(POST BY MANDOS!!!)
The chances were always high that regardless of who was elected, Trump or Clinton, there would be some kind of American attack in Syria. However, the chances were always higher with Trump than Clinton. Yes, you read that right: It was always a lot more likely that Trump would attack Syria than Clinton would. The reason for this is that Clinton took a more hawkish position on Syria before the election. Trump took a right-populist position of focusing on domestic politics and telegraphed a Russia-friendlier course. This more or less convinced me that he was going to attack Syria at some point. Likely, Clinton would have too — but with Trump it was basically inevitable.
Running a complex industrial and military power requires a highly technical bureaucracy. That bureaucracy therefore has an ultimate veto on what is possible to accomplish that is necessarily beyond democracy. That bureaucracy has made it clear that it won’t implement policies by people it doesn’t consider to be “serious.” The hallmark of seriousness is the ability to make the Tough Decision.
(DID I MENTION THAT THIS WAS A POST BY MANDOS? BEFORE YOU COMMENT…)
The complaint by the technocratic class against what it denigrates as “populism” is — among other things — that populism is ultimately the rejection of the Tough Decision. Left-wing populism holds that there are a lot of win-win situations where the benefits to (most) stakeholders far outweigh the costs of participation. Right-wing populism does not believe in win-win propositions, but rather that in a win-lose situation it is effortless to identify who should be on the losing side of the equation and to practically shove the loss onto them. Either way, left- and right-wing populism deny the centrality of the Tough Decision in leadership.
Clinton ran as the anti-populist candidate, presenting herself as the one who would preserve an already-great America through her ability to make Tough Decisions that distributed costs in a way that her supporters wouldn’t always like. Trump ran as a right-wing populist, explicitly riding on the feeling that there were designated “winners” who weren’t winning and designated “losers” who weren’t losing, and proposing solutions whereby this state of affairs could be effortlessly corrected. Insofar as he has attempted to make good on this aspect of this program in a public way, the system has acted against him, because all of the other entities, and that includes the House “Freedom” Caucus, believes in the Tough Decision.
Foreign policy is always the domain in which the right-wing populist can most easily exercise the Tough Decision and win back some loyalty from the managerial class. That is because, in the short run, breaking a promise on a foreign policy or military point is often the one that is lowest-cost to his principal support base. By attacking Syria, Trump proves that he can make a Tough Decision and that he can be “brought to reason” by the policy elite. Clinton would not have had to do this so soon, at least, and would thus have had the confidence of the policy elite that she would “push the button” but would merely be holding off until a strategically more optimal moment. The policy elite seems to have been afraid that Trump would never push the button. That concern has been proven unjust.
The cult of the Tough Decision is killing the world. It is not merely a fetish of a generation of technocrats but deeply engrained into the psychological structure of our society. It stems from a couple of inoffensive common-sense pillars:
- There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
- You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
Both of these are narrowly true. Every “free” lunch requires at least some effort to go and obtain it. (1) is merely a recognition that all things have an up-front energy cost. (2) is merely a recognition that once you’ve made a choice, the world changes such that the very same choice is not available a second time in its exact original form. In present-day psychology, we exaggerate these to mean that not merely is there an up-front cost to everything, but it is highly likely that most up-front costs outweigh the benefits — and that there are no win-win situations, because the up-front cost of most choices must result in a major stakeholder losing out.
This exaggeration of common-sense wisdom has come in its most exaggerated form of the fetishization of abstract intellectual exercises from economics and game theory. These exercises are concentrated in the political and managerial elite, but they are constantly reflected in popular discourse and media culture. It is propagated by often very well-intentioned people who would like to make the world better.
Its results are particularly damaging to left-wing populism, because left-wing populism is founded on the existence of low-cost, self-replenishing free lunches — repeated win-win situations. (As opposed to, as I said, right-wing populism, which rejects either the low-cost or the self-replenishing part.) The existence of these free lunches probably sounds like an absurdity even to readers here. Admittedly, they seem to be vanishing quickly, but they are not all gone. Single-payer universal health care in a developed country is one of these free lunches, where the principal payers of the monopsony cost (medical services providers of various sorts, including large organizations) can afford the cost without true suffering.
In a twist of fate, Trump was one of the popular purveyors of the Cult of the Tough Decision in his reality show career. Reality TV, of the “voting off the island” genre, is all about making someone cry in public as a designated loser, and then self-back-patting that it was a responsible or necessary or realistic choice. It is a genre that is emblematic of our era. So it should surprise no one that Trump returns to the ontology of public action that worked out so well for him.
The Stephen Miller Band
Great song — I have always liked it even though Peter will say they’re a bunch of Snowflakes.
Is it meant to represent Putin & Trump now that they’re allegedly on the skids and ready to start throwing large fire crackers at each other?
S Brennan
2nd sentence and you are already packing the pro-Hillary lies; is it any wonder I can’t stand your writing? You are so overtly partisan your words are meaningless dribble.
Mandos
If you take what I wrote as “pro-Hillary”, it is not I who am the partisan.
ultra
Just hours before Trump decided to launch cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Hillary Clinton stated during an interview that the United States should bomb ALL Syrian airfields (see link below). Therefore, I don’t think your reasoning that Trump is more likely to attack Syria than Clinton is sound.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/apr/07/hillary-clinton-us-should-take-out-syrian-airfields-video
Mandos
What she says after *losing* is just backseat driving and has the importance thereof.
Mandos
To be sure, I think that Hillary would have attacked Syria at some point, but the whole process would have probably unfolded on a different schedule. Hypotheticals, hypotheticals.
S Brennan
“the whole process would have probably unfolded on a different schedule” – Mandos
Hillary stated clearly she intended to impose a “no-fly zone” over Syria upon taking office…we’d have been in a shooting war with Russia had Hillary assumed office…indeed, perhaps sooner.
Mandos you’re beyond delusional. The only place Hillary was not to the right of Trump was on Tax policy and environmental regulation.period.fini.that’s all folks.
Trump’s response to the faked “white helmets” video would have been bloodless if the cruise missiles had lived up to the manufactures specs. Do I think Trump is being clever[?], no, but it’s not insane, particularly since he gave the Russians/Syrians advanced warning and from the looks of it, shock & awe, without a lot of damage.
Now, to compare Trump’s kabuki to Hillary’s shooting war with Russia which could easily see 1,500 dead soldiers in the first week is nuts. And just to point out the obvious, Russia can easily make asymmetrical moves against our multiple “tripwire” positioning of troops. The logistics of supporting those troops is just this side of impossible. Planting multiple forward “tripwire troops” is a liability when you plan on starting the war yourself.
Hillary was/is insane
Tomonthebeach
Because Trump’s attack could not have come at a more perfect time, it should have made the press stop singing Jingo Bells for a minute and investigate if maybe Syria did not order a gas attack on its people after all. After all, they had to know this would not play out well in the court of world opinion, and might trigger serious consequences. Of course, if not Syria, then who? The search for that answer usually starts with who had the most to gain. Hmmm.
1) It diverts attention from Russiagate.
2) It sent the Chinese a message regarding the S China Sea issue without having to say a word and while Chine is his guest in Florida – sweet!
3) It simultaneously a) sent a warning shot over N Korea’s bow while also b) showing China that Trump was not kidding about their getting involved or else, while c) reassuring our allies in S. Korea and Japan that we’ve got their backs.
4) The death toll was not that massive – just large enough to be scandalous to US allies.
5) The strike neutralized Russian and Iranian influence in the world court of pubic opinion regarding their support of Syria.
6) This reassured our allies in the region that Trump might not be isolationist after all.
7) Many liberal Americans might feel reassured that Trump does have at least an ounce of compassion.
8) Finally, the strike had to have excited Trump’s base. We all felt “Great Again” watching the pretty missile launches against the night sky – including the global and US Press (MSNBC excepted).
Aside from the death and suffering of the victims, did I miss another downside?
Tom
@ S Brennan
The video was not fake and I already covered it previous thread. This was a confirmed Sarin Attack in violation of agreements Assad and Putin were bound by. We have overwhelming evidence this was Sarin and its indisputable and non-debatable.
Assad is a rabid dog who can’t keep his agreements and needs to be put down like the rabid dog he is. Putin can no longer be trusted to keep Assad in line and is actively aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Now while I don’t advocate strikes against Russia itself, it can be totally cut off from world finance and forced to do barter like Iran and its diplomats made persona non grata till Putin is out of power.
