hanikrummihundursvin
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User ID: 673
hanikrummihundursvin
5d ago
It's by definition more secretive the less transparent it is.
So is every process that is not publicly broadcasted 24/7. That doesn't mean that if not broadcast, they necessitate legitimate and reasonable concerns for malfeasance. Especially to the level of torture that goes beyond general operations of US prisons.
What do you mean, I don't engage with it.
I don't think I've been pretending they don't matter.
I gave an example in my post, I'll give one again for clarity to better express what I mean: Here I asked a question you did not engage with that we are now engaging with.
Regardless of him being a 'traitor', is a US army base a valid target? Does the US army kill innocent civilians? If the answer to these questions is yes, then what is this even about? The sympathy argument made in the Fox News interview is now even more inane than it was prior. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Inshallah.
From my perspective we are now finally getting to the point, posts later, where you engage with the moral point that's been leveraged. This is what I meant when I said you were not engaging with the point.
This might be true. I don't agree with his perspective. Do you?
Factually the US has committed atrocities against civilians in the middle East. Their military has been pivotal in carrying these atrocities out. To that extent, yes I agree that US servicemen are legitimate targets for reprisal attacks. I wish those attacks did not take place just as much as I wish the US stopped murdering the innocent when chasing after a demented zionist policy. But morally there is no question. Just like, morally, one could say that the US had a legitimate interest after 9/11 to go after Osama bin Laden and drop a few bombs. But they far overstepped what was morally permissible.
So to further clarify the point of contention that relates to the viewpoint I expressed and you replied to: Do you agree that when deciding to start a war against Iran on the basis that it's ruled by an an evil regime that hates America, as is so often alleged, that Iranian soldiers and their bases are legitimate targets, yes or no? Or do you only believe that US servicefolk are exempt from being valid targets when others take issue with how America has been governed? I'm not asking for what formal rules about declarations and acts of war say. I'm asking you, morally, what is permissible. Or do you, like many Americans I converse with, instinctively believe that Americans are of greater moral value to others? Where if they commit atrocities or represent the regime other allege are evil, that they can not be held accountable or be 'legitimately' targeted in the same way the US does to others?
Well, do you agree with collective guilt, or not?
No. But I also think there's a difference between a soldier and a civilian. And the rules of engagement that are set by both parties. But I already specifically asked you a question about this here:
Iranian solders don't get to decide on when the war begins. The US just bombs them at an opportune time to the celebration of plenty of Americans. To the US that's a legitimate act of war. Why would Nidal have to operate by different rules?
And here:
Are you pretending you don't understand the moral culpability of soldiers in service of an evil regime? How does America justify killing Iranian soldiers? The same way Nidal does when justifying the killing of American soldiers.
You replied that the distinction to this obviously moral contention being presented was that Nidal was American, and not capable of carrying out a legitimate act of war. To which I asserted that you were not engaging with the point:
I think you're just being obtuse to rhetorically distance yourself from the moral arguments made by the victims of Americas zionist foreign policy. Trying to qualify the event through ways that can't be equated with the actions of US armed forces. But when we do look at the actual issue at hand, which is the killing, there are plenty of equivocal examples to be drawn on.
The way I experience this, the American frame here is simple. The only legitimate ways to wage war are conveniently conventional and appeal to the perceived strengths of the US military. Dropping bombs on targets of convenience via air is legitimate, strapping a bomb to your chest and walking it towards your target of convenience is not. The CIA doing espionage operations that lead to a military target getting bombed or otherwise assassinated is legitimate. A lone Palestinian pretending to be American and then shooting a bunch of military targets is not.
I sense, generally, that you disagree with actions taken by the United States government and therefore sympathize with Nidal. But I'm not getting a clear ethical framework for why you think what Nidal did was right and what the U.S. did was wrong.
If the US had legitimate interest in the region but killed a bunch of civilians in the process, I'd still understand Nidal's viewpoint. I'd just admonish those who want to pretend that you can import the people you just bombed and not face the consequences. And I'd likewise want to diminish those voices that wanted to pretend that there are no morally grey areas in war and that it doesn't carry a cost.
