I am honestly really scared that Donald Trump is personally insisting to Republican leadership that they not take any deal that involves Ukraine funding no matter what concessions the Democrats offer. It seems like Biden could give them a flat tax and privatizing Social Security and Trump would still make them die on the Ukraine hill.
If we let Ukraine lose, it will be catastrophic for us strategically. We'd have to redeploy a ton of forces to Europe to keep Russia from rampaging through NATO, which would massively reduce our ability to deter China, Iran, North Korea, and anyone else. And of course Biden would get blamed for it because it happened on his watch, even though Republicans caused it.
The isolationist vibes that came out of the GOP *base* from the 2nd half of the Obama presidency were the pre-cursors to the anti-Ukraine isolationism that's the sole foreign policy position on the books for the MAGAfied GOP today.
The NeoCons of the 00's were never *actually* punished for starting fruitless wars of nation-building that saw a lot of Americans and orders of magnitude more Iraqis and Afghans killed, so they were *politically* punished by the GOP base as the form of accountability via turning the party away from the NeoCon goals of American-led global security to protect free markets. Had the NeoCons came out and admit they fucked up on the GWoT--something Bush and Cheney *still* both refuse to do to this day--then maybe the GOP base wouldn't have been so extremely isolationist in the aftermath of NeoCon geopolitical fuckups. Instead, the NeoCons couldn't admit any failures on their own part, so now the NeoCons are part of "the deep state"/"the uniparty"/"the RINOs" who work with the dems against the political goals of "Real America" (the MAGA base). Ukraine policy inevitably becomes part of that mix once the sides are established--isolationist MAGA vs the interventionist "Uniparty." That forced a choice onto GOP politicians in the post-2015 MAGA era: "get off of your Neocon bullshit and get onto the MAGA isolationism train or get drummed out of the party as a neocon member of the "uniparty"/"deep state." So in order to keep their positions of power/money/access and not have to deal with a nasty primary next cycle, about 98% of GOP pols turned against supporting Ukraine. That's where the party is today, and that's how it got there.
Interesting this - "American-led global security to protect free markets." I read a bio on the Dulles Bros, the first NeoCons, a while back ("The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" by Stephen Kinzer). The book covers six of their attempts at so-called American-led global security: The coups in Iran (Mossadegh), Guatemala (Arbenz), VietNam (Ho Chi Minh), and Indinonesia (Sukarno); the assasination of Lumumba in the Begian Congo; and eight attempts to assasinate Castro in Cuba. It was clear that all of that was ONLY to protect free markets. I wondered at the end, did they exxagerate the threat of Communism? Was the threat equal to the violent means?
And now that Jamie Dimon is blabbing away about how he supports Trump, I am completely convinced that the values that have powered this country since WWII are money, money and money. Not liberal democracy, individual rights, the rule of law. This of course was not what the Framers envisioned. They hoped for civic virtue. God, were they wrong. Although most of them doubted how long the republic could last.
IтАЩm afraid money has always been the root cause of war in human history. As Rhett Butler put it тАЬAll wars are basically money squabbles. Sometimes itтАЩs тАЬFree the Holy Land!тАЭ Sometimes itтАЩs тАЬNo Popery!тАЭ And sometimes itтАЩs тАЬSlavery and stateтАЩs rights!тАЭ
I think MAGA would willingly go to war with Iran under a Trump presidency--partially because for them Trump can never do wrong, and partially because protecting Israel via going to war with Iran makes the apocalyptical evangelical base feel like they're part of something that god wants them to do. For them, Iran is a just war backed by what god and Trump want us to do for Israel, whereas Ukraine is a uniparty globalist's war of choice against someone who hasn't harmed the US militarily.
If you want a sort of proof of MAGA's support for a war against Iran, ask yourself if the Iranian government had very publicly killed our top hero general (like James Mattis for example) while he was visiting Canada under a Trump presidency in 2020, would we have gone to war with the Iranian government? If so, that's what Trump did to Iran that very same year and his base was perfectly fine with that act--also presumably fine with whatever the consequences of said act.
