In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On November 19 2017 10:56 LegalLord wrote: Obama won the presidency on a wave of euphoria in the wake of a pretty bad president. Pair his personal charm with the time’s unpopular Republican Party and the worst candidate ever for a war-weary populace, and he was an easy choice for 2008. For 2012 his case was a little more shaky, but he was still doing a pretty good job and won handily.
In office, he did a pretty alright job. He neither royally fucked things up nor did such a remarkable job that he would be forever remembered as one of the very best. I liked a lot of things he accomplished, and I didn’t like many others. He attracted a farcical Europhoria such as the one that gave him a Nobel Peace Prize, which even his biggest fans will admit was given rather than earned. But he did do a lot of good work in representing the US abroad, so I can sympathize with their sycophantic gestures.
In hindsight I would say that the biggest black mark on Obama’s presidency is that he banked the future of his political achievements on his successor being Hillary Clinton. Where Obama represents an idealistic version of the status quo, Hillary is a career politician and entrenched interest in the worst sense of the terms. She has no place being president and that Obama cleared the way and allowed a Democratic Party to rot into a party of Hillary shills is not to his credit, nor is his inability to perceive why the continuation of a Hillary-esque policy near the end of his presidency did him no favors.
We are left with a sort of paradox: he was generally popular, if not dramatically so, and yet he was replaced by a president who is not popular and swears to destroy all the things he worked towards. A turn of events he deserves some blame for, despite not being all that bad a president up to about November 2016.
It reflects the US much more than the presidency of Obama. You are poorly educated to see through bullshit, and have a split country with an undelying big racism problem. Maybe I will some time learn how Hillary was such a terrible candidate, for me it seems mostly rooted in smearing campaigns and strong opinions with little real foundation. How she could possibly lose to Trump in any "democratic" system is beyond me. You got what you deserve.
That you're incapable of seeing why it happened (whether or not you believe that Trump > Clinton was a good thing, which I for example do not) says a lot more about your own ignorance than it does about that of the US populace. Those who live in a glass house really shouldn't throw stones.
Trump is the Transformers president; the fact that he was popular doesn't mean there was good reason for the vote. There's no good reason to believe that the US populace made anything other than a dumb choice. It comes down to whether a veneer toothed American salesman and TV personality, who doesn't know whether Africa is a country or a continent, should be in the White House - and the answer is no.
I may have gotten Sarah Palin and Donald Trump mixed a bit there, though - it's all starting to run together.
We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
This doesn't seem like a logically sound chain of thought. Just because you happened to take a bad risk and it didn't blow up in your face doesn't mean you should take that risk again, and it doesn't mean that the people who warned you it was a bad risk were wrong.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: The ammount of food and shipping that goes through the SCC is undeniable in how valuable it is.
No one said otherwise - but you made a much stronger statement about the "undeniable reality" that it is guaranteed to be the most important region in the world for the current century. That remains to be seen; as of now all that would be reasonable to say is that that historically important trade region will be an important trade region going into the current century.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: Sure the suez and the hormuz is as if not more valuable but there isn't a soul in the world who thinks the US couldn't just force its ownership of them overnight.
Another unjustified assertion. The US probably has enough military to force a pyrrhic victory in one of those passages in relatively short order - definitely not overnight, but maybe in a few months - but it'd be delusional to think it could or should keep them. They would lose a whole lot of value as trade routes, considering that asserting such control would quickly turn that trade route into a war zone and thus make it quite a shitty route for shipping. It's far, far easier to harass military ships and trade ships than it would be to keep a garrison on those routes so no, I don't really think the US could do that. From the war games I've heard about the rather primitive but effective mines-and-rockets game that a nation as middle-of-the-road as Iran could play would kill at least a few carriers before the US got anywhere.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: Whats good for US corporations may not be best for the US but its better then the state controlled/backed corperations in China. Its apples and oranges and at least my apples fly my flag. The TPP is one of the things that will prevent this. Its literaly the thing that you do to stop china. A lack of TPP is pushing people to China as they show up as a regional leader with a lot of cash to finance whatever the asian country wants. 6 doesn't qualify beacuse removing yourself completly from TPP removes any ability to change TPP.