I think that killing good people is bad. And that when good people start killing one another, some want to say that there can only be good people on their side, not the other. I think those people are not just wrong but acting in a way that is morally blind and moving towards evil.
I think there's actually a huge moral valiance to oathbreaking. A single person killing his wife is much more evil than a single person who uses a nuclear weapon to destroy an entire carrier battle group, killing thousands of people including any civilians who happen to be onboard. Do you disagree?
That still would be completely immaterial to the point being discussed, which I accused you of trying to distance yourself from. Not that I even believe you to actually hold this position. Unless I'm gravely misunderstanding you and you take issue with the CIA and any espionage operations the US engages in or benefits from that rely on spies or similar 'oathbreakers'.
Outside of that I don't manage to relate to your hypothetical. Feel free to clarify. For instance, oathbreaking in a marriage can mean murder, sure, but also infidelity. My point would be that murder is worse and the oathbreaking largely irrelevant when the stakes have been raised that much. And I feel more emotional relation to the weight of betrayal from someone you lived with and trusted, rather than someone who made a vow. I'd argue the vow itself is functionally ceremonial and irrelevant in the modern world. As it does not represent anything real or serious to many people. Regardless of whether we think it should or not. Whilst feeling of betrayal or the knowledge that someone wants or wanted to murder you carries more of the emotional weight.
The link that you provided does not substantiate your suggestion that the US military killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East throughout the Global War on Terror. It substantiates that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, which I did not dispute.
You're going to have to clarify. From the article:
This chart, compiled by political scientist Neta Crawford (Co-Founder, Costs of War and Professor, Oxford University) and anthropologist Catherine Lutz (Co-Founder, Costs of War), tallies reported deaths caused by direct war violence in the post-9/11 wars. It does not include indirect deaths, namely those caused by loss of access to food, water, and/or infrastructure, war-related disease, etc. The numbers included here are approximations based on the reporting of several original data sources.
We can cut the number in half if you want, or more. The moral valance of the argument still stands. But I don't understand where you are coming from when you say that the link does not substantiate what I said.
You, of course, will not be able to find any actual polling or research suggesting that a plurality of Americans support bombing innocent civilians.
The majority of Trump supporters are in favor of bombing targets even with a great risk of civilian casualties. That's a valid plurality, I'd say. It's an interesting article in any case, that validates my overarching point as well:
In a 2015 experiment by Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino, Americans were presented with a scenario where the US military had located a meeting attended by 20 Taliban leaders taking place in the same building as 40 civilians that had no knowledge of the Taliban meeting. When asked to choose between conducting an airstrike that would kill both the civilians and the Taliban or conducting no strike and letting the Taliban leaders escape, 66 percent of Americans approved of the strike when the civilians where Afghan. This was significantly higher than when the civilians were identified as Indian (50%) or American (36%). When asked if this strike was ethical, 51 percent said yes when the Afghans were the casualties, followed by 38 percent when the casualties were either American or Indian.
Beyond that, if you're willing to risk your own civilians as victims then you can do that. I won't listen to anyone try to play victim about that after the fact though. Which is, similarly what irked me about the Fox News interview. So long as the response is proportional, I'd say it's valid. But that both parties should start recognizing the cost and the evil they are engaging in and stop.
And Nidal Hasan chose to don that uniform. He should have represented that force, instead of some other force (be that the Taliban, Palestine, the mob, whoever.)
Now you're just playing wordgames. The original point was about the validity of military targets. Nidal chose to wear that uniform and then used that uniform to advantage himself on the battlefield against his enemy. You can execute people for that, which America and others have done. But that's, again irrelevant to the point.
Kind of a weird thing to say, given that nobody can think of American without thinking of cowboys, and nobody can think of cowboys without thinking of Indians.
European peoples would have recorded their own culture and history just the same. And we would be none the poorer for it to not have stories of cowboys and Indians. As we would not know of that history existing. Just like we now, today, do not know what history or modern life could have been had the Indians not been there. And even if we did, I would likely celebrate it, as that would very likely have meant less human suffering. But that's purely hypothetical.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
You specifically proposed "killing them in a manner not publicized and then announcing that they have been executed." That is secretive. I agree that the current American method of execution, which permits witnesses to attend, is not secret.
