That could be what he's essentially saying, but if so, I don't see how that makes any sense. If people are colorblind, how would racism arise? No one would even see race. — Terrapin Station

Of course Banno can talk for himself. I'm just trying understand the idea.

Naturally you would have to follow American public discourse about the issue in order to understand the 'dog whistles' and intensions and beliefs people have about colorblindness. Without that context it might be difficult to understand. Basically it's about evading racial issues:

Refusing to acknowledge obvious social differences creates an impression of suppressed dislike, and studies have shown that whites who studiously avoid mentioning race even when it is clearly relevant are perceived as more bigoted

Perhaps the idea is easier to understand with gender/sex. Assume a sought after managerial job position would be open for everybody, males or females, but the requirements would be besides managerial qualities also that the person has to qualify at least two of the three demands: has to be 180cm or over tall, able to lift 100 kg and run 3000m in 12 minutes. Now of course there can be women that fill those requirements, but those are few, hence it's obvious that the selection prefers males. Naturally this doesn't mean that the requirements are indeed there to discriminate women, there can perhaps be a practical and logical reason for the height requirement etc. But if there aren't good reasons for it, then it is this kind selection is hidden discrimination.

Colorblindness, not speaking and thinking about race at all, can perhaps be used to hide or simply forget discrimination and racial problems. Yet I think it is quite a long stretch to go there. And then the term is simply abused in a way that forgets totally the intension.

Yet I don't think anybody here is against the idea that people should be judged of their actions, not based on the color of their skin.

Why? It's the privileged who can afford to ignore minority status. The European who cannot see colour, the male who cannot see the need for feminism, the Cis who cannot see the need for gender pronoun reform, the able who cannot see disability. — Banno

But you can see their inability to see in all of them? How does that work? — NOS4A2

I've no idea what you are asking. — Banno

And no interest either to understand the question, obviously. As obviously NOS4A2 is a troll, right?

Here's the problem (if I in my stupidity understand it): you two are simply talking about separate issues and presume some meta-narrative in the other one's argument.

NOS4A2: Colorblindness, means that we should judge people on their individual merits and not on the color of their skin and this is a good thing. Yet woke people are against this!

BANNO: Colorblindness, means that white people ignore the minority status of others and think racism doesn't exist anymore when they don't "see color". Colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics and gives refuge to white racism.

Feel free to correct me, if I've missunderstood.

Among the history buffs on the forum, is this sort of thing normal for nations to go through? Or is it something particularly American? — frank

It isn't particularly American, unfortunately.

Pessimism that the ruling elites now have lost their way totally and that the Great Power isn't anymore a Great Power, that it has lost it's way and should return to those old cherished values it earlier had is very typical, very common rhetoric. It's especially typical for a paleoconservative, and not only for one American like Buchanan. Besides, Buchanan is incoherent and illogical in his whining: if he wants to be a neo-isolationist, what the fuck is he caring about what China does? This actually shows just how Buchanan himself isn't actually really open for true isolationism. As typically these people aren't.

Anyway, about the 'suicide of a Superpower'...

The death of a Great Power doesn't happen like that. It happens when the Great Power truly loses face and understands it's not what it used to be. It simply isn't capable anymore. It's something like the Suez Crisis for the UK. That hasn't happened with the US. Thus all the whining from Americans that they shouldn't be involved in the affairs of other countries and the soldiers should come home, it's just talk.

It's when China builds naval bases in Mexico and in Colombia and asks to take care of the Panama Canal that you have lost the Superpower status. When you cannot do anything about it and nobody listens to what the American President says because nobody cares.

That's when you've lost not only being a Superpower, but also a Great Power. But hey, you'll be important to Canada! Yet...that's not going to happen.

What would be left out is the body language, the exchange of glances, the reflexive raising of hands, the modulations in tone. — csalisbury

And let's start with things like how we react to people's age and appearance, when we approach each other before anything is discussed. If you have 20 something students and then people of the age of their parents, it changes how the people behave. Just as if the people are all male, all female or mixed. In the case of this Forum, if people here would physically meet to discuss philosophy, those who are professional academics would instantly be usually given more time and they likely wouldn't be as casual about the debate. The amateurs curious about Philosophy likely wouldn't start insisting that the assistant professor of mathematical logic is totally wrong about his or her field...and they are right. But here with anonymity, that can easily happen.

An anonymous discussion site is totally different.