Yeah, this is the previously mentioned "any deal no matter how shitty is ok because it's better than China." It makes the assumptions that that is indeed better to be subservient to corporate interests, that you can actually stop China from investing, and that this is the deal you have to use. It's complete bullshit to say that the specific deal doesn't matter; it very much does.
... and instead of continuing with the rest of your post, I'm going to have to stop it right there. To be very blunt, it sounds like you are talking out of your ass right now and I don't really see any reason to continue. Between frequent and notable misspellings and the heavy emphasis on making aggressive and questionable assumptions, there really is no argument here to be had. I have seen some rather compelling and well-thought-out cases made for why the TPP, for all of its warts, is a necessity, and perhaps a necessity in the form in which it exists. This argument is no such thing; it more so represents someone repeating some choice popular assertions about the merits of free trade, the idea of command of the seas, the "seat at the table" strawman, rural/urban divide and the way that trade might affect either, and so on, without the proper nuance or justification necessary to be making such assertions. I really see no coherence or logic to the point being made, beyond a string of strong unjustified assumptions, so I also see no reason to continue this unless you care to do better than that.
How does it remain to be seen? The amount of food production and trade that flows through the area isn't replica table anywhere else in the world. Its the crossroads of India China Indonesia Indochina Japan and Korea. Nothing else in the world comes close. The blatics? the Suez or the Hormuz? Nowhere else comes close to the value the SCC has today and will have by any metric in the coming decades.
The US has the Military force to force an overwhelming victory in any of these passages. We plant 3 or 4 carrier battle groups and the US decides what exists there and what doesn't. The Hormuz and the Suez isn't going anywhere and can't decline in value if we take them. The suez is Europe's lifeline to Asia and the Hormuz has tons of oil going through it regardless. You think that the oil will be shipped through to the med through Israel or Syria? Or making Kurdistan the most powerful tribal region in the world? God forbid proposing that the oil goes through Iran or Russia. Its easier to harass ships when you arn't at war and won't just blow up anything remotely threatening. Iran could cause problems in Hormuz and there is a large port sitting there but they won't cling to power for long if no food travels in their country anymore.
It doesn't matter if its subservient to corporate interests. If the decision is between state owned or controlled foreign corporations and evil don't want to pay taxes US corporations I'm going to pick the US corporations. It doesn't matter any further then that.
You're whole shtick is wordy nonsense that says nothing and insists its superior. You didn't address anything I said other then to simply disagree. A dog could have given the exact same argument and the world would have understood them the same. You'd think you'd give some respect to one of the few people who defend you here but I guess we can all see exactly what your game really is.
Any time an american posts something like this, my answer is always:
Afghanistan Iraq
Don't let your arrogance fool you. Just because you currently have the most powerful military in the world means that you can easily take over any place you'd like and control it. You can blow up any place you want. That is it. Controlling something in the long term is way harder than blowing it up in the short term. You won in Iraq and Afghanistan in a few weeks each, 10 years later your people were still dying there, 15 years later both places are still hellholes and totally out of your control. The only reason your people stopped dying there en masse is that you just left. Maybe other countries can't win against you, but they can apparently make sure that you don't win either.
One would have hoped that you didn't forget that after Vietnam, but apparently your countries memory only lasts a generation at most.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
This doesn't seem like a logically sound chain of thought. Just because you happened to take a bad risk and it didn't blow up in your face doesn't mean you should take that risk again, and it doesn't mean that the people who warned you it was a bad risk were wrong.
Agreed. Plus, many would argue that Trump's ideas- both the ones he succeeded in carrying out and the ones that were prevented- were pretty damning anyway. His words and actions as a candidate alone were alarming enough to justify criticism and hysterics; just because his presidency might be ineffective instead of catastrophic doesn't mean the alarm wasn't warranted.