As for the Assad Regime, knocking out its airbases and thus denying him the ability to bomb and gas civilians is certainly doable and morally correct. The best way to end extremism is to eliminate this guy and thus lessen the need or desire for Syrians to join any group willing to take him out and thus return to their civilian jobs.
Mandos
Maybe an analogy might help here? Consider Syriza. The creditors, guided by their technocrats, invigilate austerity on Syriza-Greece more harshly than they would have for a more explicitly neoliberal party, precisely because Syriza was an expressly anti-austerity party. They even said so openly (in the person of the Slovak finance minister), that *because* Greeks had attempted to overthrow austerity, the party they voted for *must* be coerced, one way or another, into imposing austerity.
It’s precisely the same here. *Because* Trump ran on a policy of greater acceptance of Russian strategic aims, *he in particular* is to be guided to an escalating series of disordered conflicts in the Middle East. *Because* Hillary promised *with enthusiasm* a no-fly zone, the sorts of conflicts you would expect that policy to provoke would have been *marginally* postponed or less likely. Because the foreign policy would trust that she would *get to it*, there’d be less pressure to *make her do it*.
Jack
@ Tom
Does your last name end in “berg”, “ski”, or “witz” ? Thought so… Zionist scum.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Jack illustrates why I now think of visiting here as “slumming”. 😛
S Brennan
Jack;
Tom is an “in the bag” puppet.
No human, on their own, could be as consistently and idiotically wrong as “Tom” is… you need professional help to be that misguided.
Peter
Luckily for us all the Red Queen has no power to influence our FP and never will. What she may have desired to do in Syria or elsewhere is meaningless now and so are the attempted comparisons with Trump’s FP which is being called flexible.
There doesn’t appear to be any plan to expand this exercise in restraint into anything resembling a war against Assad unless he provokes more and harsher actions.
Hopefully the charge that Russia may have somehow assisted in the gas attack was just a knee-jerk response and is baseless. The rumor mill is already trying to sell the quaint notion that Trump along with Putin set this whole drama up for some warped reason.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Remember, Cheeto Mussolini’s background includes professional wrestling, where the participants routinely pretend to hate one another, when no genuine animosity actually exists.
Chessmaster Putin might realize his most valuable stooge, Cheeto Mussolini, is facing drip after drip of embarrassing, maybe ultimately impeachable, data emerging, concerning Cheeto Mussolini’s relationship with Chessmaster Putin.
No other prize on Earth would be more valuable to Putin than control of the Oval Office. He only has that as long as Cheetolini occupies that office.
A splendid little war might save his stooge as the Corporate Media rally to the (puppet) Emperor’s side, as they always do when a war comes. Chessmaster Putin could arrange a dust-up between Cheetolini and lesser stooge Assad, feigning outrage at Cheetolini and making kayfabe military maneuvers, in the hope of distracting the Moron-Americans (h/t Gene Lyons) from the disturbing suspicion that “their” president is actually Putin’s puppet.
I have no proof of this; I merely speculate, but “it would be irresponsible NOT to speculate…” 😉
Tom W Harris
Hey Jack, you misspelled “sky.” Not that your comment would be worth a chit anyhow.
Ben
@Tom
I’m sorry, but when did any of this confirming happen? Last I checked Assad handed his chemical weapons stockpiles over to the US military, under UN-OPCW supervision, back in 2013-14. For the sake of argument he may have lied and kept some in reserve. But that then raises the obvious question of why he would use some of his now much depleted secret reserve, not to mention risk a huge loss of political capital, to attack a random minor target in a province that has been a non-critical backwater combat theater for years. The SAA’s policy with Idlib has been to leave it alone, using it as a holding pen for surrendering militants; the various supposed rebel groups there are constantly killing each other. Also why would the Syrian government store a highly dangerous secret weapon at what is essentially a frontline airbase? There are ISIS positions just 20 miles from the airfield.
Also claiming that it was a Sarin attack is a very bold and specific claim. Sarin is odorless, highly toxic, and quickly lethal. The first responders (giving them the full benefit of the doubt) to this gas incident were not in hazmat gear and are, very conspicuously, not dead.
Montanamaven
Good article and comments at theamericanconservative. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trumps-syria-attack-and-our-abject-media/
The commenter is disagreeing with another commenter on there being a chemical attack by Assad in 2013.
“Yet the allegation is still being made, including by people in the media who ought to know better. See Parry’s article at https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/06/nyt-retreats-on-2013-syria-sarin-claims/ . And then take a look at Ray McGovern’s piece at https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/11/the-syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/ . Look also at the articles linked in both pieces, especially https://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/29/nyt-backs-off-its-syria-sarin-analysis/, discussing how the NY Times backed away from its earlier claims concerning the 2013 chemical attack, and especially at Seymour Hersh’s article at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line . and the report both Seymour and, eventually but sotto voce, the NY Times cited: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.pdf .
Ché Pasa
Interesting that this incident has provoked such outrage and/or high-stepping patriotism (depending) whereas the ongoing slaughter of civilians in Mosul and Yemen (thousands and thousands consigned to ashes and the overfull graveyards) evinces barely a backward glance.
What happened in Syria is subject to “interpretation”. Even people on the ground don’t actually know what happened, either in the village or at the airbase, but things are as they are, whatever they are, and Trump has been thoroughly “blooded” now — apparently to the satisfaction of those who rule us with little doubt, those who rule him.
“Tough decisions,” indeed. Governing contrary to the public interest and the will of the people has been a hallmark of American presidencies, courts and congresses for a very long time. It does not change because Himself holds royal court at the Winter Palace in Florida.
In fact, almost nothing has actually changed but style among our rulers.
Almost makes you think the presidency is a… joke.
The Stephen Miller Band
Exactly, Ché Pasa. It’s a known and indisputable fact that modern warfare, despite weak and ineffectual justifications & rationalizations to the contrary, kills more innocents than it does combatants, regardless of who’s engaging in it.
That means that you know the majority of the destruction you are engaging in will be delivered to innocent non-combatants. You know this is going to be the case and you do it anyway. Therefore, you are willingly accepting collateral damage as a necessary prerequisite to an attack. You take that blood on your hands. You accept it. You are responsible for it no matter how that blood was shed, be it by gas or conventional & acceptable ordinance & weaponry versus that of the mass destruction variety.
The subtle nuance between using gas versus conventional ordinance & weaponry is so fine & threadbare, it’s not worth a moral defense. Both are equally atrocious, imo. Rapists don’t get to say, “oh, but I didn’t mean to tear her vagina and asshole open — it was unintended collateral damage” and neither does America or any other nation get to say that about the killing of innocents.
Chomsky is a fucking hypocrite on this, and he knows it. If Assad did indeed do this, and I’m far from convinced he — or I should say the Syrian military — did, then he, according to Chomsky’s prior logic, is more moral than the Americans because he considers those he targeted to have enough worth to annihilate in the most heinous way possible. They, for Assad and his generals, are not an afterthought or no thought at all, but rather his enemies are so significant to him and his generals, they have such a value to them, that he and his generals feel compelled to punish and neutralize them. He recognizes them as an existential threat and therefore a force worthy of extreme vengeance.
Not the Americans though, they don’t have this kind of passion for anyone when they reign destruction. Instead, they label the faceless ones Collateral Damage and justify their carnage as unintended and continue to do more of the same in perpetuity it seems. Collateral damage has no inherent worth. It’s an acceptable statistic footnoted on any run-of-the-mill Rand analysis and everyone knows, hardly anyone if anyone reads the footnotes.
V. Arnold
Ché Pasa
April 9, 2017
Almost makes you think the presidency is a… joke.
Isn’t it?
Peter
@Maven
Many people hide behind the propaganda and rumors that support their world view especially with these serial gas attacks by Assad. You don’t have to depend on the US propaganda organs for the truth even though they sometimes report accurately.
The OPCW is the most independent authority on the use of CW and they verified that the first two Sarin attacks in Syria came from Assad’s stockpile, full stop. They also found evidence that Assad’s forces had used chlorine in a number of attacks in their most recent report and now another nerve gas attack. They also found that the IS had used chlorine and a small amount of mustard gas but no one other than Assad’s forces had used nerve agents such as Sarin.
I can see why some people think Sy Hersh has real not imaginary sources, he handled that limited hangout for the CIA called My Lai so well. I tried reading voltairenet but they are just a frenzied rumor mill.
Synoia
It’s a known and indisputable fact that modern warfare, despite weak and ineffectual justifications & rationalizations to the contrary, kills more innocents than it does combatants, regardless of who’s engaging in it.
