Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

lol

the argument that the democratic party in general and hillary specifically is indistinguishable from either the republican party or their new grassroots supported strongman

mordy the entire greenwald piece is about gop hypocrisy except for the "killing family members of terrorists" part, which references obama-era drone policy. do you think that part is wrong? do we not have a bipartisan consensus on the acceptability of killing family members of terrorists? do you not think that trump's "fuck yeah let's kill terrorist families" has a serious unwishywashy appeal that the democrats would be unwise to think stands in some kind of monstrous contrast to their own polices? my perspective here is that of someone who wants hillary clinton to win this election.

as for the hedges piece, saying neoliberal policies (which can be changed without destroying the government) created over bipartisan decades a huge economic and emotional opening for fascism is not saying they are the same as fascism, or even that they're not preferable to it. it's saying that if we're gonna be fighting fascists we'd prefer better armor.

Like I said, at least we have a President who has a rapport with black leadership and who isn't ignorant about civil rights. Electing Trump would be like sending an abused kid back to his abusers after being spared that situation for eight years. I'm terrified for my community, at the same time, I'm hopeful Clinton can win.

lol well thanks morbs

xps - Iraq and Afghanistan certainly soured the small part of the US population that voluntarily enlists in the military or national guard on the idea of small imperialist wars that slog on forever without visible progress or obvious military goals. But there is a much larger population of jingoists and chicken-hawks who think that if we'd only get a lot more violent, we'd go back to crushing all our enemies and winning all our wars in quick step time, because we've outspent the rest of the world 10 to 1 on our military for decades now, so it stands to reason that if we just "unleash" our power we can't lose. Trump appeals strongly to those assholes.

and damned by god

very cutely literal of you, please back away from the Wall.

i don't subscribe to the view that the two parties are indistinguishable but tbh hillary is a warmonger, the term suits her better than any democratic candidate we've had since the '60s

genuinely think she's personally more of a warmonger, or to be nicer, an interventionist, than either jfk (martial rhetoric, but cautious when it counted) or lbj (totally thoughtless in this area, easily filled with the Complex's thoughts)

but of course those guys monged a whole bunch of war anyway

cautious at some of the times that it counted rather

jfk (martial rhetoric, but cautious when it counted

"cool and unflappable" re our beloved Schlesinger

i don't see how she can be considered more of a warmonger than the vietnam war dems

She plays Call of Duty iirc

^probably only because it's pretty unpopular now across a wider demo

xpost

Short-fingered vulgarian sounds like a lost Smiths track.

Or a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang henchman

"i don't see how she can be considered more of a warmonger than the vietnam war dems"

Time period matters. Either way I'd say it's close.

no way. one and a half million dead from vietnam. intervening to help topple gaddafi after he threatened a genocide in benghazi is qualitatively (as well as obviously quantitatively) different

Those NYT articles published last week about her "decision making process" re Libya were chilling in revealing to what degree the impulse To Do Something for purportedly altruistic motives still motivates administrations whose leaders when campaigning claimed they didn't believe in stupid wars. Plus, the sources made her look gullible and foolish – inevitable in these campaign stories molded out or the whimpering of senior administration officials and former advisers. She's not a warmongering, which implies belligerence. She's been part of the establishment elite for so long that she's apt to believe the worst case scenarios that Pentagon/NSA types give her.

The Short-Fingered Vulgarian:

1 oz Cranberry juice
2 oz vodka
1/2 oz Bud Lite
1/2 oz chocolate syrup
1oz lime juice
shake with crushed ice for 10 seconds, serve unstrained in a rocks glass emblazoned with the words "Who Farted?"
garnish with a glow stick

Yes to all of that. I think Bernie is vulnerable to the same things (and in some ways even more so given his incuriosity about foreign affairs). xp

In November 1961, President John F. Kennedy authorized the start of Operation Ranch Hand, the codename for the U.S. Air Force's herbicide program in Vietnam.

whitewashing JFK + LBJ's war crimes bc they make Hillary look better by comparison is nagl

i was splitting a strange hair about the contents of people's heads in a way that had nothing to do with the argument we were having before

hillary really believes in the value of military intervention and feels that it has been demonstrated to her in multiple ways over her career (rwanda, bosnia, libya); she has real personal feelings and intellectual arguments about this

lbj never knew the first thing about foreign policy and just kept doing what the boys told him would let him go back to paying attention to the war on poverty; if he had been surrounded (somehow) by doves, he would have been influenced by them in a way that hillary clinton would not because she actually has her own thoughts

jfk talked a bunch of irresponsible Vigor shit about our dangerous enemies but when everyone in the room including noted peacenik bobby told him to bomb cuba and not take any of this emasculating guff about removing the turkish missiles he didn't listen, is the best thing you can say about him, and i'm not sure what hillary would do there

of course the actual effect of these people's presidencies was the vietnam war, i realize that

in typing this post i may have changed my mind about jfk, who was a warmonger (truly damning epitaph in a decades-later footnote to an early-60s vidal piece about jfk: "secretly, i think he thought war was fun") but i was trying to make a point about lbj's vacancy on this front

whitewashing HRC's war crimes because you think her interventions were justified is nagl either