It is not secretive to openly process someone through the justice system, sentence them to death in a fair trial, house them in a a valid (for US standards) prison facility on death row, and then unceremoniously kill them. You provide no argument, you've just asserted that this is secretive somehow again and again. If you believe these institutions are working in secret, make that case. If you don't believe that, give a justification for why institutions that are not working in secret would start if the method of execution was changed from being a publicly broadcasted event to a private one. Why would that elevate the risk of torture?
I don't think this is an accurate description of Americans on here, even the ones I've argued with about foreign policy.
But that is exactly my experience both here and elsewhere when talking about Us foreign policy. And is in part what you are doing in this very conversation.
What's your point here? I don't think anyone is denying that Hasan sees the world something along these lines, although I am not sure this is exactly how he would articulate it.
This is the perspective of another person. I'm sure he would articulate it differently, but this is what I presume motivates many middle Eastern terrorists.
But you don't engage with it. Instead you assert the American perspective. Despite all the innocents killed by the US. How are you not seeing this? It reminds me of this exchange between Michael Scheuer and the House Homeland Security Committee.
Nidal was not carrying out an act of war.
From his perspective he was. He sees no reason to dignify the sanctity you or others reserve for the US and its actions on the world stage. And as he demonstrated, and like America has demonstrated against many a innocent victim across the globe, those rules and laws are just a piece of paper. Those US soldiers are dead just like those civilians are. If you want to pretend that the motives of the shooter don't matter, go ahead. But I think they do. And I think that a military like the American one, that has done some many horrible things in the service of a demented foreign policy can't play victim or hide being international law, sitting on a throne of dead women and children. That were to the US at the time 'convenient targets' they later choose to call 'Collateral Damage' after the women and children dead are counted.
Can you acknowledge how absurd it would sound to a person who identifies with the victims of those attacks that people representing the organization that committed those atrocities are complaining that they themselves were attacked in a 'place of trust' that's actually a military base?
Nidal is an American soldier who publicly committed to protect and defend the constitution and faithfully execute his duties. Perhaps oathbreaking is not morally cognizable to you, but it generally is not considered moral behavior. It would be similarly contemptible for Iranian soldiers to break their oaths and kill their fellow soldiers in the way that Hasan did, even if they did so out of sympathy for the United States.
Here you are asserting your American frame. There's no argument. Just an assertion that, to you, Nidal did wrong based on specific premises. I don't think oathbreaking is the main problem when people commit a mass shooting. I think you're just being obtuse to rhetorically distance yourself from the moral arguments made by the victims of Americas zionist foreign policy. Trying to qualify the event through ways that can't be equated with the actions of US armed forces. But when we do look at the actual issue at hand, which is the killing, there are plenty of equivocal examples to be drawn on.
Did any of the people Nidal shot kill innocent people?
Did any of the civilians bombed by the US?
Getting things right generally matters. If you are unfamiliar with the dynamics of the Global War on Terror and who killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in the Middle East, perhaps you should withhold some of your judgment until you have a better understanding of what actually happened.
I'm familiar with the death toll and the number I mentioned is generally accurate, depending on how much faith you put in US universities doing research into the topic. I already said, however, that the total number would not matter to the point of contention, given that it's very high in any case. High enough to make a mockery of any US serviceman who pretends to be a victim when killed. Especially so in Yemen.
Does it have to be hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Isn't it perverted to support the murder of...one person?
What do you think this chain of replies is about? You said Americans were generally well versed in the moral cost of the actions they support. Noting several popular authors who you allege are read in America. I maintained that many Americans generally were not, given the repeat support they show for bombing innocent civilians.
So to incorporate your example, yes. If someone murdered an innocent person on command of someone hoping to benefit some twisted foreign policy, then wrote a book about how haunting the face of their victim is as it twists in pain in their dreams. And then someone else reads this, says it affected them dearly, and then goes out and supports killing innocents in search of the same gain the murderer sought, I would call that perverted, yes. The emotions felt by the reader were purely self gratifying and perverse. The emotional turmoil just another experience to be had.
