Yeah guys, the left should really calm down about the KKK-endorsed paranoid bully who might gain access to nuclear weapons.

jesus h christ enough with the false equivalence

Yeah, teethsalad speaks true. Trump's bad, but he's an absolute rookie compared to the amount of dirt Hillary amd her campaign staff are rolling in. There's a little bit of equivalence here in terms of domestic policy, but none at all in terms of ethics or foreign policy.

And Xenocide, in fairness, please stop calling Hillary "KKK obsessed". Robert Byrd might have been KKK obsessed, but given the current evidence, the most we can safely say regarding Hillary is that she was "KKK curious".

Meme - the best (worst? Most chaotic-neutral?) part about this is, the Truthers were right. All year long they've been warning that the elites were psychologically prepping the populace for disorder and civil war. At this point, I think it's clear that no matter who wins - Team Globalist Corporatist or Team Nationalist Socialist - the security-industrial complex will get the next Pearl Harbor they crave.

Still got openings on my boat, man. Just bring some Megadeth albums and you're in.

"The truthers were right"

hahahahahahaha oh EH you scamp, no one's nibbling that bait.

So "we're going to have a civil war" *isn't* a meme that's all over the mainstream consciousness now?

They predicted an orgy of stupid. We have been in an orgy of stupid for at least six months, and it's rapidly worsening. That is not a controversial observation, and I don't see why it should be taken as such.

>>They predicted an orgy of stupid. We have been in an orgy of stupid for at least six months, and it's rapidly worsening. That is not a controversial observation, and I don't see why it should be taken as such.


Hold on, what about "the elites were psychologically prepping the populace for disorder and civil war." ?

Well, in light of the Robert Creamer bombshell, Trump's behavior in this regard is perfectly understandable.

Oh Christ. James O Keefe.

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/19/498587397/sting-video-purports-t o-show-democrats-describing-how-to-commit-voter-fraud

Yep. Creamer, Podesta, OSF, the DNC, Emailgate, Rapegate, and Hillary's latest tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ("it's all the Russians! Look at the evil Russian, not at me!").

If it makes you feel any better, this was inevitable. As I said before, civil war is part of the script; war, or at least the threat of it looming large in the public imagination, is the whole point of this election cycle. Trump is just doing his part to maintain the establishment for once.

Of course, it's important to remember that this narrative exists largely in your head. *Trump* didn't threaten civil war. You just *assume* that, he did because you have been psychologically prepped by the culture-industry to think in those terms. When Bush "stole" the election from Gore, did you ever for a minute consider the Sore/Loserman fiasco a call for civil war?

BOMBSHELL?

>>>The video shows Vargas appearing to agree to a scheme that an undercover Project Veritas operative is pitching that would involve busing people from state to state in order to vote illegally.

>>>Vargas says, "this is not going to happen this election," but appears to be open to the idea at another point in time. "Can we make something special during midterm elections in 2017," he says.

>>>But it's not clear what Vargas is talking about here. Theoretically, he could be talking about any number of proposals floated during that meeting. "Whatever I told this group is what I tell everyone in public: We fight for our family not for a political party," Vargas wrote on Facebook. "They have a transcript of our conversation to confirm I told them that voting twice was illegal."

So it's NOT Creamer saying the POSSIBLY incriminating stuff, but they're trying to make it about him, because he has ties to the White House. it MAY or MAY NOT involve fraud in ANOTHER ELECTION. Whatever is going on here, it may not be good, and if somebody really is commited fraud, they should be prosecuted, but the ham-handed attempt to shoehorn it into the narrative is unavoidable.

And, of course:

>>>The videos are edited, and O'Keefe and Project Veritas have a history of selectively — and at times misleadingly — editing their videos. While they have previously posted raw footage, they have not done so with these latest stings.

MEH

>>Of course, it's important to remember that this narrative exists largely in your head. *Trump* didn't threaten civil war. You just *assume* that, he did because you have been psychologically prepped by the culture-industry to think in those terms.

Readers of English will note that I actually asked rhetorically if he was joking or threatening Civil War. It could be either one. I claim no knowledge of what Trump is thinking,and I'm not convinced that the orange assclown knows what he's thinking, either.

THIS fucking guy again.

I know EH is usually doing a thing these days, but damn if he doesn't sound exactly like a certain stripe of Leftie. Poe's Law or whatever.

"There's a little bit of equivalence here in terms of domestic policy, but none at all in terms of ethics or foreign policy."

I couldn't agree with you more on this point. Voting for Hillary Clinton is, without any doubt, voting to go to war in Syria in pursuit of regime change. It's directly voting for thousands of human beings to die. You can't say that about Trump.

I'd say ethically you'd have a hard time differentiating them though. Trump rips people off, Clinton sells influence for tens of millions of dollars. Both are entirely without anything normal people would consider "ethics".

>> It's directly voting for thousands of human beings to die. You can't say that about Trump.

OH YES YOU CAN! Consider the difference in their policy toward refugees. Thousands will die.