I believe you can omit “modern” in “modern warfare” and your statement would be entirely accurate.
You might want to reflect on the historical phrase “rape, pillage and loot” as anecdotal evidence of the need for the qualifier “modern.”
I do agree WMDs. gas, as munitions are the more effectiveevil, but I doubt that ancient armies, the Mongols come to mind, the Trojan Wars, or the Second Punic wars, did not slaughter masses of people.
Peter
@Synoia
Modern urban warfare even with all of its advanced weapons seems to have been forced to devolve to using the same tactics as Cortez used to take Mexico City. Buildings are destroyed to flush out the defenders and then overwhelming numbers move forward to the next building, rinse and repeat.
realitychecker
@ Mandos
“This exaggeration of common-sense wisdom has come in its most exaggerated form of the fetishization of abstract intellectual exercises from economics and game theory. These exercises are concentrated in the political and managerial elite, but they are constantly reflected in popular discourse and media culture. It is propagated by often very well-intentioned people who would like to make the world better.”
Oh, Irony, where is thy sting? (It should be buried deeply into Mandos’ butt lol.)
When I see how Ian continues to give you space for your vanity expositions, Mandos, I am starting to feel like I am witnessing a real-life Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde scenario. Not to say YOU are intrinsically evil, but just to note that the starkness of the duality of style and approach is just as striking as in the fiction.
(A word to the wise is always wasted on you. So, carry on carrying on. I’m sure you must be impressing SOMEBODY.)
realitychecker
@ Jack
“Jack permalink
April 8, 2017
@ Tom
Does your last name end in “berg”, “ski”, or “witz” ? Thought so… Zionist scum.”
So, Jack, does your name end in “-off,” or do you only answer to “anti-Semitic asshole” ?
Got swastika?
The Stephen Miller Band
I think this song is equally appropriate for Trump and his ensuing Military Adventures.
Rhinestone Cowboy
Mandos
RC: I am always appreciative of your dyspeptic concern trolling.
Mandos
Ché Pasa:
Actually a great fictional analysis of the Trump phenomenon can be found, written years before, in Michael Swanwick’s brilliant urban fantasy/magical realism novel The Dragons of Babel, in which the main character arrives as an upstart hustler in the magical city of Babel (New York), a misruled and yet functioning city yearning for “His Absent Majesty”, the righter of wrongs and royal tribune of the people…
Mandos
So the point is that Trump is following a template that runs counter to the expectations of a lot of people here, who instead seemed to have a theory that a right-wing populist like Trump could fill a void that could not be filled from Democratic-progressive politics. It turns out that that void is simply not there to be filled. Who sits in the Oval Office is merely a purveyor of Tough Decisions.
Stirling S Newberry
He the purveyor on easy decisions. Syria is easy.
The Stephen Miller Band
North Korea is an easy decision too. Just send Dennis Rodman.
Ben
@Mandos
“So the point is that Trump is following a template that runs counter to the expectations of a lot of people here, who instead seemed to have a theory that a right-wing populist like Trump could fill a void that could not be filled from Democratic-progressive politics.”
The void filling wasn’t him doing anything different after being elected, instead it was the very fact of him getting elected in the first place. In the absence of a credible, nice guy economic populist in the form of Sanders, many people were willing to take a gamble on the asshole economic populist. It’s not like the alternative in Clinton hadn’t already made it clear she loathed vast stretches of the country and didn’t want their support anyway.
Also, why are you talking about Democrats and progressive politics as if they have any kind of connection? Like Clinton herself, the Party has made it clear that it doesn’t want progressives.
realitychecker
@ Ben
Word.
Mandos can’t help himself from trying to help his team.
His team always thinks that big words and convoluted theories are irresistably persuasive to the unwashed majority. (Like us, lol.)
realitychecker
@ Mandos
I guess I should match your graciousness by thanking you for the dyspepsia you cause with your writing. 🙂
different clue
I don’t have my own computer at home. And I don’t have abundant screen time with computers elsewhere. So I don’t have the endless hours of time to perform the retrospective forensic search which I am about to express the hope that somebody carries out.
And that search is this: a search of everything Mandos wrote between Trump first announcing his seeking the Republican nomination and the election itself. And a fine-tooth-comb search of everything that Mandos wrote over that time period to see if he ever wrote that he believed Trump would more inevitably attack Syria than Clinton would.
If such verifiably true quotes can be produced and proved to have been written by Mandos during the time period I just mentioned, then I will believe that Mandos really believed and predicted that ahead of time. Otherwise, I will wonder if Mandos is just making up these claims of “having predicted it” now . . . after the fact . . . to polish and burnish a reputation he thinks he has for being smart and wise.
Oh, and . . . by the way, Nirling Stewberry has STILL not answered my question as to why he said the Cambodians had a choice about being bombed by Nixon or not, and why he thinks so.
different clue
“Democratic-progressive” politics? What an oxymoroon! as Bugs Bunny used to would have said.
Democratic politics are all Clintocratic now. Or Clintonbamacratic, if you prefer. As such, they are antiprogessive and antipopulits and anti-working class and anti lower class.
Democratic feminism, for example, is strictly the Upward Mobility feminism of the Goldman Sachs feminists and the Tiffany Glass Ceiling. Democratic anti-racism is the Upper Class anti racism of making sure that 12 per cent of the OverClass and the Oligarchs are Black Like Obama and Black Like Holder. It just goes on and on and on.
realitychecker
@ DC
Another dyspeptic concern troll heard from! 🙂
You just don’t understand poor Mandos. He has figured out that convolution is its own reward.
(I agree there is some importance to be attached to the mission you propose, and I would rush to undertake it, but, alas, I just noticed that my toenails need trimming. Triage, triage lol.)
Peter
Muqtada al Sadr the Iraqi political and military leader is now calling for Assad to step down to allow the chance for negotiations to proceed. He is the first Shia leader to break ranks with Assad and he is certainly no friend of the US.
S Brennan
Ben, DC, RC;
Nice tight grouping, but in fairness, Mandos goes out of his way to be an easy target.
Mandos must think that nobody noticed that the “Democrats” renounced the FDR/JFK/LBJ* paradigm back in ’78**.
*Not entirely LBJ, as “Democrats” do spend their days seeking a new Viet Nam war to embroil the USA in.
**http://www.samefacts.com/2010/08/everything-else/who-invented-the-reagan-revolution-jimmy-carter/
Mandos
Agreed that there are too many threads to dig through by hand for it to be worth it, but:
I do remember having argued that Trump was not going to be significantly different from Clinton on the politics of war, although I probably didn’t discuss any scenarios in specific detail — it was too hypothetical then!
But I have consistently been attempting to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, to allow that there might be some plan to replace Obamacare with something genuinely better, that there might be some plan to avoid further war in the Middle East, that all those things might be the case. I do that, because y’all really want to believe that by having defeated Clinton, you’ve slain some terrible beast and that a political transformation of some sort is around the corner.
But it isn’t, because Clinton was never the real problem. The real problem is, as Ian himself keeps mentioning, the deep psychological structure of the societies in which we live. What that problem exactly is and how to solve it is the real discussion.
I have my own answer. Let me give you a little hint. When you learn to have at least an understanding patience with the purveyors of funny gender-neutralizing pronouns, you would also then be on the side of peace in the world, and not before.
Mandos
Who said anything about the FDR paradigm? I certainly didn’t! You can’t make history repeat like that.
Tom
General Mohammed Yousef Hasouri the bastard responsible for the Sarin Attack on Khan Sheikhoun was killed by an FSA Special Operations Team last night.
Also Turkey is moving SAMs and other heavy equipment into Syria and gearing up to hand the FSA groups it works with medium altitude SAMs.
Since Putin is no longer a reliable person who can be trusted to keep his agreements, fuck him and Assad. The Rebels have issued joint statements that they will accept naught but unconditional surrender of Assad and anyone fighting for him is just as guilty and will be punished accordingly.
Putin and Assad seemed to operate on the mistaken ideal that they could bomb, torture, rape, and loot without consequences, and decided to add gassing people to the mix. Well they have sown the wind and will now reap the whirlwind. FSA recruitment is up, and Foreign Support is increasing dramatically for them.
Those who continue to defend the Assad and Putin Regimes are morally bankrupt. It is well understood principle that you don’t gas people and they crossed that line and there is no turning back from it.
Those who deny this gas attack occurred are in the same league as Holocaust Deniers as well as being idiots who know nothing about gas or its treatment. We have overwhelming evidence this was Sarin and we know exactly where this attack came from and who was responsible. There is nothing to discus and the case is closed, Assad and Putin are collectively guilty. Period.
