Monday, September 14, 2020

Greatest Threat to World Peace

 


22 comments:

  1. Iran didn't attack another country in about two centuries, North Korea has a habit of doing needle strikes up to sinking a whole corvette, but they haven't been in the invasion business in 70 years.
    The PRC hasn't been in the invasion business in 40 years, albeit it does have border conflicts in largely or entirely uninhabited places.

    Russia and the United States deserve to be in top spots as threat to peace based on their actions of the past about 30 years, right next to casually neighbours-bombing and illegally territory-occupying Israel.

    All of them only cause relatively minor wars, no great wars with millions of dead.
    I see the greatest potential for such a disaster in the India-Pakistan conflict. The nationalistic Hindu government in India and the nationalistic Muslim government of Pakistan are a fiery match.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm surprised Erdogan was not included in the survey. Or maybe he was included but his percentage was negligible.

    I agree with Sven above about India and Pakistan. If they start slugging it out in earnest it could spill over to another worldwide conflict.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's bad

    and

    it's only going to get worse...even if Biden is President, the eventual consequences of trumps four years will come due because so much has happened, and so much has been lost

    America will try and attempt to regain it's relevance, but it'll eventually sink in, and we're going to have to reconcile ourselves to this...that trump's tenure marginalized US influence, and the world has moved on without us.

    sheerahkhan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think the process has been going on for a long time, sheerah. The US has never been particularly good at balancing hard and soft power, military versus diplomatic power. We've been bulking up our muscles and letting our brains atrophy...and the bill for that's coming due.

      Yes, Trump has put that on steroids...but it's been building at least since 1945. Reagan and Dubya did a hell of a lot of that damage, too...and I'm not sure if it's reversible at this point.

      Delete
  4. Trump has Covid and I am confused.

    Just a couple days ago people were claiming he was an existential
    threat to democracy, the Union (and more).

    Today, those same people are wishing him a speedy recovery.

    What gives?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You'll notice you're not hearing any of that shit from here. As far as I'm concerned I hope the bloated nitwit suffers a nasty course of the disease, at teh very least, to remind him of the hundreds of thousands he's helped to sicken and kill.

      As for the political press and the other pols...well, it's the sort of public hypocrisy that we use when someone we loathe is in some sort of trouble. It's the kind of thing we say when the boss we hate gets cancer "Gee...that's too bad."

      I'll bet you money if you could get Pelosi and Schumer and Obama and Biden somewhere they could be absolutely 100% deadlock certain that their words would NEVER be heard they'd tell you that Trump and McConnell and Gohmert and Miller and all these GOP shitbags are...well, worthless shitbags who whould be lucky to go die in a hole.

      But they can't. They have to work at least along with these people, so they have to pretend at least some human empathy for them to grease the wheels of administration.

      Delete
    2. I understand all that. Although I am confused how calling someone an imminent threat to democracy and a proto-fascist wanna-be dictator is OK and you can still work with them the next day, but suggesting that his actions greatly increased the probability of this happening and that he should be willing to wear the consequences is beyond the pale.

      Look at Rachel Maddow. She of the "Trump is a puppet of Putin" camp. Now she is piously wishing for a speedy recovery. And yet, when Bernie had his heart attack, I don't recall the same level of public sympathy.

      Maybe she regards Trump as a significant meal ticket for her and if he goes away then fewer people will watch her show?

      Delete
    3. Don't watch these politainment shows, so I'm not sure how they roll. Maybe it's a meal ticket, maybe it's political calculation (Trump croaks, Pence is the president and he's more plausible and less of an out-there asshole, so maybe he gets elected?)...

      I honestly don't even recall Sanders' heart problems, so my guess is that they didn't get much play. Which kinda makes sense given that the Plague is news, while heart problems are so old hat.

      Delete
    4. Many people fear the unknown - and the outcome after a death of the lying moron instead of his resounding defeat in an election is an unknown.

      Delete
  5. AEL -

    Nobody wants Commander BoneSpurs to be considered a martyr. Which is exactly what his base would think if he croaked with Covid. There are already conspiracy theories by some of his lunatic fringe followers that he was deliberately infected by his political enemies. That is why many in Democratic circles are hoping for his recovery.

    Plus what Sven said about the unknown if the Lying Moron dies from the virus instead of dying figuratively at the ballot box.

    FDChief's comment on a President Pence is a bleak picture of the country's future.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I simply don't understand how anyone could consider Trump a martyr if he dies of coronavirus. However, I simply don't understand American politics, so that's a wash.

