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An argument? You want an argument?
Every person who was wrong about Trump and his effect on this country needs to pray to God for forgiveness. I know I have.
If you spectated this disaster from the comfort of intellectual distance, you're part of the problem.
X being important is not somehow a rejection of the need to advance an argument for X. If you actually think it's so important that people come to God, you need to do more than berate them.
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Yeah, imagine. We could have had Hillary instead, and the Ukraine war would have kicked off eight years earlier.
I'm not a Clinton fan, but I doubt she would have been bad enough to retroactively start a war two years before her election.
I think she'd have been far more agressige in prosecuting whatever we were doing in the Syrian civil war. One of her stump points was establishing a no fly zone there (which would have meant shooting down Russian aircraft at the time she said it).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/25/hillary-clinton-syria-no-fly-zones-russia-us-war
Yes, this - this was only and sufficient point given on Less Wrong (or other rationalist space, do not remember after such long time) as reason for supporting Trump.
From rationalist perspective, avoiding raising the probability of escalation all the way into Global Thermonuclear War even by few decimal points beats any bad things Trump ever did or was expected to do at the time.
The argument otherwise knows as "Pascal's mugging". Once we select an infinitely negative utility event, and proclaim certain action has a non-zero probability to prevent this event (no matter how low), there's no cost which we shouldn't pay for performing this action, because nothing beats Global Thermonuclear War. If this argument proves anything is the limits of naively "rationalist" approach where anything can be mathematically calculated from a set of assigned probabilities and utilities.
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You found one of the five reasons I voted for him. it seemed obvious to me at the time that Hillary would have pushed NATO forces right up to the Russian border on Ukraine. She wanted Gaddafi’s, al-Assad’s, and Putin’s skulls on her wall, figuratively.
One of the “scandals” from before he was even in office was his “office of the President-Elect” having pre-inauguration contact with the Russian Ambassador, to reassure Putin that Trump didn’t want war. The point of having ambassadors is to ensure diplomacy! Talking with an ambassador is probably the furthest thing from collusion I can imagine.
This must be the reason Russian Sberbank paid her husband for "lectures" and why she approved sale of Uranium One to Rosatom after a modest bribe. All that was leading to nailing Putin's skull to the wall, somehow. Must be one heck of 3D chess.
No, there's no "3d chess" involved, just a morass of differing incentives and power relations. Clinton and her charity were willing to take money from any foreign power or interest they could, because they made their money via influence peddling. When she was simply selling access to the levers of power, all that mattered was keeping the business running. If she was elected to the office of president, she wouldn't actually be pursuing her own policies per se. The MIC really wants war, and their influence over the US government is strong enough that it reaches beyond partisan affiliation - the difference is that Hillary would have been a willing servant, and Trump did everything in his power to fight back against it (he didn't win, but he did manage to hold ground in some ways). That's the main difference, not anything to do with ideology or principled positions - there wouldn't be any functional difference between a Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Joe Biden or Chris Christie presidency, but there would be a difference if Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Ron Paul or Trump was in office. Left/right just isn't that meaningful of a divide when it comes to the administration of a globe-spanning, declining empire.
That may be true, but the war they want is not destruction of Putin's regime. What they want is something like the current war in Ukraine - remote, long, expensive in money but not in American casualties, low-stakes as to anything pertaining to the US, and prolonged as far as possible to ensure return business, preferably without generating too many headlines that would promote changing anything. This has nothing to do with "Putin's skull" - if fact, if anything, that requires Putin to be in power, otherwise who'd the war be with?
That's why I object to the premise she wanted Putin's skull on the wall - Putin is a business partner for her, not a mortal enemy. True, in these spheres there are no friends and sometimes competition is very vigorous, but until Feb 2022, Dems did not even see Russia as a real opponent (the 80s called, remember?). And Clinton saw it as a regular business partner, among others. The war does not prevent that too - war is business too. Maybe not for Ukrainians (though for some there it is, unfortunately), but for Clintons it would be. And that's why it emboldens Putin - he knows that for the right prices, he can have Ukraine or almost anything else he wants - because it's just the question of finding the right deal. And he thinks he can afford the price of some hundreds of thousands of Russians being dead and some oil money spent - if that gives him what he wants.