Thats the best thing about Trump and congressional Republicans. They are too incompetent to really do anything big to really mess thing up. Frankly I don't know how many of these guys keep their seats. Not even losing them to Democrats, just actual conservatives. Most of the ones who got into office just seem to bully in with money and appealing to the lowest of branches.
Timothy Snyder, Yale historian and author of the excellent book 'On Tyranny' is doing a deep yet comprehensive analysis of the political sutuation that the US find themselves in.
First episode is focused on the fictional character of Mr. Trump
Second episode is focused on a deeper look into the ties between Russia and the US, especially since the breakdown of the Sowjet Union.
You don't get such deep analysis in journalism, so consider his arguments and put your focus on the historical context of what is happening right now.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: The ammount of food and shipping that goes through the SCC is undeniable in how valuable it is.
No one said otherwise - but you made a much stronger statement about the "undeniable reality" that it is guaranteed to be the most important region in the world for the current century. That remains to be seen; as of now all that would be reasonable to say is that that historically important trade region will be an important trade region going into the current century.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: Sure the suez and the hormuz is as if not more valuable but there isn't a soul in the world who thinks the US couldn't just force its ownership of them overnight.
Another unjustified assertion. The US probably has enough military to force a pyrrhic victory in one of those passages in relatively short order - definitely not overnight, but maybe in a few months - but it'd be delusional to think it could or should keep them. They would lose a whole lot of value as trade routes, considering that asserting such control would quickly turn that trade route into a war zone and thus make it quite a shitty route for shipping. It's far, far easier to harass military ships and trade ships than it would be to keep a garrison on those routes so no, I don't really think the US could do that. From the war games I've heard about the rather primitive but effective mines-and-rockets game that a nation as middle-of-the-road as Iran could play would kill at least a few carriers before the US got anywhere.
On November 19 2017 10:55 Sermokala wrote: Whats good for US corporations may not be best for the US but its better then the state controlled/backed corperations in China. Its apples and oranges and at least my apples fly my flag. The TPP is one of the things that will prevent this. Its literaly the thing that you do to stop china. A lack of TPP is pushing people to China as they show up as a regional leader with a lot of cash to finance whatever the asian country wants. 6 doesn't qualify beacuse removing yourself completly from TPP removes any ability to change TPP.
Yeah, this is the previously mentioned "any deal no matter how shitty is ok because it's better than China." It makes the assumptions that that is indeed better to be subservient to corporate interests, that you can actually stop China from investing, and that this is the deal you have to use. It's complete bullshit to say that the specific deal doesn't matter; it very much does.
... and instead of continuing with the rest of your post, I'm going to have to stop it right there. To be very blunt, it sounds like you are talking out of your ass right now and I don't really see any reason to continue. Between frequent and notable misspellings and the heavy emphasis on making aggressive and questionable assumptions, there really is no argument here to be had. I have seen some rather compelling and well-thought-out cases made for why the TPP, for all of its warts, is a necessity, and perhaps a necessity in the form in which it exists. This argument is no such thing; it more so represents someone repeating some choice popular assertions about the merits of free trade, the idea of command of the seas, the "seat at the table" strawman, rural/urban divide and the way that trade might affect either, and so on, without the proper nuance or justification necessary to be making such assertions. I really see no coherence or logic to the point being made, beyond a string of strong unjustified assumptions, so I also see no reason to continue this unless you care to do better than that.
How does it remain to be seen? The amount of food production and trade that flows through the area isn't replica table anywhere else in the world. Its the crossroads of India China Indonesia Indochina Japan and Korea. Nothing else in the world comes close. The blatics? the Suez or the Hormuz? Nowhere else comes close to the value the SCC has today and will have by any metric in the coming decades.