So if we can acknowledge that the killing of another country's top hero general is a war-starting act, that Trump did this war-starting act, and that the MAGA evangelical base already gets its rocks off thinking about a holy war with Iran for Jesus and Israel, then we can reasonably assume they'd be just fine with a war with Iran--especially when they're actively attacking us militarily, which Russia has not done. Iran shooting at and killing/wounding US service members abroad? Just cause for war for MAGA. Sending weapons to Ukraine as part of a globalist scheme to protect European democracy? Not a just cause for military aid for Ukraine or antagonisms against Russia for isolationist "America First" MAGA.
Agree with this: "protecting Israel via going to war with Iran makes the apocalyptical evangelical base feel like they're part of something that god wants them to do." And excellent distinction between Israel and Ukraine.
You could be right but I suspect something different (I definitely could be wrong). I think they imagine Iran has some puny little nation that we would bomb to nothing not any idea that they are hardened fighters with lots of weapons and it most certainly would require American soldiers on the ground.
A war in Iran with the intent of regime change would be harder than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan were, but I think you're right that MAGA assumes it would be a walk in the park because of how the 80's went.
The same veterans of the Iran-Iraq War that were giving guys like me such a hard time in Iraq in the 00's are still alive and well in Iran. Iran has about twice the populace of Iraq (more fighters), has wayyyy better technology than Iraq did (the best IEDs hitting us in Iraq came from Iranian manufacturing), is a larger country than Iraq by size with even larger cities for urban warfare, and has a network of proxies around the world that could continuously harass us away from their homeland which would spread our resources thin. It would *not* be a cakewalk like the Tanker Wars of '84-'88 were.
The Iran crowd just ignores the shit out of me. Mostly because they arenтАЩt honest. Look if you donтАЩt like jcpoa and Iran going nuclear than be honest about what that really means. Which to me is the following: maximum sanctions which donтАЩt work and Iran continues to develop a nuke than what? They know what they mean: letтАЩs go to war baby!!!!! They wonтАЩt say it because they know Americans would be like тАЬwtf are we doing in the Middle East again?тАЭ
ItтАЩs like the Iran hawks donтАЩt understand what the Iraq war did to their voters (Republicans). They want out hard and fast
I'm going to have to disagree. If we let Ukraine lose, 45 will be leading the charge for us to pull out of NATO. We won't lift a finger while Putin rampages all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Heck, 45 might get some loans forgiven and that hotel in Moscow that he wants his name on. Europe being conquered is a perfectly acceptable price. The really sad part is that tge GOP has shown that they're fine with this course of events.
MAGA cares about Europe being overrun by Russia about as much as Jamie Dimon cares about democracy being replaced by MAGA authoritarianism here. As usual, those hungry for power/money are perfectly willing to throw their friends, neighbors, and countrymen to the wolves in order to get what they want.
I genuinely regret ever serving this country or its peoples after everything I've learned about both since returning home from combat as a young adult. At least I got the GI Bill and VA home loan as a conciliation prize for those personal sacrifices, but holy shit the American populace and the system they passively allow to exist here were in no way shape or form worth putting my own life on the line to defend--not with the principles they collectively hold and the status quo they're collectively unwilling to change. This isn't a country, it's just a class and culture competition pretending to be a country. And there are young people out there dying for it--as recently as this weekend. Fucking sickening in the big picture.