Nothing we know about the Clintons indicates that they're going to
push a protracted war that isn't popular. And a war of regime change? I don't see that happening. In fact, I could see the insistence on a no-flyzone being something to trade for more refugees.

But I'm not going to stand here and say that nothing bad is going to happen. I don't share your certainty, but this stuff scares me.

Where the hell have you been? You haven't watched any of the debates? Clinton's rhetoric leaves no room for anything else other than war in Syria.

The email dumps show Clinton pushing for war in Syria as far back as 2012. Why else do you think that every neocon warmonger, Kissinger, Albright, Negroponte, etc. etc. etc. are solidly on her side? She NEVER opposes military aggression.

And I'd be every dollar I have on Clinton not doing shit about middle eastern refugees for three reasons:

1. There's no need to. The Syrian refugees can/will/should be absorbed by countries geographically and culturally much closer to them than the US.

2. It would be an epic act of electoral suicide for 2018 and 2020. America wouldn't tolerate 1% of the trouble that has been caused by middle eastern refugees in Europe. The Dems would lose voters permanently. The establishment Dems know this, so expect nothing more than lip service.

3. We can "scratch that itch" by pushing for immigration reform. The refugees/migrants from Mexico and south of there have a substantial political bloc voting for them here, and actually have a good argument for us to let them in. So therefore NOT accepting middle eastern refugees wouldn't look like xenophobia or whatever.

"It's directly voting for thousands of human beings to die."

You may or may not recall that Syria is a place that has been in the throes of a civil war for years now, and in fact is the country where Assad was using chemical weapons on his own people. Remember that? Or the Syrian refugees who are desperate to be anywhere but in Syria? Syria is one of the few countries where ISIS is fairly popular because at least they're not Assad; that's how deadly Syria is right now.

As much as the Left gets off on it, there is no virtue in blithely letting tyrants murder their citizens. And I am sorry that I have to say that about the Left, but that really is what the Left has come to. I remember not so many years ago when the Left was genuinely troubled by places like Rwanda or (pre-9/11) Afghanistan, when monsters were murdering civilians and the Left felt at least uncomfortable about inaction (though nevertheless usually preferring it to action). But at least the Left used to be willing to weigh action against inaction.

Of late, the Left has stopped dealing with painful ambivalence altogether, by declaring every other nation a peaceful prosperous land that Obama / Hillary wants to destroy out of unreasonable bloodlust. It's as bad as hawks on the Right who think American bombs never kill innocent people, the only difference being that the Left blindly cheers the foreign warlords while the Right blindly cheers the US.

Bort, what happens when we knock of the (admittedly despotic) leader of a middle eastern country? Did we learn ANYTHING from Iraq and Libya?

And this particular quagmire has an insanely dangerous wildcard mixed into it: Russia has a naval base in Syria. Russian troops are embedded in Syrian Army units. Do you really want to roll those dice?

Not to mention that by your own admission the alternative to Assad is ISIS. So just for the sake of argument, what happens when we knock off Assad? Do you actually think that the killing STOPS?

Maybe the western world does need to intervene in Syria, but clearly it can't be America. We've lost the benefit of the doubt on shit like this. We will turn Syria into a fucking mess of war profiteering that will drag on for years and result in the deaths of tens of thousands, in the best case scenario. Intervention by America IS NOT the humanitarian thing to do.

Yeah I will agree that almost all intervention comes with risks of further chaos; I never said otherwise. But scroll back up and you'll find the one who said, and I quote:

"It's directly voting for thousands of human beings to die."

Well the same could be said for voting an isolationist into power. People are ALREADY dying by the thousands in Syria, so you can't turn to "sanctity of human life" arguments. Especially after this:

"There's no need to. The Syrian refugees can/will/should be absorbed by countries geographically and culturally much closer to them than the US."

And the Syrians who don't manage to leave the country ... ? I guess they just wanted to die. And so another thorny dilemma for the Left is resolved without any actual compassion or empathy for the people at risk.

Voting for Clinton is by proxy voting to go to war in Syria. That's the part where you directly vote for thousands of people to die.

You are operating under the assumption that American intervention in Syria results in LESS deaths than America doing nothing outside of diplomacy, and recent history does not support this assumption at all.

This isn't about the sanctity of life, it's about reality and numbers. Assad/Russia eliminating ISIS while America remains hands-off results in X number of deaths, while US-backed regime change and/or a decade or more of American occupation results in Y number of deaths.

I think it's fucking crazy to assume that X will be larger than Y given the results of the massive and disastrous experiments that we have done in this exact fucking field of study within just the last decade. This is a lesson that we should have learned already.

"You are operating under the assumption that American intervention in Syria results in LESS deaths than America doing nothing outside of diplomacy, and recent history does not support this assumption at all."

No I am not making a statement at all on whether an invasion of Syria would be the right move or not. In fact my instinct is that it would be the wrong move, but then again I'm not the one claiming that voting for Hillary means an invasion which means death where there was none before.

