Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Obama was, in the referenced Tuscon speech, speaking soon after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that is now seen as one of the earliest examples of political assassinations now frequently discussed.
Obama wasn't "adopting a frame," he was telling the truth, and liberal/progressive attempts to turn the Tucson shooting into a political event to pin on conservatives are rank propaganda.
Everyone remembers that Congresswoman Giffords was wounded during the shooting, but the [edit: typo, thx @NewCharlesInCharge] one guy who was actually killed - Judge John Roll - was a Republican, appointed by Pres. G.H.W. Bush, who had struck down the Brady "assault weapons" ban.
The shooter himself, Jared Lee Loughner, was himself described by class-mates as "left wing, quite liberal," and (ironically for Lakoff) was obsessed with the idea that the structure of English grammar controlled people's thoughts.
Realistically, Loughner appears to have been genuinely detached from reality, claiming to have mind-control powers. There's never been any evidence linking political rhetoric from either of the parties to Loughner's actions, nor any evidence that Loughner had any support in either his ideas (such as they were) or actions.
Supah_Schmendrick
11hr ago
Israel's modern weaponry is dependent on a complex international supply chain that could be interrupted at any moment by patrons dropping their support whereas Germany was, by design, autarchic and self sufficient.
Germany literally ran out of fuel, as well as several major metals necessary to build tanks, airplanes, and shells. And as for Israel, they produce quite a lot of their own gear; the Merkava tank, their own small arms, quite a lot of their drones, etc.
The IDF has nearly no tolerance for casualties, unlike the Hutus or Waffen SS. You can drop bombs or snipe people from a distance but to commit Rwanda-tier genocide you have to close in and closing in would expose Israeli fighters to a level of risk they aren't willing to take.
Neither the hutu militias nor the einsatzgruppen (of whom there were only a few thousand at any given time) were zerglings or mindless hordes; this is not a serious analysis.
We executed orders very well, so I assure you if there had been an order to kill all Jews, there would be none left in Europe. Instead, there are millions of survivors.
Extreme apples and oranges. Attempting to exterminate an ethno-religious group across an entire continent is a much different thing than attempting to destroy a single large city and kill the inhabitants - something the Nazis did do several times during WWII, most notably in Warsaw which went from a city of over a million to having only a couple thousand people left when the Soviets entered. Here, actually, the Japanese were significantly worse - they simply demolished dozens - potentially hundreds - of towns and villages, and killed all the inhabitants.
If killing millions of people is as simple as you think then why did Hitler bother with the logistical hassle instead of just killing them on the spot like Genghis Khan?
They did quite a lot of killing-on-the-spot - far more than the Israelis have done, with far fewer soldiers involved. Also, the Nazis extensively used prisoners - including jews in concentration camps - as slave labor in service of that autarkic fantasy you mentioned above.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
An argument can be made that they still are as they were in the 90's, because that's when critical theory was being born; it was also the last major push for censorship in the universities.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Except that you'd expect someone like Zinn to be over-indexed for when you hold a giant "debate-me" event. Yes, you get a lot of people who want to participate in good faith, but you also have put out a honey-trap for wackos with outsize grievances.
It's the same mechanism that draws people like this to city council open comment sessions.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Who's advocating for anything? I responded to your historical counterfactual with my belief that events would not have been nearly as bloody as you described them.
Your comment is not in good faith, and unworthy of the legacy of this place.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide...
...Were largely civilians, waving machetes and operating under no military discipline whatsoever. Those Tutsi militias were veterans of several other brush wars in Tanzania and Uganda, and were led by a quite effective and battle-hardened leader (Kagame)
Just being brutal doesn't always translate to being more militarily effective...
It does if your objective is, as many allege, to simply depopulate an area through violence. The Rwandan genocide took a little over 3 months, during which mobs of civilians armed with blades and a few small arms killed a million people. It defies credulity that the IDF, armed with modern weapons, somehow is so incompetent at genocide as to only kill less than 10% as many over a period of time six times longer, especially when all the would-be victims are penned up in a tiny area like Gaza.
No, if the Israelis were actually the Nazis that so many here portray them as being, they could have just treated Gaza like the Warsaw ghetto and it would have been over inside a month.
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
Presented without comment from the opening of Antony Beevor's "The Battle for Spain, 1936-1939":
'A civil war is not a war but a sickness,' wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. 'The enemy is within. One fights almost against oneself.' Yet Spain's tragedy in 1936 was even greater. It had become enmeshed in the international civil war, which started in earnest with the Bolshevik Revolution.
The horrors in Russia had undermined the democratic centre throughout continental Europe. This was because the process of polarization between 'reds' and 'whites' allowed both political extremes to increase their own power by manipulating fearful, if not apocalyptic, images of their enemies. Their Manichean propaganda fed off each other. Both Stalin and Goebbels later exploited, with diabolical ingenuity, that potent combination of fear and hatred. The process stripped their 'traitor' opponents of their humanity as well as their citizenship. This is why it is wrong to describe the Spanish Civil War as 'fratricidal.' The divisiveness of the new ideologies could turn brothers into faceless strangers and trade unionists or shopowners into class enemies. Normal human instincts were overridden. In the tense spring of 1936, on his way to Madrid University, Juian Marias, a disciple of the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, never forgot the hatred in the expression of a tram-driver at a stop as he watched a beautiful and well-dressed young woman step down onto the pavement. 'We've really had it,' Marias said to himself. 'When Marx has more effect than hormones, there is nothing to be done.'