Tom W Harris
John McCain, is that you?
S Brennan
Does anybody actually read “Tom”?
I mean..besides reading it’s name and moving on? I did it once, but thought “hey that ain’t a person, it’s a beta test of troll software”. Hopefully…some day..they work out the kinks to the point that “Tom” doesn’t appear as dumb as automated voice software used to prevent you from talking to a real person…I still won’t read “Tom’s” dribble, but perhaps an upgrade of it will stop vomiting on this webpage with it’s verbal effuse…ah..hope springs eternal.
Tom W Harris
Maybe it’s Lindsey Graham.
Charlie
The cult of the Tough Decision is killing the world
We can say what we want about Mandos, but what he wrote here is one true statement that trumps the rest.
Ben
@Manos
“y’all really want to believe that by having defeated Clinton, you’ve slain some terrible beast and that a political transformation of some sort is around the corner”
Seems like a strawman to me. The destruction of the Clinton dynasty is certainly a plus for American politics, as would corporate Democrats going the way of the Whigs. But I don’t think many people here ever seriously believed Trump would transform anything. A desperate hope, maybe, but no real expectation.
“When you learn to have at least an understanding patience with the purveyors of funny gender-neutralizing pronouns, you would also then be on the side of peace in the world, and not before.”
Another strawman. I have no problem with sexual minorities and fully support them being given equal rights. And it costs me nothing to indulge whatever term they wish to be addressed by (though I will note that the use of the simple singular ‘they’ stretches right back to Chaucer; do we really need to agonize over coming up with new terms?).
But using minority rights as a way to get votes while screwing a broad spectrum of people economically is not a winning strategy. If you don’t have a firm foundation in economic justice, which the Dems haven’t had in more than a generation, working people are going to eventually abandon you. They’re simply not going to bother showing up for a candidate who offers nothing but promises to a narrow field of minority groups. Worse, some of them will cast their votes for the opponents of the party that has abandoned them. And this is exactly what has happened.
You seem to be preaching the unity blather that the Dems are big on these days. Only nether you nor the party ever offer any compromise, any meaningful concessions to our side. ‘Unity’ to you means we have to be the ones who compromise, to give up our ‘petty’ economic progressive ideas and join the party, and their same-old platform, to oppose Trump. Why? You’re basically Republicans already, stop trying to scare us with the GOP Boogeyman who is just doing more of the stuff Obama was already doing, which was just more of what Bush was doing.
And speaking just in terms of pure pragmatism, the DNC refuses to substantially alter any of their platform positions. It’s clear they think the issue is ‘messaging’, that they just need better propaganda. Well I’m sorry, but that platform just lost against in orange haired, reality TV star, human-shaped sockpuppet. You’re in no position to be making demands of progressives. How about you listen to us and our ideas for a change, compromise in our direction. You might actually learn something.
funnyhaha
To say that Hillary would have been better than Trump on Syria is a laughable joke. So now you’re okay with posting utter shit articles whose entire premise is based on magical thinking? Mandos is seriously a dumb fuck.
Stirling S Newberry
SMB ++
realitychecker
Ben nailed it.
People like Mandos think they should be the teacher, when modern history says they should be the student.
It’s actually the cult of “Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss, Only Worse” that is the problem. And Mandos worships with that cult, whether he realizes it or not.
Tom
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/sarin#section=Stability
https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/sarin/basics/facts.asp
Now that I’m home and have access to my personal computer as opposed to my smart phone after a mandatory training exercise in Sarin treatment protocols caused by this attack.
These are the facts of Sarin and why Putin and Assad are lying.
Case closed.
Stirling S Newberry
N != NP and N = NP solved, perhaps – it has to be checked. This is a long process.
https://symbalitics.blogspot.com/2017/04/n-np.html
Donald
“It was always a lot more likely that Trump would attack Syria than Clinton would. ”
This is wrong as a matter of mathematics. It was almost certain that Clinton would attack Syria. It is therefore impossible that it was a lot more likely that Trump would. I’m not being snarky. This sort of illogic bugs me.
Peter
@Donald
As far as I can see Trump has no active war plans for removing Assad from power but he has been forced to maintain a threatening posture because of this last in a series of gas attacks. Many thinks can happen now good or bad including another demonstration attack without actually going to war with Assad.
Clinton’s and the establishment’s plans were for a war to remove Assad starting with an aerial confrontation over safe zones that could have involved the Russians. This was a true aggression and would have required follow-up and would have opened the door to escalation, all parts of the plan just as happened in Libya.
The Clintonites and their quislings want people to believe Trump has joined their agenda but he is making his own policy and I doubt theirs is going anywhere.
Ché Pasa
The fantasy world Trump loyalists and defenders created for themselves — with ample assistance from Trump himself, of course — has been coming apart before their eyes, and they can’t cope with it except by redoubling their defenses and further elaborating their fantasies.
“Dragon-Slayer” indeed.
Every day more betrayal; every day another 180. It’s what he does. It’s who he is.
Why he might even turn out to be a “Clintonite” after all. Nobody could have anticipated…
Of course his behavior has been well known and on display for decades. Anybody who was paying attention knew what and who he was.
Hag Hate and the war-cry against Democrats so clouded judgment, however, that who he is and what he does never mattered so long as the “Clinton Dynasty” was destroyed and the Democrats were forever consigned to the wilderness — or the funeral pyre.
Now some of Trump’s defenders are left with little more than their claim that all they really ever wanted was to “heighten the contradictions” a la Mao/Lenin/Marx — as if they understood any of that. They didn’t and they don’t, but oh well!
We’re guaranteed a mess with this clown, a bloody mess to be sure — the latest count of civilians slaughtered under his command is well over a thousand so far and rising fast. Chaos spreads, risks grow, collision and crash ever more likely.
There would have been plenty of bloody business with Mrs. Clinton in charge (oh, you mean she isn’t? To read some of Trump’s defenders, the Clintons, especially the Hag, have been in charge of the Whole Wide World since Carter, and they still rule supreme). But Mandos is right: the attacks launched against targets so far, particularly Syria, were more likely to occur under Trump than Clinton. While her judgment was often faulty (!) she was socialized to the military and foreign policy shops and she could sort through their advice and play their games skilfully. Trump is out of his element and falls off the horse more than he rides.
If he could do the right thing, the God-Emperor Trump has been made out to be by his fans might redeem himself, but he can’t. He’s been an entertainer, con-man, gangster, abuser for so long, and he’s gotten away with it so often, the “right thing” is outside his ability to recognize let alone do.
No, this won’t end well…
Willy
Trump’s being there helps keep the conversation going – the one which (if we’re smart about it) will increasingly disallow itself to be sidetracked by shiny objects.
Not sure about the technocrat bit. What’s a self-serving “public service” technocrat called? (a word something between greedy, corrupt and incompetent, strongly flavored with “fear of established power” I’d think…)
S Brennan
“The fantasy world Trump loyalists and defenders created for themselves” C-Pasa
as opposed to;
“The fantasy world Hillary loyalists and defenders created” – see Mandos/Pasa/ et al.
But cheer up folks, Hillary won the policy battle. Trump’s foreign policy is now “line on line” Hillary’s..so all the warmongering Hillary lovers should be pleased…but no huh?
That’s because your support of Hillary was not about her “take us to war now” policy, but rather some fetishistic attraction to Democrats pushing the button down…cheering for death from the sidelines doesn’t turn you on does it? You really miss Obama/Hillary’s [D] brand of carnage don’t you?
BlizzardOfOz
There’s a lesson here, but not the one Che Pasa wants it to be. By avoiding fixed positions, Trump presents an evasive target to his opponents. This is probably a necessary tactic in his situation, with the unelected and informal state entirely against him.
If Trump goes full neocon, then all bets are off, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. In the meantime, he has managed to focus a lot of minds (notice Xi just gave concessions on trade), and scattered his domestic opponents.
I recommend this for current and former Trump supporters: http://www.amerika.org/politics/world-wakes-up-to-trump-agenda-on-syria-errr-russia/
Ché Pasa
And the bar is ever lowered. Soon it will be: “Trump cannot fail. Trump can only be failed.”
BlizzardOfOz
The most jarring thing was not the bombing itself, but Trump’s statement where he spoke in treacly language about “the beautiful little children”, and the story of how he just had to retaliate because his little princess Ivanka was so upset. The sheer dissonance to Trump’s past statements presented a paradox. Plenty of people have taken this at face value, and concluded that the guy is in fact and was all along an over-emotional teenage girl; this theory doesn’t comport with the facts that we have, however. Others think he’s gone full neocon, launching Zionist wars under cover of garbage-tier propaganda delivered by #woke 7 year old girls; does not seem likely either, however.
