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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   31176 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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The more alarming question the article raises is : /If/ the US did blow the pipeline, could anyone in traditional civilian or military leadership corroborate they gave their blessing (or even stern objection) to this operation before or during or after those charges were placed?

The article highlights that this project was run out of a A. small inner circle of whitehouse insiders, B. an intelligence agency, C. a small detached unit of navy personnel, D. some collaboration with NATO commanders in the Baltics. Not a single member of congress (or a single Republican?) is ever told about this for nine months.

Basically, we may have initiated an act of war against a nuclear power, and 99.9% of our leadership is completely ignorant if we even did it! Obviously, the military chain of command under proper civilian leadership is broken if the whitehouse insiders are allowed to run black ops that could trigger a nuclear war with no accountability or oversight.

Hersch has given an investigator with subpoena powers everything they need to corroborate or debunk his claims: the location of the navy base where the divers would have been stationed, and the dates the charges were planted. From there, narrowing the small cadre of elite divers, to the even smaller cohort actively diving on the days should narrow the list down to a manageable set of interviews and figure out if they placed the charges. Then the other question to ask, ideally again through subpoena of all records: is it true that all of congress can claim full ignorance of this operation?

The more alarming question the article raises is

The more alarming question for USA citizens, sure. But the citizens in Germany would be alarmed in a different way: "USA are not our allies".

Obviously, the military chain of command under proper civilian leadership is broken

Yes, but it is also, ACTUALLY broken if we consider the current POTUS to be nothing more than a walking and talking vegetable hopped up on god knows what meds. It feels like his lucidity and "coherence of taught" is drifting one way or the other depending on what meds and how much they've been given to him just before the press conference.

Do you genuinely believe Joe Biden is in a near vegetative state powered only by drugs, and lacking normal cognitive abilities?

Do you consider dementia a near vegetative state?

These are medical definitions on which our personal opinions have no bearing. Vegetative state means a specific thing - if someone's view is "Biden is too old and dopey to be trusted to be president" then say that.

It's a manner of speaking, just like saying he isn't sharpest pencil in the box. Doesn't mean he is literally a pencil.

So it would be accurate to say he very likely has dementia?

Of course "He isn't the sharpest pencil" doesn't mean he's literally a pencil, it's a negation - it's saying he is not.

it's saying he is not

Yes, that's exactly what the idiom means: the person is literally not a pencil.

If this is not bad faith argumentation, I don't know what is.

You should probably not believe this. Such arguments have a very poor track record in the past; see similar claims for Trump and Hillary. Particularly the part about revving him up for public appearances with drugs; I'm pretty confident that drugs do not work that way for the actually senile. Biden still does public appearances, still makes public speeches. Sure, he's obviously a doddering old man, but doddering isn't vegetative, nor even close. If he can deliver a coherent speech, he's still enough there to sit in the big chair.

For 'drugs not working that way' - drugs like amphetamines increase attention, drive, but those are all intents or orientations that depends on already-present intelligence, understanding, desires, and just pushes you locally around them. Senility is usually due to general degradation of function - bad memory, lower intelligence, etc - and drugs can't compensate for that. Like how drugs can't make a dumb person smart.

Based on a few clips I've seen recently (and not ones selected by republicans), his speech itself seems very off, stuttery, mumbly - but this isn't senility, he's still quite sharp, able to respond to surprises, read the room, and score points on republicans.

Yup. This thing about "[Leader] is completely senile, and the other side is pretending otherwise in a bid to hold on to power" is just another variant on the "Secret knowledge that will let us win easily" meme. There's been dozens of them for every president in my lifetime, and they never, ever pan out. The real world just doesn't work that way. It's not a subtle pattern, and people should learn to avoid it.

This is the most extreme example of this in my recent memory. While Bush might have pretended to be dumb on stage at least he was somewhat witty and didn't forget what the hell he was talking about mid-sentence.

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