I'll give a short anecdote about this, I remember once talking on this Forum (or likely it was the predecessor of this) about John Horgan's book the End of Science when the author, John Horgan, actually joined the discussion. As I had read the book, I did notice that new site member knew the book (naturally). I knew that Horgan was a science journalist, so the idea of a science journalist first googling what is talked about his books and then participating in a discussion about one of his book wasn't at all far fetched to me. Unfortunately the other PF member debating me didn't think that an author would drop in a conversation of his book in a measly site like PF and accused him to be a phony and 'sent him to hell', which naturally ended the discussion.

Taking this discussion back to the topic of the thread, similar divide is happening with political debate. You have the social media, the internet, where people behave one way and then there is the actual physical World where they interact quite differently. In fact I guess this question of being either a Trump supporter or not (or Trump supporters being deplorables) are those questions that Americans likely don't start a casual conversation.

Or just think yourself walking in Maine to a total stranger and asking out of the blue: "What do you think about Donald Trump?". The body language, the exchange of glances, the reflexive raising of hands, the modulations in tone…all that would be quite interesting.

Really?

Just re-read the first page on this thread and it's totally obvious that people are talking about separate issues and without bothering to think about what others are talking about.

As you said above "Of course people are judged by the color of heir skin. That’s no question." Then read just from the first page replies like of Maw and 180Proof, and I'm quite sure people agree on something here… but, of course, that doesn't matter. You are worried about the woke intersectionality rising and the "attack" on colorblindness and the racialization of nearly everything and they just notice hmm…. perhaps hypocrite white denial or see right wing tropes and go on the counterattack. Or something.

And what point would that be? — NOS4A2

HAHAHA!

Well, if you don't find ANYTHING you would agree on with the people for example here on PF you mostly disagree with and argue with, then the above description fits you. :wink:

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't support Trump's border policies. I didn't support Obama's. Obama deported far more people than Trump. I'm simply appalled at the massive hypocrisy of the left. Is Trump an autocrat? Yes. Was Obama? It's the same deal. - Am I taking your point correctly? — fishfry

To notice here the similarities is very helpful. Just as was with the War on Terror lead by Bush and then continued by Obama...with increasing the drones all around the Muslim countries with even underaged American citizens killed in the process. The fact that somehow the criticism died totally down after Obama was elected even if the actual WoT strategy of Bush was continued and GITMO stayed open was for me a moment of awakening on how deep the partisanship goes and how irrelevant the reality is to the supporters of either party.

Of course there is political leadership and then the vast bureaucracy and organization carrying on with it's own weight. But in the US, the situation is even more special. Both parties have to desparately show just how different they are from the other. In the end you are talking about a centrist party and a right-wing party.

You see, there is a symbiotic relationship with the Democratic and the Republic party have. They have absolutely no competition for power in the US. They dominate totally the political scene and share power with 4 or 8 year intervals. Even to talk about primary elections anywhere else would be totally strange. Only policy wanks follow how political parties choose their candidates. It ought to be a side event. Not so in the US. And in order to eradicate any chance of a third party surfacing, which could happen, the two parties sharing the spoils are as vitriolic and hostile to each other as they can be. And voters fall for it. Hence the toxic discord in the political discourse.

As you said, this another common strawman. Of course people are judged by the color of heir skin. That’s no question. Color blindness is merely that we shouldn’t judge people by the color of their skin. It’s not to deny racism exists, it’s to refuse to engage in racism, to refuse racialize others, and to refuse to utilize these outmoded categories. — NOS4A2

Well, people are perhaps in love with their own narrative, so happy in their own echo chamber in the discourse and simply aren't willing to listen.

And people simply aren't anymore ready to engage other one's thoughts on the level of "I agree with you on x, however I disagree with y". Seems like you are giving your little finger to the Devil if you acknowledge that the people you disagree with have also a point.

This “fantasy” was the goal of the best part of the civil rights era, and the message was used to end apartheid and Jim Crow, back when people were openly persecuted for their skin color. This “fantasy” was espoused by MLK and Mandela, both of whom were thrown in jail while speaking it. Rather than promote their “fantasy” you’re reiterating the same color consciousness as their jailers, and illustrate it by proving your suspicion of another man because of his skin color. — NOS4A2

Sometimes it seems that people are intentionally not even trying to understand what the other one is saying and only trying to put the other one in the worst light possible. Just take the message the worst way possible. And oh boy, do people love their strawmen.

