What if it's actually North Korea and Venezuela behind it? Did anyone investigate that angle?

I'd prefer you didn't strawman my list of examples as deeply considered analogues.

Uber goes public, everyone sees what a financial disaster it is, so they think: I know what will be a good idea! Let's make Uber but for ****ing helicopters.

If they’re only as deep as pointing your figure at Trump and crying, “liar!” then the analogies are nothing but vacuous rhetoric. You can concede that if you want, I suppose.

But why would you want to unreflectively spout out empty political slogans?

I'm not interested in wrestling a pig right now.

Actually, I changed my mind. I guess I am interested in wrestling a pig.

Pointing out that governments have a history of lying in order to justify violence does not mean that I agree the United States government is lying in this instance. I was simply pointing out that people are justified in their skepticism. I explicitly said so. Furthermore, only one out of the three examples I gave was even about the United States government, and none of them had anything to do with Donald Trump. You hallucinated practically everything about this discussion.

If anybody is guilty of reflexively spouting empty political slogans it is you, person who supports Trump's posture on Iran and would clearly embrace any narrative that might justify violent action against them.

Yep, so did I, so we obviously don’t disagree.

You did, roughly one post before you started imagining all kinds of fun things that I didn't say and am not interested in discussing with you.

Shower broken, I guess?

Feels like a Twitter slapfight up in here.

Yeah, but it’s been a little while, so...

Know what's more fun than trying to guess what flimsy excuse will eventually be used to justify inevitable US misadventures in Iran? Trying to guess what geopolitical interests the United States would actually be protecting there.

Because I'm having a hard time thinking of them. The US doesn't need Middle Eastern oil and they don't have anything else of value.

Oh no! Look how sore you are because I’m responding to things you brought up!

I guess when you said “Gulf of Tonkin incident” you weren’t bringing it up because you thought it had any bearing on the oil tankers, but because you think those words in that particular order sound pretty together?

I also brought up Wiebo Ludwig, an Albertan oil critic who was framed by the RCMP in order to silence him. Pretty hard to fit that one into your theory that I was actually drawing direct comparisons with this situation, huh? I guess that's why you conveniently ignored it.

Here, Eversor, lemme illustrate for you exactly how much table stakes I have w.r.t. a US/Iran war:

∅

Do you seriously think I give a single **** whether Iran's been bombing freighters, or if it's a US false flag, or whatever? Because I don't. I actually don't. But you've clearly got a lot of imagined arguments with Iran limpet mine skeptics stored up, and I'm glad I was able to help you exorcise them. Next time though you might want to try someone who gives a ****.

Going to some lengths to cover your tracks after making reciting lazy arguments dude

Don't take it out on me just because r/politics downvotes you.

I don’t know what that is

Literally nobody believes that.

It’s a Reddit channel? I’m not really a Reddit guy.

Well yeah, of course not. They downvote you.

14500!

Twitter slap fight indeed

Let me make this simple enough for you to understand, Eversor: I'm me.

If I intended to reference those past events because they're analogous to a current event, I'd argue the analogy to death. Or at least until you left the forum, because, as you've previously whined, that's what I do. For example, this thread, where I am prepared to argue forever against a contrarian Redditor who stubbornly insists that I said something that I didn't.

It would be very out of character if I disavowed my thesis just because you, supergenius who clearly intellectually intimidates me, got real mad about something he read on Reddit and took the opportunity to recite some superficial argument that (psst, by the way) I didn't even read because I super don't care what you think about the historical parallels. So I suggest it is unlikely that I did either of the things you've accused me of doing.

I wouldn't know, bro. Twitter seems more like your thing. 140 chars of polemic for you to get your daily hate on.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I understand where you're coming from Eversor. I'm sure your east coast Facebook feed is full of all sorts of slavish Democrats radicalizing themselves into siding with Iran's theocratic dictatorship just because Trump hates them, and you're afraid to say anything because it'll cost you friends. It's sad. Really, I do understand. I'm an Albertan socialist. Personally, though, I prefer to have these arguments in the shower instead of throwing them at living humans who don't even disagree with me.

Honestly I’m just cracking up because you’re having a meltdown. You (for some inexplicable reason?) are claiming that some views I was attributing to people in general I was in fact attributing to you specifically. Those remarks I made weren’t a personal assault on you, dude. Like, this whole episode of you freaking out like a cornered dog could’ve been avoided by you pretty easily.

On another note, I find it really surprising how many people still have Trump derangement syndrome, and STILL make it a point to point out his lies.

Like, what's the ****ing point? We have a demented narcissist in office. There's no reason to take anything he says seriously outside of the damage he's going to do to the economy, environment and world. But there's no use trying to investigate his "reasoning", just prepare for what the future of America will look like with spit-covered windows.

