Oh, are we counting treasons again? I guess mid-century modern is actually a thing now. Good, it’s a nice aesthetic. Bell bottoms and protest, fuck yeah.
Maybe this time we can follow through, eh? We’ve seen what happens when we don’t.
Nothing new here. Regan was the flashpoint of the dumpster fire that is America now. Nixon was just the match. Trump is a tanker truck full of napalm.
Somehow its still democrats’ fault.
I wouldn’t give Trump that much credit (yet), the damage done by Reagan was far greater (disregarding social/demographic, which I mostly blame the attention industry of). But we’ll see how much damage he does this time, maybe he “trumps” Reagan…
He’s speaking openly about imprisoning political opponents and even members of his own party that didn’t bend the knee. And now the Courts he packed are backing up his claims to absolute immunity.
He even said people will no longer “need to vote” after he’s done.
The best hope for America right now is an aneurysm.
Yeah definitely, it could escalate to a complete shit-show unfortunately, as they even got senate and house as well… I’m lucky currently that I’m european, not that politics is heading in the right direction, but we’re not yet at autocratic level as could happen in the USA…
Good thing they learnt their lessions and itll never happen again. On a completely unrelated note did you know that Hamas is planning on releasing their hostages mysteriously as soon as Trump gets elected, Bibi is also planning on starting serious peace talks at the same time.
Nixon extended the Vietnam war, because he didn’t want it to end before the election.
My first thought also, and I strongly recommend Ken Burns’ Vietnam War doco to those who haven’t seen it - that’s where I first learned of Nixon’s unforgivable treason (about this particular topic… not to mention his other treasons).
See also Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by HST.
Democrats let it happen and let it slide after the fact. The GOP is criminal. The Democrats are just lazy and weak.
Unger reserved his most intense criticism for the Washington Post, which owned Newsweek at the time and, he says, had an outsize role in quietly killing the story. He’s also equally critical of Congressional Democrats, who he claims never pursued the dramatic charges as earnestly as they should have.
“Democrats were lap dogs,” Unger said
Democrats serve the rich class. They’re a red herring to make us believe that we are a democracy
Damn, nothing has changed
And this is why the lesser evil is still evil.
When the majority of our voting public just chose the GREATER evil in all three branches of government, the lesser evil is still significant harm reduction.
And if the lesser evil had won all three branches of the federal government, maybe we’d instead be talking about how the voters sent a signal that the greater evil needs to tone down all the evil, and things can move in the right direction.
But nope, let’s just pull the lever on the max-evil slot machine to see whether we end up ma more in cyberpunk, nazis, or mad max!
It was not unprecedented. Nixon sabotaged the Vietnam War peace talks to get elected too. Don’t think that has ever been addressed very well either.
Then they committed treason again with Iran Contra
GOP: Oops, all treason
I’m not young and there isn’t a time in my life when the GOP wasn’t somehow treasonous
Ollie North! Ollie North! He’s a soldier! And a hero! And a novelist! And now he’s on Fox Neeeeeews!
Deplorables doing deplorable things.
“This was genuine treason by the GOP.”
Nah…just a typical Wednesday for them.
Two things can be true
I mean - not really. It was pretty bold at the time.
Now, yes. Because nothing was ever done about it and no accountability etc.
especially given iran contra drugs for guns. The whole thing is unbelievable and the historic thing has been. shrug.
I bet you the exact same is happening with Nethanyanhu and Trump.
I think you mean Putin and Trump. Netanyahu isnt at war, they’re committing genocide.
Context?
Donald Trump’s cheatsheet when he pretended he hadn’t extorted Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Why is media and news so important? It controls the recording of history.
When a large majority of media conglomerates being conservative, like the Sinclaire group, it makes sharing this news with Americans very difficult.
Throw in education restrictions to keep kids from learning about these events in school, you’ve got a steep uphill battle to raise awareness.
They keep doing it. And then they do other shady shit like schedule the pulling of troops out of
SyriaAfghanistan for next year because it won’t be their problem by then. 🤷♂️Did you say Afghanistan?
lmfao I had a feeling something was off when I wrote that and didn’t give it a second thought. But yes, thank you!