Is it really so that people here think that colorblindness is a fantasy, something totally unreachable? That we utterly cannot judge people by their actions and not the color of their skin? That hence to speak about colorblindness is actually something negative, harmful and wrong?

And the other way around for the other side:

Is it so now that people aren't judged at all by their skin? It's something really meaningless now? So is now everything really OK? Especially in a country where the white people call the poor people of their own race "White trash", just to give one example? So no xenophobia and judgement of others whatsoever worth talking about?

What I do agree on is that if we take this reinstate race and gender in an macabre way to our discourse, it's not going to improve anything. But then again, people can ruin anything worth doing something about.

So when one speaks of white privilege it is not an inherent property of whiteness, but a property of power. — unenlightened

Yet then it basically isn't talked as "(put the racial/ethnic term here) priviledge". And that wouldn't have the same connotations. In fact it's really stupid to take this term "white priviledge" out of the US context and generalize it to everywhere.

I agree, ideally. And I also find that, more often or not, I'm competing or preening. Not only not living up to the ideal, but roundly ignoring it. I often have trouble figuring out how to get out of this way of acting - it feels like an addiction or compulsion. The quickest and easiest way to dispel guilt and cognitive dissonance is to call out others for doing what you suspect yourself of doing. I find myself doing that again and again. The post you were responding to, which I edited out, was essentially that sort of thing. — csalisbury

Well, one way to think about philosophical debate is the way some people, especially men, approach these issues: it's just about the matter in hand in the discussion, the issue at stake, nothing else. One doesn't approach the discussion as social interaction between other people at all. After all, extremely few people here actually know the people here (apart from the mods and admins) and even fewer have met each other, at large we are anonymous to each other. Thus if you upset someone or look foolish in some discussion, it doesn't matter. In fact there are so few of us that if one would by accident stumble to another that participates here in the discussion, the meeting would be very likely a happy event (what would be the odds) even if in the forum the persons are bitter rivals. The cordiality is only defined by the rules of the forum, which are simple. The worst thing what can happen is that the Forum NKVD can take you to the virtual forest and use the ban gun on your head. Afterwards, no more PF for you. Some haven't cared much about that either.

The problem I see, from a pragmatic perspective, is that you cannot avoid this unless both sides are playing "by the rules". Trump's divisive rhetoric should already have disqualified him for a second term. The fact that it hasn't indicates there is already a lot of division. — Echarmion

This is why basically the US is going on path of divisive political discourse like in Venezuela. And Venezuela, even if under totally different path and different conditions, shows how divisive political discourse can be effective and result with willing supporters clinging on even when disaster turns into a catastrophy.

What ought to be noted is that both Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump share the same strategy of divisive rhetoric and getting the support from their followers by making a divide in the people. There is absolutely no effort in "reaching over the isle" or consensus in any way. Chávez not only took disasterous socialism from Cuba, but from the start promoted traditional class warfare painting him as the only defender and only hope for the poor against the evil rich, the evil imperialists. And the supporters of Chávez were indeed first ecstatic and afterwards lukewarm, but they wouldn't let their hero down later when the economy was collapsing. (Under Maduro things are of course worse)

With Trump the same strategy is used. And the first target is political consensus, or as Americans call it, bipartisanship: it is portrayed to be dead, something only naive idiots and suckers would try. Something that would only play into the hands of the sinister adversary.

Don't be too pessimistic.

This is rather important, but also rather delicate. One says to a supporter, Stop voting for Trump, he's a misogynist; to vote for Trump is to vote for misogyny, and voting for misogyny is mysogynist. But you are not a mysognist, you have been misled into supporting mysogyny. — unenlightened

Yeah, delicateness. Yet it typically comes down to a Democrat voter deciding who he or she thinks to be a Trump supporter (if it isn't obvious from the MAGA-hat) and saying: "You're a fucking misogynist if you vote for Trump!"

Brilliant. The landslide victory to the non-Trump democratic candidate is inevitable. :up:

The deplorables are the rich people and their propagandists lawyers, — unenlightened

No, the deplorables are the ones seeking deplorables. What is deplorable is thinking that if a bad president is voted to office, there has to be then deplorable people. These are the ones creating the wedge. And btw it's really working well and these deplorables are very effective in turning citizens against each other.

