The insanity of this is that Trump is funding a country who is supplying armaments to Iran, who the US is at war with.
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@Remittancegirl I mean they are only directives to departments. They don't get to contravene the law. But since he doesn't actually care what is illegal and nobody is holding him to account, it doesn't matter. If the constitution said he couldn't do it he wouldn't care either. After all, he's doing things that are forbidden by that as well.
@ariaflame True, but if it were codified in the constitution, even the current supreme court would have problems upholding it. (not all the members, but a majority)
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@Illuminatus No question, but that was always present. Right?
We know how successful the Nazis were at keeping America out of WW2. It was that idiot Hitler who ruined their work by declaring war on the US.
And because of a "treaty", even! What an idiot. I'm surprised he made Corporal. -
@Remittancegirl Yeah I sort of agree, but I try not to get too inevitablist about it. If the problem is both the people (too weak and petulant) and the "leaders" (too manipulative) then it's hard to know where to start.
In the UK at least, I do think there has been a slow shift away from an (albeit conservative) civic-mindedness, towards a more consumerist attitude.@Remittancegirl For example, people have always been annoyed with the BBC. But now they want to get rid of it, rather than fix it.
People get upset with their political party because of single issue X, so they look for another party, expecting to find one that is tailored to their views. That is a consumer mindset. -
@Remittancegirl
I assume the simplest explanation is that the narcissist sociopath does whatever benefits him personally or emotionally, and that he can get away with.
A lot of money went into making sure the supreme court said he can get away with literally anything, so there are no brakes on the clown car.@petealexharris I can't argue with this, but I would say that what has unfolded takes more of an attention span than Trump has.
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@unkx I know. It was just framed in a way that had no response. And while sarcasm can feel good, it really isn't terribly easy to engage with. I like your restatement far better. It's undeniably true.
@Remittancegirl yeah sarcasm is hard. Especially online with people from dlfferent cultures and backgrounds etc.
And personally I suck at remembering that whenever I’m trying to say something ”meaningful” and get the bright idea to use sarcasm as the framing device…
(Also english ain’t my native language, so some idioms that are ”natural” to me make no sense in english, and some english language idioms i still don’t get to this day…)
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We know how successful the Nazis were at keeping America out of WW2. It was that idiot Hitler who ruined their work by declaring war on the US.
And because of a "treaty", even! What an idiot. I'm surprised he made Corporal.@WellsiteGeo @Illuminatus Actually, it was Japan. It was the bombing of Pearl Harbour that finally got the US into WWII.
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@kbm0 You know, I used to think it was worth considering, but I'm starting to feel it isn't.
A majority of people are short-sighted, weak and petulant. Which makes them easily manipulable and prone to gestures linked to identity rather than communality.
I'm not for a moment suggesting people don't have absolutely legitimate grievances. But they always have. Regular people have always been instrumentalised by those in power, with more or less misery attached.
@Remittancegirl @kbm0
"A majority of people are short-sighted,"Like I've said for decades, we still haven't understood the consequences of these "agriculture" and "pottery" technologies.
10kyr clearly is not time enough. -
@Remittancegirl For example, people have always been annoyed with the BBC. But now they want to get rid of it, rather than fix it.
People get upset with their political party because of single issue X, so they look for another party, expecting to find one that is tailored to their views. That is a consumer mindset.@kbm0 Absolutely. And I do not know how to change that mindset within the time period necessary to stop certain systems from collapsing. Not spectacular collapses, but systems so eroded - like the BBC - as to be approaching uselessness.
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@Remittancegirl yeah sarcasm is hard. Especially online with people from dlfferent cultures and backgrounds etc.
And personally I suck at remembering that whenever I’m trying to say something ”meaningful” and get the bright idea to use sarcasm as the framing device…
(Also english ain’t my native language, so some idioms that are ”natural” to me make no sense in english, and some english language idioms i still don’t get to this day…)
@unkx Also, I think using sarcasm can protect us from the full, tragic gravity of what we're saying.
Anyway, I'm so glad we're past that!
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RE: https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/117453794779199297
The insanity of this is that Trump is funding a country who is supplying armaments to Iran, who the US is at war with.
