of our global military presence and role, which is not at all benevolent or altruistic (just ask the Palestinians in the West Bank, or the Arab-Palestinian minority living in Israel).

    We shouldn't view institutions as politically neutral, basically. That is the error of the Obama Presidency. By the end of his eight years, he was describing himself, in celebratory terms, as an "institutionalist." The problem is that political power and decision-making has shaped these institutions and unless we seriously consider and reckon with that reality, they will continue to perpetuate the same destructive logic of the post-War American Empire and not the emancipatory and anti-colonial logic that is actually at the heart of, and still exists within the documented history and Constitution of, the American Republic.
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    Post by Duff... Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:15 pm

    I don't have a problem with questioning the military or our diplomatic positions, and we probably agree on a lot as it pertains to those things. I don't really think "the boy scouts" are really blind to the mistakes and outright terrible things the country has done in the world and domestically, either; McRaven here himself qualified his statement, suggesting he's well aware there are valid points of contention.

    It's just the entire context of this particular discussion is about how Trump and his cronies are bad, not just in ways that speak to more liberal minded people, but in anyone who believes in the ideals of liberty and justice and wants our country to live up to those ideals. Insisting this country never stood for those things (which, frankly, is equally false as "the boy scout ideal") undercuts a pretty strong appeal, one that has been effective in many of the moral crises our nation has faced. There's been a distance between our ideals and our actions since the beginning, but the ideals still matter.
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    Post by WP64 Sat Oct 26, 2019 9:27 am

    Duff... wrote:It's just the entire context of this particular discussion is about how Trump and his cronies are bad
    Is that the context? It isn't that I disagree with you, I just think that focusing solely on this Administration is pretty myopic. Like I said, our hegemonic role on the world stage is going to endure beyond the Trump Presidency. Also, we have seen that his Administration has very little clout amongst senior officials in the military, so who exactly are these cronies?


    Duff... wrote:Insisting this country never stood for those things (which, frankly, is equally false as "the boy scout ideal") undercuts a pretty strong appeal, one that has been effective in many of the moral crises our nation has faced. There's been a distance between our ideals and our actions since the beginning, but the ideals still matter.
    Okay, but what if these appeals and national ideologies ("we are the good guys") actually do more to just mask the distance you are talking about? Because I think that's definitely the case. These bullshit mantras and totally ahistorical self-identity that we have fabricated just legitimizes the often internationally-recognized criminal activity of the United States (and also Israeli) military. Again, just read any serious, scholarly, peer-reviewed article about the Israeli occupation and the treatment of Palestinians (especially refugees), which liberals in America have enabled and celebrated for literally generations now, and then lecture me about how effective these ideals are in confronting moral crises.
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    Post by Duff... Sat Oct 26, 2019 11:04 pm

    WP64 wrote:
    Duff... wrote:It's just the entire context of this particular discussion is about how Trump and his cronies are bad
    Is that the context?

    It's what we're talking about right now, yes.

    WP64 wrote:
    Also, we have seen that his Administration has very little clout amongst senior officials in the military, so who exactly are these cronies?

    I mean, he runs the armed forces. Also, there's the state department, department of justice, homeland security... There's a lot of stuff he's doing that is testing the entire checks and balances system as well as the entire post-WWII world order (in not good ways).


    WP64 wrote:
    Okay, but what if these appeals and national ideologies ("we are the good guys") actually do more to just mask the distance you are talking about? Because I think that's definitely the case.

    Obviously it can. That's not what's happening right here.

    WP64 wrote:
    These bullshit mantras and totally ahistorical self-identity that we have fabricated just legitimizes the often internationally-recognized criminal activity of the United States (and also Israeli) military. Again, just read any serious, scholarly, peer-reviewed article about the Israeli occupation and the treatment of Palestinians (especially refugees), which liberals in America have enabled and celebrated for literally generations now, and then lecture me about how effective these ideals are in confronting moral crises.

