The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
And despite it being transparent garbage, millions of Americans are eagerly lapping up Red Scare 2.0
[flagged]
Google says the Chinese military budget is 281 billion. They probably get lower cost labor and production, but that’s significantly lower than the United States.
Adjusting for Purchasing Parity, an imperfect measure, that still only like 600 billion, significantly lower than the United States.
They're vertically integrated so a lot of materials are cheaper. They also steal a lot of technology, so they save a lot of money on having to do the research the US already paid for. Finances alone don't make the military and your argument doesn't change anything I said.
Vertical integration is an interesting claim, because we have been told that the government outsourcing to private companies is more efficient due to competition than the government doing the work themselves.
It depends on the vertical. If you're outsourcing a sixth-generation fighter jet or an aircraft carrier, your options are fewer than if you're outsourcing building construction or office supplies. You don't want to trust your nuclear-powered supercarrier to Joe's Boat Emporium.
>shadowy
brother we're not discreet about it, the US is a stain on the world and the world would be more stable and better off if it disappeared, it is the biggest organizer of violence, arms dealing, murder, corruption and every single one of your leaders has been a scourge inflicted on the world. It's not a deep, hidden conspiracy.
It also turns out that only one side of these two has the means to wage war and is also the biggest arms dealer in the world. Bully gets called mean names, boo hoo :(
We didn't start World War 1, or World War 2, or the Korean war, or the Vietnam war. We didn't make Russia attack Ukraine. We didn't make Iraq attack Iran or Kuwait. We didn't make Iran fund terrorism around the region and the world.
We have promoted peace in Europe through NATO. We're trying to achieve a similar Europe-like stability in the Middle East so it isn't constantly at war, often caused by Iran proxies.
What country is it that you're defending? Iraq? That country that invaded its neighbors, lit all the oil fields on fire, committed genocide and buried all the bodies in countless mass graves, attempted to kill the US president, attempted to blow up the World Trade Center and abducted women then raped them while recording it to show the recordings to their family to shame them? Is that what you're defending? Please tell me, I want to know.
Oh no, it couldn't be Iraq. Maybe it's Iran! Do you want to go down the list of the kind of country Iran is? How about Afghanistan? North Korea?
The world is not a very nice place. Make sure you know what you're defending. We have free speech in the US and people can do their own journalistic research and reporting even if it goes against our own government. These other countries don't have free speech, so they can spread all kinds of lies about the US and ban any other opinions inside their countries. That means people become indoctrinated and find it more difficult to think for themselves to get closer to what the truth is.
I don't know where to start. The US supported Saddam after his Iran invasion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...
Maybe read how de Gaulle viewed the US "promoting peace in Europe" or how the British did after the US stole the Suez canal and kicked the British out of the Middle East.
Yes, after Saddam invaded Iran, because Iran was trying to export its revolution to Iraq. We didn't make Iraq attack Iran though. It was just one more war caused by Iran exporting revolution which has happened several times in the Middle East already.
It was an opportunity to weaken Iran which is a far worse problem in the Middle East than Iraq was. Iran had fired most of its airforce pilots for not being Islamic radical enough and with their airforce in shambles, Saddam saw an opportunity. Then Iran had to rush to rehire their old airforce pilots regardless of their dedication to the revolutionary cause or regime just to fight back.
And what lead to Iran exporting Islamic revolution? Possibly something involving Kermit Roosevelt Jr and the CIA?
Britain was exporting oil from Iran, which was understood and agreed on.
Russia was trying to turn Iran communist, so it spread the message that Britain was taking advantage of Iran's oil and stealing the country blind in order to help overthrow the government.
The Islamic revolutionaries and the communists helped overthrow the government.
Then the Islamic revolutionaries executed the communists after they complained that they weren't being given an opportunity to help administer the country.
The Islamic revolutionaries were basically chanting "neither east, nor west". No capitalism taking advantage of Iran's resources, no Russian communists taking control of their government.
From there, the revolution now had a state and it could leverage the state's resources to export and fund its revolution to other countries which it has done extensively.