Are you pretending American and Iranian soldiers are co-belligerents? Or than American soldiers swore an oath to uphold and protect the Iranian Constitution?
No, I don't understand this. I'm saying that when you don a military uniform, you represent that force.
In your definition, a black guy who ancestry has been in America for hundreds of years, or a Native American guy whose ancestry has been in America for thousands of years, is less American than Donald Trump, who's a latecomer.
For the most part, yes. And this is demonstrated by the plurality of blacks living in America today. And the history of the native Americans, who never in their thousands of years of history on the continent did anything to make it into America as it is generally known to be. That was all 'Europeans'.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
We agree that appearances are important. What we don't agree on is whether or not killing someone in private is 'secret' or not. How you could maintain that it would be, despite the American legal system is beyond me still. You keep asserting these caveats and scenarios that just aren't necessitated by anything. You can execute someone with witnesses and not have the event be public and without any risk of that person being tortured. There is no elevated arousal of suspicion regarding torture. You just keep asserting that there is and it's completely baseless beyond the average torture conditions in US prisons.
The problem with Nidal Hasan's target wasn't that he targeted soldiers. Iran has killed somewhere between a dozen and two dozen soldiers in our war with them and none of the American commentators on here have acted like that was illegitimate in the same way that Hasan's was (or as far as I can remember, at all) because Hasan is an American who turned his gun on his countrymen.
No, this is you looking at things from your American perspective. From the perspective of a Palestinian who is of a different ideological persuasion, America is still factually engaged in active warfare against people in the middle East. The soldiers in Fort Hood were not his countrymen or comrades but enemy combatants who play an active role in a military organization that has killed countless civilians in pursuit of an evil zionist ideology.
Regardless of him being a 'traitor', is a US army base a valid target? Does the US army kill innocent civilians? If the answer to these questions is yes, then what is this even about? The sympathy argument made in the Fox News interview is now even more inane than it was prior. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Inshallah.
I don't think you can point me to a single star-spangled flag waver on the Motte that has argued that Artesh soldiers, acting in the normal course of their duties, should be executed for the deaths of US soldiers.
I don't understand the point here. Iranian solders don't get to decide on when the war begins. The US just bombs them at an opportune time to the celebration of plenty of Americans. To the US that's a legitimate act of war. Why would Nidal have to operate by different rules?
If you are a soldier and particularly an officer, then yes, a military base is a place of trust, and generally stateside on a military base US soldiers are disarmed, and will go to jail if they carry a weapon on base.
If you are a combatant and see an enemy military base, it's a target. Do you see how you're just not engaging with a perspective that's not American? How the only way many Americans parse events is through American eyes? And how you repeatedly assert this frame again and again and never engage with anything beyond it?
I am not sure I would say Hasan is a coward but shooting unarmed people is not generally what is associated with courage.
Some might even say that killing the innocent makes you a valid target for just retribution. But many Americans seem incapable of understanding that other people also feel that way when they conceptualize of all the innocents killed by Americans.
Did American troops kill close to half a million civilians during the Global War on Terror? No, they did not. The majority of civilian casualties throughout the Global War on Terror were not caused by US troops.
Maybe this is a point of confusion but the exact number doesn't matter. Pick any number of thousand that you want. Are you pretending you don't understand the moral culpability of soldiers in service of an evil regime? How does America justify killing Iranian soldiers? The same way Nidal does when justifying the killing of American soldiers.
Off of the top of my head, there are only two Americans who could reasonably qualify, and I don't think either of them felt bad about what they did, or ever pretended to.
We were talking about public opinion. Maybe I can rephrase it so you better understand:
It's actually quite perverted to support the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and then read a book about how horrifying that was for the victims. And then make a big deal about how bad you feel about that. But then just repeat the process as soon as some foreign policy idiot theorists conception of America's hegemony gets threatened.
