Is it? When and where has this been the case? Not trying to troll, genuinely curious.
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edit: misread that.
We have a tremendous advantage over China militarily in every way except maybe manpower to repel an invasion.
It doesn’t offend me if you think so, but I don’t have anything like a “Go USA-guard freedom around the world” perspective. In fact my perspective is probably worse than being genuinely idealistic about it. It’s closer to: somebody has to be #1, kinda glad we’re it because everybody else is ~basically worse, so let’s try to be the nicest #1 possible.
I agree that electing stable genius ipso facto makes us a big question mark going forward even if we get a saner, restorative presidency at some point in the future. If you’re not supporting his actions ok, but you are challenging the consensus? view that the Syria outcome and the SK outcome is very bad?
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I mean, it isn’t. If everybody’s living well, then there’s no reason to really protest. It’s when the power imbalance between the rulers and ruled is so extreme that it is detrimental to the ruled’s quality of life that instability occurs.
Syria? Dunno why you would bring that it as if everything is always the same. Syria != Korea != The Ukraine.
The outcome has been terrible in Syria, though it’s not surprising. The US was never a good partner for the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria and I don’t think the Democrats in office were a guarantee of a permanent US force standing in Turkey’s way. And again, the many complicated outcomes in Syria are partly the result of US policy both in Iraq and in, directly or not, supplying weapons to groups like the Army of Conquest.
What SK outcome? Walking out on talks? That’s an outcome? Of course that’s lame and could be harmful, but it’s hardly an outcome.
The “consensus opinion” is basically the opposite of Trump. This is not a bad rule of thumb, but it ends up swinging from pole to pole whenever he does, just on the opposite side.
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Long-term abject poverty is not a threat to the ruling class. People who are trying to just get enough food are not the revolutionaries that middle class people without political freedom are.
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English Civil War, the first half of the French Revolution, most European revolutions in the 19th century successful or unsuccessful. If you’re some snotty nobleman with no merit and there’s a class of people rising up who know how to trade, bank, do law, print stuff, they’re going to destabilize your shit unless you co-opt them or crush them.
Of course if you have a personality cult surrounding you, people can justify abject poverty. North Korea is a perfect example.
But so long as people are happy with their lives, they aren’t going to band together and rock the boat. Millennials in China aren’t that far removed from what things were like during their childhood. They’ve seen the development and are optimistic for their future.
The thing that’s the same is that they’re in the news, and mostly because some guy is on a crime spree, using American foreign policy for corrupt ends, either to enrich himself, to stay cool with dictators on whose patronage he depends, or to pursue conspiracy theories that give him and/or his fans the feels, or all of the above.
I haven’t followed it yet, just read a few tweets, it seems like he has taken concrete steps to get out of South Korea, whether that means the troops leave, no more joint drills w/e I don’t know yet.
I used to be pretty offended by like the Euros who just seemed to hate the US. Jalfrezi can attest to this. Trump has made me much more open to looking at the US from the outside. I’ve always been like “sure, the US has some terrible history”, but I’m much less enthusiastic about our present and future now.
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Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating the business dealings of Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, including whether he failed to register as a foreign agent, according to people familiar with the probe. The people were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Rudy you dumb motherfucker.
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You know what Rudy Guiliani says when he can’t hear something?
Pardon me?
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I agree with that, but in the context we’re discussing they have more than enough power.
Yawn.
“I don’t remember”
“Executive privilege”
“5th amendment”
- thanks for testifying Don
Shots? Impressed.
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