In fact looking at how this forum has turned out on these issues has changed my view on all of the political parties that I oppose and have never voted. I've started to respect those people, my countrymen, more. They may not think similarly as I and their ideas don't work, but they typically want to improve things...in their own twisted way. Above all, they don't want to kill me, like some predecessors wanted to kill two of my great-grandfathers to make the World a better place. Hence I'm OK with them.

But it continues - the raison d'etre is to make people feel stupid, while showing that you're smart. That's mostly what has guided me too. Isn't this gross? I don't claim to be free of it, but I do claim to reflect on it, and not like it. — csalisbury

That's with the people that cannot rise above the level of seeing a philosophical discussion mainly as a competition between individual people and focus on how they themselves come out to other people.

For me it's the forum is a window where you can share your ideas and see if they make sense to other people. The best thing that can happen is that someone takes their time, reads and understands your idea and shows that you have an error somewhere in your reasoning in such way that you yourself get the point. Or gives more insight to the topic. That improves your thinking and your argumentation. Then you are not making that mistake in real life.

To argue whether it's fair to claim Trump supporters are racist is, IMHO a distraction from the actual issue - that Trump is a bad president that supports bad policies. — Echarmion

This is a true distraction, but perhaps the worse outcome isn't that the politicians themselves are accused in this way (to be racist etc.), it is that those who voted for him are all tagged as a group represented by the worst, the most eccentric and ludicrous fringe there is. As if all Trump supporters are racist whites fearing losing their 'white priviledge' and as if all Democrat voters are all AOC fanboys and fangirls craving for social democracy, sorry, democratic socialism. And do notice that this is exactly the strategy of Trump too and this isn't anything new. What is new is how headlong Americans fell for this and how the "silly-season" of the election 2016 never went away. This creates the toxic and vitriolic political environment where the US is now in. This is the way you erode social cohesion and divide the people into separate camps, which then you legitimize by saying that they belong to separate 'tribes' and explain that people are tribal.

Hillary Clinton's gaffe of speaking about the deplorables was one of the contributing events that helped Trump (apart from the FBI's October suprise). Making accusations about the voters of your competitors is basically a taboo in a democracy. Yet it can be very, very successful strategy and can get divisive politicians elected who have absolutely no desire to keep the country together.

I wouldn't be so worried if this was only an American phenomenon. Unfortunately this is mimicked in Europe and a similar process is happening here too.

Feel free to refute the counterpoints I provided! — Maw

Ok,

So you refute the video by saying that it is "laughably awful, unsurprisingly shallow, biased, and filled with discredited presumptions and absurd claims that we're somehow meant to accept at face value". And then you give examples why this would be so by then stating for example:

It's been nearly three years since Trump won the 2016 election and we have ample evidence to confirm that racism in fact played a key role in mobilizing votes for Trumps. Not "economic anxiety" - The video claims that Trump voters have been struggling financially while Hillary voters mainly comprised of coastal elites, a majority of voters with income <$50K voted for Hillary (53%) over Trump (41%), while voters with an income over $100K were split 47% vs. 47%. — Maw

Well, places where Trump was very popular were places in the rust-belt and not the most well off prosperous places. (And white, of course) From this chart you can see that typically the more well off households did vote for Clinton than Trump. All I've read about the differences in Trump and Clinton voters support this view.



Now, we can argue about the statistics and have a discussion about them, but what I'm just saying is that dismissing totally the video with such ferocity and hurling so many accusations of being biased and absurd etc. come off to me as quite arrogant.

And saying that "Most of you clearly don't read any relevant political material, and it shows in your comments" I do find a bit condescending.

Nothing against Netherlands (and not much against the EU), but you are right. With all it's shortcomings and hypocrisy, the US still stands out as a beacon for democracy and freedom. Sort of.

I really do believe it. This is an aspect of racism that now permeates throughout American culture and is spreading, to the point that it has become institutional, manifesting in policies such as “diversity training” for example. It is being taught in school. I’m not sure where you live, but take a peak. — NOS4A2

Why would you believe it?

You should learn more about the Soviet Union. You see, things that don't work... don't work. And they keep not working even if people imagine them working. And how large the Overton window is or isn't doesn't matter when it doesn't work.