      I notice the polls are not good for him and he is increasingly desperate to change the channel. The traditional approach is to have a splendid little war. He just put in total financial sanctions against Iran. What are the chances that Iran responds before the election?

      Delete
    2. To understand US politics at this point, all you need to know is that:
      1) about 30-40 percent of the US population has political opinions that range anywhere from what a Canadian or a European would consider "moderate-right" (a sort of British Liberal or German Christian Democrat) to "left-left" (British hard-left Labour, German SPD), with a tiny fraction really out there on the radical Green or wild-eyed radical fringe that has no effective power or hope of getting any.
      2) somewhere between 30 to 40 percent are hard Right, with a fairly substantial (my guess is about 5-15%) reeeeeally Right, like Falangist or Fascisti (to avoid Godwin here). The remainder are similar to hard Right Tories in Britain or Canada, or the AfD wingnuts in Germany.
      3) about 20-30% are just completely fucking useless, ignorant, and checked out. They don't vote or, if they do, just go with some weird random brain-fart-level stuff.

      The US "left" is all over the place because it's a fractious coalition of everything fro "democratic socialists" to old-school New Dealers to what used to be moderate Republicans (who are white people who are okay with the welfare state in general so long as it doesn't mean that they have to pay taxes or live next to Black people...) So it's very hard to get the Democratic party - which is the left Big Tent - to play anything like the sort of political hardball that comes from...

      The US "right" has increasingly become captive to the most looney elements of it's "base". The critical pieces here are the racists - the people for whom whiteness is the most important piece of their "identity" (as in "identity politics") and will vote for anything and anyone who reps that - and the Christian religious (who have largely gone all in on abortion since they were caught out on the wrong side of the civil rights debate) and the gunhumpers. The people who run the show are supposed to be the wealthy, but income concentration at the top means that their numbers are too small for them to get anything done in a representative democracy. So they used all the culture war crap to rope in the nutbars...and now they're captive to them. They'd love President Pence, but he doesn't make the other whackos erect (they tried with Romney and got waxed...) so they're stuck with Trump, who the other ding-dongs idolize.

      And it really IS "idolize". The GOP has become a cult, basically.

      As far as a wag-the-dog war with Iran...well, it could happen. Trump is far stupider than any of the people involved in the Balkans in 1914, and none of them anticipated what would happen if Austria-Hungary ginned up a war with Serbia. The Trumpkins are entirely stupid enough to gin up a war with Iran thinking "what's the worst the could happen..?"

      As far as the Iranians go...hard to say. My thought would be, if I was the IRGC CINC, to turn further towards Russia and China and play that hand as well as I could.

      Thing is, I'm not sure a US-Iran war (Fourth Gulf War?) would be all that politically popular in the US. I think the public in general is sick of Middle Eastern wars. And given the size of Iran the notion of an actual invasion and occupation is too insane even for the Trumpkins. And a "shock-and-awe" bombing campaign? Yawn. BTDT. Don't see him getting a yuuuuuge bump out of that.

      No, his people are going to have to stick to stealing the election through legal Bush v Gore/ratfucking/vote suppression-type things, I think.

      Delete
  6. AEL, and all hands
    Lookee here:

    https://www.inquisitr.com/3823493/fox-news-has-tripled-cnn-and-msnbc-in-viewers-since-donald-trump-won-election-beating-both-competitors-combined/

    https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/29/new-york-times-subscriptions-soar-tenfold-after-donald-trump-wins-presidency.html

    https://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/after-trumps-election-news-organizations-see-a-bump-in-subscriptions-and-donations/

    It's about the Benjamins Baby, thousands, nay millions of them. These stats say it all, attack attack = defend defend. Let the good times roll. The corporate pigs are delirious. After all, because after all is said and all is screamed, billions + billions = more fucking billions. In fact, so many that one cannot wrap their gourds around them. And for the ordinary, cretinous believer of serfdom, a heavenly thrusting of hands to the Gods of
    plenty, beseeching more scraps. As for the cynical others, a downward gaze at the funnel to Hell.

    Let me know if any of the links don't work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't recall which one of the network CEOs said this, but when asked back in 2016 if all the free airtime they were giving Donnie was good for the country, his reply was that it was VERY good for CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN/whatever.

      Frankly, that's not the networks' problem. They're scavengers, and will feast on anything that will get them ad money. Had the public been - as they should have been - dismissive, contemptuous, and uninterested in Trump's ridiculous lies and the GOP bullshit none of that would have mattered.

