All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[PwrdOn]

That just feels a little too close to imperialism and ethnocentrism to me.

That's because that's exactly what it is. Western democracies are only free and prosperous because they use their military and economic power to bully poorer nations into giving them what they want. "Spreading democracy" in practice just means taking down any country that dares to fight back against Western hegemony, and installing a compliant puppet regime that will serve Western interests over those of its own people.

I doubt that the Afghan people, even the majority of poor rural villagers, have any great love for the Taliban or their fundamentalist ideology, because after all Afghanistan has always existed on the fringes of the Muslim world and life there is governed more by tradition and custom than strict Muslim orthodoxy. However, in their eyes, it's the US that has brought war to their country, bombed hospitals and weddings, and cynically claimed that this was all for the good of the Afghan people. So to them, the Taliban were the resistance fighting back against foreign domination, and the Kabul government were just the loyal lapdogs of said foreign oppressors, and no matter how fragile the Afghan national identity might be, when presented with a choice like that it's clear who most people will side with.

[green_garnish]

That's because that's exactly what it is. Western democracies are only free and prosperous because they use their military and economic power to bully poorer nations into giving them what they want. "Spreading democracy" in practice just means taking down any country that dares to fight back against Western hegemony, and installing a compliant puppet regime that will serve Western interests over those of its own people.

I doubt that the Afghan people, even the majority of poor rural villagers, have any great love for the Taliban or their fundamentalist ideology, because after all Afghanistan has always existed on the fringes of the Muslim world and life there is governed more by tradition and custom than strict Muslim orthodoxy. However, in their eyes, it's the US that has brought war to their country, bombed hospitals and weddings, and cynically claimed that this was all for the good of the Afghan people. So to them, the Taliban were the resistance fighting back against foreign domination, and the Kabul government were just the loyal lapdogs of said foreign oppressors, and no matter how fragile the Afghan national identity might be, when presented with a choice like that it's clear who most people will side with.

While I wouldn't deny that western cultures have abused their global strength, I cannot accept that as the only source of their freedom and prosperity

[CSTowle]

I feel that the key to people treating each other with respect is to provide a stable and relatively well-off existence for them. People tend to be more tolerant of other people and ways of thinking when their basic needs are met and they don't have to worry about where their next meals are coming from (let alone if bombs are going to be dropping on their heads). There will always be extremists regardless of stability and comfort, but it's harder to get a following among the masses for an extremist movement when there's more to lose. I'd imagine the Russian revolution, Nazi Germany, the French revolution, etc. wouldn't have happened if the peoples of those nations were relatively happy and comfortable.

But it only takes a little instability to turn the tables the other way. Look at how fast we devolved into conspiracy thinking and willingness to back a near-fascist wanna-be dictator (saved only by his incompetence and lack of a real ideology), and that took four years. It doesn't take much, and it can happen in the wealthiest nation on Earth. It's hard to judge a region of the world that's been unstable and had an even greater disparity between rich and poor since gods know when.

[Mister Mets]

That just feels a little too close to imperialism and ethnocentrism to me.

It's nothing to do with imperialism or ethnocentrism. It's a basic approach (some combination of elected executives and legislators along with basic enumerated rights for citizens) used in countries all over the world. The world hasn't come up with anything better, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

There is an argument that money and resources are needed first, although I'm unaware of a better track record of wealth creation than having a capitalist democracy.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'm of two minds on the issue; on the one side gender equality and LGBQT rights are values I absolutely feel strongly about and that there are places where that isn't so is troubling, but on the other side Islam is a culture every bit as old as Western society so I have trouble saying that their values are wrong and they should change to match our values.

Does every nation have to be a Western Democracy?

I'm not certain.

Considering that America haven’t been friends to democracies on western and European models i.e. mosadegh’s Iran, Guatemala, Chile among others; and doesn’t seem to have much interest helping Taiwan, I would say this is the wrong question to ask.

My feeling is that two or many things can be right at once:
- American engagement with Afghanistan was a mistake from the start.
- Biden withdrawing and his reasons for it make sense.
- Taliban returning to power is appalling social tragedy.
- Democracy is a human universal right and not inherently Western in any way.