    And this is kind of another thing. Certainly the US is too cozy with Israel, in ways that it often feels like we are subordinate to them, like loyalty to the US is secondary to loyalty to Israel. But here you are yourself assuming that american policy is israeli policy. That what Israel does is what the US does. And it's not, and shouldn't be, and we need to talk about these things as if the two nations are not axiomatically forever tied.


    Last edited by Duff... on Mon Oct 28, 2019 3:06 pm; edited 2 times in total
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    Post by WP64 Sun Oct 27, 2019 7:27 am

    Duff... wrote:Obviously it can. That's not what's happening right here.
    But since this does happen all of the time, we should stop propagating these myths. It has been demonstrated over and over that these narratives are just used by people in positions of power to gain the consent of large percentages of the American public to slaughter innocent civilians abroad. So let's just stop.

    Duff... wrote:And this is kind of another thing. Certainly the US is too cozy with Israel, in ways that it often feels like we are subordinate to them, like loyalty to the US is secondary to loyalty to Israel. But here you are yourself assuming that american policy is israeli policy. That what Israel does is what the US does. And it's not, and shouldn't be, and we need to talk about these things as if the two nations are not axiomatically forever tied.
    Yes and no. It's pretty obvious at this point that the tail is wagging the dog. It felt significant that Obama, as a sitting President, was at least acknowledging the rights of Palestinians and was actually critical of Netanyahu's government. But literally all that those criticisms amounted to were some harsh stares directed at Netanyahu from Obama. The billions of dollars that we provide the Israeli military, which enables their policy of occupation, dispossession, and formal apartheid, was never called into serious question. Moreover, we continually vetoed every single goddamn internationally agreed upon resolution about the Palestinians freedom of movement and the right of return for refugees displaced by the 1967 war and subsequent conflicts. The only cowardly exception from that administration, even after the Republican opposition literally invited Netanyahu into Congress to directly criticize our President, was to not veto one of those resolutions at the very end of the Obama administration, which was, at that point, a purely symbolic and feckless gesture. So yes, American citizens don't vote for representatives in the Israeli Knesset, but we probably should have political representation in their country considering the fact that we single-handedly enable the existence of their Zionist, illiberal, ethno-State.

    And anyways, it isn't just Israel. We also have horrible alliances with authoritarian and far-right regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to name only two other examples. Moreover, the United States and other powerful Western European countries have created global financial institutions -- the IMF and World Bank -- to forcefully subsume developing countries into endless debt as a precondition for their access to globalized markets of exchange, which is a soft policy of domination and exploitation that is enabled by our global military presence.
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    Post by Duff... Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:58 pm

    WP64 wrote:
    Duff... wrote:Obviously it can. That's not what's happening right here.
    It has been demonstrated over and over that these narratives are just used by people in positions of power to gain the consent of large percentages of the American public to slaughter innocent civilians abroad. So let's just stop.

    And they've been used to get americans to do moral things they probably wouldn't have and to make other countries (and our country) be less terrible. So let's not.
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    Post by WP64 Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:46 am

    That's extremely vague.
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    Post by undo Thu Aug 06, 2020 6:28 pm

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    Post by Ned Braden Thu Aug 06, 2020 8:54 pm

    You guys remember Pumping Up with Hans and Franz? First time I’ve thought about that in quite some time.
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    Post by zappo Wed Jan 20, 2021 12:36 pm

    Bitch McConnell wrote:The mob was fed lies.  They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.

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    Post by undo Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:31 pm

    Moscow Mitch, welcome to #theresistance

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    Post by WP64 Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:38 pm

    Trump is probably going to end up being convicted in the Senate just as political retribution. McConnell would probably still be Senate Majority Leader had it not been for Trump's absolute refusal to acknowledge the result of the election.
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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Jan 20, 2021 2:23 pm

    undo wrote:Moscow Mitch, welcome to #theresistance

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    Laughed my ass off at this. Well played sir.
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    Post by zappo Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:34 pm

    I'm very surprised that he was so willing to condemn himself!

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