There were plenty of so-called liberals who constantly pressed Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia, in order To Do Something for altruistic motives, and who were vocally disappointed when, for several years, he refused. Then he changed his spots regarding Kosovo, for seemingly the same reasons he'd rejected for so long. Then he was praised (except for the Chinese embassy fuck up).

no way. one and a half million dead from vietnam. intervening to help topple gaddafi after he threatened a genocide in benghazi is qualitatively (as well as obviously quantitatively) different

tbf Morbz seems to have something of a mental block when it comes to scale/numbers

justifiable != justified. i don't know if she was right to intervene in libya (syria suggests to me that there isn't a right answer). i do know that she didn't approve dropping agent orange on the libyan public to repress their revolution. she did propose a no-fly zone which gave the rebels an advantage bc gaddafi could no longer bomb them with impunity. these are very different things.

The Slow Bern

2oz habenero-infused blanco tequila
1ozMescal
1/2 oz lime
1/2 oz overproof rum floater
cinnamon stick stirrer
Serve on fire, with a shot glass of ice water

and there are many people who blame bill for /not/ intervening in rwanda. there are no easy answers for most of these events.

in typing this post i may have changed my mind about jfk, who was a warmonger (truly damning epitaph in a decades-later footnote to an early-60s vidal piece about jfk: "secretly, i think he thought war was fun") but i was trying to make a point about lbj's vacancy on this front

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Friday, March 4, 2016 6:27 PM (6 seconds ago)

lol at "secretly, i think he thought"

scoreboard morality is so beauuuuutiful, as Jimmy Breslin usta say

i'm sure your disgust with scoreboard morality won't stop you from using it when you think it proves your argument

"no way. one and a half million dead from vietnam."

The argument is not that Vietnam was a less bad military engagement than Libya, more that LBJ decision to escalate in Vietnam very much a construct of that time and mostly reflects his weakness to resist terrible advice (and a nonsensical narrative) whereas I think Hilary's decision to involve us in Libya reflect more specifically to her politics.

that's crazy hair splitting. what politics does her intervention in libya reflect? that the US should use military might to impose a no-fly zone when we think a dictator is about to murder a ton of ppl? i feel like the warmongering critique only makes sense if you don't look at any details.

That the US can solve these issues with military intervention without creating a fuck ton of other issues.

is that what you actually believe she thinks? that US interventions don't come w/ unintended consequences? or is yr complaint that despite knowing that she still thinks in certain cases it is worth doing? i am not in favor of an isolationist military policy which sounds like the only alternative that you'd be okay w/.

LBJ basically reversed his own policy when he escalated; in the 1964 election he'd promised he wouldn't send "american boys" to fight in asia. his tragic flaw was that he seemed to be able to bully/stand up to everyone in the universe save the ivy league foreign policy experts.

JFK otoh talked a lot of hawkish talk but seemed to flinch at actual military engagement most of the time (not just during the missile crisis but during the bay of pigs, where he infuriated pentagon hardliners by refusing to send military support to bail out the failed invasion). the vietnam intervention is the worst blot on his record but it looks fairly minor compared to what happened after him.

his tragic flaw was that he seemed to be able to bully/stand up to everyone in the universe save the ivy league foreign policy experts.

The man was a great listener and never showed contempt towards older men more experienced than he, so that's the other tragic flaw.

I think it's the number of cases she still thinks it's worth doing.

"evil goddamn warmonger" two of these three words are theologically charged language meant to exclusively appeal to reactionary impulses and the third is a hyperbolic mischaracterization that acts as a sop to flatter the speaker's belief that they aren't a disgusting human being.

― Mordy, Friday, March 4, 2016 12:55 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh i see i have been looking at it all wrong. it was wrong for me to look at her public record of voting for the Iraq War and selling weapons to the Saudis and call her a warmonger bc grammar.

oh adampaws

every president has sold weapons to the saudis

just dropped in here to get my daily dose of Clinton condescension

every president is a warmonger obv

p much!

which renders it m/l invalid as a criticism. better to identify specific instances/policies that you agree/disagree with, and take it for granted that whoever you vote for is going to be involved in the murder of innocents.

it is possible to think that particular interventions were not smart or admirable without being an "isolationist"

"which renders it m/l invalid as a criticism. better to identify specific instances/policies that you agree/disagree with, and take it for granted that whoever you vote for is going to be involved in the murder of innocents"

So you don't think some politicians are more or less likely than others?

i agree. it's also possible to believe that particular interventions were not smart or admirable without believing they were motivated by belligerence and bloodthirst. xp

400,000 ppl dead in syria so far (mostly casualties of SAF and Putin), 800,000 were killed in rwanda. UN airforces in Libya killed approx 1,000 ppl and NATO killed approx 1,000-5,000 civilians in Kosovo. i don't accept the argument that non-intervention in the face of genocide is the right move and i don't need to go back to ww2 to make it.

So you don't think some politicians are more or less likely than others?

sure, there's a scale. Guys like Cheney obviously more genuinely bloodthirsty and prone to military adventurism than, say, Warren Christopher.