The US has the Military force to force an overwhelming victory in any of these passages. We plant 3 or 4 carrier battle groups and the US decides what exists there and what doesn't. The Hormuz and the Suez isn't going anywhere and can't decline in value if we take them. The suez is Europe's lifeline to Asia and the Hormuz has tons of oil going through it regardless. You think that the oil will be shipped through to the med through Israel or Syria? Or making Kurdistan the most powerful tribal region in the world? God forbid proposing that the oil goes through Iran or Russia. Its easier to harass ships when you arn't at war and won't just blow up anything remotely threatening. Iran could cause problems in Hormuz and there is a large port sitting there but they won't cling to power for long if no food travels in their country anymore.
It doesn't matter if its subservient to corporate interests. If the decision is between state owned or controlled foreign corporations and evil don't want to pay taxes US corporations I'm going to pick the US corporations. It doesn't matter any further then that.
You're whole shtick is wordy nonsense that says nothing and insists its superior. You didn't address anything I said other then to simply disagree. A dog could have given the exact same argument and the world would have understood them the same. You'd think you'd give some respect to one of the few people who defend you here but I guess we can all see exactly what your game really is.
There is a decent chance the Suez channel will decrease in importance as the ice north of Russia keeps melting. So you can take the northern route in many cases. Depends on departure and destination points of course.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
Isn't it highly detrimental that there is close to no progress on important topics like healthcare, tax reform, combating climate change and the voting system. At minimum with the first two both parties agree that change is necessary. CC deniers and other lunatics in Congress and senate is another topic.
This does not look fine from afar. Having a businessman in charge of the country who can't even think farther ahead than when his next shit is due and what to post on Twitter during said activity cannot be distorted to be fine. It's the government's job to look father ahead than the next quarter.
This doesn't look fine. From no perspective. Dems are triggered, repubs don't get shit done and the world is either rubbing their hands or scratching their head. Maybe from Russia or the Philippines the outlook is fine though.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
This doesn't seem like a logically sound chain of thought. Just because you happened to take a bad risk and it didn't blow up in your face doesn't mean you should take that risk again, and it doesn't mean that the people who warned you it was a bad risk were wrong.
It's the essence of Bayesian reasoning that if something happened that you didn't expect, maybe you were wrong in the first place, especially if the same people keep being wrong about things that have a 2 percent chance of happening, their conclusions become more and more suspect.
Saying that the world hasn't collapsed and the skly fallen (what exactly would that entail? mass genocide?) with the presidency of Trump is a pretty low bar to clear. You are bascially saying that Trump should be applauded for not causing a nuclear war. On the other hand, the fallout of emboldening of white supremists and pardoning of white supremists to the detriment of the rule of law and wellbeing on USA will be occuring for a long time yet. perhaps you don't care. Amongst other policies he appears to be persuing.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
This doesn't seem like a logically sound chain of thought. Just because you happened to take a bad risk and it didn't blow up in your face doesn't mean you should take that risk again, and it doesn't mean that the people who warned you it was a bad risk were wrong.
It's the essence of Bayesian reasoning that if something happened that you didn't expect, maybe you were wrong in the first place, especially if the same people keep being wrong about things that have a 2 percent chance of happening, their conclusions become more and more suspect.
You're going to need to specify who "the same people" are and which "things" you claim have a 2% chance of happening they keep wrongly predicting for this argument to hold. A single data point is not particularly meaningful, whether you use the words "Bayesian reasoning" or not.
On November 19 2017 20:57 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Saying that the world hasn't collapsed and the skly fallen (what exactly would that entail? mass genocide?) with the presidency of Trump is a pretty low bar to clear. You are bascially saying that Trump should be applauded for not causing a nuclear war. On the other hand, the fallout of emboldening of white supremists and pardoning of white supremists to the detriment of the rule of law and wellbeing on USA will be occuring for a long time yet. perhaps you don't care. Amongst other policies he appears to be persuing.