In the Soviet Union they had there all these kinds of programs to create a new society and the prime way to do this was to create a New Soviet Man. This was to be done through educating the new generations (as current ones seemed to be such a disappointment). The new generation would create the socialist Paradise. But of course it didn't work and everything become just talking utterly pointless and empty bullshit, which was called "lithurgy". And in the end nobody didn't believe in the system that didn't work except we the people in the West. And homo sovieticus took a totally different meaning, basically meaning an average conformist just muddling through (and usually using a lot of vodka to do it).

Now your problem seems to be that you believe that it would work. Oh, they are having 'diversity training' in school! What will happen to new generations now? As if 'diversity training' would be highly successful.

Americans had this problem especially when thinking about communists and the Soviet Union. It can be seen in the stereotypes of Soviets in Hollywood movies during the Cold War. Never were these bad guys anywhere close to being actually Russian (or Ukrainian etc.), these happy go lucky sentimental slavs, who unfortunately have these monstrous corrupt societies.

Anyone who has been keeping up with post-2016 political discourse and election analysis should have found it fairly easy to point out the bullshit discussed in that documentary, as I did. I've spend the last few years making the effort to keep myself informed, and I'm not going to take kindly to people who continually think they can get away with not doing their homework, yet act as if their thoughts and speculation on the matter are more valid than mine. — Maw

Again you show your arrogance quite well.

People that give protest votes think far more just about protesting than anything else.

So why are we back-peddling on racial color-blindness? Why are we teaching kids to be conscious of another’s race, and to factor it into their judgements and treatment of others? Are we heading backwards? — NOS4A2

And why are you so counter-woke?

You think that those silly woke progressives blabbering about intersectionality etc. are genuinely some kind of a threat to our culture? You really think there is this "assault" against color-blindness, which is there to reinstate racism and racist thought to our time only in a different format? That really people are demanding us to look at each other not as individuals, but first and foremost as members of a race, gender and so one that define us so much that what people actually think doesn't matter?

How difficult is it to understand that when something is done to end totally open and apparent racism, when racism has been curtailed, the movement based on simple and very popular demands loses it's straightforward push. When any movement comes to it's third or fourth 'wave', the cries of "there's a lot more to do on this issue" become more desperate, more strange and more distant from the original objectives that have been met.

Common sense will prevail. The World isn't going to end.

But why are we talking about who put more kids in cages? Many liberals actually disbelieve that Obama put ANY kids in cages. It was a big shock a few of months ago when Jeh Johnson, Obama's director of Homeland security, admitted that Obama built the cages. Most liberals simply had no idea. — fishfry

Countries typically have policies and procedures that transcend party lines. It's simply a myth that in a democracy government day-to-day operations would differ so much depending on what party is in power. Even if political leadership does matter. And naturally political parties do have an incentive to portray themselves to act totally differently than the other party.

Most of you clearly don't read any relevant political material, and it shows in your comments. — Maw

And some of us seem to enjoy being arrogant and condescending.

And all the while, Trump supporters parrot on about 'patriotism' and 'America first'. — Wayfarer

This is the tragedy. A lot of Trump supporters think that President Trump, their shall we say God Emperor, is making great and welcome decisions against a 'wretched Washington bureaucracy' hell bent on retaining the status quo. He isn't. Let's take the Russia policy as a whole for starters.

Many Trump supporters start with the following idea:

I have nothing against Russia so the US shouldn't have anything against Russia, hence Trump is doing great by improving relations with Russia. And any criticism of this (Trump and Russia) is just the empty rant of the Democrats because they cannot admit that Trump won fair and square.

This attitude above clearly shows the blissful ignorance about a) Russia and it's agenda and b) the self-centeredness of Trump supporters, who typically think that everything is about US domestic politics. No other discourse can even exist!

First and foremost, current Russian leadership sees the US as an enemy. It also has to have the US as an enemy to justify the domestic political crackdown and for the reason for Putin to hold on to power. Russia's official military doctrine states as it's most pressing and largest military threat the actions of the United States, mainly the enlargement of the US lead alliance. Russian leadership wants Russia to be a Great Power and wants to have influence over other countries. If it can lure the US to withdraw from it's Superpower position, it can fill that void created by the US. It has no illusion that the US military has other ideas than Trump and with Democrats in power US foreign policy would return to normal. Russia does not think about international relations as like a normal country that "everybody would be better if we had warmer relations". It genuinely sees it as a competitive field where one's gain is another one's loss. It's insecurity is structural and deeply historical for the country. One should realize that this isn't just a response to US actions, but something also independent of US actions. A country lead by a KGB agent is different than a normal democracy.