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
If Israel's military is so great why have they failed to take an area the size of a suburb in almost two years despite massive brutality and having to beg for boundless supplies of weapons?
Because they aren't actually being all that brutal. Depopulating and securing an area is quick and easy if you're willing to adopt the ROE of Ghengis Khan or the Greco/Turkish war.
Israel's main military asset is propaganda
This seems wildly inaccurate.
giving low IQ west bank settlers the capacity to do things that are seen and heard globally effectively turned that on its head.
I think you've got that backwards.
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
No, they would have been ordinary arab citizens of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and/or Lebanon.
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)
President Truman did...
Supah_Schmendrick
2d ago
Supah_Schmendrick
5d ago
This can be spun into "radical far right killer 4chan tried to pin the blame on trans", and to an extent it will be. This is such a disaster.
I would bet $50 that ~no-one will remember this aspect after three weeks.
Supah_Schmendrick
5d ago
Supah_Schmendrick
6d ago
the DNA lounge in San Francisco has a "neck shot" special tonight
That is in exceptionally poor taste.
Historically, that kind of thing would have likely resulted in some form of mob event - tarring and feathering the proprietor, smashing of the saloon, etc. But we live in more temperate, and less small-d "democratic" times...
Supah_Schmendrick
6d ago
In that case the wisdom and sanity of Hamas's senior leadership - who surely knew all this and more - is deeply in question.
Supah_Schmendrick
7d ago
Kirk wasn't just an influencer. He was a major GOTV activist (he basically ran the GOTV effort for Trump 2024), pundit, organizer, and behind-the-scenes staffer/connection-maker.
Supah_Schmendrick
8d ago
anyone who would be addicted already is, and the only effect of keeping the drugs illegal is that criminals are in charge of selling and producing them instead of capitalists/entrepreneurs who are above the law, and that there will be less stuff that is spiked/laced because of regulations.
The cartels have a significant leg up on would-be legal operators; the cartels don't have to pay capital costs to create new production infrastructure. The cartels already have extant and significant distribution networks that new operations have to create from scratch. The cartels don't have to comply with the significant regulatory and tax burdens that legal operations have to comply with. This isn't to say that legal operations can't ever compete, just that it's not the lol capitalismzorz curbstomp that the legalization argument presumes.
Also, cartels already deal in legal products (just with a side of violence). Diesel fuel and avocados, are two significant examples. In fact, cartels need legitimate businesses in order to launder their drug proceeds and provide cover for the movement of product and purchase of materials for drug production/cultivation/processing.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
Your gloss on human trafficking vs. illegal immigration misses the mark completely due to this baffling refusal to believe that pro-immigration advocates care about immigrants' welfare as human beings, as an end unto itself.
Those may be their feelings, but closer examination of the actual facts of migration policy reveal this to be, at best, Mrs. Jellyby-ism. So much undocumented immigration is facilitated by truly horrific cartels/people-smugglers that the U.S. government has long balked from designating the cartels as what they are - para-state criminal enterprises fully deserving of the foreign terrorist organization label just like the Haqqani network, Hezbollah, etc. - out of fear that it would open many illegal immigrants to criminal liability for materially-assisting an FTO.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
"You lost fair and square" is a bad objection to Democratic congressmen pursuing their own mandates. Politics is always going on all the time, power is always being renegotiated, and no side is entitled to their enemies laying down arms.
In the words of Nancy Pelosi, "elections have consequences."
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
No such thing as current Democratic party platform is conceivable in Asian countries
No, but nor is there some sort of inherent immunity from western-style progressivism in epicanthic folds; sometimes Asian progressivism is more extreme than the western version.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
Why couldn't they make all those workers legal?
It appears Hyundai was doing what previous practice had established to be "legal-ish" enough for federal enforcement purposes...only then the new administration started enforcing the letter of the law, not the cozy de-facto waiver that had been in place previously.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Unfortunately in most of my IRL friend group, casual wishing of death on Trump and veneration (literally, in the form of faux-votive candles) of Luigi Mangione is the norm. I've known and cared for a good number of these people for over 20 years, but SoCal shitlibbery won out.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
Kinda, but that itself was viewed as evidence of misogyny. Contemporaneous examples: The Guardian, CNN, Time.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
Civil War was obviously very bad, but things recovered and the nation got stronger over the next 50 years.
I mean, kinda? The south went from one of the richest regions in the world with major influence over the federal government to basically being an internal colony which was systematically shut out of power until the Wilson administration.
You can argue that this was a good thing, or necessary in order to expunge slavery, but there's no denying that it happened.
Whoops, accidentally left a stray "the" in. Thank you for the correction.
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