No, because it's not my claim, this is the same childish trick from the campaign. Refuting something asinine doesn't put you on the same level as whatever the random claim is. If I called you a serial suicide baiter and said you would get 50 schoolgirls to jump off buildings in the next 4 years, you would probably be confused if after you said "no," I chimed in with "setting the bar pretty low aren't we?" Now imagine 1 year has passed and the tally is at 0 schoolgirls. That's what I'm seeing. Also, if we were to work in the framework of inevitability where anything good that happens while Trump is president is actually Obama, then so is anything bad, including nuclear war at least as far as it concerns North Korea, which is the only place that's at risk of it right now, that problem is directly inherited from the failure of Clinton/Bush/Obama. Nuclear war at least being a specific example to unpack.
This analogy also seems flawed. Did anybody say they believed with certainty that a Trump presidency would result in the consequences you're describing, or only that it was a risk? Your analogy indicates the first but I only remember seeing the second said with any frequency.
On November 19 2017 20:57 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Saying that the world hasn't collapsed and the skly fallen (what exactly would that entail? mass genocide?) with the presidency of Trump is a pretty low bar to clear. You are bascially saying that Trump should be applauded for not causing a nuclear war. On the other hand, the fallout of emboldening of white supremists and pardoning of white supremists to the detriment of the rule of law and wellbeing on USA will be occuring for a long time yet. perhaps you don't care. Amongst other policies he appears to be persuing.
No, because it's not my claim, this is the same childish trick from the campaign. Refuting something asinine doesn't put you on the same level as whatever the random claim is. If I called you a serial suicide baiter and said you would get 50 schoolgirls to jump off buildings in the next 4 years, you would probably be confused if after you said "no," I chimed in with "setting the bar pretty low aren't we?" Now imagine 1 year has passed and the tally is at 0 schoolgirls. That's what I'm seeing. Also, if we were to work in the framework of inevitability where anything good that happens while Trump is president is actually Obama, then so is anything bad, including nuclear war at least as far as it concerns North Korea, which is the only place that's at risk of it right now, that problem is directly inherited from the failure of Clinton/Bush/Obama. Nuclear war at least being a specific example to unpack.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
This doesn't seem like a logically sound chain of thought. Just because you happened to take a bad risk and it didn't blow up in your face doesn't mean you should take that risk again, and it doesn't mean that the people who warned you it was a bad risk were wrong.
It's the essence of Bayesian reasoning that if something happened that you didn't expect, maybe you were wrong in the first place, especially if the same people keep being wrong about things that have a 2 percent chance of happening, their conclusions become more and more suspect.
You're going to need to specify who "the same people" are and which "things" you claim have a 2% chance of happening they keep wrongly predicting for this argument to hold. A single data point is not particularly meaningful, whether you use the words "Bayesian reasoning" or not.
It's pretty obviously referencing Trump's chances of winning the election, and then mockingly estimating the chances people would give of him NOT fucking everything up. Whatever the prior probability of colossal failure is we can grant that it's not small, because if it were small enough it wouldn't count as a risk anymore and then what would we be talking about here? I'm not making an argument except political agnosticism and you should assume everything's approximately average unless it can be demonstrated otherwise. I'm also not trying to make an argument from pretentiousness as I don't think statistics is that inaccessible but one data point can have a big impact.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
your inability to see, and parse, the damage done, doesn't mean it isn't there. as is your inability to see and describe the actual complaints many people had, and the actual existential problems that have been demonstrated clearly here that were less visible before (though almost certainly existed).
also, I do concede there rae some people who prophesized excessive doom and gloom from trump beyond what would be reasonably expected. but pointing out that some crazies on a side made ridiculous predictions that didn't come true doesn't count for much. because the large amount of reasonable people who pointed out reasonable considerable problems which did happen remain.
On November 19 2017 22:31 oBlade wrote:...I'm not making an argument except political agnosticism and you should assume everything's approximately average unless it can be demonstrated otherwise. ...
Since the statements originally made were in terms of risks rather than certainties, observing a single outcome doesn't demonstrate much about the validity of the original statement. Therefore, I assume that the "existential problem card" was approximately average-ly "credible".