But all of the above doesn't matter for the Trump supporter. Nope, for him (or her) it's the annoying democrats (desperately trying to get Trump impeached), it's the military industrial complex, the neocons and the Washington foreign policy blob that is the reason why Russia is acting as it is. If the US would change it's behaviour, Russia would naturally behave differently. Hence Trump is making great openings!!!

I truly hope that the people in the center will get fed up with the Hillary voting Trump haters and the Trump voting Hillary-haters, who both have seem to have stayed in the trenches of the last election and will continue from there during the next election their war against the other.

One side believes that neonazis will take over (or are now in power) and the other side that Cultural-Marxists will take over (or are now in power...not perhaps in the White House, but still).

Trump's actions clear show examples of things that many won't say, but are true:

1) The United States today is an unreliable ally that should not to be trusted.

Many Americans themselves believe in a fallacy that that foreigners are typically against them. Many of these Americans also go so far with their criticism of their own state and it's foreign policy that they don't see anything good in it and hence are open to quite blatant anti-US propaganda. Now criticism is healthy, but only up to a level, being overly critical isn't anymore realistic. To view US policy as only as this perpetual machine sucking resources to the military-industrial complex and nothing else is simply naive and ignorant. What is also evident is that many Americans simply either don't care or are totally ignorant about anything else than their domestic viewpoint, which creates a self-centered biased view of the World. As if there wouldn't be a good side to US involvement in World affairs. As if countries wouldn't create problems even without US involvement. This self centered viewpoint makes many Americans think that absolutely everything revolves around them and hence they lack the ability to understand that in the eyes of foreigners they are just one player in the big game. If the US as a superpower leaves, it simply creates a vacuum that will be filled by others. And this vacuum creates competition, which then can turn ugly. Is really Middle East divided by the Russian-Iranian alliance and the unholy Israeli-Saudi camp really better?

2) The United States lacks a coherent foreign policy and is open haphazard turnarounds.

This lack of long term planning and basically utter lack of understanding (or care about) that others have their own agendas creates an environment where the US just goes from bad to a worse situation, usually without total lack of understanding how it makes things worse. Prime example of this is it's old ally Pakistan, which the US has simply pushed into the arms of China. And US-Turkish relations can go the way of US-Pakistani relations. Turkey has demanded for years to make an own security area and it's NATO allies simply haven't given it the chance... until now. Will this improve US Turkish relations? Not likely: the Turkish military incursion will be condemned. This likely won't change even when Trump leaves the office as US domestic politics is such in a state of inflamed vitriol and inability.

3) President Trump is easily influenced and his poor leadership has consequences

This is most obvious from his decision to put a family member with absolutely no abilities to handle the situation, but just leave the door open for even more blatant corruption than before. But this isn't at all important for Trump supporters, of course. Someone might fantasize that when Trump cannot do much he won't create bigger problems, but long term consequences can be dramatic.

What I've got from reading is that a long time ago the good man was he who brought home the bacon, the one who won, and so forth. That is, the good man was the man who did successfully. Failure meant that the man was not a good man - — tim wood

I find this quite troubling and quite honestly very typical for the present where we put victimhood on a pedestal.

Trying to do well yet failing to win or not to get the job when jobs are scarce has never been a sign of being bad. Not now, not in the past either. Bad in this way would be like a man "trying to stay sober and not hitting his wife and children". If one then "fails" in this 'test', gets drunk and beats the crap out of the wife and the children, this indeed would be considered bad. We wouldn't say the man "tried to be good, but failed, hence poor of him". This 'failure' is indeed totally different from not winning a competition and coming second.

We genuinely do demand some level of moral behaviour from people and don't accept 'failing' at this basic level of ordinary humane and moral interaction with other people etc. Just where we put this red line is the interesting question, which tells a lot about us and our society.

It was also the SDF’s line. — NOS4A2

Wow. A 100% defeat. As if insurgencies go away like that.

Just like Obama declared victory over Al Qaeda (in Iraq).

May I remind you of a time when Obama pulled the troops out of Iraq:

The president said the last US troops will leave in the coming days, travelling south across the desert by much the same route that American, British and coalition forces attacked Iraq in 2003.

Obama hinted at the military and diplomatic quagmire he inherited from a Bush administration that had promised Americans a quick and easy war that would see Iraqis scattering flowers at the feet of US soldiers. Instead, the American invasion unleashed a conflict - part civil war, part anti-occupation - that dragged on for years.