Luckily, your Democrat party is like “it is beneath us us to even notice such filth”.
It’s not very effective though.
yeah the real lesson is its the democrats. keep them out of office and things will be great.
I don’t see how that would help anyone either.
I would assume he is sarcastically shitting on the great many Lemmy users who, instead of blaming our fellow countrymen who actively chose the path of evil, immediately blamed democrats for not doing enough to do xyz where xyz is that user’s pet interest (Bernie, Gaza, profits, trans rights, term limits, etc).
Those Lemmy users are of course quite dumb.
A sacrifice to the elite, for the greater good of wealth concentration, the gods of greed demanded it.
The efforts of the chaos gods Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, hell even the might Cthulhu, pail in comparison to the power of Mammon!
you forget the sex one, Slipperyquim or whatever
The real story here is that Iran betrayed their people and worked with Republicans.
It’s a theocracy, I’m not sure why you would expect it to care that much. But also, the theory is that part of the deal was for weapons to be deliered to Iran. Iran’s military had been weakened badly in the revolution, Iraq was right next door with a very large military, the new Iranian government had called for the Iraqi one to be overthrown, and the two had existing border tensions that would go on become a full scale war in less than a year. Seeking weapons to re-arm when ypu expect a fight with a strong neighbour is pretty rational if you ignore the morality of all of it.
I’m not sure why you made assumptions about what I expect? I’m pointing out the failings of their government - they betray their people and work with the US whenever they can, and it never works out for them. That’s the real story as far as I’m concerned.
I said that first part specifically because you called it “the real story” - surely it’s not much of a story if nobody does anything surprising or unexpected, right?
Either way, this did work out fairly well for Iran. They held the Iraqi invasion off (even if their own counterinvasion was a dud), Reagan continued selling them arms throughout in what would go on to be called the Iran-Contra scandal, and direct American involvement was limited to protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
That’s very short term. Surely you see how getting Reagan elected lead to where Iran relations are today?
America was already officially embargoing Iran, and Iran had taken Americans hostage. I don’t think it’s very reasonable to say that this deal made relations any worse than they already were.
No, but I think it’s reasonable to say Reagan’s “War on Terrorism” lead to Bush’s “War on Terror” and Iran being declared part of the “Axis of Evil”
Then came Obama and the nuclear deal, and then came Trump and he yanked the rug out from under the nuclear deal.
Iran cooperating with the US has never really worked out in the long run.
I think that’s expecting a bit much prediction of the future from the Iranian government, isn’t it? At that point it seemed like America was far more concerned with communism than anything else, and the new Iranian government wasn’t communist. The only time America had sent troops to the western half of Asia between then and WW2 was when Lebanon requested help.
Not really. That’s generally just something anyone should expect. After all the United States China Russia etc etc etc etc have all done the same. It’s why allowing a concentration of power. Or in cases like China and Russia demanding a concentration of Power are such bad things. Power corrupts.
This didn’t really benefit Iran’s power in the long run, did it?
The actions of authoritarian governments rarely do. They’re honestly not concerned with long-term thinking or benefit. Because they don’t need to be. It does not benefit them personally to do that extra work.
“”“Authoritarian”“” governments (really, all governments) are concerned with the continuation of their authority. Iran, it seems, is so desperate to work with the US that it will try over and over again, despite always getting back-stabbed shortly after. See also: the nuclear deal. It’s short sighted and it never works, but they keep doing it. You’d think they’d learn!
The country that kills girls for not wearing a head covering? That’s the one you’re expecting to take care of it’s people?
I’d expect an enemy of the US to not work with the US whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Iran has always been willing to capitulate, even though they’re touted as America’s #1 enemy in the region.
It’s an odd relationship.
It’s an odd relationship.
That’s certainly true.
No, it’s not
But I know that trying to explain it like you were 3 would be too hard for someone posting from .ml
You’re such an independent thinker. How could I ever comprehend your incredible insights like “America’s enemies bad”?