I guess you'll be as disingenuous as needed to avoid mentioning America's involvement in overthrowing the legitimate government of Iran in 1953.
That wasn't the question you asked. The question you asked was about a couple decades later. When we helped overthrow the previous leader, it was because the fear was that he was establishing communism in Iran. He was unelected, removing the actual elected representatives and undermining the Shah. Of course after removing him, the Shah ended up not being much better, but can't win'em all.
The spark that caused the whole thing as far as I understand, is that Britain was taking advantage of Iran's oil which kept upsetting the population until they wanted something to be done. This probably gave communists an opportunity to come in, nationalize the oil and be the saviors, before then simply becoming the new oppressors of the population.
I don't think anybody was a hero, just Brits, Russians and the US strategizing around a country that seemed lost.
It really wasn't, but in either case your answer takes us back to the original point being made...
> it [the US] is the biggest organizer of violence, arms dealing, murder, corruption and every single one of your leaders has been a scourge inflicted on the world
These aren't independent events. Every time we impose our imperial will on other countries, the echoes winds up being worse, with a very, very limited number of exceptions.
> but can't win'em all.
We barely win any of them, but if your attention span is only a single generation, then I can see how you might fail to notice.
> Every time we impose our imperial will on other countries
The US isn't an empire. Is Germany a US territory? Is Japan a US territory? Is Iraq? No. Is Panama? No. Puerto Rico and Hawaii are happily part of the US. We don't have to use military force or economic leverage to keep them part of the US. If the US government was destroyed, we would recreate it, because it is good.
The US also championed natural rights globally, which recognizes that people have rights that are not derived from any government, but are inherent. Guess which countries reject this? China, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and others.
> We barely win any of them
Winning depends on what you wanted to achieve. We don't need to win, we just need to get what we want. Our military won in Vietnam, but when conflict started again the government voted not to get involved. The Vietnamese love the US and hate China. South Koreans love the US. North Korea's leader loves the US and hates China. Japan loves the US and hates China. Saddam Hussein was killed in Iraq and we established forward bases to use against Iran. Afghanistan hates Iran. Osama bin Laden was killed. European countries and most Middle Eastern and most Asian countries are friendly with the US.
Everyone seems to recognize how Russia, Iran and China align. Our allies are getting stronger, because we're giving them tough love, while Cuba, Venezuela, Russia and Iran are all getting weaker.
You can interpret all of that however you'd like, but it doesn't sound like losing. People can delude themselves all they want and the media can yell from the top of the trees how everything is awful and we're losing and so on, but reality gets a vote. Don't let other people tell you what is real. Figure it out yourself and come to your own conclusions.
>World War 2
Do I need to remind you you _nuked_ a soon to be surrendering country for the lulz?
>Vietnam war
Lmao you've literally went in there because of your blind anti-communist behaviour after coup-ing your own "allies" of South Vietnam
>Korean War
True, not your fault, you just bombed an entire country into non existence.
>Iraq attack Iran
Lmao you gave Iraq billions of dollars in hardware through back channels to go around your own inclusion of Iraq as a backer of terrorism and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran
>Iran
You installed your own dictator and supported him in a coup because the prime minister of Iran wanted to have control over their own reserves. The fact that there's been an islamic revolution is direct blowback caused by your involvement.
>We have promoted peace in Europe through NATO
Peace in Europe exists because of the European union and because we've finally accepted to stop shooting at eachother. It was also the American government that pushed back against UN intervention during the Srebrenica genocide.
> We're trying to achieve a similar Europe-like stability in the Middle East
By spending hundreds of billions on a country that, since its inception, has continuously been at war, an aggressor, colonizing, genocidal theocracy? Working out GREAT.
>What country is it that you're defending
Watch out, your paranoia is seeping through. The US is a net negative to world peace is the only thing that was said.
>Oh no, it couldn't be Iraq. Maybe it's Iran! Do you want to go down the list of the kind of country Iran is? How about Afghanistan? North Korea?
