Tiff, do you understand that you are still strawmanning? Nobody is talking about "letting everyone in". Send them all back if you want. We are talking abut a specific policy here.

It's obvious what I would do, I would stop separating children from their parents because it's absolutely inhumane. Stop conflating it with the wider border issue. You can build your insane wall if you want. I couldn't care less. But don't psychologically torture children and their parents. You just don't do that and get to call yourself a humane society.

Yes, they're just "immigrants" and it's all about politics and the wider border issue. Total strawman to detract from what's actually happening. You need to understand that you can have border security without rampant cruelty. Those are not the same issue.

I didn't take anything down. You seem to be incapable of realizing what's happening to these parents and children. It's sick.

I get it, Tiff, you just can't see this people as human. That is very sad for you.

Strawman bullshit.

It is monstrous to anyone with a human soul. — Jeremiah

Worth repeating.

@ArguingWAristotleTiff
I'm actually horrified knowing that you are an empathetic person in general that you'd defend this scummy policy.

Tiff, this has nothing to do with the bloody weather. You don't have to baste the kids in honey and strap them to a pole on the middle of the desert in order not to rip them from their parents. It's crude and cruel and the Trump admin owns it fully. They didn't have to interpret the law this way and previous admins didn't. Besides, they said they chose to do this as a deterrent. Now imagine it was you getting a young child of yours taken from you. Please do that just for a second before you come out with this partisan clap-trap. This goes way beyond dems vs. Republicans. It's a simple matter of empathy.

I don't know whether it is or not, originally. There are other crimes being discovered though, so I'm not going to complain if some corrupt people get punished for them. Are you?

That's called a strawman. Look it up. You might learn something about...philosophy. But I doubt you will, so I'll explain it to you. I didn't say Mueller was the messiah. I didn't even mention Mueller in my comment. Understand? Or would you like me to perhaps write it on the back of your MAGA hat for easy reference?

FBI and CIA agents talk smack about politicians they don't like all the time. They did it with Bush, they did it with Obama, they did it with Trump. The only surprise here is that more of them weren't talking smack about Trump considering what a dufus he is. So, you've got a couple of FBI agents who turns out don't like the president. Quick, call Hannity and turn it into a conspiracy. Only a complete idiot would take any of this seriously. What a yawn. :yawn:

It's all relative. It comes just outside the top 20 in overall score, which puts it in the "flawed democracies" list. But the important point is to notice the backward trend since 2006 (if you follow the link). It's not just about the U.S. If you credit the index as being accurate, it's got to be worrying that we've been, as a world, getting less not more democratic over the last decade.

"Salty". And kind of "non-responsive". The only good bit was the joke at the end.

OK though, what happened to rising living standards? There's more wealth. Where did it go and why? You tell me.

The truth of the modern nation is that ignorance is exploited for monetary gain and growth of influence. — TogetherTurtle

Yes, this is the paradoxical problem with "too much" freedom and "too much" democracy in terms of @Hanover's point. They tend to lead to their opposites. So, sure, we want to allow people to put their opinions forward in order to convince voters who they should support. But, as we know that with modern marketing methods money can buy opinion and convince people to vote against their own interests, putting more money into the pockets of those who buy the opinions that suit them along with support for the politicians who propagate them creates a self-stroking cycle of concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands, as has been happening, particularly in the US and particularly since the 80s when brand power, both commercial and political, began to really take off.

This also explains why the expected spoils of technological progress that had resulted in significant increases in standards of living for most of the last century are now being lost to the vast majority of the population. So, what's democratic about all this? In fact, isn't calling it democratic just another symptom of the problem and exactly what those who are causing the problem would want us to say? The solution of course isn't to shut down free speech but simply to regulate the influence of wealth and power in politics, something the US is continuously getting worse at (which given the above is obviously no accident). And, so, yes. It may be too late. But apart from the obvious common sense point that giving more and more power and wealth to those who are already powerful and wealthy just gives them more ability to perpetuate that very process, the theoretical point is that modern consumer democracy is a fragile beast and needs to be protected from eating itself.

I'll help.

Kim is the current leader of NK, is he not? — raza

Yes.

Oh, and according to the above index the world as a whole has become less not more democratic since 2006 when the index first reported. If capitalism has figured out it doesn't need democracy as much as it thought it did (after Singapore, China etc.) it may indeed simply die out. There are no guarantees.

You've focussed on one particular democracy, the US, but I don't feel like it is especially representative of democracies in the world today. — angslan

Just to put that point in some context, according to the Democracy Index the US is categorized as a "flawed democracy" well down the list of well-functioning democracies.