Very well. I shall expect you, then, in the spirit of self-consistency, to refer to Trump as a European leader going forward :)
If you were serious about that conversation I would consider it, considering how ethnically split America is. It was basically complex colony of a wide range of Europeans. Held together by a common capacity to cooperate. Now it's unraveling through a host of ethnic contradictions as the share of non-Europeans who can't cooperate weigh the entire project down. I'd still prefer to refer to people of European ancestry who have lived in America for some time as Americans, for the same reason I don't refer to Germans as Europeans. But there's nuance there.
hanikrummihundursvin
7d ago
America specifically has popularized many ways by which you can torture people and not leave a mark. So if a prison institution were committed to torturing their death row inmates and believed they could hide those acts, and I don't know why that would become the case if you were to not execute those inmates in public, they could presumably do just that.
But the idea that "here in the West we don't execute people publicly" doesn't, because it's not true.
Most modern western nations don't execute people, full stop. The ones who did public executions dropped the practice before the turn of the 20th century. Did they do so in the past? Yes, but 12 year olds working in factories for 14 hours a day was also a thing in the past, but is not associated with 'western values'.
Do you really think this is an accurate description of me based on my posting history?
I don't know. I based it on your reply to me here, where you acted with incredulity towards the assumed legitimacy of the targets of Nidal Hasan. Who were all but one, as far as I can tell, directly involved with the US military in one way or another. Alongside that I think the Fox News interview was very emblematic of exactly the kind of viewpoint blindness that I see afflicting many Americans.
As an example, from the Fox interview which another person thought would make people less sympathetic to Nidal, acting like a military base is a 'place of trust' and that the military personnel therein where defenseless, and therefor the attack was cowardly. And that if Nidal had honor, he would have challenged the American servicemen to hand to hand combat. I mean, it takes me a while to get past the absurdity of hearing such things said, but to examine it further, did the US military conduct itself with such honor? Or did they kill close to half a million civilians through war campaigns across the middle east? Where none of those men, women and children in a place of trust?
I'm not surprised when Americans who consider themselves reasonable and open minded rise on their hindlegs whenever the legitimacy of their tremendously stupid and murderous zionist foreign policy is questioned. Because despite their beliefs about themselves as being reasonable and open minded, they're often actually not all that. They just egotistically believe that about themselves, whilst acting with complete disregard for anyone and anything but themselves and their preconceived notions of 'America's interest'.
And to follow your point about open minded American literary figures, as dramatic as all the media Americans make about the atrocities they commit can be, whilst cathartic for the American, doesn't actually absolve Americans of the reality of those atrocities that they committed. It's actually quite perverted to murder hundreds of thousands of people and then write a book about how horrifying that was. And then make a big deal about how bad you feel about that. But then just repeat the process as soon as some foreign policy idiot theorists conception of America's hegemony gets threatened.
His parents were Americans also.
As I said, we have a different definition of what a national is. You think it's the stamp from the government or similar. Which is a historically absurd definition that contradicts the etymology of the word 'nation'. I think it's your ancestry. If you don't want to engage with the topic, fine, but these assertions are inane. A person born of two Palestinian parents is Palestinian. He proved that with his actions as well.
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
This gives rise to speculations that the condemned was tortured the death, or not killed at all. Both are bad.
I'm not getting this. Aside from being tortured by other inmates, which is routine in American prisons, I see no reason to assume that a prison intended for general population inmates or a military prison would begin torturing inmates because they changed the way they execute them. You could just as well torture them and execute them via firing squad.
Actually, at least in England, the post-enlightenment period lead to the "Bloody Code" and a rise in executions, which were often public and treated as a spectacle.
The code was not supported by the people. Which is why executions went down, despite more capital punishment law being passed. And it was then ultimately abolished. In either case, people don't associate 'the west' with public executions. But rather the modern justice system that came after.
This is a false equivalency and you know it, or should know it.
It's not. But people who are emotionally unable to sympathize with people born too far away do believe that it is.
Please quantify this statement and back it up with polling numbers or another citation.
I'm referring to the person in the Fox interview, people who share his sentiment, you and other pro-America guys on here. Who ultimately draw the distinction between good and bad, with America on the good side of every conflict. And they don't see that as unreasonable or questionable.