So let’s see what the results end up being. It still may be the disaster that a lot of us assumed almost reflexively, but the ripple-effects are looking a bit more propitious than that …
The Stephen MIller Band
One of the many repercussions of Regime Change. What’s good for Libya is good for Syria.Where’s The Media outrage?
The Stephen Miller Band
Petraeus explained the other day that this conflict, with Islam presumably but Terror as its proxy, will be multi-generational thus alluding to The Doctrine of Perpetual War. If there is any strategy that ties all of it together, from Korea in the 50’s then Vietnam in the 60’s to present day and the chaos inculcated in The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, to name just a few, it’s the strategy, a religion really at this point, of Perpetual War.
With a military this large, you have to use it or lose it. It’s become its own Beast and it’s on an insatiable Feeding Frenzy. What you consider an expense is profit for those exploiting it. Until we all concomitantly get on the same page and recognize it for what it truly is, nothing is going to change and it’s just going to get worse.
Ben
@Ché Pasa
Lot of weird nonsense going on in here.
highrpm
rogue. rule of law; what’s that? corporate by-laws; what are those? make things up on the fly.
Mandos
Coulda fooled me. That “desperate hope” is leading so very many here to come up with ever more abstruse 11-dimensional chess explanations for what Trump is Really Truly Doing, or even if he isn’t doing it, what his election Really Meant, etc, etc. This in the place where people took a most dim view of 11-dimensional chess explanations of Obama’s behaviour.
But it turns out that the messy Rube Goldberg machine of Obamacare is designed almost perfectly to force a future (now) GOP government into a political dilemma about what to do, but Trump is easily bent to the system’s will on anything that matters, except a few things that make the world worse.
It has nothing to do with whether you “have no problem with sexual minorities” but rather how central identity issues are to your political approach. A political approach that relies on a hierarchy of needs that places eating over feeling hasn’t work and is not going to work.
Except the identity-political democrats still have fewer, but a lot of seats and a lot of power compared to left-wing economic populism, which has…zip. Nothing. Nada.
I really don’t know who you’re addressing here. It seems as though you have adopted a sort of highly (inner-)partisan binary thinking here. Like Ian, I am not (US)American, nor live in the USA, though I once did for a while. I have no “demands” to make and am not a proxy for an establishment you seem to mistakenly think needs you for something.
The DNC are execrable war-mongers and corporate grifters. However, they obtain a massive portion of the popular vote (the majority in the last US presidential election). The rest went to…someone who increasingly turns out to be very much on the beaten path, in terms of foreign policy, much of economic policy, etc, but who plays a similar identity politics in reverse. In order for economic progressives to have any leverage over them, you need to be able either to supplant them or offer something they want at a price they’re willing to pay.
I see you as being able to do neither one! And I want to know: why is that? What did you do wrong, that put you in this position, and why is it that you (very strangely) think that they need to learn lessons from you, considering that economic progressives are by far the least influential of the major political trends in the USA?
And part of my answer is: you can’t stray too far off the beaten path of known “boogeymen” and have the kind of cultural leverage to exert influence. You want people to fear and wish for things that their conceptual architecture is not presently designed to revere or abhor. The Democrats will keep losing elections, but they will still be, you know, elected. And you?
Mandos
You know, there’s really nothing wrong with thinking I’m wrong and telling me so. But you do not have special access to what “modern history” says — what the most recent modern history tells us is that, you know, messaging does actually win, and that if you didn’t win, you didn’t have the right messaging, and that people will happily vote themselves deeper and deeper into suffering and penury if given the right emotional stimulus.
realitychecker
@ Mandos
All your blather condenses very neatly into this: Messaging is all.
Problem is, what you call messaging is, to real people, LYING.
Sure, lying works, always has, maybe always will.
But those who win by lying are still liars.
My solution? Either learn to ignore known liars forever, or, if necessary, have a guerilla uprising that kills the worst of them, until the rest get the idea that lying to the public is no longer perceived to be a risk-free game. Because no societal system can ever work well unless the greater value is placed on truth-tellers, rather than on the skillful liars.
I hope that hurts your fucking feelings, you damn quisling.
Mandos
And that you think that is why you keep failing, RC. Construction of a message in a manner that appeals to the emotional structure of the recipient of the message is not the same as lying. Marketing is an inevitable product of mass communications.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
The voting history of non-elite white USAmericans (my group) has demonstrated this repeatedly since 1968, if not earlier. I still don’t know how, Ascended Madoka be praised, I managed to overcome my cultural programming and see through that confidence scheme.
Agreed, but I still don’t understand why so many people vote their feelings, at the expense of their practical self-interest.
realitychecker
@ Mandos
You are really quite a hopeless mess. Got amorality?
People who have any sense resent being lied to; it HURTS THEIR FEELINGS.
The recent history of last November shows that people get so angry at perceived liars that they will take a chance and vote for a pig in a poke just to not support the known liars.
That is a good trend, and I hope it continues, even if it drives people like you, the spinners, the marketers, the message-crafters, into a suicidal depression.
People who can only get their way through dishonesty and manipulation of the uninformed do not deserve to survive. They are bad for society.
People like you who worship and wish to emulate those people are bad for society.
Right now, people like you are very upset with the way things are going. That means I am winning. And you are losing.
All your pompous blather cannot change that even one little bit.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
RC just stated, in effect, that the entire USAmerican conservative movement, its wealthy backers, and their GOP, deserve to die–because they have ascended to their current position only through the careful, and thoroughly dishonest, manipulation of my foolish fellow palefaces.
Why am I reminded of Charlie Sheen’s “WINNING!” remark?
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I will not endorse RC’s advocacy of homicide, however; the Big Kahuna is said to disapprove strongly of such suggestions, and the government–which is far more powerful than any ragtag group of Timothy McVeigh wannabes–is known to disapprove strongly of such suggestions.
The Stephen Miller Band
realitychecker, are you asking everyone to write a manifesto and mail it to Trump before setting out on a shooting spree? What a brilliant strategy. There’s no fool a man twice bullshit. Fool a man, or a woman, once and that’s it — they’re irredeemable idiots who have proven they’re easily fooled and will be again and with each successive fooling, they descend into barbarity just as intended.
Violent Dumbass
Hugh
I think it is important to understand the nature of violence. Foreclosing on a million families is violence. Suppressing wages for 40 years and shipping millions of jobs to China and Mexico is violence. Creating shit healthcare systems like Obamacare and Trump/Ryancare that affect hundreds of millions is violence. Dumping a trillion dollars of undischargeable debt on students with no ability to repay it is violence. Bailing out the rich and perpetrators of the 2008 meltdown and leaving everyone else to turn slowly in the wind is violence. The rich and elites kill a couple hundred thousand of us every year through their malice and neglect, but such violence doesn’t even rate a mention. However, bring up even the possibility of violence against any in our predatory overclasses and all the alarm bells go off. Suddenly, you are beyond the pale, have transgressed the taboo. You see we are like Pavlov’s dogs. We have been trained to accept that violence is only really violence if it is directed against the rich and elites. The violence that they direct against us isn’t really violence at all. It’s just the natural course of things. Here, have a dog biscuit.
The Stephen Miller Band
The only people who would bring such a thing up in public are the protectors of The Rich attempting to snuff out deeply hidden potential threats. Who are the protectors of The Rich? The Alphabet Agencies, therefore, they’re the only ones who dare bring up such a notion because they have license to do so. One or two are commenting to this blog, no doubt. They have license to do anything they damn well please. Who’s going to stop them? No one, that’s who.
And then you have people egging on fruitcakes like Jakubowski. What a bunch of cowards. Egging on a psychotic nutjob to go shoot up schools, movie theaters or any other place where innocents gather in large numbers. Hey Jakubowski, do everyone a favor and just kill yourself rather than taking a bunch of innocents down with you. You’re being a coward and you’re doing precisely what they want you to do and have programmed you to do. This is where violence always, and I mean ALWAYS, leads and that’s why The Establishment encourages it.
The Stephen Miller Band
How come the Jakubowki’s and McVeigh’s and McClendon’s and Holmes and Hennard’s of the world choose the targets they do versus a target like the following? It’s called programming.
Get the f*** out of my country now, you ass****.