While none of those countries are angels, and a lot of them are also victims of political power plays outside of their own control (hint: it involves the US being so violently anti-communist that it would rather raze a country to the ground rather than see its hegemony ever so slightly threatened), I would like you to remind you that none of these ever nuked a country twice. It's really hard to catch up to the US on the scale of atrocities committed.
I could also remind you of the dozens of dictatorships you've funded and supported in South America, the weapons selling to Iran, the ongoing involvement in the drug trade or the illegitimate embargoes.
>[free speech word vomit]
I don't particularly give a shit about American free speech when the US is, once again, the biggest source of political instability anywhere in the world. But I'm glad you can freely and openly support Nazis because freeze peach, it's made the world a lot better.
> Lmao you've literally went in there because of your blind anti-communist behaviour after coup-ing your own "allies" of South Vietnam
Anti-communism was and still is highly important and critical. Comintern was aiming to conquer the Earth with global communism. It was an open objective and part of what caused World War 2. The Soviet Union has caused more death on this planet as a result of its communist expansion threat than any other country in history. So yes, we are anti-communist. And you should be too.
> Do I need to remind you you _nuked_ a soon to be surrendering country for the lulz?
It was largely symbolic and demonstrative. Nukes aren't as deadly as other weapons we were already using. There wasn't any guarantee Japan was going to surrender and you have the benefit of being in the future, which they did not. You should also try understanding what Japan was doing to other countries. It was horrific in every sense. They had to be stopped by any means. You could argue part of the strategy of using the nukes to end the war early was to pre-empt the Russians gaining ground in Japan and getting stuck with a second communist split like in Germany. That concern was certainly validated by Russia's push for Korea decades later. Korea would have been fine without Russia trying to gain communist control there.
> Lmao you gave Iraq billions of dollars in hardware through back channels to go around your own inclusion of Iraq as a backer of terrorism and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran
Countries do all kinds of things to achieve their strategic aims, the US isn't remotely unique in that regard. Still, we didn't encourage him to invade Iran and we only supported him when he started losing to prevent Iran expanding into Iraq.
> You installed your own dictator and supported him in a coup because the prime minister of Iran wanted to have control over their own reserves. The fact that there's been an islamic revolution is direct blowback caused by your involvement.
It was more complicated than that. Britain was taking advantage of Iran and Russia was trying to establish communism in Iran. The new leader was essentially getting rid of elected members of government and becoming a dictator. It wasn't a good situation to start with and the US didn't want Russia to establish communism there. Even decades later when the revolutionaries took over, the communists helped them overthrow the government and then the revolutionaries executed the communists. If everyone had left Iran alone, we probably wouldn't have gotten involved.
> Peace in Europe exists because of the European union and because we've finally accepted to stop shooting at eachother. It was also the American government that pushed back against UN intervention during the Srebrenica genocide.
Peace in Europe does not exist because of the EU. The US formed NATO with the European countries. That established a mutual defense agreement so if anyone attacked anyone else, everyone would join in and defend.
> I would like you to remind you that none of these ever nuked a country twice.
I don't know why you're so caught up on nukes. Far more people died from other weapons than nukes and the US has done more to prevent the proliferation of nukes than any other country. Nuking Japan also wasn't a single country decision. Multiple countries had to agree to it, because of what Japan was doing. Nobody is going to use nukes today unless they want to end their country.
> I could also remind you of the dozens of dictatorships you've funded and supported in South America, the weapons selling to Iran, the ongoing involvement in the drug trade or the illegitimate embargoes.
You can't change the whole world at once and even if we could, we wouldn't want to. That's a communist thing. There are monarchies and dictatorships that are largely tolerable, like Singapore. Usually whenever we help some country, especially a country we don't particularly like, it'll be conditioned on something. I can't know every strategic plan we've ever had or why we had it.
> I don't particularly give a shit about American free speech when the US is, once again, the biggest source of political instability anywhere in the world. But I'm glad you can freely and openly support Nazis because freeze peach, it's made the world a lot better.