But the president, who came to power promising to end the war, said that for all the suffering, the result was success.

"We knew this day would come. We've known it for some time. But still there is something profound about the end of a war that has lasted so long," said Obama. "It's harder to end a war than begin one. Everything that American troops have done in Iraq - all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has landed to this moment of success."

That was 2011. Al Qaeda in Iraq had then already morphed into the present ISIS. And in a few years it would overwhelm large parts of Iraq. Of course now it's nearly beaten, but quickly now withdraw away to snatch that defeat in the long run (again).

He wants to end endless wars. — NOS4A2

Yeah, just like... Obama.

The caliphate is done. The operation is over. Time to bring the Troops home. — NOS4A2

Seems that someone believes here Trump's line. :grin:
Who cares what the military on the ground say. Who cares what the former secretary for defence said. Believe in Trump: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, just like Obama did.

Contrast this behavior with Russia's stance towards it's Syrian allies. They made a massive military effort to safe the Assad regime and managed to turn the civil war around. — Echarmion

Actually the Russian effort shouldn't be described as massive, it was (is) a small but effective force which worked. And don't forget Iran's military assistance. Russia has also used the occasion to train it's flight crews and test it's new equipment.

Yet the real lesson is about being consistent with your allies. And to be patient and consistent in your foreign politicy and it's objectives, without haphazard changes. Russian Turkish relations are a great example of this. Earlier Turkey shot down a Russian fighter bomber and relations deteriorated for a while. Now Turkey and Russia are friends again. The relationship the US has with Turkey is mildly starting to resemble US-Pakistani relations. Some years ago everyone in the West was looking at Assad collapsing. Not anymore.

Americans on the other don't give a shit at all about their allies. And Israel? To put it bluntly: Israel isn't an ally of the US, the US is a loyal ally of Israel.

Talk of knowing how to handle Trump...

Any time people do the deciding that causes others to do the dying, it definitely is about those dying. — Benkei

But states that start wars for their reasons, and usually they don't care so much about those dying.

I am in the end a naïve human rights proponent. — Benkei

Yet you likely do also understand how politicians think about these issues.

Why are former GOP allies distancing themselves from him? Are they really concerned about Kurds? Or are they in the pocket of defense contractors? What does this mean for the Kurds? — Benkei

It's not about the Kurds.

It's the about the absolute train wreck that is militarily done in the Middle East.

First and foremost, the US is losing totally it's credibility and leadership in the Middle East. The situation was bad when Trump started, but it has become worse. Erdogan and Putin can leer the US anyway they see it fit with Trump. One really should notice how Israel has approached Russia being in Syria. It's the new serious guy in the neighborhood.

And look then at what are so-called "allies" of the US. Heck, Saudi-Arabia, it's main ally, was on the cusp to go to war and invade another smaller US ally with important US military bases. The US is not only lacking leadership in the region, it is showing non-existent leadership with it's allies. Actually Trump has just berated his allies and while in Europe this might not have problems, in the Middle East it creates huge problems.

The thing is the US foreign policy in the Middle East is a total fiasco.

We are far from the time of the Baghdad Pact, the Twin Pillars strategy or the time when the Syrians, Egyptians, Saudis, Moroccans, the Gulf States etc. all fought alongside the US to liberate Kuwait and after that the US heeded their advice NOT to advance further into Iraq.

Soon we'll have gangs and factions in here. — Wallows

I blame Donald Trump. — Wallows

Gangs and factions form only in our heads. Never forget that you are talking to individuals that use their own minds. However much those minds might be influenced by the media, by present politics or by in general the outside World we live in.

(Of course you could be talking to bots here... but perhaps AI hasn't reached that level yet.)

A thread on the Kurds and the history leading to their present predicament could be interesting. As far as I know, the Kurds had been systematically divided and conquered since the end of the Ottoman empire (their homeland exists over the shared borders of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey). As far as I know they've never held formal political power in any of those modern nations, and have essentially been a second or third class minority. Turkey in particular has always been in conflict with the Kurdish people in some form (especially for their aspirations toward nationhood), of which there is a long a bloody historical record. Three or four years ago I was convinced that the Kurds would finally get a Kurdistan. They were helping the fight against ISIS like no other group, and they were eager and hopeful to have the west as an ally. — VagabondSpectre

That the Kurds don't have their own independent state shows just how divided they are. That the states with Kurdish minorities (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria) have been able to keep the Kurds in separate camps is quite astonishing.