You clearly can’t considering your constant retardposting
This is why I don’t understand why people say that Trump winning again is the end of democracy.
Trump’s behavior is not “weird”; it’s standard American politics.
The only way to beat it is to offer real democracy, real economic change, and to take people unhappy with the current system seriously instead of dismissing them as “weird” or “deplorables”.
Trump’s behavior is not “weird”; it’s standard American politics.
It’s not. I remember all the presidents since Nixon. The stuff Treason Trump did is an order of magnitude worse than anything that came before.
Funny that you post that in a comment section where the OP is literally about Reagan also committing treason.
Reagan did not try to overthrow democracy. He didn’t conspire with Russia against America. He didn’t try to blackmail a foreign power into dishonestly interfering with a US election. He didn’t retain 60 boxes of classified secrets after leaving office. He didn’t sexually assault 26 women. He didn’t tell 30000+ lies in 4 years. He didn’t say that immigrants were eating our cats and dogs.
And despite not doing any of that he still inflicted massive generational harm to the United States. As bad as Trump? Only time will tell.
Even knowing everything that has come before intimately doesn’t make Trumps stuff make any sense. There is a reason all the professional historians, including the ones politically on his side, are up in arms about him and his plans. This is not “business as usual”, he is as bad as literally everyone that has any idea about any of this stuff says he is.
He is way too easy to corrupt and sway. He has no idea what he is doing and trusts all the wrong people because they play him so easily. He’s a “useful idiot”, but useful to people who want to bring America down or just make more money for themselves. He still thinks all of his plans are his own ideas, or at least that he is doing them for his own reasons, but they are just tapping into his overblown self-confidence and ego.
The reason calling him “weird” actually worked is because he knows that word… schoolyard taunts bother him so much more than accurate assessments of the consequences of his actions. If he could follow along with that logic, he wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. Deplorables doesn’t get to him because he has no idea what that means and refuses to learn. He has an aversion to reading. Yes, that thing that is basically 90% of the presidents job.
This is absolutely business as usual, but Trump as a business man is just more erratic and harder for those with a vested interest in maintaining existing power structures to control.
He’s not as bad as Reagan, but he’s a loose cannon and I agree that that makes him dangerous.
calling him “weird” actually worked
I’m sorry, what? Did we see the same election results? Publicly dismissing someone for being weird is alienating to large swathes of the country. Many of us take pride in our weirdness.
The commenter you are responding to completely nailed it.
see worse is, surprisingly for some, worse than bad and then, this is pretty advanced now, even worse is worse than worse. its trippy.
Has Trump put the lives of innocent American hostages at risk for his political gain?
Note that I’m not saying that he wouldn’t, just that he hasn’t yet to my knowledge.
I would say that Reagan’s treasonous acts were in fact even worse than Trump’s, considering that Trump’s impeachment treason was to put a foreign country at risk.
Note that that isn’t to say that Ukrainian lives matter less than American hostages or that what Trump did wasn’t bad, just that putting Americans at risk is “worse” on a scale of treasonous actions.
Another way that things are in fact getting better is that unlike Reagan, Trump actually got impeached (even if the conviction failed at the end).
Do you remember how Trump chose not to address COVID for political gains when it looked like it was hitting primarily democratic cities? I’ve seen some calculations that half a million more Americans died from COVID because of his reaction to it. That’s treason on a level nobody has reached
Yes, I do remember the Trump White House making the decision to keep COVID guidance classified for what appeared to be political gains. I remember my boss at the time arguing against that decision and receiving retaliation, leading us to pivot our business strategy near the equinox.
(I was told that) the last Trump administration’s hires were so inept that they didn’t change the passcode to dial in to the situation room as I listened in to this meeting, live. I hope that Tulsi (or whoever the new DNI ends up being) will be smart enough to change the passcodes on day 1. It’s a matter of national security. My revealing this is intended to serve as a reminder to do better this time. Maybe it’s moot because I doubt that the situation room is still running Adobe Connect (I hope), and maybe the new system was designed help facilitate better opsec (I hope). I broke my brain a bit by forcing firefox to run Flash in March 2020, two months after its supposed EOL in January 2020, just to listen to that shitshow. Completely shattered what was left of my faith in our federal government’s ability to do anything.