The US dollar, defense agreements, preserving international waterway navigation and aggressively pushing back against communism has done far more to improve the stability of countries than any time in history. The USD being almost ubiquitous helps to stabilize it against many kinds of major shocks that no other country can absorb.
I think you have your feelings way too invested into your opinions. If you can prove anything I've said is incorrect, I'll change my mind, but I don't think the same could be said about you. If you don't have the freedom to change your mind, then you'll stagnate.
> Anti-communism was and still is highly important and critical.
McCarthyism was the pinnacle of the anti-communism movement. How did that turn out, again?
> It was an open objective and part of what caused World War 2
I'm pretty sure Germany invading other countries was the cause of World War 2. I don't see how you can lump "dang commies were spreading, so we had to go fight 'em" in as a justification, when there was only a non-aggression pact between Germany and the former-USSR. "Those dang commies were spreading without shooting a single bullet, so we had to stop 'em! Yeehaw!"
> Nukes aren't as deadly as other weapons we were already using.
How do you figure? If they weren't/aren't as deadly, why did the US waste the billions to research and produce them? The technology of the time had no qualitative equal. Rockets weren't even in use, yet, because the V2 only came out during WWII. So, no ICBMs. At best, there was the rail gun that Germany was developing but that was a "their" weapon and not an "our" weapon.
> The US formed NATO with the European countries.
Where are you getting this revision of history from? The Western Union was created, first, by European countries and it became NATO a few years later. The US didn't form anything, it came to an already existing table.
> I don't know why you're so caught up on nukes.
Ok, Agent Orange? People are still dying from cancer, to this day, from that.
> Usually whenever we help some country, especially a country we don't particularly like, it'll be conditioned on something.
You're so close to getting it... "it'll be conditioned on something" is the pivotal point: As long you get what you want(ed), consequences be damned. Iran-Contra comes to mind, here.
> The USD being almost ubiquitous helps to stabilize it against many kinds of major shocks that no other country can absorb.
Isn't actually the inverse? It's preventing all of it's former close allies from just dumping the bonds because Dorito wants to antagonise all of your allies? Didn't the 2008 crash demonstrate it can destabilise in a major shock, just as well?
> If you can prove anything I've said is incorrect, I'll change my mind
Everything in your statements seems to be bathed in American Exceptionalism and I'm doubting that anyone could change your mind.
> McCarthyism was the pinnacle of the anti-communism movement. How did that turn out, again?
It worked out fine?
> I'm pretty sure Germany invading other countries was the cause of World War 2. I don't see how you can lump "dang commies were spreading, so we had to go fight 'em" in as a justification, when there was only a non-aggression pact between Germany and the former-USSR. "Those dang commies were spreading without shooting a single bullet, so we had to stop 'em! Yeehaw!"
Many communists were armed and had guns, aiming to take over every country on Earth. The US, Japan and Germany were fighting back against them in China, Spain and Germany.
> How do you figure? If they weren't/aren't as deadly, why did the US waste the billions to research and produce them? The technology of the time had no qualitative equal.
I figure objectively. Far more Japanese were killed by fire bombings, which could be done extensively, at scale, with impunity. Nukes were important and consequential, but if the goal was simply to kill Japanese or destroy strategic targets then we already had that problem well solved.
Japan had thoroughly spread propaganda of racial superiority and being divinely chosen. One of the benefits of dropping a nuke compared to fire bombing, is that it immediately leaves a humbling impression.
> Where are you getting this revision of history from? The Western Union was created, first, by European countries and it became NATO a few years later. The US didn't form anything, it came to an already existing table.
The US created the League of Nations, which was the first known collective security organization like that to prevent a repeat of World War 1. Ironically, the idea came from a German. World War 2 demonstrated that Europeans weren't prepared to defend each other.
The Western Union was mostly an attempt to demonstrate to the US that European countries were now ready to defend each other, rather than failing. This is relevant right now, because there are concerns that Putin wants to test NATO to see if their resolve collapses the same way it did during World War 2 under the League of Nations. In order for NATO to be formed, the US had to be convinced that European countries could be active participants rather than passive consumers of defense guarantees, which is also again relevant since we've been pushing harder for European countries to meet their defense spending commitments.