The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index map for 2017.
Bluer colours represent more democratic countries as reported

:100: :fire:

I think at this point we're not much in disagreement over the basic facts but more over the likely outcome and therefore the justifiability of the route there. You're seeing the glass fuller than I am.



That's a fair point. I didn't watch the stickman psychos video yet, but I soon will in order to understand everything about you. :joke: :fire:

That's the grand prize, not a prerequisite to begin the talks. — Hanover

That's just wrong. The commitment would be basic progress on what they've said before. What they said in the text they've been saying since 1992! It's a nothing-burger. The grand prize would be actual disarmament and preceding that concrete steps towards that goal.

He put that on the table, but it hardly means the exercises won't occur if there's not compliance by the North Koreans. — Hanover

He didn't put it on the table. He gave it to them after they left the table. There's a big difference. And he can't take it back so easily. These things are planned way in advance. You can't just cancel a huge military exercise and then a couple of days before it had been scheduled put it on again. Doesn't work that way.

A reckless and impulsive person doesn't win the presidency. — Hanover

So, it was a robot that won and the real Donald Trump is locked up in the boot of a car somewhere? :) Look, it's about degree. Me saying that Trump was impulsive and somewhat reckless in this instance does not mean I impute a level of impulsiveness or recklessness to him that would have made it impossible or even unlikely for him to win the presidency. That's just a bad argument.

If the point of the summit was to denounce Kim as evil personified in the fashion of typical American diplomacy, then it was a failure. — Hanover

You failed to notice that space in there between excessive praise and excessive denunciation. I'm arguing a neutral and dignified approach would have been better. That you shouldn't hand out love candy to sociopathic murderers in a political context is not to say you need to hit them over the head with a big stick every time you meet them.

Nothing has been given away. Everything said can be rescinded. — Hanover

That you can rescind stuff doesn't mean you didn't give it away. In fact, unless you're rescinding it from yourself, which isn't logical, it's a condition of being able to rescind something that you actually did give it away. But semantics aside, sure, the position is (mostly) not irreversible, only he's made things harder for himself, that's all I'm saying.

We're on the first few feet of the marathon. — Hanover

Time for a strategic concession, methinks. Agreed!

I've been ambiguous about Trump from the start partly for that reason. Or to put it this way: First of all the admonishment 'bad' or 'evil' is pretty useless in any discussion of almost any politician. Without qualification, it's just too reductive. So, bad or evil how? We need to be specific. And this is especially important with Trump because the way he's 'bad' as a politician differs so much from the way other politicians are 'bad'. Even his dishonesty is of a different class.

And that's the segueway into my second point, it's not only the difference, it's the opposition—almost everything that's 'bad' about Trump is also 'good' in some other way when looked at from a different perspective relative to a standard politician. I don't mean this in terms of degree—I'm not proposing a balancing equivalence just highlighting how Trump functions politically as an obverse to a standard that illuminates characteristics of the standard which might otherwise remain obscure.

So, zooming out on Trump as a political function you might judge him, despite already identifying almost everything specific he has done as negative, as overall actually a positive. And I think this not only applies to his presidency as a whole but to specific tasks / goals of his presidency which can be individuated into smaller micro-tasks. As in, he might fail many micro-tasks, e.g. this summit, and yet succeed at the macro-task, nuclear disarmament of the DPRK and peace in the region. The whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts with Trump whereas for other politicians it is to a more predictable extent.

So then, zooming out further you might say this very situation where standard politics is problematized by the arrival of an interesting if unstable alternative is itself good. Maybe it opens up the conceptual space for imagining a type of politician who is the obverse of the obverses, so to speak. Who's good where Trump is bad and also good where a standard politician is bad.

Or there'll be a nuclear holocaust in Korea followed by WWIII and we all die. Who knows with Trump? :)

It's an interesting angle because the whole presidential bid was, according to some commentators, just a promotional effort, and he never expected to win, So, yes, it wouldn't surprise me although like most people in the public eye there's a danger of reducing him to cartoon-character simplicity (which I need to be careful of myself). I'd guess there's a complicated mix of motivations in there but with self-interest in whatever form coming out on top in the end.