You're free to imagine whatever you want (as you've proven above), but I'm not emotionally engaged in this discussion. I do find you insufferable, but neither that nor your habit of knocking down strawmen is a recent development. I do doubt you're actually cracking up though. That's pretty internet for "I'm mad".



Clearly none of this was directed toward me:



But thank you, at least, for finally conceding that you were actually responding to nameless Democrats who made you angry elsewhere, and not to anything that I really said.

Yup that's why I've more or less stopped posting stuff about Trump in this thread. Turns out that despite saying a lot of stupid **** he's actually a super generic Republican president.

Edit: Know what's the difference between Trump and Reagan? Trump's dementia is less progressed.

I can assure you that I’m not either, as much as you’ll protest. I wasn’t trying to start a flame war and I’m kind of confused why you’re still so insistent on making this conversation as unpleasant as possible, but flame on, if that’s what you’re into. It’s amusing and bewildering to me more than anything else.



Doesn’t really seem like a concession from me as much as you acknowledging that you finally recognized that I wasn’t assaulting you personally, but if you want to pretend this is some kind of victory then be my guest.

Kind of the sentiment behind my initial post broaching the Iran issue, tbh. I suppose I think there is actually some value to taking what other people in the admin say at face value, but not Trump, and still only with caution.

u mad

You accused me of "vacuous rhetoric" and "unreflectively spout[ing] out empty political slogans", which is clearly not an attempt at good-faith debate. What exactly would you post if you did intend to start a flamewar? Your honest opinion about Iranians?

Uh, we already went over this.

u mad

uh huh yeah keep backpedaling dude

Jon, come on man. I’m trying to deescalate here. I genuinely don’t care: if you want to keep on doing whatever your doing, keep on doing it. But if you want to put this behind us I’m glad to do that too, and chalk it up to a misunderstanding between us.

Well, what Peter Navarro says about Trump is pretty ****in terrifying. The rest of his lifelong profession discounted him as an imbecile, only for an authoritarian monster to raise him from his own dirt to the most powerful station of which he's ever dreamed. I'm not sure he'd take a bullet for the admin but he'd definitely stoke the ovens.

The rest of them mostly seem embarrassed. Occasionally grateful when they're left alone to do their standard Republican thing, which seems to be why this administration is so typically Republican instead of something truly remarkable.


If I were an American I'd be mostly concerned about the potential normalization of the use of emergency powers for stupid ****, but as a non-American I'm not sure I'd ever really be able to tell the difference.

Yeah, like... he’s a Republican President and as his tenure has continued he’s governed like a fairly conventional Republican. I suspect that he won’t be remembered as a worse president than Bush II (and people forget just how low a bar that is, but still, he’s not that much of an aberration). In a way, that’s partially why I find myself more preoccupied with liberal hypocrisy about his presidency than the scandalous nature of his presidency itself. It really is center-left liberals who are crazy insano right now. They can’t see this presidency for what it is.

The complete failure of liberals to abide by any kind of coherent principle aside from “whatever Trump does is bad” has led Democrats to a bad place, and has really subverted the perception in my mind that Democrats are any more closely aligned with “facts”, “evidence” and “truth” than Republicans. They both do a pretty bad job of that.

It’s an interesting exercise to try to imagine what the Trump admin will look like 10 or 20 years from now. It could be that the most defining events of the presidency are yet to come. But given how I personally have had the experience of living through the Bush admin and it’s aftermath, and have seen how in hindsight and without partisanship goggles on, its possible for those on the left to actually acknowledge that president’s accomplishments without snickering, I do think a day will come when some things that Trump did, considered in isolation, will seem sensible. I’m not convinced he’ll be seen as a national disgrace, in the same way that Nixon is.

It’s really difficult to know, though, because I think the question of Trump’s legacy can’t really be addressed outside of the context of the post-Trump years, in a way that isn’t necessarily true of other presidents. Whether the post-Trump world brings about a paradigm shift that makes Trump seem like an important, pivotal transitional figure, or if things revert to some earlier Obama years-like state is quite relevant. Seems like the former is significantly more likely.

10 or 20 years from now it will be the Republicans' turn to be president again, and Democrats will insist that the new president is the worst. thing. ever. He's so bad that it actually makes them miss Trump. Did you see that video where Trump joked with Douglas Emhoff and fed him candy? I hear he's taken up tasteful modeling shoots with the widows of soldiers who died in Iran.

Well, actually, I think it’s entirely possible that a Dem is elected in 2020 and we do have a reversion to Obama-era politics, which I think was primarily defined by, at least in civil society and not in the government, by liberal complacency, despite the fact we were “sleeping on top of a volcano”, to quote (relevantly) Tocqueville.

Bingo