America’s failure to successfully support democracy in Afghanistan doesn’t mean that the Taliban was right nor does it mean that democracy is discredited. It could mean simply that the Americans aren’t good at spreading democracy, or that they were never very committed to it in Afghanistan or anywhere else for that matter.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It's nothing to do with imperialism or ethnocentrism. It's a basic approach (some combination of elected executives and legislators along with basic enumerated rights for citizens) used in countries all over the world. The world hasn't come up with anything better, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

There is an argument that money and resources are needed first, although I'm unaware of a better track record of wealth creation than having a capitalist democracy.

There’s nothing inherently democratic about capitalism or inherently capitalistic about democracy.

And you can have capitalistic wealth generated in non democratic states like China or Singapore.

[Iron Maiden]

We need a Republican Covid bingo card

So let's see....we have Lindsay Graham, Trump, Rand Paul, who else?


Gov. Abbott was getting tested for COVID every day so they caught it pretty fast. Just shows that although he talks the talk, he was making sure he would know as soon as he got it so he can immediately get dosed with Regeneron.

[Iron Maiden]

Agreed. The same thing happened to Russia 30 years ago or so.

Still, what has happened could have happened with less hand wringing from the Afghan population if the president had had a little more forethought.

But wasn't Biden locked in by Trump's agreement? If not I think means to establish consistency etc, you have to follow through with what the previous administration began. I think Biden was going to do it anyway if he became President but Trump's deal forced their hand to follow through when Biden's term of office began. I think that people are going to be more against giving any kind of help overseas if you can spend 20 years and billions of dollar and have it all be for naught.

[Tendrin]

We need a Republican Covid bingo card

Republican state senator André Jacque has taken a trip to the hospital after experiencing pneumonia brought on by COVID-19. On Monday, the De Pere Republican sent an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying that after some of his family members tested positive for COVID-19 last week, he himself had also tested positive and ended up at the hospital. Whether or not he was admitted to the hospital is unknown.

The Journal Sentinel reports that the anti-mask, anti-vaccine state senator texted that he became sick shortly after returning from the State Capitol in Madison, where he testified during two different hearings, at least one maskless. “Fatigue has been a long-standing health concern of mine, but otherwise I had good health readings when I tested positive. My office has been following all protocols, and I personally reached out to the limited number of close contacts from last week in case I was positive at the time. I do not believe any of my staff or close contacts are experiencing symptoms. Unfortunately, I am now at the hospital with pneumonia, which I have had previously. I do not have further information to share at this point.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...t-for-COVID-19

[JackDaw]

But wasn't Biden locked in by Trump's agreement? If not I think means to establish consistency etc, you have to follow through with what the previous administration began. I think Biden was going to do it anyway if he became President but Trump's deal forced their hand to follow through when Biden's term of office began. I think that people are going to be more against giving any kind of help overseas if you can spend 20 years and billions of dollar and have it all be for naught.

Constitutionally he wasn’t (locked in). And morally he wasn’t.

Indeed if he thought the Trump agreement was wrong he had a duty to go against it.

Basically he agreed with the Trump decision…surely there’s no point pretending otherwise.

[worstblogever]

Constitutionally he wasn’t (locked in). And morally he wasn’t.

Indeed if he thought the Trump agreement was wrong he had a duty to go against it.

Basically he agreed with the Trump decision…surely there’s no point pretending otherwise.

We can't say Biden agreed with it completely, delaying the pullout over four months to work to get more people out ahead of the Taliban fully returning to power.

The logistics of getting out of there were something that I would be almost completely confident that Trump gave no thought to. If he didn't leave he incoming administration a vaccine distribution plan, it's pretty safe to say an exit strategy for getting out of Afghanistan in 15 weeks after the Biden administration was also not something Trump dedicated time to while he was laser-focused on plotting his coup attempt.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2014 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our profile of Tye “Glenn” Champ, a GOP candidate for governor of California in 2014 who just so happened to have a record as a felon for soliciting underage prostitutes and committing manslaughter, who after faring surprisingly well in the primary (finishing better than ten other candidates), managed to later get into an argument with a neighbor where Champ fired off several rounds at the neighbor and his son, instead missing wildly and killing a horse. He is now back in prison, and as such, seems unlikely to be politically relevant for some time (but nice job inviting him to your state party convention, California Repubicans!)