I did this for you, now when I ask for a favor, you better do it for me. — Agustino

I anticipated this objection, so you really did do this for me, and as a favor to you, I'll elaborate :) : Claiming that you shouldn't give anything away for free in a negotiation is not really the same as saying you should never consider making a calculated concession, which I agree with you could be a good idea given the right circumstances (even though it's always a risky strategy in proportion especially to the size of the concession). So, a calculated concession is not really giving something for free as it only succeeds when it's reciprocated, i.e. the concession reduces either to a surreptitious trade or it fails. So, here there's no evidence the military exercises concession was calculated to put pressure on NK, no evidence that they gave anything in return, and no evidence that it puts any pressure on them to do so. Further, Trump mentioned money when he spoke about it, which, if that is part of the motivation, is an absurd consideration at this point in the chess game. So, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

I think from a negotiation point of view that praise was great. It showed Kim that Trump is willing to accept him on the world stage if he obeys, which is exactly what the North Koreans have wanted for so long. That's why they got nukes in the first place, they wanted to sit down at the table with the big boys and play. — Agustino

That's one way of looking at it. Although it seems to me Trump was doing most of the obeying. I'm not going to argue the toss much more except to repeat that the optics were terrible. Kim, morally speaking, is hardly above Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein in terms of his brutality (if not the damage he's managed to exact with it). Praising him, if that were the only way to get him to do something, might be acceptable. But again, was this a calculated concession or a simple giveaway to him and every other tyrant the world over? I'd bet on the latter. It's simply that Trump respects, likes, and to a certain degree wishes to emulate strongmen. It's part of his political character.

Agreed. — Agustino

Calculated concession?? :gasp: ;)

And the article seems fair. I'd be a bit harsher on Trump but I don't have an editor to worry about.

I would agree with your general gist except for a few very important specifics:

1) A commitment (if not a timetable, which at this stage would have been an unrealistic demand) to CVI (Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible) denuclearisation from North Korea was expected to be and should have been a red line demand from the US coming into the summit.
2) There was no need to make a concession on military exercises as it wasn't in the joint statement, wasn't (apparently) expected by the South Koreans, and was (apparently) granted by Trump on a whim (First rule of negotiation: Never give anything away for free).
3) The excessive praise of Kim was unnecessary and will only embolden autocratic tyrants around the world (not to mention Kim himself).
4) Ending upcoming sanctions I would have agreed with if 1) and 2) had been different. But they weren't. So, another giveaway.

Any country coming into any negotiation, even a preliminary one, must have goals with regard to the outcome and can only be judged in terms of their success on the basis of those goals. I'm sure you'd agree with that. So unless the goal of the US was to get nothing here and give several things away, they failed. Simple as that. That doesn't mean the whole thing will be a failure. It's not over yet, obviously.

Something about the way the mind typically works seems to make rooting for someone you hate to succeed virtually impossible, even if it's in something that may benefit you personally. — Erik

Yes, which puts Trump haters between a rock and a hard place as rooting for a nuclear war is also virtually impossible. :) I wouldn't call myself a Trump-hater though. It's more contempt. What I hate is unqualified people taking on important work, the failure of which will affect us all, and then being unable to put their ego aside enough to take a back seat even if that taking a back seat is done subtly and will result in a better outcome.

Trump could have let his advisers take the lead on this summit seeing as he didn't prepare for it himself (by his own public admission) instead he insisted on going by "feel" and publicly announcing that beforehand, which made him a sitting duck for manipulation. Knowing him, he did this so that if the meeting was a success he could take all the glory, and prove himself the Master of the Art of the Deal, or whatever. And the result of this is there is no clear result. We have to rely on the bare hope NK are sincere (and, as they never have been before, that's a big ask).

Having said all that, I guarantee you if Trump comes up with a comprehensive Iran-style nuclear deal with the DPRK at the end of this process, and that's certainly a possibility given that there are advantages to Kim re-engaging with the international community, then I will be the first to laud him for that. Just as likely though is that NK are cementing their presence as a nuclear power on the world stage and continuing to work in the background at making themselves an unassailable deterrent (possibly with China's covert collusion).

Last thing, "Love your enemies" is all well and dandy as a principle when your enemies are relatively harmless, but is potentially disastrous when they are as dangerous and duplicitous as the likes of Kim. And "Love your enemies but hate your friends", which seems to be what Trump is going for is as close to willful self-destruction as I can imagine as a foreign policy. So, 'crazy like a fox' or 'dumb as an ox'. Take your pick as things stand. The ball is in Kim's court and it's his serve.

Yes, which puts honest criticism in a difficult position. As I intimated in the Shoutbox earlier, just because the one who said said you failed doesn't like you doesn't mean you succeeded. You don't get to take that magic carpet ride out of every predicament you get yourself into. Presidents should be held to high standards and maps out of crises drawn from fuzzy and warm aspirations alone are just as likely to lead to perdition as to salvation. Anyhow, we're still in limbo at the moment, so it could be worse.