      Way too many of us still buy into the Randian idiocy that "big government is the problem". is if by wishing "government" away somehow we'll return to the sweet freedom of pastoral perfection. As opposed to, given the massive complexity of modern industrial society, the rule of the "other" huge power centers; massive private and corporate wealth.

      It's not an issue of "government oppression or freedom" and never has been. That whole framing is wingnut fantasy.

      It's "government rule or corporatism/feudalism". Because either We the People in the form of our government set the terms of the public markets...or the big players in those markets do. And you know damn well if the players get to make the rules. who're they going to make them for..?

      Delete
  7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/oct/15/sorry-sunshine-wrong-place-new-zealand-deputy-pm-tells-off-covid-conspiracy-theorist-video

    That's how to handle idiots who dared to face the sunlight instead of hiding out in their caves of idiocy.
    It's also testament to how much of the world thinks about Americans these days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Worth noting here that the US "conservative" faction is utterly dependent on its adherents fully believing complete nonsense like the "Laffer Curve" economics and 19th Century pseudoscientific racial idiocy like Murray's Bell Curve. No GOP politician can afford to just dismiss looney conspiracy theorists out of hand; they're probably something like 30% of the "base".

      Not that there aren't all sorts of looney tinfoilhatdom things out there. Just that nobody relies on them the way the current GOP does for electoral support.

      Delete
    2. It's also worth noting that the infection has spread through the language.
      Conservatives are behaving similarly corrupted and evil in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

      Delete
  8. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/oct/15/sorry-sunshine-wrong-place-new-zealand-deputy-pm-tells-off-covid-conspiracy-theorist-video

    That's how to handle an idiot who dared to leave his cave of idiocy and enter the sunlight.

    It's also a testament to how much of the world thinks about Americans.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's kind of horrifying to look around and realize that, after a term whose "accomplishments" include a massive tax cut for the wealthy and...ummm...brutal racism? Nativism and xenophobia? Climate change denial? Gilded Age economics? At-least-fascist-curious politics? Proud stupidity and ignorance that have taken a pandemic disease and allowed it to eviscerate one of the world's most militarily and economically powerful industrial democracies, nearly two-fifths of the supposed "citizens" of that "democracy" want MORE of that.

    And that even assuming that the REST of the nation is so furious at the combination of venality, malice, and stupidity that it turns out in record-enough numbers that even the blatantly obvious intent of the party that was in power during that term to steal the election - if it's close enough to gimmick - can't be viable...all those people will STILL be there. Angry. Resentful. Festering full of hate for the 21st Century and everything to the Left of John D. Rockefeller and John Birch.

    So, o. the "danger to world peace" isn't Trump. Trump is just the orange face on those people, who have been subject to 40 years of nonstop FOX and Rushbo and Malkin and Ingraham and Tucker.

    And I have no idea what the hell a republic does about that.

    ReplyDelete
  10. FDChief -

    Agree with your next to last paragraph!

    But it ain't two-fifths of the country. Polling has lost its way. Pollers are relying on statistics, but nowadays nobody answers their phone to take a poll except the kool-aid drinkers. So the statistics are slanted.

    And not all of those that polled for Trump hate everything to the left of the two Johns you mention. Many or most of them of them love on their Medicare and Social Security. They are sucking up to Trump because of the judges. Or because of the so-called tax relief even though they never got a penny of tax relief themselves. Low information voters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, we already know the rock-bottom Crazy Factor; 27%. Dick Cheney's approval rating in 2008. If you still luuuuurved you some Darth Cheney after seven-odd years of nonstop lies and bullshit and pointless death? You're a hardcore nutbag.

      But the roughly 13% who want "the judges"? What do they want "the judges" to do?

      Imprison women who abort their children.
      Imprison gays for sodomy.
      Imprison refugees for...well, refuging.
      Imprison strikers and protestors for striking and protesting.
      Imprison their political enemies - "Lock (insert pronoun) Up!"

      That's not materially different from any of the 27%.

      You can be stupid AND a fascist.

      Delete
  11. I have no idea what to say after yesterday. Confronted between the choice of a bland corporate technocrat who would put in place the sort of commonsense public health measures that have tamped down a pandemic disease in places as far apart as Germany and South Korea, and a raging, thieving, lying dumpster fire of a hominid whose insane incompetence has helped kill a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens, nearly half of the U.S. public screamed "FUCK YES!!! I WANT MORE PLAGUE!!!"

    I don't care how much you love your guns, or your God, or your tax cuts.

    It's the fucking Plague!

    Half the goddamn US public can't vote to escape the fucking 14th Century.

    WASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSF.

    ReplyDelete