It's curious how one could get such a perspective. Certainly not from reading American novelists (such as Tom Clancy), or American scholars (such as Lawrence Wright) or American journalists (such as John Hersey) or American combatants (like Ian Fritz) or interacting with American Mottizens (we have GWOT vets on here, and I've never gotten that impression from them at all; rather the opposite.)
I get it from interacting with Americans. What is most peoples reaction to Timothy McVeigh when he called the children killed in the bombing 'Collateral Damage'? Yet so many Americans fail to imagine why some people refer to America as the great Satan.
Repeating something doesn't make it true.
We agree on that. What we disagree on, it appears, is what makes someone a national of a nation. With two Palestinian parents, I think you are a Palestinian.
It is rational to punish traitors because the harm of their actions erodes trust, and as I think you know, a lower-trust society is a worse one.
Sure?
hanikrummihundursvin
8d ago
This is true inasmuch as "wrath" is, when used technically, the sinful version of anger, but anger is not itself sinful in the Christian tradition.
So when I use the term wrath in this context we could conclude that I am talking about the sinful version of anger. To that extent I think it's very obvious that anyone seeking out glee or spectacle in another persons death is acting in a sinful way. In this context we presume it is out of anger or revenge, which would necessarily be sinful. A better Christian would recognize just law and capital punishment, along with the necessity to personally forgive the perpetrator to save their own soul.
Doing this is how the Soviets did it.
There's nothing secret about publicly sentencing someone to death in a court of law, killing them in a manner not publicized and then announcing that they have been executed.
The western tradition of public executions, along with burning witches, is generally not what people think of when talking about 'the west' which more often refers to the post enlightenment period and the major upswing in technology and standards of living through the 18th and 19th century. Which coincides with decreases in public executions and capital punishments along with a host of other social revolutions.
Why? He killed a pregnant woman who was his comrade-in-arms.
The US army has killed plenty of pregnant women in Nidal's lifetime. Should one only sympathize with pregnant women getting killed when they are American? That's what many Americans earnestly believe. Expressing themselves as completely incapable of recognizing any hostile act taken against them from the viewpoint of its perpetrators.
Nidal Hasan is not a Middle Eastern terrorist, he is an American citizen and soldier, born in Virginia, who shot his fellow soldiers to death when they were unarmed in a place of trust.
Nidal Hasan is a middle Eastern terrorist. He has a stamp from the US government and a birthplace far from his actual homelands, but knows in his heart exactly who he is. A martyr for a cause he believes is just, who shot enemy combatants in a successful ambush.
Maybe one day American soldiers will stop killing unarmed people in 'places of trust' the world over, but until they do, there's little rational to mourn them beyond anyone else when the shoe is on the other foot.
America has no collective moral standard. So what else can one expect than complete chaos?
To put things in perspective, the eugenic argument for killing violent criminals is simple and straightforward. The argument for reveling in their death is different. As someone who has always been vary of group pathologies, this event and the surrounding characters make it feel like we are skirting the line.
As an example, killing a child rapist is just. But making a spectacle of the event where the intent is to invoke some emotional gratification or celebration goes beyond chasing the mere utility of ending a bad life. Good people don't enjoy suffering. The true celebration of ending the lives of criminals comes in the form of safe and happy societies that are free from the terror of living with bad people who allow themselves to cause undue suffering.
This should be especially obvious to those of the 'Christian' persuasion. Of which, one has to conclude, most Red Tribe Americans are not. If you feel anger or hatred for someone, the 'Christian' thing to do is for you to forgive them, if only to save yourself and those around you. Wrath is a sin. And if your conception of these events differs greatly from this Christian framework, you're probably not 'western'. That does not mean letting criminals go free, you should still seek justice. But beyond that justice you have a life to live.
It might be the case that the modern western person is simply too sheltered and cowardly to face the reality of what the third world necessitates. And that the 'spectacle' of the act is necessary in some way. But until such arguments are made, this feels like another slip towards barbarity. If this guy was to be executed, walk into his jailcell in the middle of the night and end him. Everything else is degenerate. I mean, he is paralyzed from the waist down, no? Are you going to shoot a guy in a wheelchair?