You may be right. It could well just be more Trump porn.

Ok, but there are levels, and Kim is well beyond Trump or any other democratic leader in the murder/cruelty stakes.

I think the following video btw conveys Trump's childlike mentality well and why the kind of strategic diplomacy he's been called upon to carry out lately is so beyond his capability. He played this for Kim at the summit. It is utterly moronic and I'm sure that fact wasn't lost on the North Korean leader.

There's no argument against overall rapprochement and no argument against easing hostilities as far as I know, Erik (not-unless it's entirely one-way at least). Not from me anyway. If you read through my posts my criticism is of Trump's strategy re this summit and the result that came from it.

I want to re-emphasize too that the blame for what so far is a fiasco should not be laid primarily at his feet. In an important sense he's been painted into a corner by his predecessors and China (who have been two-faced re NK from the beginning).

According to Trump, Kim is very talented. And he is at two things:

1) Mass murder and torture
2) Humiliating his adversaries

Again no analysis from you. Anyway, if we're going to look at outside commentary, here's another conservative voice that says it's a total failure (the idea that this is a partisan liberal attack is nonsense and itself just a partisan attack...on liberals) :

"Kim Jong Un got it all for actually doing nothing. Plus, he got a promise for a regime...that tortures and murders its own citizens...and a leader that commits crimes against humanity."

I've written many lengthy posts explaining my position. It's a waste of fucking time. I really dislike the insult culture on this forum. — fishfry

Not on this issue you haven't. And you haven't responded to the substance of even one thing I said. Notice in my conversation with Hanover there were no insults btw. Because he actually replied in good faith. All you've done is write a few combative one-liners and run away. Your concerns for the forum and for philosophical argumentation ring very hollow here.

@fishfry

It's disappointing that you can't defend your position despite being repeatedly invited to do so. It's a philosophy forum. Drive-by one liners aren't going to cut it here.

I'm being critical but not unfair. This has nothing to do with not giving peace a chance, it has to do with the realities of the situation, what could reasonably have been expected and what actually occurred. You can gloss over the failure here by saying it might turn out to be a success in the end, but it's still a failure now. I don't know if it will be a success in the end. Obviously, I hope it will be. And I don't speak for the left as a whole but the idea that it wants failure, which ultimately suggests that it would prefer a nuclear war, which would result in millions of dead, rather then see Trump get a foreign policy victory is hardly fair. The left are not made up of foaming-at-the-mouth sociopaths. And it's the right, when Obama actually succeeded in reigning in Iran's nuclear program, that sabotaged what was actually a solid deal, with Trump the ultimate culprit. That may yet lead to an unwanted nuclear war. So, his record as stands is ambiguous at the very best.

Where's the harm in this agreement — Hanover

It's more of a missed opportunity than an active harm. If it works out, all's well, but right now, as things stand, what Trump got (i.e. nothing), with all his bluster about being a great deal maker is an embarrassment.

(Of course if Kim is being completely disengenuous, which is a significant possibility given past behaviour, the active harm is as I've specified before: that his position is strengthened having made no concrete concessions while avoiding new sanctions, seeing important military maneuvres on the other side stopped, having his personal cult elevated, his regime strengthened, and getting China back on side.)

Matter of fact, apart from a short contribution by Hanover, there's been no analysis at all from the opposing side to suggest this meeting was a success. Just some vague assertions. Kind of like the joint statement itself, fittingly enough.

Anyway, waiting for something substantial...

@fishfry
https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/full-text-of-the-iran-nuclear-deal/1651/

Sorry not 110 pages, 160 pages. That's what an actual deal looks like. Again comparing that to a vague joint statement like the one above is ridiculous. Really.

(Make no mistake, if Trump can get a deal as comprehensive and secure as that out of the DPRK, I'll absolutely applaud him and so should we all.)

Last thing, is Ben Shapiro a liberal with "Trump derangement syndrome"?

Ben Shapiro:""If Obama had done this, I would be crushing him today."

There is no comparison. One is a comprehensive deal, the other is a joint statement of zero substance. Have you even read what's written above? Are you willing to engage in even a basic level of analysis?

@fishfry

This is what Trump got :

1) The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity. [Fluff]
2) The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. [Fluff]
3) Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.[Repeated fluff]
4) The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.[Minor humanitarian concession]

That's it. Roughly zilch. And then afterwards he gives away military exercises for nothing without even telling the South Koreans, reportedly. Because they are "too expensive". (Not to mention all those impending sanctions he just canceled).

Now go read the 110 page Iran deal.