Besides, in truth they have had a semi-independent state in Iraq, even if they officially have been part of the post-Saddam Iraq.

Hence VagabondSpectre, it's not true that they haven't never held form political power in these countries: Jalal Talabani, head of the Patrioitic Union of Kurdistan, was the President of Iraq for 9 years during 2005 - 2014. Just to give one example.

Yes, all seems to be so well in these well established and exemplary democracies like United States and United Kingdom.

Both are sooo united these days.

Annexation of a large part of a neighbouring state and basically starting a war there is a little bit different than one sovereign state having internal political problems.

Who remembers anymore that Spain was a short time ago on the brink of coming apart?
Who cares?



The trick here is not to kill people. Killing protesters is a taboo. Killing people makes an ugly statistic. It looks bad. Other countries have to respond to it...especially when they aren't your allies. You are way out of line when you start killing protesters. Water canons, rubber bullets, first aid to detained protesters so that they don't die, controlling the media and the internet feed from the demonstrations and simply controlling the discourse about the events is the more professional strategy these days.

True. Demonstrations can die out in a whimper and protest movements can fade away. Just remember how Occupy Wall Street ended.

And yes, naturally the Chinese know that sending the tanks into a city and having pictures of dead protesters on the streets will hurt Chinese business around the World.

The purple is really nice. There's something celebratory to it. — StreetlightX

It's not so bad.

If you really want to change the template for the action of doing something new (and disregard old conservatives as me and darthbarracuda etc. who were happy with the blue / cyan colors), why not have in similar fashion the reference names (or whatever they are called) in purple tone also and not in red?

Talking about fascism might indeed trivialize the discussion as the word is just a meaningless swearword used to berate something one doesn't like (and people don't know what it actually would be about).

It's hard to imagine where this might anger the PRC anywhere more than originating from Hong Kong.

Yes? No? Maybe? — Wallows

Protests in Beijing would be noted. Just like in 1989 when they did happen.

I think the Communist party will never forget that. That's why they fear any protests.




But you can turn it the other way around: assume if the people of Hong Kong were totally happy and went on with their life as usual. What would that tell you about China then? That would be actually more scary as then you would have a case example of that people indeed can be as OK in an totalitarian state as in one that formerly had all the free speech and etc. stuff.

The thing is that Hong Kong is the perfect 'canary in the coal mine' showing the true nature of China.

This I think is important during a time when one half of America fear fascism and neonazis taking over and ruining the Republic and the other half fears cultural marxists taking over and ruining the Republic. Events in Hong Kong show where the lines of true authoritarianism and the acceptance and tolerance of it go with people that have stilla taste Western freedoms.

Concerning Taiwan, I predict that Beijing will not remain patient forever either. Beijing will ultimately seek to recover their rebellious province — alcontali

They will just have to wait a couple of years that the US makes up it's own problems so bad that the US either it will not care or doesn't have the ability anymore to care about Taiwan.

With patience you can overcome the Americans as they have none.

ssu did you miss the above? There's is an opening to assert the contents in your post by HK-ers. And, it would be refreshing for them to do so, creating havoc within party circles, as to make their stipulative definition of Chinese communism also be working for Hong Kong. — Wallows

What opening?

Am I understanding you correctly? Do you think that the people of Hong Kong could change China because they could "ask for socialism"? As if they could say: "Hey, we are just asking what Maoism was about". Is that your idea? Change from inside the party?

You seem not have noticed either what I wrote. I'll rephrase it: 1) the Chinese communist party has long since replaced socialism with de facto fascism. 2) It is a totalitarian state. China is socialist in name only. It truly doesn't give a fuck about socialist ideals as they have literally experienced that socialism doesn't work. They have had the debacle of the Cultural Revolution for that. Just like they don't give a damn about workers rights (which is typical in an 'Workers Paradise'). What they believe in is state lead capitalism and they will crush anything that can be seen as a threat to their power. And that's why I call it fascism.

And you are assuming somehow that the Chinese communist party would be open for new ideas. As if they would want to reinvent or find again socialism or whatever. This is a really strange and naive idea. You have to understand that a Marxist Leninist Party is a totally different animal than a political party in a democracy.