"I genuinely regret ever serving this country or its peoples after everything I've learned about both since returning home from combat as a young adult." That's a profound statement, Travis.ЁЯШл
I wish it weren't true, but ask yourself how you would feel if put in my shoes:
I came from an institute (the USMC) where everyone pulls their weight, there's a real meritocracy driven by actual personal performance, nobody sits on the sidelines and lets someone else pull their weight for them, and no one member of the team gets to claim 10/12 of the MREs in the food box while letting the rest of the squad fight over the last two. I came back to a country that has runaway wealth inequality driven by an established oligarchy with little-to-no pushback from the bootlicking working class and a broad tolerance for the pay-to-play "meritocracy" we have here that puts rich kids at the front of the line for basically everything. It was like coming home to an alternate universe where Americans don't give a shit about one another--only about themselves and their families/communities--and condone the hoarding of massive sums of wealth at the expense of not improving the whole country. I realize now that I came from an institute and way of life that put the country and the mission before individualism while fighting for a country full of individuals who don't give a shit about fixing the broken system that people like me were sacrificing our best years and our physical lives and health to preserve. How is it that so few of us could sacrifice so much at such a young age while old rich men who have lived full lives with the highest levels of decadence can't be bothered to give up fractions of their massive net worths to improve the country? That's the kind of reality I live with in my head every single day of my life. Of course I'm going to feel like I got robbed by a country that cares more about individualism than it does about making personal sacrifices for the country to make it better for our kids.
Since 9/11--which occurred in my hometown of NYC--I feel like I lived through the death of patriotism. My shock is that so many other Americans haven't come to the same realization. "We're not a country, we're a competition pretending to be a country." Once I understood that fact, everything else made much more sense to me. But even though it made more sense, it didn't make me feel any better about it.
Damn right. Biden should make this clear. Offer the Rs whatever they want, ask them to name their terms. They wonтАЩt go for it. The Lord High Trump has spoken. Get it on the record and in public, as often as possible.
I am honestly really scared that Donald Trump is personally insisting to Republican leadership that they not take any deal that involves Ukraine funding no matter what concessions the Democrats offer. It seems like Biden could give them a flat tax and privatizing Social Security and Trump would still make them die on the Ukraine hill.
If we let Ukraine lose, it will be catastrophic for us strategically. We'd have to redeploy a ton of forces to Europe to keep Russia from rampaging through NATO, which would massively reduce our ability to deter China, Iran, North Korea, and anyone else. And of course Biden would get blamed for it because it happened on his watch, even though Republicans caused it.
The isolationist vibes that came out of the GOP *base* from the 2nd half of the Obama presidency were the pre-cursors to the anti-Ukraine isolationism that's the sole foreign policy position on the books for the MAGAfied GOP today.
The NeoCons of the 00's were never *actually* punished for starting fruitless wars of nation-building that saw a lot of Americans and orders of magnitude more Iraqis and Afghans killed, so they were *politically* punished by the GOP base as the form of accountability via turning the party away from the NeoCon goals of American-led global security to protect free markets. Had the NeoCons came out and admit they fucked up on the GWoT--something Bush and Cheney *still* both refuse to do to this day--then maybe the GOP base wouldn't have been so extremely isolationist in the aftermath of NeoCon geopolitical fuckups. Instead, the NeoCons couldn't admit any failures on their own part, so now the NeoCons are part of "the deep state"/"the uniparty"/"the RINOs" who work with the dems against the political goals of "Real America" (the MAGA base). Ukraine policy inevitably becomes part of that mix once the sides are established--isolationist MAGA vs the interventionist "Uniparty." That forced a choice onto GOP politicians in the post-2015 MAGA era: "get off of your Neocon bullshit and get onto the MAGA isolationism train or get drummed out of the party as a neocon member of the "uniparty"/"deep state." So in order to keep their positions of power/money/access and not have to deal with a nasty primary next cycle, about 98% of GOP pols turned against supporting Ukraine. That's where the party is today, and that's how it got there.
Interesting this - "American-led global security to protect free markets." I read a bio on the Dulles Bros, the first NeoCons, a while back ("The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" by Stephen Kinzer). The book covers six of their attempts at so-called American-led global security: The coups in Iran (Mossadegh), Guatemala (Arbenz), VietNam (Ho Chi Minh), and Indinonesia (Sukarno); the assasination of Lumumba in the Begian Congo; and eight attempts to assasinate Castro in Cuba. It was clear that all of that was ONLY to protect free markets. I wondered at the end, did they exxagerate the threat of Communism? Was the threat equal to the violent means?