No need to consult your risk tables, realitychecker. I’m content with metaphorically spitting on the Roman Abramovich’s of the world. Violence would only play into their hands. Depriving them of their support and ultimately freezing the wealth they have stolen from us and then deporting them is the most humanitarian solution and it doesn’t have to be violent and shouldn’t be. It’s the only solution that will work but the majority have to break out of their programming and realize who the real enemy is and refuse to play by their rules any longer.
realitychecker
@ Hugh
Thanks for demonstrating that not all the readers here are tantrum-prone children.
(BTW, you left out all the foreign policy choices that directly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of other country’s citizens.)
But, only the idea of violence against the people who deliberately orchestrate and benefit from all this violence gets everybody’s panties in a twist. Fucking priceless.
Anything I write here around this issue is offered purely as a matter of pragmatic analysis; I have already shared that I am not expecting to live very much longer, and I have no children, so my interest in the future of America, or of mankind in general, is strictly limited, and only philosophical, and I would never disturb the peace of my own remaining time to try and make the future better for all these mewling morons.
The older I get, the more I know, the more convinced I become that misanthropy is the only rational path for the enlightened individual. The masses are asses, plunging blindly into a corporate fascist future where they will be livestock.
Ignorance and amorality are their own reward.
realitychecker
@ TSMB
Yeah, right, I am an agent for the alphabet agencies, and I have already recruited your mother to keep a close eye on you down there in your basement.
You are already one of the most hysterical voices around here, so I won’t go into detail about how much she enjoyed the recruitment process.
Have a nice day, meat. 🙂
highrpm
the tank’s empty when the engine’s sputtering.
Stirling S Newberry
https://symbalitics.blogspot.com/2017/04/n-v-np-problem-1.html 1st post on the problem, with at least 4 more to go.
Mandos
Sometimes clichés are true: physician, heal thyself. I have hardly met anyone on the Internet more tantrum-prone than you.
realitychecker
@ Mandos
You have proclaimed your belief that feelings matter more than anything else, and that dishonest manipulation, which you are pleased to call “messaging,” is acceptable to fraudulently secure the consent of the governed.
Why would I, or anybody else with a brain or a grain of moral sense, ever give a fuck about what you think?
Mindfucker, heal thyself.
Stirling S Newberry
> Sometimes clichés are true: physician, heal thyself. I have hardly met anyone on the Internet more tantrum-prone than you.
Must work harder!
Mandos
As I said.
realitychecker
@ Hugh
Hey, Hugh, I just realized that idiot TSMB was calling YOU an agent of the “Alphabet Agencies,” not me lol.
Can ya get me a job interview, Agent? LMFAO
Seriously, at what level of idiocy should one start actively praying for the extinction of the human race and the return of the control of Earth to the more humble and sensible flora and fauna?
It seems to me we must be getting close to that level, if we are not arrived there already. (sigh)
realitychecker
@ Mandos the Mindfucker
The label fits you perfectly. Wear it with pride.
Peter
@Hugh
Generalizing and over applying the meaning of words such as violence seems to reduce them to meaning everything or nothing. Commemorations of the War to End all Wars remind us of the real violence that the US along with other countries continues to employ and now we even see poison gas return from the dim past as a terror weapon aimed at civilians.
Calling all foreclosure violence is nonsense especially in reference to the housing price bubble and crash where some possibly many people were gambling with their homeownership and huge sums of money were syphoned from inflated home values. The fact that millions of people couldn’t pay for their mortgages is tragic and damaging but many people’s decisions played a large role in that tragedy. Foreclosure is what happens months and even years after people fail to meet their promise to pay for their home and the nasty bankers/investors lost billions that couldn’t be recouped through foreclosure.
Depressed wage growth was caused by many factors over the last 45 years one of which was business’ need to have some control of the one of the major factors they can affect in production, labor.
What many people seem to have forgotten is that the world changed dramatically around ’70 when the US ceased to be a producer economy and became a consumer economy. Conservatives saw that in the future US production and profit from export would decline so they organized, see the Powell memo, to protect their future interests. Offshoring and demanding wage reductions were especially cruel actions some of our MUTUs seem to enjoy so they might deserve being viewed as violent. Their primary goal seemed to be to stop the growth of the welfare state before we became the deep debtor nation we are now so they failed but Trump is taking on that long overdue task.
Another task Trump has taken on is returning the US worker and jobs to the business calculus as a priority not an afterthought as both parties have relegated them to. Toyota is now on board with this priority spending over a billion dollars updating their main US factory with more billions coming to build US jobs.
realitychecker
@ Peter for causing those deaths does not make them any more morally acceptable.
Way too literal, and way too shortsighted, amigo.
Lives are lost continually as a function of the way our country conducts its activities. Those deaths are just as predictable as any others. Those lives lost count as much as any others. The fact that someone realized a profit does not make those deaths more morally acceptable.
Re foreclosures, I know its your pet area lol, but how many suicides do you think resulted from families being deprived of their primary asset? Those deaths count, too.
Lives are lives, and deaths are deaths. Why play word games around it, except to mask the unpleasantness?
Willy
If this was a brainstorming session in some corporate conference room, where practical ideas vital to the survival of the company were needed, RC would be the one screaming that the other fools need to just kill the managers already.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be in. I’ve had some real sociopathic doozies for managers. But demonstrating my lack of skills at coup management might get me included on RC’s death list (if it hasn’t already).
Maybe it’s time for some useful examples from history?
Adams
Wow. Tough crowd.
Agreed that Trump and Clinton were both likely to attack Assad at some point. However, IMHO, Clinton’s attack would not have been a minimal cosmetic action designed to “send a message” (to whom, really?) It would have been a well-planned, strategic strike designed to take out Syrian air capability. And if there were some destruction of Russian assets, well, darn, collateral damage, right?
There are mixed messages from the Trump Adm about what was really intended and what happens next due to rank incompetence, internal divisions, and Trump’s incoherence, ignorance, and lack of impulse control. But it appears that the lasting impact internationally, both physical and political, will be minimal. Domestically it’s another story as the media and politicians of all stripes strain to outdo each other in praising the decision to strike.
Clinton’s intervention would have been designed to change the game, i.e. eventually the regime of Assad. It would not have been a spur of the moment reaction based on a specific incident, although some empty pretext (aluminum tubes? yellow cake? mushroom cloud? or RTP) no doubt would have been the trigger. It would have deliberately provoked Russia and Iran and pleased the Saudis and Israel. Would Iran be next? Ukraine? Baltic states. NK? Definitely would have stoked the fires of the Perpetual War Machine.
My guess is that Trump would rather be incorporated into the deep state than digested by them, and he’s beginning to understand the difference. So there’s no guarantee that we won’t end up with a Clintonista, conventional wisdom, inside the beltway foreign and military policy in the longer run. But for now Trump Adm signaling continues to be less bellicose than Clinton’s.
BTW, as I said above, just the humble opinion of a lurker and very occasional commenter. Feel free to ignore completely. Don’t want to cause anyone’s spleen to burst. As Ian might say, “Be kind to one another?”
different clue
I would note that Mandos never offered any quote to show that he predicted Trump would attack Syria. I suspect that is because Mandos has no such quote to offer. Mandos has no proof that he thought such a thing beforehand. I continue to think he is retro-ascribing to himself thoughts and theories he never had at the time, in order to make himself appear smarter now.
If this is what left wing though amounts to, I can see why Mark From Ireland is laughing so much. I can see why the right-in-general is laughing so much.
Why does Ian Welsh let Mandos bring his profound shallowness to this blog? To let the worthlessness of left wing induhlectualism illustrate itself?
At least Ian Welsh is considerate enough to warn us that a post is by Mandos. That gives people to bypass them if they are in no mood for some lo-to-no quality input.
Donald
To make it clear, I am not a Trump supporter. I actually voted for Clinton as the lesser evil because of other issues. But on Syria, it was near certain that she was going to bomb Assad. Her booster Michael Morell famously said on the Charlie Rose show that we should be killing Russians in Syria. This was a few days after he endorsed her.
My point is not to defend Trump, who I think is an extreme narcissist and who probably knows nothing about foreign policy or anything else. But the fact is that precisely because of this Trump has been captured by the neocons. And claims that Trump was more likely to have bombed Assad are silly–until the gas attack the criticism from the mainstream was that he was too friendly with Russia and Assad. So again, ignoring this and saying he was always more likely to bomb Assad is clickbait blog posting.
Ben
@Manos
“A political approach that relies on a hierarchy of needs that places eating over feeling hasn’t work and is not going to work.”