This is such a perfect illustration of the obscene veil of geopolitical nonsense when it's pulled back.
There are men who want to cling onto power. They will do anything, fund anyone, kill any number of civilians, ruin any number of healthy economies.... just to hang onto their own personal power a few minutes longer.
@Remittancegirl Americans: Vote as if Putin was on the ballot
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@Remittancegirl I have a half-baked theory about this. But I'm just a rando, so feel free to disregard.
It makes sense of quite a lof of what is going on, which is both good (it has explanatory power) and bad (maybe it has too much explanatory power).
My theory in sum is that what we might call, for lack of a much more precise and lengthy characterisation, the US foreign policy elites, have an essential disagreement between two factions I'll called optimist and pesimist.
Optimists are the people who were in charge pre-Trump. They are liberals, in the technical sense of upholding free markets and so on, and believe their own propaganda. They're the sort of people who think Fukuyama was right and which believe capitalism is more efficient and soft power matters. Who think GDP measures power, financialisation has no negative sides, and industrial production is something that can be done elsewhere and paid for. Who regard China as abnormal, and on a permanent edge of crisis, and consider it will inevitably adopt more capitalist forms because it will otherwise run into a dead end. Optimists trust the US's ability to ultimately outcompete its rivals and regard persuasion and diplomacy as key tools.
The pessimists have similar terminal values (US hegemony, private property) but aren't convinced that there's anything more efficient or automatically victorious about them. They see China as an existential threat to the model, and aren't invested in upholding rules if that means they might lose. They also see the present moment of US power as historically unique, a peak, and so they see its current allies as resource bases to be extracted from, and its military as a tool to create facts on the ground that cannot later be reverted. Under this frame, US power is fragile and temporary, so it makes sense to use it now before it's lost.
This makes sense of very strange things, like the urgency to intervene in Venezuela, the concern with Panama, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, and the otherwise inexplicable support for the war in Iran. The way I see it, this is the pessimist faction gaining the upper hand and deciding having a big and scary military is no advantage if you never do anything with it, and since the hegemonic status is ultimately temporary, this is the time to act.
@modulux @Remittancegirl
"The pessimists have similar terminal values (US hegemony, private property)"Not "private" property, but *my* property. They'll happily steal "your" property, but the moment you steal something from them (e.g. your attention, stolen from *their* advertising) it's time for the full power of the State in defence of *their* property.
See also : ThoughtPolice, and viewscreens watching your eyeballs tracking the adverts.
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@modulux @Remittancegirl
"The pessimists have similar terminal values (US hegemony, private property)"Not "private" property, but *my* property. They'll happily steal "your" property, but the moment you steal something from them (e.g. your attention, stolen from *their* advertising) it's time for the full power of the State in defence of *their* property.
See also : ThoughtPolice, and viewscreens watching your eyeballs tracking the adverts.
@WellsiteGeo @Remittancegirl Fair enough. I was summarising, since the reply was already too long as it was. Call it private property in the means of production.
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RE: https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/117453794779199297
The insanity of this is that Trump is funding a country who is supplying armaments to Iran, who the US is at war with.
This is such a perfect illustration of the obscene veil of geopolitical nonsense when it's pulled back.
There are men who want to cling onto power. They will do anything, fund anyone, kill any number of civilians, ruin any number of healthy economies.... just to hang onto their own personal power a few minutes longer.
@Remittancegirl
Perspective matters. Is the person making the decision an agent of Russia with a goal of destroying the US? He might be doing a fantastic job. I don't see any inkling that he has more concern for anyone besides himself and Russia. -
So, there are some possible options:
1. Trump's attention span is so sort and so narrow, he doesn't register this dichotomy.
2. There are people behind him suggesting shit to a compliant Trump who are architecting this incoherence for their own purposes.
Are there others I'm not seeing? Can you think of some frame in which the logic of this makes sense?
@Remittancegirl there are people suggesting things to a narcissistic Trump who is easy to manipulate. Those people are in conflict with each other, some of them are Christian dominionists, some are just frauds, some are tescrealists, some might have literal Russian handlers
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