And now that Jamie Dimon is blabbing away about how he supports Trump, I am completely convinced that the values that have powered this country since WWII are money, money and money. Not liberal democracy, individual rights, the rule of law. This of course was not what the Framers envisioned. They hoped for civic virtue. God, were they wrong. Although most of them doubted how long the republic could last.
IтАЩm afraid money has always been the root cause of war in human history. As Rhett Butler put it тАЬAll wars are basically money squabbles. Sometimes itтАЩs тАЬFree the Holy Land!тАЭ Sometimes itтАЩs тАЬNo Popery!тАЭ And sometimes itтАЩs тАЬSlavery and stateтАЩs rights!тАЭ
If you like reading about the Dulles brothers give тАЬLegacy of AshesтАЭ a go. Covers the CIAтАЩs history of fuckups going back to just after WWII.
Tend to land where you are on the description of how we got here.
What I donтАЩt understand is the тАЬfuck UkraineтАЭ crowd and the тАЬbomb IranтАЭ crowd.
There is no fucking chance that Americans will invade Iran. They want nothing to do with the Middle East (I donтАЩt blame them).
I think MAGA would willingly go to war with Iran under a Trump presidency--partially because for them Trump can never do wrong, and partially because protecting Israel via going to war with Iran makes the apocalyptical evangelical base feel like they're part of something that god wants them to do. For them, Iran is a just war backed by what god and Trump want us to do for Israel, whereas Ukraine is a uniparty globalist's war of choice against someone who hasn't harmed the US militarily.
If you want a sort of proof of MAGA's support for a war against Iran, ask yourself if the Iranian government had very publicly killed our top hero general (like James Mattis for example) while he was visiting Canada under a Trump presidency in 2020, would we have gone to war with the Iranian government? If so, that's what Trump did to Iran that very same year and his base was perfectly fine with that act--also presumably fine with whatever the consequences of said act.
So if we can acknowledge that the killing of another country's top hero general is a war-starting act, that Trump did this war-starting act, and that the MAGA evangelical base already gets its rocks off thinking about a holy war with Iran for Jesus and Israel, then we can reasonably assume they'd be just fine with a war with Iran--especially when they're actively attacking us militarily, which Russia has not done. Iran shooting at and killing/wounding US service members abroad? Just cause for war for MAGA. Sending weapons to Ukraine as part of a globalist scheme to protect European democracy? Not a just cause for military aid for Ukraine or antagonisms against Russia for isolationist "America First" MAGA.
Agree with this: "protecting Israel via going to war with Iran makes the apocalyptical evangelical base feel like they're part of something that god wants them to do." And excellent distinction between Israel and Ukraine.
You could be right but I suspect something different (I definitely could be wrong). I think they imagine Iran has some puny little nation that we would bomb to nothing not any idea that they are hardened fighters with lots of weapons and it most certainly would require American soldiers on the ground.
A war in Iran with the intent of regime change would be harder than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan were, but I think you're right that MAGA assumes it would be a walk in the park because of how the 80's went.
The same veterans of the Iran-Iraq War that were giving guys like me such a hard time in Iraq in the 00's are still alive and well in Iran. Iran has about twice the populace of Iraq (more fighters), has wayyyy better technology than Iraq did (the best IEDs hitting us in Iraq came from Iranian manufacturing), is a larger country than Iraq by size with even larger cities for urban warfare, and has a network of proxies around the world that could continuously harass us away from their homeland which would spread our resources thin. It would *not* be a cakewalk like the Tanker Wars of '84-'88 were.
Exactly.
