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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7083 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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I still can't fathom people who bought into his no new wars schtick.

I mean, in his first term that was basically true.

During the entire decade of Trump's presence in politics I have heard every possible configuration of "Orang Man Bad" arguments, but somehow "he is going to start new wars" never came up, even from his most rabid opponents.

Scott made a post about this in 2016.

I saw (both at the time and as part of the discussion of the recent Iran war) "Trump's pulling out of JCPOA will make a war with Iran (or a nuclear Iran, which nobody wants) inevitable, and the people* who convinced him to pull out of JCPOA know this and are actively trying to maneuver America into a war Americans don't want." That isn't "Trump, personally wants to start a war" but it is close.

* Whether the people in question are Netanyahu and the Israeli right, or GOPe neocons and the Deep State in the US.

I bought into "Trump is not paid off by, and is rich enough not to need to be paid off by, the Saudi-Israeli Axis of Idiot, and will therefore pursue a saner foreign policy that may lead to less Salafi jihadism" in 2016. Hilary Clinton seemed to me to be unusually close to the Saudi influence machine, which I thought was more dangerous (in terms of corruptly influencing the US to pursue policies contrary to the national interest, and potentially in ways which would increase my personal risk of being blown up by Salafi jihadists) than the Israeli one, though the two machines were (and remained until the current Iran war started going wrong) sufficiently aligned that this may be a distinction without a difference.

Given the amount of Saudi (and Israeli? not sure) baksheesh the Trumps took in his first term, I didn't find this argument particularly credible in 2024. I also don't understand how anyone believed "Kamala is likely to do a forever war for Israel" strongly enough that "Trump won't" became a viable campaign message rather than a Captain Obvious kind of thing.

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