I don’t remember any evidence that Trump himself was involved in that decision-making, but 1) that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved in the decision-making outside of where I had limited visibility and 2) that doesn’t mean he isn’t responsible for the actions and decisions of those he nepotistically hired.
I’ll note that my perception of all this was filtered through a really weird job I ended up at under questionable circumstances and it’s hard for me to put much certainty behind any claims without external, corroborating, contextual evidence.
Thank you for the reminder… it’s been a crazy ride and that was a completely different life for me that’s genuinely hard for me to think about or remember much of until someone says something that brings back rushes of memories and leaves me shaking and a bit disoriented and I end up sleeping a lot to recover.
Please gimme a source on those calculations you’re talking about.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00804-3/fulltext
I read another recently but can’t find it. Any search with the words Trump and COVID is a tricky proposition.
After thinking about these a bit more, especially The Lancet article, I have a hypothesis.
For wealthy neoliberal elites, COVID was babby’s first trauma, so they overestimate how badly it impacted the average worker. It was so much worse than anything that had happened in their privileged lives up to that point that by comparison it was a world-altering traumatic event that changed everything.
Working people are used to surviving hardships (especially medical hardships) while those in power ignore them. COVID and the Trump administration’s lack of response was just business as usual. Compared to other widespread diseases that get routinely ignored and for which poor people routinely get denied care, COVID was minor (albeit more infectious) and easily forgettable.
That’s my best guess for why the libshits can’t grok why the little people reacted with such indifference while they lost their fucking minds.
That is part of it, but there is also a long-running thread of medical denialism in society. People want to believe their home remedies, homeopathic cures, chiropractic adjustments, or bleach enemas can cure things just as well or better than certified doctors can. To be fair to them, it has only been about 130 years since doctors learned they should wash their hands before surgery. The average person isn’t educated enough to understand how safe, effective, and trustworthy vaccines are.
The other part of it is explained by the lottery. Millions and millions of people play the lottery regularly even though the odds of them winning are about the same as getting struck by lightning while getting bitten by a shark. The average person is shit at understanding odds. They think that they will be lucky enough to beat the odds.
That applies for avoiding Covid. They don’t understand that being harmed by the vaccine is far fat less likely than being harmed by the disease. They think they can beat the odds by not getting the disease and still avoid Covid. Some won, but most lost.
For me, Trump’s handling of COVID specifically and the COVID pandemic more generally were such a minor blip in the timeline of horrors and chaos that I witnessed and partook in and only barely escaped from between 2018-2022 that it’s hard to register the pandemic as a significant event in that timeline.
I work with elderly people mostly so the absolute terror was probably magnified for me. Regardless of their politics, they knew they were the most vulnerable and it scared the shit out of them.
how do you feel about the whole iranian general missile thing. that felt like it could have gone very, very wrong. Keep in mind to that he was largely still using the established beuracracy when he came in and this go round he has a lot more intended people and many military people said they had to keep him in check.
My understanding is that Soleimani was responsible for the deployment of a type of anti-vehicle mine in Iraq that killed hundreds to perhaps in the low thousands of US soldiers. A lot of the military brass wanted him dead for personal reasons and Trump was too weak to resist their urging he be taken out. Trump may have avoided immediate consequences because Soleimani was more useful as a martyr to the Iranian leadership at this point. In the long run it fueled another generation’s anti-US animus.
If you’re talking about Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani, then I have to admit that I’m less familiar with thr details there since it happened while I was out of commission.
From the wiki article, it looks like the root problem was Trump being an idiot and loose cannon by reneging the Iran nuclear deal, leading to a crisis in the Gulf, which he then tried to solve by killing that guy.
Can you expand on the question?
yeah it was a moment when it was like. did he just start ww3. I mean I think everyone was bowled over at how small the response was from iran. it was just a dangerous as fuck thing to do.