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine
I'm baffled at how you can look at the last year and think everything's okay. America's international reputation has nosedived, the country is fractured, the government can't pass anything and Trump can't seem to fulfill the basics of office, like appointments or showing empathy. He's friendlier with foreign dictators than traditional allies, is pushing coal power whilst enriching himself through the office and he seems to be under some form of Russian influence. I could go on but it's pretty apparent that everything isn't 'fine'. He just hasn't nuked anyone or attempted a coup yet, and that's a pretty low bar to be setting.
"everything seems fine" is a good way for an individual to signal that they don't know anyone personally affected by Trump and his attendant bullshit. It's also a weak, unverifiable statement that does little aside from cast aspersions towards those who feel otherwise.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine at the least so if in another 3 the country and world still haven't collapsed and the sky fallen, the hysterical rhetoric is going to look bad in hindsight, it's going to be apparent all people really did was vote for a Republindependent candidate and trying to play some kind of existential problem card was not credible.
Who is literally arguing that the sky will fall and the world will collapse?
Most of Trump's worst ideas were shot down on sound reason. Repeal / replace proposals for the ACA were all shit, and many Republicans knew it, with a few even voting against them. The Travel Ban was ill-conceived, and protesters and the courts stopped / limited its roll-out.
Here's a nice parallel - the sky did not fall and the country did not collapse in 4 years, yet Hugo Chavez and his successor were terrible for Venezuela.
On November 19 2017 22:31 oBlade wrote:...I'm not making an argument except political agnosticism and you should assume everything's approximately average unless it can be demonstrated otherwise. ...
Since the statements originally made were in terms of risks rather than certainties, observing a single outcome doesn't say much about the validity of the original statement. Therefore, I assume that the "existential problem card" was approximately average-ly "credible".
So do you mean about a coin flip?
I don't know, 4 years is a "single outcome?" As almost the entirety of Hollywood reminded us last November it can seem like a long time. It's the length of higher education anyway.
On November 19 2017 15:38 oBlade wrote: We're at T+1 year and everything seems fine
I'm baffled at how you can look at the last year and think everything's okay. America's international reputation has nosedived, the country is fractured, the government can't pass anything and Trump can't seem to fulfill the basics of office, like appointments or showing empathy. He's friendlier with foreign dictators than traditional allies, is pushing coal power whilst enriching himself through the office and he seems to be under some form of Russian influence. I could go on but it's pretty apparent that everything isn't 'fine'. He just hasn't nuked anyone or attempted a coup yet, and that's a pretty low bar to be setting.
It's hard to listen to, in the case of Kim Jong Un he's too mean and Putin he's too nice.
The country was already fractured and government dysfunctional, can't scapegoat the system on him, and anyway fractured is good because it means people are involved and at least want to pay better attention and revitalize both parties. To any other extent the fracturing and reputation are things in people's heads.
Can't show empathy and presidenting under the influence of Russia, there's nothing to grab onto there, it's just psychoanalysis. Just had a wide tour of Asia.
On November 19 2017 23:23 farvacola wrote: "everything seems fine" is a good way for an individual to signal that they don't know anyone personally affected by Trump and his attendant bullshit. It's also a weak, unverifiable statement that does little aside from cast aspersions towards those who feel otherwise.
"Attendant" is smart-aleck way to ascribe responsibility for anything bad that happens on your most convenient enemy. "Trump's America" is just repackaged "Thanks, Obama."
On November 19 2017 23:40 oBlade wrote:... So do you mean about a coin flip?
I'm not saying that the odds of something dreadful happening during the Trump presidency were or are a coin flip.
I'm saying that my assessment of the credibility of the people who warned there was a risk of an "existential problem card" remains about average, since I don't see a compelling reason to alter that assessment much.
The other question about what constitutes an outcome and what doesn't is getting into some mathematics which I'm not super well versed in and don't really want to talk about anyway. Suffice it to say that no matter how you define it, if Trump doesn't start a nuclear war in the next three years I still don't think that's a particularly good reason to talk smack about the people who warned it was a risk. If somebody said they thought it was a certainty or overwhelmingly likely, then go for it.
EPT