In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who in 2010, had colorful campaign discussions that included pushing back against calls to increase the statute of limitations on sexual abuse in Wisconsin, leaving victims of abuses years ago unable to seek justice, labeling Social Security "a Ponzi scheme", saying that the 97% of climate change scientists who say the phenomenon is man-made were "crazy", the real cause of climate change was sunspots, and that Greenland is covered in snow and ice because we're actually witnessing "global cooling". In 2013 that Ron Johnson answered criticism from the League of Conservation Voters that he denied climate change by accusing them of waging “environmental jihad” and has compared politicians and activists trying to prevent climate change to Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro.

Johnson also was against marriage equality, and was pro-life to the extent where he considers that life begins at conception (which means he's also against most forms of birth control). Johnson also showed quite a bit of hypocrisy, railing against the economic stimulus packages passed by Congress to help the American economy, that as it turned out, his business had accepted funding from. Or perhaps he showed a great deal of personal bias for attacking the Obama administration for trying to take BP Oil to task after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the environmental damage he caused, by categorizing it as "launching an assault on BP" and after some digging, the media found out that Ron Johnson had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in BP Oil, and he made the excuse of not selling it because he was waiting for the stock market to be better so he could get more money out of it. And that was just what we discussed from BEFORE him reaching office in the 2010 Tea Party Wave in an upset victory over three-term Senator Russ Feingold. Since reaching office, Johnson has stayed to party lines in almost every obstructing vote in the Senate, voting against increasing the debt ceiling, the new version of the Violence Against Women Act (which he said was “unconstitutional”), and disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, just to name a few choice “blocks”. Heck, he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and then voted to keep the government closed when the time came to end it. Inexplicably, he also tried fear-mongering to the fringe elements of the GOP prior to the 2014 elections during the outbreak of Ebola Virus in Africa, warning that ISIS might deliberately infect its own followers with the disease and send them to the United States to deliberately spread it (which is not a viable form of suicide attack, considering people afflicted with Ebola are far from mobile as their body starts getting wracked by the disease, and they have to get blood or feces on anyone they’re attacking without being noticed). Sen. Johnson was one of the “47 Traitors” in the GOP who tried to meddle in the State Department’s negotiations with Iran, presented a photo of President Obama and President Rouhani shaking hands as proof they were “chummy” that was actually photo-shopped image of Obama with the leader of a completely different country, and wasted time in a Senate hearing asking Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz questions about an “EMP Bomb” that doesn’t actually exist outside of movies. And speaking of movies, Johnson even went on record to rail against, of all things, The Lego Movie, because he felt the villain, Lord Business, was a demonization of rich corporations. He has blamed a rise in mass shootings on the media for reporting them, paid tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after his death by stupidly posting a picture of actor Edward Gero, who starred in a play about Scalia and his court decisions called “The Originalist”, and whose solution to help combat the prescription opioid drug abuse epidemic… bring back those “War on Drugs” ads where your brain was compared to an egg in a frying pan that did nothing to curtail even ordinary drug abuse in the 1980s.

Johnson compared his own hard battle for re-election in 2016 to the choice of passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to storm the cockpit, and as outrageous and disgusting as that comparison might be (not just to the victims but to his opponent Russ Feingold), with a lot of help from the voter suppression tactics employed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his cronies in the Wisconsin state legislature, managed to actually win a second term in 2016. And that was even after how on the week of the election, unprompted, he decided to discuss impeaching Hillary Clinton. I mean, counting your impeachment chickens before they’re hatched much, Ron?