And as has been overviewed, the third worlder is no stranger to public executions. And dying a martyr for your cause is not something you should fear. So the only people not understanding what is going on from any angle are the 'westerners'
Keeping the proceedings focused primarily on the victims, including testimony by survivors such as this guy may help to quell any instinctive sympathy for the condemned that viewers could otherwise experience.
Listening to this person made me sympathize with the soon to be martyr. It could only be deduced from this interview that some Americans are incapable of understanding the suffering of others.
I am going to say it is called -- it's God's will. You live by the sword and you die by the sword. The way he went about doing his deed was a coward's way. We didn't have any way to defend ourselves that day and he chose in his terms was a soft target.
An American saying this about a middle Eastern terrorist is beyond a joke. America has no moral currency in that part of the world. It was all spent on the graves of children. 'They should not shoot our soldiers when they are not prepared' is laughable, and further serves to highlight just how morally lost America is.
If you could simply make children out of GDP going up you would have a point. But that is not the case. And as far as I can tell the 'good' see little reason to care, and would rather short circuit the system with mass immigration and mass female employment, since it's much easier and they can make more money that way in the short term. Every other effect, including the baby boom, was secondary.
The most crucial thing the third Reich promised and delivered on, for the short time it existed outside of wartime, was an increase in births. Low birthrates were already a looming threat back then, and the threat was met and dealt with. To that extent there is no indication that they would have stopped doing that. On top of that I would argue that the claims of the German economy relying on slave labour are quaint Libertarian fiction. Germany is, after all, the most industrially and technologically proficient nation on earth. To assume they would rely on labour camps in perpetuity is childish at best. Similarly, the term 'extraction based economy' is just silly. Every economy importing raw materials is extraction based. But if you happen upon resources during wartime that are necessary for your wartime economy, what do you do? 'Not extract' them? Again, to assume the Germans would have settled on a perpetual wartime economy is quaint Libertarian fiction.
Aside from that I don't see your point. Was Russia not on the good side in WW2? The entire war was practically a war between Russia and Germany! My argument applies equally to both the European West and the East. In fact one could argue the 'good' side winning is directly at fault for dooming the East to suffer under the Soviet Union.
As someone who lives in a EU country, that’s just plain false.
You, me and every migrant on earth can enjoy those very same benefits at your expense. Hence why the EU is burning down one way or another. I'd prefer to burn it down before the rot reaches the nursery. And personally I'm tired of hearing stories from my new coworkers of how they walked from Turkey to Austria, before taking a plane ride to my hometown.
As far as you want to personalize the excellence of the EU nations, I want to tell you that you suck. There is no coming back from what is going on today.
People are willing to die for movements that appeal to their emotions, not for those that will improve their lives the most. Anarchist terrorists were a serious threat in the 19th century, not so much Georgists, even though the land value tax has a better track record at improving economic efficiency.
I don't disagree. Which is why I don't understand the veneration of the 'good' side, given we see the disastrous consequences of their supremacy. Your nations, culture and people are living on borrowed time for reasons no one can articulate. Is it greed? Corruption? Power? All anyone can say when asked why this is the case is to backpedal towards Hitler and how he was evil and therefor, by defeating Hitler we are good no matter what comes after. That's a pretty cheap rubric to fall under, in my view.
hanikrummihundursvin
14d ago
I believe the consequences of invading another country are always gruesome. Nevertheless it is the case that leaders make calls to war. I doubt you will find many who believe that the brutality of the fighting is to be blamed on the leaders who assumed the necessity of the war. Unless you're making an HBD case relating to Slavs and Anglos. The British have their own history of failed military ventures, after all. I'm not sure people would as earnestly buy the English bulldog bravado about their 'just' wars if they had GoPro footage from them.
I'd contrast Russia's failed military ventures with Britain's failed domestic policy. Importing millions of fighting age men willingly and then setting up a system of governance and justice that marginalizes the natives to a point where thousands of little girls can be raped by foreigners with little to no interference is, as far as statecraft goes, kind of worse. Leaving aside the brazen effort of population replacement. Which is maintained by the state through a network of media suffocation and political suppression.