> Isn't actually the inverse? It's preventing all of it's former close allies from just dumping the bonds because Dorito wants to antagonise all of your allies? Didn't the 2008 crash demonstrate it can destabilise in a major shock, just as well?
People actually traded in other currencies for USD rather than ditching it after 2008.
[dead]
We've got a billionaire funded conspiracy openly ignoring the Constitution, wantonly trashing our American liberties, and yet you're still raging about "communist billionaires" ?
The politics of billionaires as a group is not leftism, nor is it rightism. The politics of billionaires is self-serving authoritarianism. From each camp, they pick the sides of issues that stand to increase their own power, taking stakes in them as if they are horses. They will gladly support woke groupthink as long as it's getting results, and then readily switch to supporting anti-woke groupthink when society has had enough and the winds shift.
The net effects from both phases are losses from our individual liberty, which have been accumulating for decades, and are presumably the source of your rightful anger. But please come to your senses!
From what I've seen, freedom of speech has been improving. It used to be that people could barely speak their mind on Reddit, Twitter or at universities without getting attacked or cancelled over who knows what. Now, people are expressing themselves more regularly in all of those places. Universities still have a ways to go, but it is improving.
There have been some television networks that also had public licensing to broadcast over the air, but that requires a broadcast license which has stipulations of serving the public interest. To maintain this license, you require locally relevant content, a variety of viewpoints expressed and they cannot distort the news.
Increasingly, shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and The View which are all broadcast over the air with public licenses, became more than simply interview shows with interesting guests. They became actual political hit jobs that masquerade as news while day in day out insulting politicians and spreading provably false out of context lies which people could debunk themselves with their own research. Yet, these networks used this entertainment loophole as if it was a blank check to go against the public interest broadcast license.
No doubt, people can argue the same about politicians themselves, but politicians aren't restricted to this legal standard, because they need the flexibility to achieve whatever they think the country needs at the moment. Public broadcasting is its own thing and does allow for a significant range of content, so long as you adhere to the standards.
If PBS ran a decent journalistic report investigating some problem in an administration that is in the public interest and is an entirely different thing than these political hate shows that all seem to echo the exact same thought with different words. They can exist just fine, but I fundamentally agree that it stretches the definition of what is acceptable public interest programming for over the air broadcasting.
Putting pressure on them to change up their programming is probably a good thing for the country. What ever happened to the old high quality high integrity debate shows and intellectual interviews? It's all insults or propaganda now and "I don't know, they're crazy!", so nobody understands what's going on in the world or why it's happening. It's like they make it obvious that they have no interest in informing you, because if you understand it, you can't hate it as much as they need you to.
It would be fine for those networks to continue running those shows, but they would have to move it off to some other channel that isn't broadcast using an over the air license.
As for the constitution, they are surrounded by lawyers and if they overstep something, they back off. They are applying unitary executive theory as a solution to a slow congress to address the many critical issues facing the US in our time, one of which is demonstrating to China that we can act, which is one more element of deterrence to prevent them from starting World War 3.
Companies are largely pro-American and if they feel like woke helps resolve some kinds of political tensions that have been dividing America, then they will feel like that is the patriotic thing to do. When it turns out that is actually Marxism in disguise aimed at destroying the country, they push back. These things just happen slowly and it takes time to adjust.
> As for the constitution, they are surrounded by lawyers and if they overstep something, they back off. They are applying unitary executive theory as a solution to a slow congress to address the many critical issues facing the US in our time, one of which is demonstrating to China that we can act, which is one more element of deterrence to prevent them from starting World War 3.
The solution to save the country is to write off the Constitution in favor of "unitary executive theory" aka autocracy? Falling flat on our face in Iran creates a deterrent for China? I'm sorry, these are nothing more than partisan rationalizations.