Because…? The reality is that an economic focused policy is the *only* way to victory. Trump carried states in which ballot measures for things like minimum wage increases also passed. Voters desperate for decent paying jobs voted for the only (major) candidate promising them such jobs. Was he lying? Of course. But Clinton wasn’t even offering them empty promises.
You’re saying that we should support Dems because they still have some leverage, while the economic populists have none. The most popular politician in this country is currently Bernie Sanders, who won’t shut up about economic justice. He showed the Beltway that it was possible to run a real national campaign entirely based on small donations from real people (a lesson the Beltway conspicuously refuses to take to heart; they actually loving being on the corporate teat). The Democrats you keep saying saying we should support because they have more power had to actively sabotage this same economic populist. Doesn’t sound like left-wing populism is an unwinning platform in the slightest to me.
I’m also really hard-pressed to understand the mindset you seem to possess. You seem to be saying that people should care more about whether someone is triggered by the use of the wrong pronoun than about whether that person is starving or not. And the economic left doesn’t care about feelings? Socialism is in large part based in a sense of moral outrage that so many go cold and hungry. What is that but pure feeling, pure empathy for humanity?
So I’ll reiterate: you need to shut up and actually try and learn something.
Mandos
I’m actually the one who includes the repeated warnings that it’s by me, because people don’t read the byline and think that Ian wrote what I wrote.
different clue
Well then, that at least is considerate of you.
Hugh
Peter repeats the canard that millions of Americans most of whom couldn’t even balance their checkbooks were still clever enough to outwit and cheat the banks with their armies of good-hearted but gullible lawyers, accountants, loan officers, and vulture CEOs. Peter also ignores that even if this fantastic victim-blaming scenario had occurred, the result would only have been a rather severe downturn in housing and a recession. What turned it into a worldwide financial meltdown was all the derivatives that were written on this dreck, the CDS and synthetic CDOs that were written on all the CDOs, CDO squared, and CDO cubed. These multiplied losses to the level capable of taking out the whole financial system. These were not the product of Peter’s shifty homeowners but of the banks and financial institutions. I should note that victim-blaming is a classic tactic of class war. Don’t believe your lying eyes. The banks, the powers that be, the masters of the universe suddenly, and conveniently, turn into the hapless victims of millions of ordinary Joe Blows.
Another tactic of class war is SMB’s strawmanning. Anyone seriously opposes a violent system is a Timothy McVeigh although virtually all of McVeigh’s victims were other ordinary Americans. Spare me.
Mandos
I never said that I “predicted” that Trump would attack Syria. I said:
…which is indeed a thing that one can say in retrospect. However, whether I predicted it or not, the onus is not on me to defend against such an assertion, but on you to do the homework you yourself said you were too lazy to do or otherwise incapable, to validate the assertion you were making against me. Also the time bound of before the election is artificial and “stacking the deck” — people were claiming up until the very act of bombing in Syria that we had been saved from Hillary the warmonger.
But lo and behold I did a little bit of your homework, and with a little bit of Google found myself saying, after Trump was elected:
and
Meaning that very shortly after his election, Trump almost immediately revealed that he was in cahoots with the hawks. “If only the Czar knew!”
Now, I did not mention Syria in that quote directly (found, as I said, after the most cursory search!). I have been bending over backwards to give this idea that the USA and the world has been saved from a worse fate under Hillary the benefit of the doubt. Was that a mistake for which you are now taxing me? I should, maybe, not be trying to give the benefit of the doubt, and out and out saying from here on in, there is and never was any possibility that Trump would be better than Hillary when you add everything up.
So I don’t see what the point of this exercise is, other than a hackish attempt at discrediting someone who has pointed out the elephant in the room: that your model of the world is and continues to be proven wrong…by the actions of Trump himself.
Mandos
Not really. It’s a crowd that represents a constellation of political views that has less overall influence than either the Nazis that sometimes poke their heads out here or even graffiti-ing anarchists, but thinks they have lessons to teach anyone else on telling the truth or whatever. They, of course, don’t, but for some reason they can’t recognize it.
Of course, the irony is that I sympathize with that constellation of views overall and therefore have not more influence than they do. But they get very upset, for some reason, when someone turns the lens of analysis and critique on them. Name-calling, unjustified condescension, and bad faith “writing advice”.
I once called this the Narcissism of Truth, and I’m sticking by that.
The Stephen Miller Band
Wow, who knew, Peter and I are on the same side in this Class War. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put my smoking jacket on and retire to the lounge for a cognac or two and a cigar before my mistress stops by.
Tillerson best avoid the tea. I say we make it a Trifecta. SO far we have Syria and North Korea, so let’s add a third for Donald. Who shall it be? I’ve got it. Fiji. I’m sure Nestle & Coke will approve.
Willy
“the Narcissism of Truth”
People project their own reality onto the world, as if what’s works for them will automatically work for everybody else (am I projecting this projection? dunno, still working on that…).
It could always be worse. My faves are the evangelical wingnuts. So fun and easy baking their noodles! I know I’ve done my job when I’m finally called their worst insult, the “f$%kin$ socialist”. The guys over at the skeptic sites have been amusing themselves with them for years. They claim that much of the nonsensical ‘wisdom’ found at Conservapedia is actually their own tomfoolery.
Willy
(Remove the italics on the last two paragraphs)
different clue
@Willy,
Way above you asked what would be a good word for a public self-serving technocrat. I don’t know if the following will be a good word or not so I suggest it just in case.
And the word is . . . technogarch.
wendy davis
zounds; y’all must have wore yerselves fairly to frazzles on this thread. wouldn’t it be a lovely thing if the world were built on cooperation, not competition, as many early societies did among local villages?
“y’all grow the beans and squash, we’ll grow the corn and keep a few goats…and trade later on”.
cooperation makes better music, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OAj5RrpAhM
different clue
@Mandos,
I do apologize! A Thousand Pardons, o Good Sir! You are so exquisitely correct that you wrote Trump is more likely to do an attack “in” Syria. Which I read in this context as an attack “on” Syria. Meaning “on” the Legitimate Government and/or the Legitimate Armed Forces of the Syrian Arab Republic. THAT’S the attack which Trump in fact did and which Ian Welsh was so surprised by. And so was I and a lot of other people. Because “overthrowing Assad” which would require an attack “on” Syria was one of the things Trump ran against.
Of COURSE Trump was going to order an attack “in” Syria. The ISIStas and the Cannibal Liver Eating Jihadis are waging their War of Islamification withIN Syria so to attack them would of course require an attack “in” Syria. Your own referencing of the Islamophobic Adviser to Trump would indicate that you expected a Trump attack to be against the same Islamists which that Islamophobic Adviser would be so against.
But this Trump attack was not an “Islamophobic” attack. It was an IslamoPHILIC attack, designed to support the Cannibal Liver Eating Jihadis against the legitimate forces of the legitimate Secular Dictatorship government of Syria. So this attack was not the attack you expected and when you oh-so-exquisitely claim that it was just what you predicted, based on the clever weasel-word difference between “in” as against “on” Syria, I can’t prove that you don’t know exactly what kind of clever trick you are pulling. I can only say that I smell your intellectual bad faith right through the computer screen.
So a Thousand Pardons once again. You have proven how slippery the brilliant innalekshul knows how to be. I won’t make the mistake of reading your pieces with any expection of basic mental honesty on your part ever again. In fact, if you remain courteous enough to say that you are the one who writes these pieces, I won’t make the mistake of reading them at all in the future.
I’m sure you won’t miss me any more than I will miss you.
Mandos
Astonishingly dishonest, disingenuous, fatuous, hypocritical. I never drew attention to the preposition nor was it the basis of my objection, and you know it. I objected to your attempt to stack the deck and reverse the burden of proof, and you proceed with a nitpick about the political use of prepositions.
Oh is that so? The very degree of energy and, indeed, rage you and fellow travellers put into denunciations of me is kind of interesting.
realitychecker
@ Mandos
“Oh is that so? The very degree of energy and, indeed, rage you and fellow travellers put into denunciations of me is kind of interesting.”
Oh, Mandos, you so funny!
Please don’t stop sharing your delusions of genius with us. We have so little to laugh at these days, that you must be considered a treasure of sorts.
Don’t you love farce? 🙂
Peter
@RC
I’ve steeled myself for the pictures of the shriveled remains of the victims of the Foreclosure War but all I’ve seen is a couple of women whining about mistreatment by Steve Mnuchin. Someday someone will uncover the mass graves from the beginning of the depressed wage growth era probably dressed in late ’70s disco dancing clothes but these atrocities will have to be blamed on the Japs who sold us cheap steel from the modern foundries we helped them build.