Russian grannies might watch state TV, but nigh every man, woman and child in the west watches Netflix. I don't particularly care for the weight people put on the distinction between state propaganda and propaganda that happens to not be directly from the state. There's obviously a program being run by every government to get a message out there or to follow a message. And to drown out other messages. To that extent I don't believe the average granny in the UK is much better informed than the average granny in Russia in any way that matters. British people in general seem just as stupid as others when it comes to discerning reality from fictional propaganda.
Questioning the Core
Recently Tucker Carlson, who everyone knows, did an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former British MP for the Tories. JRM is a known quantity in British politics as an upper class Englishman with a neoliberal stripe who manages to say enough things 'wrong' for the far left and right to dislike him. But on the flipside he does say those things with a very pleasing accent. He earned this particular interview with Carlson due to his firm anti-Russia stance and recent agitation that Britain needed to prepare for war.
The interview itself was mostly boring. Tucker seemed to not really know what his own point was for the first half of the interview, aside from JAQing off about NATO aggression. And JRM didn't feel like giving Tucker any rope to pull on. To that end both parties came across as snide. JRM never directly engages with what exactly the point of NATO is or what Britain or the EU is even doing at this point, and Tucker never directly asserts that the liberal moral order has been the catalyst for more harm than good. Instead they both circle around their underlying points but never directly engage with them.
The surface level Tucker Carlson argument here is that Britain is weak, its allies are weak, and Russia is strong. So Britain should sue for peace.
JRM's argument is that Britain is good, and Russia is evil. So there will be no peace.
They are both correct. Insofar as Britain is weak, Russia is also weak. And as far as Russia is evil, Britain is also evil. Failing demographics with corrupt and inept leaders suppressing their subjects alongside shocking news of unconscionable crimes on a huge scale, signaling deep social decline. No offers of a positive vision for the future are anywhere to be found. Only fatalism and the faint promise of a coming metamorphosis. Worry not for your pain. You, the English, will soon cease to exist. And so will the Russians (as far as any westerner has an analog to what a Russian is). A complete separation of state and folk. The death of nations.
It's fair to say that neither party wants to engage with this reality. As admitting to anything real here would be tantamount to ponder whether Hitler was actually right. Since neither can, neither will. Though they do get close:
The Liberal World Order gambit that JRM employs is simple enough: If Hitler was evil, everything is vindicated. So we just repeat that for Putin, right?
Well, Tucker doesn't raise this point directly enough, but leaving aside the question of whether looking at world events through the eyes of a 10 year old to decide who is good and who is evil is beneficial or not, has the consequence of being on the side of 'good' been of benefit to the people? The obvious answer is no. And that's not the fault of Hitler, but the people who came after him. So why should anyone take their word for anything? They are fast becoming literally worse than Hitler.
Whilst not directly questioned, it should be. Are Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Ursula von der Leyen really the best a man can get? Can you really take the light of critical inquiry seriously if it can only be shone at those who have already been determined to be evil? So we pretend the Ukrainian state isn't a cesspool of corruption and shame, but rather the bastion of good against evil. That the EU isn't a bureaucratic hellscape that hates its citizens. Or that the US isn't going to industrially and culturally decline along with its demographics.
The big question is: Are any of the big movements that now define modern society worth dying for? Is continuing the status quo of 'good' in anyone's best interest except those who are evil? The cynic in me believes you can always draft enough young men to die in any war no matter what. And that indignance towards dying for the ruling class has and always will exist. And maybe I'm in that bubble of indignance. But I want to believe that things are different now. The current state of affairs is just so ridiculous.
hanikrummihundursvin
22d ago
All Western legal theory falls apart when the subjects of the law start viewing the enforcers of the law as just another competing tribe. Same thing happens when the enforcers of law start viewing the subjects as a competing tribe.
To that end these discussions are very quaint. No one is interfacing with reality.
The businessman inside me suddenly wants to sell women's sportswear with 'Whore' written on it.
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