The Iran crowd just ignores the shit out of me. Mostly because they arenтАЩt honest. Look if you donтАЩt like jcpoa and Iran going nuclear than be honest about what that really means. Which to me is the following: maximum sanctions which donтАЩt work and Iran continues to develop a nuke than what? They know what they mean: letтАЩs go to war baby!!!!! They wonтАЩt say it because they know Americans would be like тАЬwtf are we doing in the Middle East again?тАЭ
ItтАЩs like the Iran hawks donтАЩt understand what the Iraq war did to their voters (Republicans). They want out hard and fast
I'm going to have to disagree. If we let Ukraine lose, 45 will be leading the charge for us to pull out of NATO. We won't lift a finger while Putin rampages all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Heck, 45 might get some loans forgiven and that hotel in Moscow that he wants his name on. Europe being conquered is a perfectly acceptable price. The really sad part is that tge GOP has shown that they're fine with this course of events.
I tend to land where you are. The idea that trump would lift a finger to Europe doesnтАЩt really seem plausible
MAGA cares about Europe being overrun by Russia about as much as Jamie Dimon cares about democracy being replaced by MAGA authoritarianism here. As usual, those hungry for power/money are perfectly willing to throw their friends, neighbors, and countrymen to the wolves in order to get what they want.
I genuinely regret ever serving this country or its peoples after everything I've learned about both since returning home from combat as a young adult. At least I got the GI Bill and VA home loan as a conciliation prize for those personal sacrifices, but holy shit the American populace and the system they passively allow to exist here were in no way shape or form worth putting my own life on the line to defend--not with the principles they collectively hold and the status quo they're collectively unwilling to change. This isn't a country, it's just a class and culture competition pretending to be a country. And there are young people out there dying for it--as recently as this weekend. Fucking sickening in the big picture.
"I genuinely regret ever serving this country or its peoples after everything I've learned about both since returning home from combat as a young adult." That's a profound statement, Travis.ЁЯШл
I wish it weren't true, but ask yourself how you would feel if put in my shoes:
I came from an institute (the USMC) where everyone pulls their weight, there's a real meritocracy driven by actual personal performance, nobody sits on the sidelines and lets someone else pull their weight for them, and no one member of the team gets to claim 10/12 of the MREs in the food box while letting the rest of the squad fight over the last two. I came back to a country that has runaway wealth inequality driven by an established oligarchy with little-to-no pushback from the bootlicking working class and a broad tolerance for the pay-to-play "meritocracy" we have here that puts rich kids at the front of the line for basically everything. It was like coming home to an alternate universe where Americans don't give a shit about one another--only about themselves and their families/communities--and condone the hoarding of massive sums of wealth at the expense of not improving the whole country. I realize now that I came from an institute and way of life that put the country and the mission before individualism while fighting for a country full of individuals who don't give a shit about fixing the broken system that people like me were sacrificing our best years and our physical lives and health to preserve. How is it that so few of us could sacrifice so much at such a young age while old rich men who have lived full lives with the highest levels of decadence can't be bothered to give up fractions of their massive net worths to improve the country? That's the kind of reality I live with in my head every single day of my life. Of course I'm going to feel like I got robbed by a country that cares more about individualism than it does about making personal sacrifices for the country to make it better for our kids.
Since 9/11--which occurred in my hometown of NYC--I feel like I lived through the death of patriotism. My shock is that so many other Americans haven't come to the same realization. "We're not a country, we're a competition pretending to be a country." Once I understood that fact, everything else made much more sense to me. But even though it made more sense, it didn't make me feel any better about it.
I completely get it, Travis, even though I have never participated in such an institution.
You've broken my heart.
America broke mine.
Excellent analogy!
Damn right. Biden should make this clear. Offer the Rs whatever they want, ask them to name their terms. They wonтАЩt go for it. The Lord High Trump has spoken. Get it on the record and in public, as often as possible.
Didn't JVL propose exactly this a few weeks ago?
100% this.