Now, since Sen. Johnson’s re-election in 2016, he has done little to stand up to the Trump administration, voting for every unqualified member of his “Cabinet of Horrors”, as well as voting for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. As frustrating as that is to see, there has only been one big vote on legislation since January in the U.S. Senate, and that would have been on healthcare repeal… Ron Johnson, in late July, was saying he would vote against any attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because Sen. Mitch McConnell and leadership in the Senate were being too secretive about what was actually in the bill, and that he would vote to block it from coming to the floor. Two days later, Johnson voted to repeal. Two days. That’s all it took to contradict himself. And how upset was Sen. Johnson that he couldn’t burn down the American healthcare system and whiz on the ashes? Enough so that he responded to the dramatic “no” vote by Senator John McCain by whining about how Sen. McCain’s “brain tumor may have factored in” to his vote. Well, isn’t that sweet of you, Ron.

We’ve covered before that Ron Johnson is a moronic conspiracy theorist, so current events in our country mean he’s really reveling in the moment, what with a conspiracy theorist at the White House. And what with Donald Trump and a lot of conservative “media” sources rambling on with paranoid delusions about a “Deep State” within the government sabotaging the Trump administration, that Sen. Johnson would join in the chorus on Fox News:

"And that secret society — we have an informant talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site. There's so much smoke here, there's so much suspicion. I've heard from an individual that ... there was a group of managers within the FBI that were holding meetings off site. Wzhen Strzok and Page had described a secret society, that didn't surprise me because I had corroborating information."

And… that was stupid enough that fellow GOP Congressman Charlie Dent all but accused Johnson of having brain damage.

We’re honestly thinking that’s not hyperbole. In April of 2018, Johnson started whining about supposed “unprecedented obstruction” about Democrats, and then literally, a minute later, started praising Mitch McConnell for leading the Senate GOP to block the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Just… f***. F***.

[worstblogever]

On the July 4th weekend in 2020, you may have seen a report about several Republican Senators and one member of the GOP House spending the celebration of American independence by going to Russia to meet with their foreign counterparts. Commentators and pundits thought that maybe the optics of going on a diplomatic visit to the country that meddled in the 2016 election on arguably its most patriotic holiday weren’t good. But, it was worse than that Three days later, Johnson suddenly was arguing against sanctions on Russia because “they aren’t working that well”. Three days. That’s all it took for Ron Johnson to flip on his on country. This… this ***hole really does telegraph how easily he’s bought, doesn’t he?

Speaking of, Sen. Johnson gave lukewarm criticism when Donald Trump told four Democratic Congresswomen of color to “go back to where they came from”, but defended him against accusations that the attack was racist, saying that telling people to “love America or leave it” wasn’t racist in the 1960s. (Which isn’t what Trump said, mind you, and it has had racist connotations… but what do you expect from the dumbest man in the Senate?)

Ron Johnson spent the 2020 election season apparently volunteering his services to be a proxy for Russian intelligence, issuing Senate subpoenas to the FBI to have them come down to discuss their investigation of Donald Trump colluding with the Russians in 2016, and also that he’s still beating the dead horse of Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and knowingly admits he’s doing it to swing the outcome of the 2020 election.

Just… some of the timeline from the past year and a half or so:

• January 31st, 2020: Ron Johnson votes against witnesses being allowed in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
• February 5th, 2020: Johnson votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance in the 2020 elections.
• February 25th, 2020: Johnson votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.
• March 17th, 2020: Ron Johnson opines that citizens receiving a Covid-19 stimulus would “incentivize people to not show up for work”. Which, during a pandemic, if they could be incentivized to stay at home for non-essential jobs, that’s THE POINT, RON.
• July 22nd, 2020: Senator Johnson single-handedly blocks the advancement of a bill to celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday, deeming it “too expensive”.
• September 16th, 2020: Johnson uses his seat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee to try and launch an investigation into Hunter Biden to sabotage his father’s presidential campaign, and it’s so blatantly stupid that even fellow Republican Senator Mitt Romney calls him out for it.
• September 17th, 2020: Ron Johnson, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren, declares that “Donald Trump is the most transparent president in American history”, which had fact checkers remind him Trump never released his tax records, his college transcripts, his medical records, his DNA to investigators looking to find out if he sexually assaulted women, he wouldn’t disclose the White House visitor logs, or that he actively would not reveal what was said in meetings with Vladimir Putin, and actively put recordings and transcripts of calls with foreign leaders on a highly classified server.
• November 10th, 2020: Johnson begins furthering “The Big Lie” that Joe Biden did not actually win the 2020 election, answering when asked if he congratulated Biden by saying, “There’s nothing to congratulate him about.”
• February 13th, 2021: Sen. Johnson votes to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.
• February 16th, 2021: During a hearing on the January 6th attack, Ron Johnson claims that the Capitol Riot “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me”.
• March 6th, 2021: Ron Johnson votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he can’t be bothered to care if people need financial assistance during a pandemic.
• March 12th, 2021:Senator Johnson says that he in no way feared for his life on January 6th, but said that if there were Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Capitol, he would have feared for his safety. Because he's racist, frankly.
• April 23rd, 2021: Johnson criticizes the Biden administration for their vaccination roll-out plan, not for its efficiency or lack thereof, just that it was happening, saying he sees “no reason” for the mass vaccinations to the public.
• May 8th, 2021: Ron Johnson disseminates misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine in an interview on right-wing radio in Madison, saying that 3,000 people died from the vaccine in the first 30 days it was being used.
• June 3rd, 2021: In one flurry of gaslighting, Johnson attacks Dr. Anthony Fauci, claims that the Capitol Riot was far more peaceful than was reported, claimed there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election, and chastised Black activists, saying they “need to read more MLK speeches” at their protests.
• June 12th, 2021: Ron Johnson is banned from Twitter for a week for spreading Covid-19 misinformation.
• June 19th, 2021: Senator Johnson singlehandedly blocked the passage of a bill to celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday in 2020. After it passed in 2021, he had the nerve to show up at a Juneteenth celebration like he’d helped pass it, and was booed until he left.

Barring any sudden resignation or karmically developing brain tumor on his own end, Ron Johnson is now cemented in the Senate like the dumb bag of rocks he is until 2022. Just… goddamn. He has pledged to not run for a third term, but still has not made any official announcement on his 2022 plans at this time. We’re hoping whether he runs or not, that he is not in the Senate after that time, and is ridiculed in public for the remainder of his days upon this earth for the damage he has done to this country.

[numberthirty]

Constitutionally he wasn’t (locked in). And morally he wasn’t.

Indeed if he thought the Trump agreement was wrong he had a duty to go against it.

Basically he agreed with the Trump decision…surely there’s no point pretending otherwise.

Never mind that the guy ran as the "I am actually a competent politician..." alternative to Trump.

This would have been a really good time to actually prove it.

While I get that this was always going to be some degree of "You screwed this up..." blame he wasn't going to be totally responsible for, I tend to believe that there must have been a better plan kicking around somewhere.

[Korath]

It's nothing to do with imperialism or ethnocentrism. It's a basic approach (some combination of elected executives and legislators along with basic enumerated rights for citizens) used in countries all over the world. The world hasn't come up with anything better, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

There is an argument that money and resources are needed first, although I'm unaware of a better track record of wealth creation than having a capitalist democracy.

Modern capitalism sprang from the accumulated wealth of Europeans conquering the Americas and using slavery for centuries. Without it, there would never have been enough accumulated private capital to industrialize. Nowadays, the links between that era when French, English, Spaniards and Portuguese pillaged the "New World" and each other's ships in return is widely recognized to be the cradle of capitalism, which is rather evident in the way capitalism unleash and promote the worst human traits as a way to success : greed, arrogance, brutality and cynicism will always take you farther than empathy, humility and the like.

And sadly, it's what killing our planet.

Regarding Afghanistan proper, what killed any chances for this country as the US diverting back to Irak almost as soon as it had ended invading Afghanistan, no real interest in making the country a better place and basically a repeat of all the same mistakes of the Vietnam War, complete with letting a corrupt government in place, absolute lack of a better life in the rural parts of the country and, of course, no intent to curtail the warlords and Talibans by actually making poppy growing, which was basically the sole source of revenue for a lot of extremely poor peoples, legal, and thus drying up the dark flows of money to the insurgents.