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You expect accurate arithmetic in the midst of a polemic?
Well yeah, what else do I expect on this here site 🤣
I genuinely do believe Hillary would have been very eager to show she was Stronk Woman at the time, especially when it came to dealing with Putin, and if Syria wasn't enough to keep Vlad occupied I think he'd have made some move to show that NATO bitches not the boss of me.
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I think this person is 100% trolling because everything they’ve said doesn’t mention a name, and could easily be applied to everyone
Senile old man? Biden.
People were wrong about trump and should be begging for forgiveness? TDS sufferers.
They're 100% trolling because this is at least the second time they've had the same conversion experience, but yes, they also made it ambiguous that they were talking about Trump until the end
And the Kid Rock thing seems to be from 2017, though many sources intimate it was from 2021. Apparently he showed Kid Rock maps of North Korea.
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I would impeach Biden for being old and will accept any pretext whatsoever.
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The last sentence in the OP says Trump. Before that I did consider it ambiguous.
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That's not an argument, it's just ranting.
Hectoring, finger-wagging, and telling people "You're a bad person and you should feel bad" is not what this place is for. Go ahead and talk about why you think Trump is terrible and Trump supporters should repent, but right now you're not a lot different from a evangelical Christian yelling that we all need Jesus.
Well, we do, and maybe that's suitable preaching given that this is Sunday, but let's not get into the theological weeds right now? 👼
Why not?
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I feel like you and he are both missing the point - of course we know Christians believe this, but like anything else, if you want to make an effortpost about why Christianity is True and we should all accept Christ, you may do so, but don't just start preaching and calling people sinners.
WE ARE ALL SINNERS
IT IS KNOWN
Okay, y'know what? You're either drunk or trolling.
I'm giving you a three-day timeout to get sober and/or serious.
Come back and do this again and I'll assume you're just a dramanaut and act accordingly.
Out of everything they said, that was what threw you over the edge?
In a performatively tired tone: "Yes, yes, you can countersignal fascism (we need such people for maintenance and smugness purposes). But how dare you say we have sinned, or worse, everyone has sinned. The one thing we do not want entering these hallowed grounds is humility, forgiveness and the grace of God."
Nope. Banned for trolling, not for Jesusing. If you read all his comments and believe he is sincerely just trying to preach humility, forgiveness, and the grace of God, then I question either your critical reading skills or your sincerity. And if, by chance, he really is someone who landed here and felt compelled to CAPLOCK ABOUT HOW WE ARE ALL SINNERS, well, I'd also mod someone for capslocking while countersignaling fascism.
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You do need Jesus.
But that's neither here nor there.
Trump supporters should repent because it is wrong to turn brother against brother in politics.
I'll bite: what is it that makes you think Trump supporters are worse in this regard (turning brother against brother) than other political factions/subfactions?
One of the criticisms that stuck with me early on in Trump's presidency, don't know who said it, was that by embracing a politician whose action deliberately enraged the 'other side', we were furthering division in this country. I think that was undeniably true, and it was undeniably the sort of thing any proper conservative party should understand.
You think "basket of deplorables" Hillary wouldn't have been divisive, had she come to power?
I keep harping on about Mitt Romney, whom I think is a very whitebread politician and doesn't impress me greatly - had his ambitions ever gone anywhere, I think he would have been the Gerald Ford of the time (vaguely competent but uninspiring and not missed once his term was done).
For a while there he was The Only Good Republican from the same people who, back when he was running, were representing him as the Mormon theocrat who was going to implement the Handmaid's Tale for real and start burning the gays at the stake and as for minorities -! We don't even want to think what he was going to do to BIPOC folx! He was just another Literally Hitler Rich White Cis Het Christian Republican who only cared about making money and grinding the faces of the poor. As for what he did to poor doggies, well the shame has never dissipated about his cruel heartless animal-hating treatment, remember that?
So don't talk about divisiveness being uniquely a Trumpian moment, I think it was in the building for a long time.
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Do you think Obama didn’t antagonize people? Yes, obviously from a blue tribe perspective, even a blue tribe conservative perspective, trump is uniquely divisive and shit, but there’s no actual reason a blue tribe perspective has to predominate.
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