US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1478

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would supply soy beans and poultry meat to China and that the United States had effectively given up on that market.

Putin was speaking at the Russia Calling annual investment forum.

On May 22 2019 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:


"Morally enough" for/relative to what?



No, I don't.

On May 22 2019 22:13 KwarK wrote:

The stupid thing is they’re going to all this trouble to make him do something which the politicians generally voluntarily to be transparent. Tax returns don’t give that much info, especially if it’s all flow through entities and you don’t have the work papers. But it’s something he should have done. It’s not stupid to make him conform to the basic norms of political practice. Maybe after they’re done they can get him to stop charging the secret service for the use of Trump tower etc.

On May 22 2019 22:21 xDaunt wrote:

Iamthedave is right. I asked the wrong question. Which president(s) do you consider to be moral and why?

As for my answers about Trump, I see the presidency as being somewhat inherently amoral. It’s a position in which a person is called upon to wield vast power for the benefit of the nation. This issue becomes particularly acute in the realm of foreign policy. So for me, the best way to gauge whether a president is being a moral is whether he is faithfully discharging his executive duties in accordance with the law.

On May 22 2019 22:36 brian wrote:


i think it is stupid to make him conform to the norms if it requires an actual legal battle and pretty bad optics when the best case scenario is someone looks at the returns after all this negative press and says ‘nothing to see here.’

it just looks abysmally poor. if there was any other best case scenario besides ‘yep, we clawed our way into these tax returns and everything looks in order,’ that’d be one thing. but having fought and clawed for, hopefully, nothing you will have to answer for why you clawed your way there, in my opinion. the better play would be to ask, get rejected, call that fair play and make laws compelling it in the future if it is so necessary. which, even then is fairly questionable since, as you’ve said, they won’t exactly be full of information. when you’re already setting expectations low for the outcome, is it worth it?

On May 22 2019 22:21 xDaunt wrote:

Iamthedave is right. I asked the wrong question. Which president(s) do you consider to be moral and why?

As for my answers about Trump, I see the presidency as being somewhat inherently amoral. It’s a position in which a person is called upon to wield vast power for the benefit of the nation. This issue becomes particularly acute in the realm of foreign policy. So for me, the best way to gauge whether a president is being a moral is whether he is faithfully discharging his executive duties in accordance with the law.

On May 22 2019 23:21 NewSunshine wrote:
Add to the list the latest incident of Ben Carson confusing REO's, when asked, for the Oreo cookie. We've never had a president before who makes an active effort to fill every position in his cabinet with people who literally and blatantly don't give a fuck about their job, and who know nothing about the role they fill. It's just stark cronyism, testing, breaking and throwing away norms out of mere convenience. They'll keep taking and destroying until they get thrown out.

On May 22 2019 23:29 On_Slaught wrote:


For all the shit the bureaucracy gets, it probably deserves credit for keeping everything running as smoothly as it has despite Trump appointing people aggressively unqualified for their jobs all over government.

Too bad for our country that fealty to the king is the only real job qualification needed to work in this administration.

On May 22 2019 23:41 NewSunshine wrote:

For all the flaws this administration has revealed in the weakness of our systems, it likewise reveals the things it does well. That things haven't descended into madness and autocracy yet is a source of hope. Even if misguided.

On May 22 2019 22:54 GreenHorizons wrote:


none. I think that's why you don't even want to argue there are any. You'd rather argue that somehow the presidency is beyond morality with what I see as nonsense (I'll explain).



You seem to be arguing that abandoning morality is equivalent to being ignorant of it?

That a president could knowingly act immorally so long as it was a faithful execution of his legal obligations and you'd reconstruct a reality in which the president is unaware of the immorality of their actions rather than dismissive of them.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "amoral", because the president isn't a goldfish?

On May 22 2019 23:47 GreenHorizons wrote:


It feels like you guys are celebrating the hegemonic nature of colonial/neo-colonial interests and their perpetuation despite Trump exposing their rather vulgar machinations?

On May 22 2019 23:50 xDaunt wrote:


It was Thomas Paine who said that at best, government is a necessary evil, and at worst, an intolerable one. Conceptually, government is the use of force to restrain inherent individual liberties. And we accept this use of force against us in exchange for the security and other benefits that it can provide. But the desirability of this social contract does not change the fundamental "evil" that is the government's use of force.

So when you ask me whether the president is acting morally, you're asking me to gauge the morality of something that is inherently evil. Rather than simply state that all presidents are immoral for what they do (because this isn't very interesting or illuminating), I'd rather frame the issue as being one beyond morality (hence my use of the term "amoral"), creating a metric that assesses the president based upon what he is appointed to do: specifically, "whether he is faithfully discharging his executive duties in accordance with the law."

On May 22 2019 23:53 NewSunshine wrote:

Not really. I like to think that we can appreciate the ability of our nation's systems to hold back a galactic narcissist and emperor-wannabe, even if those systems are problematic in their own right. It's ultimately what lets us even consider addressing their problems in the first place.

On May 22 2019 23:54 GreenHorizons wrote:


This is a yes to Drone's question then? You are arguing that so long as it conforms to US law there is no such thing as immoral foreign policy executed by the president (outside of the concept that government in it's very nature is immoral [presuming government can only exist by way of enforcement through inherently immoral force according to your argument])?

On May 22 2019 23:27 Liquid`Drone wrote:


At what point is an immoral foreign policy option too immoral for you? Or are you actually going to argue that there is no such thing as an immoral foreign policy?

On May 23 2019 00:05 xDaunt wrote:

Like I I said previously, that which is legal and that which is moral are distinct concepts. Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it's moral. For example, while it might be legal for the US to bomb the shit out of another country, it's another question as to whether it is moral to do so.

Now, what I have said repeatedly on this point of foreign policy is that states should act in their own rational self-interest and without regard to morality as the ultimate end. The state's duties are to its people first, not the peoples of other states. Executing these duties faithfully may require adversely affecting the peoples of other states, even if such action is immoral. And sure enough, state actors generally function this way. This is why I said that foreign policy is an amoral exercise.

On May 22 2019 23:54 GreenHorizons wrote:

I did say seem because it seemed as though you were celebrating the systems interest in preventing Trump running roughshod. Which seems to neglect Trump is a "problem" of that very system's making. Trump's not an aberration, he's just an enthusiastic colonialist.

Which you still seem to be doing with "it's ultimately what lets us consider addressing problems"

On May 23 2019 00:06 xDaunt wrote:

Certain actions could certainly be too immoral for me. But again, and per my post above, framing foreign policy in terms of morality is the wrong approach both conceptually and empirically.

On May 23 2019 00:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:


I understand that you don't want to pursue "good" morality as its own ultimate end and I understand thinking a country should pursue its own interests ahead of the interests of other countries. For a small country like Norway, what is good for the world is more obviously also good for us, so it's easier to adopt a position that can to a greater degree be considered both good and self-serving. (I mean, I think a lot of the US's strong-arming has been counter-productive, but as stupid as Vietnam or the Iraq invasion were, they still make a whole lot more sense than if Norway were to launch similar attacks.)

However, it sounds like you are arguing that it should not be a factor. That's where you lose me. You've consistently been saying this for a long period of time in politics threads, so I have to believe that it's a belief you have, but it's inconsistent with the belief that certain actions can be too immoral - unless the only reason why you find certain actions too immoral is that the international backlash would become so severe that the action was no longer in your self-interest..