FWIW I was right there with you regarding the woke groupthink of the past decade, but as I said the real issue is that the political winds have shifted, and unless you shift with them you go from speaking truth to power to simply speaking for power's new buntings. I completely understood a vote for Trump 2016, I was the weirdo telling my friends he was likely to win. But by 2020 it was clear that he had no actual substantive policy or leadership, just more division and "I don't take responsibility at all".
As I said, please come to your senses. You don't have to listen to my arguments (in fact you shouldn't, because what I said above aren't actually arguments - rather they're short blurbs to measure how far from centrist non-partisan reality you've gotten). But please listen to criticism from somewhere. Standing up for individual liberty in the face of tyranny is plain old-fashioned American, not woke.
> The solution to save the country is to write off the Constitution in favor of "unitary executive theory" aka autocracy?
Unitary Executive Theory is not autocracy. You seem to have capacity to reason and maybe don't understand how the US works, so I'll explain. In the US, we have many states. All of the states can check the federal government, because it is the states that created the federal government to start with, as an expression of the people.
The federal government has multiple branches, which each have different responsibilities. The president doesn't control the legislative or judicial branches, only the executive branch. If the president did some kind of truly insane dictator thing, there would be bipartisan support to impeach him and it would be upheld at the supreme court. If he simply went into a restaurant and started shooting people, he would be detained, impeached and imprisoned. The illusion the media spreads that somehow the president has gained control of both legislative and judicial branches is not reality.
China does not have a military. The Chinese Communist Party has a military. In the US, the military serves the constitution, which serves the people. If the president started tearing up the constitution and somehow the legislative or judicial branches were destroyed, the military would step in. Yes, the president is the commander of the military, technically, but nobody is above the constitution.
The best way to defend the US constitution is to be an originalist which uses well established understandings of the spirit, original intention and demonstrated early application of the language of the constitution. Trump's administrations interpret it using originalist arguments.
I know that it is difficult to hold a view that media seems to hate or not support, because surely media has merit and smart people who know the truth and they will speak the truth, right? Unfortunately, we cannot give up our capacity to make up our own minds. The fact people can make hand gestures and emotional facial expressions on video now does not give them any more authority than a quote from a newspaper 100 years ago.
> Falling flat on our face in Iran creates a deterrent for China?
Rolling up on Cuba, Venezuela and Iran weakens China's proxies. It has also caused China to start to draw down on their huge oil reserves which reduces their sanction proofing which mitigates some of the risk of World War 3. Helping Ukraine target Russian oil infrastructure is another component of that, because that is another source of oil for China that they are coming to understand cannot be relied on.
Tons of oil is moving through the strait now and none of it is Iran's, because we're blockading them. This is fine by us, because it's more oil China has to take from its reserves. Our #1 priority is stopping World War 3. Preventing Iran from getting nukes, shutting down their space program (keep in mind, Russia's space program was just hit too), limiting their ability to harass their neighbors, shutting down their drone supply chain so they can no longer support Russia's war in Ukraine and more are all side goals by comparison.
What the media says, what China says, what Iran says, what Europe says about all this... it's usually ignorant oblivious garbage. We aren't overly motivated to tell everyone what we're doing or why we're doing it. We're doing what we think we need to do. People can heckle from the sidelines, but it is the norm throughout history that most people don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's very common especially for things like war, where the media will be 6 months 5 years or even 50 years behind what the reality is.
> As I said, please come to your senses. You don't have to listen to my arguments (in fact you shouldn't, because what I said above aren't actually arguments - rather they're short blurbs to measure how far from centrist non-partisan reality you've gotten). But please listen to criticism from somewhere. Standing up for individual liberty in the face of tyranny is plain old-fashioned American, not woke.
I've spent thousands of hours researching these things, watching substantive intellectual debates and interviews, legal interpretations, geopolitical analysis and so on. I don't go in with a preconceived notion, only digging for anything that supports it. I'm not an idiot. Just because some fancy highly respected person says something, doesn't mean it is true. Smart people are wrong plenty, which is a fact that means we cannot delegate our ability to reason.
If you can formulate strong counter-arguments, I'll listen. Just don't make lazy arguments.
Can you name some of the communist billionaires
[flagged]
[dead]