What we should do on the Korean Peninsula is really pretty obvious imo. Crippling sanctions and military displays make things worse. We should prudently use modest sanctions and extravagant cooperation with North Korea to spur an increase in the standard of living there. Poverty and military threats are always beneficial to tyrannical governments.
Having an ocean on both sides of the US mainland helps too.
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Don’t think it’s going to be so much the benefit of the doubt as an urgency to begin repairing the damage today with whoever is willing to help. There will be bad actors, but we have to at least start with the declaration that this will never happen again.
It’s sort of like the crazy waitress at the casino that’s drop dead gorgeous but out of her damn mind. No boundaries, compulsive liar, drug problem, broke except she’s always got someone else to grift. Sharon Stone in Casino.
But ffs you’ve played it safe your whole life and don’t even get laid a lot. Certainly not by anyone this hot. Why not stick your dick in crazy and see what happens…?
Three years later…
Nope, nope, that was a bad decision. Now you’re broke, jobless, friendless, homeless. Not that no one wants to be your friend again, but it’s going to take some time.
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Friendly reminder that it’s late 2019 and Trump’s approval rating is still in the low 40s.
Wonder why we propped up a brutal dictator when South Korea was destroyed and we cooperated with and helped develop The Netherlands when they were destroyed in WWII. Hell, we decided the German people were all good and that we should be friends and welcome them into the democratic world community, while the people of South Korea were to be subjected to dictatorship and used as fodder in our war 3600km away.
Well it’s not a perfect analogy.
Plus like, that’s 40% of people addicted to crazy. And that’s limited to US citizens for the purpose of this argument.
By no means am I dismissing the real-world consequences of those people having power. Just thinking of the global perception of America regardless of whether an individual supports Trump.
Unless I misunderstood your objection? I have liked you as a poster for a very long time, so I welcome whatever you have to say on the topic.
Meh. Barry Goldwater got 39% or so of the vote after pretty much saying he was going to nuke Moscow the morning after he got elected.
Trump has historically bad numbers. If the Electoral College wasn’t such a cartoon way to elect a president, he’d have less than no shot. But here we are.
MM MD
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Wasn’t Goldwater going to nuke Hanoi?
A fair number of politicians at the time strongly wanted to turn Germany into basically pastureland under a continued AMG for the indefinite future - but that became untenable due to Russia. Why wouldn’t we have rebuilt the Netherlands?
I dunno what the “best” strategy for South Korea at the time was - I don’t know enough about Korean politics at the time to even have a vaguely informed opinion. We’ve had a hideous track record in propping up dictators pretty much everywhere except western europe, though.
MM MD
I’m sure being allied more closely to China and Russia now is going to do wonders for their democracy.
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I’m not old enough to know - I have the sense that Johnson badly outmaneuvered Goldwater by getting him to agree not to make Vietnam an issue in the election, and then painting him successfully as a nuke-crazy squirrel who would start WW III ASAP. How accurate that all is, I don’t know - Goldwater was way to the right of Nixon, which at least gives an idea of his politics. Nixon had been edged out by Kennedy in 1960, and (rightly) thought Johnson was unbeatable for a lot of reasons. Nixon, interestingly, was viewed as the unifying moderate in the GOP at the time, and his decision not to run set off a scramble of lesser-known candidates that somehow ended up with Goldwater getting the nomination and getting crushed by Johnson in the election
MM MD
My point was not that we shouldn’t have behaved as we did in the Netherlands. It was that we decided that liberty was for white people.
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“We’re all about freedom and democracy starting … now!”
Am sure it’ll work out this time.
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I guess my point was that the vast majority of Trump voters aren’t in some kind of regret three years later.
He’s lost some support, but many are still with him no matter what.
And this is many tens of millions of people. It doesn’t really make the US look good. (Though cuse’s point about a lot of other countries electing idiots is a very good one, and might be the thing that bails us out)
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trump probably has the flu. it’s flu season, he’s an old man with a terrible body, terrible diet, probably a weak immune system. he’s most likely got the flu.
the idea that he’s freaking out about impeachment so much while watching fox news 12 hours a day that he gave himself a stroke and they took him to walter reed for an MRI and he’s in hiding because he’s recovering from a severe medical event is hilarious but it’s not the most likely thing going on.
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i like how his campaign video shits on mueller. isn’t his line that the mueller report proved his innocence?
That’s fine and everything but it’s hilarious the WH can’t say that. Instead, we have Fat Dear Leader who shits sunshine and we are all lucky to have such a wonderful perfect person in charge.
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Did Nunnihi quit again?
Possible he and Trump are the same person - went dark about the same time.
MM MD
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