The steel and the auto industries collapsed because of foreign competition long before outsourcing or NAFTA and those jobs that were replaced by the New Economy were much lower pay semi-skilled service sector positions that now dominate our economy. This is how overall wages stagnated while skilled high pay jobs still demanded and got some of their demands as the numbers decreased while low pay service jobs grew.
People who suicide out of the struggles of life are making their own choice, exercising their liberty while most everyone else in their position choose to continue with the struggle which is life. A few carefully placed cruise missiles launched into certain windows on Wall Street might alter the nastier behavior of some MOTUs but maybe not.
realitychecker
@ Peter
Well, the best response I can give to that is, “Thank Dog I will never have to worry about being the only one here who will dare to take a stab at defending the merits of capitalism” lol.
Peter
@RC
I don’t intend to defend capitalism just actually understand it and not get caught up in the bible-thumping like harangues that attempt to oversimplify it along with much else today.
I’ve become interested in the one world wide trend that might be capitalism’s undoing, The End of Growth. I’ve read some about this but few people seem capable of even addressing the idea because they have no answers or even good questions about something that could remove the driving force of capitalism, endless growth.
I’ve read two recent articles from the oil patch showing that trends are pointing to a much more rapid approach of the collapse of energy demand growth than expected. It was just a few years ago that Peak Oil was the big worry for the energy sector but tight oil production has pushed that further into the future. Peak Demand may happen before Peak oil and they don’t have a clue about what they can do.
realitychecker
Well, I share your disdain for the bible-thumping anti-capitalistic rhetoric that usually comes from the left, but at the same time I think all participants to any bad situation must be ascribed their fair share of the blame. Basic relationship therapy axiom there lol.
Btw, the other thing nobody seems to be thinking much about is the rapidly approaching Robot Revolution. Seems to me that deserves more attention than a lot of other things we are focusing on these days.
different clue
@Mandos,
I know you are, but what am I?
Strut yo’ induhlectual superiority stuff! Work it,baby, work it!
Shake that thing.
realitychecker
@ DC
Moar syllables!!! 🙂 (h/t/ Christopher Walken lol)
Ben
@Mandos
“It’s a crowd that represents a constellation of political views that has less overall influence than either the Nazis that sometimes poke their heads out here or even graffiti-ing anarchists, but thinks they have lessons to teach anyone else on telling the truth or whatever.”
If you’re referring to economic populists, need I remind you that your ‘superior’ platform just LOST AN ELECTION against DONALD FREAKING TRUMP? And it lost against a candidate that himself was running on an economic populist message, and after actively sabotaging a left-wing economic populist who they viewed as a threat because of the massive groundswell of support he was eliciting. Millions of people who previously voted for Obama didn’t even bother to show up for Clinton, because she wasn’t offering them anything that mattered to them.
Let’s go with your logic for a minute. Economic justice is not a winning platform? Okay. But clearly neither are your ideas. In addition to losing the presidency to a human cheeto, the Democrats have spent the last eight years being wiped out at every level of government, leaving them weaker than at any point since 1928. So what’s the worst case scenario in your mind? That they run someone like Sanders and also lose? How would that be any different that what has actually happened? Again, your ideas just lost against a person who seems to be 100% human Id. You’re in no position to be lecturing anyone, much less belittling them as powerless.
Mandos
Whose “superior” platform? I never had a hand in making it, nor have I had the opportunity to vote for or against it! And I never said a thing about superiority here. You speak very tribally. But clearly, in any way that matters to the folks here, the mainstream (D) platform is pretty inferior.
But.
They lost in a way they could accept, with, in large part, intact careers. They either individually
1. believe that your ideas cannot win in a way that can preserve their political careers.
2. prefer to keep just this degree of losing rather than win on your preferred platform.
3. genuinely believe your platform is worse for the country, even if it might be popular.
I have observed examples of all three.
Many also believe (possibly dangerously wrongly) that a bit of Trump punishment will lead the voters back into their arms. It’s kinda sorta working in Europe, for example.
They lost a lot of legislative power, but still have a lot of political careers running, still get news time, etc, etc. You, on the other hand, have no power to make them choose otherwise, or to supplant them. That is the only power that matters: supplant them, or coerce them. As you correctly observe, they would rather accept a downwards electoral trajectory than give you any compromises. And why is that? Because, as I said, they don’t think you can offer them anything they value, and they know you have no power to supplant them, or you would have already!
That’s the only power that matters here.
S Brennan
Mandos; Your post, with it’s attempts at a “lawyerly” defense, are thousands of meaningless words that are beyond pointless. We know you to be an out an out liar…you’re just wanking yourself in the front window of your courtyard building…put some clothes on for God’s sake, your pathetic body of words would scare your own mother.
Hugh
“People who suicide out of the struggles of life are making their own choice”
This reminds me of the old Soviet joke about the Russian poet who committed suicide. Did he have any last words someone asks. Yes comes the reply: “Comrades, don’t shoot!”
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Hugh has just reminded the Bens, DClues, and PNDs of the world why so many people, who basically would approve of social democracy, nonetheless fear and suspect anyone or anything, such as Sen. Sanders, which, fairly or unfairly, is judged to smack too strongly of Marxism.
Most people would rather put up with the obnoxious plutocrats and their equally obnoxious minions, than risk the rise of gulags and killing fields. “Better the devil(s) you know…” and all that.
Communism proved, however unwittingly, to be capitalism’s best friend, in that it managed the seemingly impossible feat of making capitalism look good, or at least less evil. Fascism (especially its Nazi variety), the psychopathic bastard offspring of Communism and capitalism, which combines the most hideous features of both of its parents, managed the same feat.
Ben
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Except the polls, successful ballot measures, and things like the post-election town halls where they actually talk to Trump voters, make it overwhelmingly clear that socialist ideas like Medicare for All are a winning platform. The obstacle is Democratic Party policymakers, not the will of the people.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Then why, Ben, did the great masses of White Real Murkans turn their backs on the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and 1970s, BEFORE the DP began to compromise away the New Deal and the Great Society, which it did in order to gain money from the plutocrats, in order to afford the advertising to try to bring back its lost voters?
Why did it lose those voters back then, when it was still the party of the New Deal and the Great Society?
I’ll answer that for you; my tribe are “a stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears”, who will, in the now-famous formulation from the Web, VOLUNTEER to live in a cardboard carton, cooking a sparrow on a bent coat-hanger over an open fire, as long as they are assured that those non-white folks down the road don’t even have a sparrow, a carton, or even a bent coat-hanger.
“Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.”–H. L. Mencken
realitychecker
Banging one’s head against a tree trunk all day does not seem to do much for one’s mental clarity.
It’s almost as though some people think nothing has happened in the last half-century.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Shorter RC:
Yes, the Democratic Party, in some ways, betrayed the White Middle Class.
But the WMC betrayed the DP first, in order to punish uppity Negroes, uppity women, uppity hippies, uppity non-believers, uppity whatevers.
The “Southern Strategy” still delivers for the GOP, partially because “Southern” here really means a cultural identity, rather than a geographic location.
realitychecker
Like I said, in your stilted POV, nothing of importance has happened in the last fifty years that could have any value in explaining our present situation. Nothing at all.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Culinary advice for RC: Remember to pluck the feathers off the sparrow before you roast it. 🙄
realitychecker
I can’t help myself from thinking “Go pluck yourself.” 🙂
Willy
I think what Ivory Bill is saying, is that your average voter is kind of dumb, and needs to be treated as such. Their thinking (and voting), outnumbers what we might find in this place by a margin of at least a hundred to one. These people are easily trained by clever evil because they’re made that way.
How can the rational integrous few, those with proven cause-effect reasoning ability, ‘retrain’ them? The current DNC ain’t gonna do it.
Ben
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
…you do understand there’s a difference between the South and the Midwest, right? Not once have I been talking about the South; the GOP candidate was always going to win there. Just as the Dem candidate was always going to take the coastal liberal strongholds. What flipped the election for Trump was the Rustbelt abandoning the Democrats.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
George Wallace won the 1972 Democratic primary in that kudzu-strangled cradle of the Confederacy, the state of Wisconsin. As the late, great Hunter S. Thompson noted, that proved that there were just as many mean, stupid bigots in the North as in the South.
The difference is smaller than Ben thinks.
Ben
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Your explanation for states that previously voted for Obama voting for Trump is…racism?
realitychecker
@ Ben
Gotta be racism, IBW don’t do complex lol.