My point was, is, and ever shall remain that "the only wrong move is for America to get involved" is a cop-out that demonstrates a complete lack of interest in the well-being of people in other countries, all pretensions aside. Are there times US involvement is a bad idea? God yes, and in fact I'll say that sounds about right most of the time. But there are times where the US can and, arguably, should get involved.

Out of curiosity, you do know that Qadaffi was planning to massacre his own citizens, which is why the United Freaking Nations called for a no-fly zone, right? I grant you Libya ended up becoming a shithole after Qadaffi was deposed, but the alternative wouldn't have been peace and rainbows; the alternative would have been reprisals against civilians in the short term, and in the long term who even knows. It would have been a different hell, and it's hard to say better or worse. But it would have been a hell we allowed to form through inaction.

>>>You are operating under the assumption that American intervention in Syria results in LESS deaths than America doing nothing outside of diplomacy, and recent history does not support this assumption at all.

No I'm not assuming that at all, and I didn't say that. In fact, I said that I don't know what's going to happen, and I find that troubling, of course. But a war in Syria could easily cause less death and suffering than electing another climate change denier.

>>Trying to defend Clinton with the argument "she's the more ethical choice" just makes me think you are being facetious and are actually telling me.

That wasn't my argument, I was arguing competence, but fuck you anyway. You can disagree, but it's not a joke, and pretending that it's a joke is a not a argument, it's just being a dick. We're done.

I was responding to Bort, not to you JHM. So just go spank it to some Boxxy videos or w/e you do with your spare time.

Bort: save the "omg Gaddafi was just about to murder his own population before we murdered him and let his country devolve into an orgy of money and weapons for ISIS" argument because that's just government propaganda bullshit. You can't back that claim up with a credible source, I know because I've tried to find one.

Gaddafi was obv. a bad guy; but if he was alive today Libya would be stable, more Libyan people would still be alive, and ISIS wouldn't have Libya's resources. That's just reality even if it's inconvenient to the narrative.

It's also disingenuous to pretend that I'm taking some kind of unrealistic pacifist position. You'd have to be completely disengaged from reality to think that American troops on the ground in Syria, or an US-enforced no-fly zone (or w/e you want to call it) WOULDN'T result in years long occupation and/or a disastrous clash with Russia.

Clinton's rhetoric has left no room for anything but military action in Syria. If you read the leaked emails you'd see that Clinton and her people were pushing hard for invasion in Syria years ago. Libya was her fucking project; it's a prime example of how she's going to run her foreign policy.

Seriously, read this and then tell me that Clinton won't invade Syria in year one: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-bec ame-a-hawk.html

"Bort: save the "omg Gaddafi was just about to murder his own population before we murdered him and let his country devolve into an orgy of money and weapons for ISIS" argument because that's just government propaganda bullshit. You can't back that claim up with a credible source, I know because I've tried to find one."

Then you haven't looked. And it's not even OUR government that came to that conclusion, but the United Nations Security Council. Tell me, is the UNSC also working for the United States?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_ Resolution_1973

How about the Arab League, are they tools of the US government too?

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/03/20113121885268784 8.html

I really, really want to hear how a story about the Arab League reported by al-Jazeera is our government engaging in propaganda.

"Gaddafi was obv. a bad guy; but if he was alive today Libya would be stable, more Libyan people would still be alive, and ISIS wouldn't have Libya's resources. That's just reality even if it's inconvenient to the narrative."

Well that sure would be a convenient outcome, which is exactly the position I'm railing against: through some sort of magic you have decided that everyone would have just stopped fighting in Libya, internal tensions would have faded away, Qadaffi's forces would have turned into peaceniks, and there would have been no chance for ISIS to exploit the post civil war condition of the country. If only the US hadn't intervened and ruined the perfect paradise just around the corner in Libya!

"It's also disingenuous to pretend that I'm taking some kind of unrealistic pacifist position."

See above with Libya. OF COURSE you're taking some kind of unrealistic pacifist position, where everything will work out for the best provided the US doesn't get involved.

Trying to defend Clinton with the argument "she's the more ethical choice" just makes me think you are being facetious and are actually telling me.

*trolling

I am about 70 per cent convinced that Cracksmack is an Evil Homer sock puppet. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What I said was that they're not the same.

I do believe that Hillary Clinton is more ethical than Donald Trump. But that's not what I said, and certainly not my argument. I can't prove that any more than I can prove that crackersmack is an EH sock puppet, so I'm not going to argue that. My argument is competence. You may think that Hillary Clinton is more likely to get us into a war,but if trump does get us into a war, it's going to be a fucking mess.

And I think he will start a war. He's going to go after Isis. And there's no reason to believe that he's going to show any restraint, or judgment, or a grasp of reality. He's just going go grab em by the pussy, and he's not going to care what anyone thinks.

Trump isn't the worst person in the world, he's just the worst person in the world to be president, because he's not a politician. Politics is what we have instead of dictators, and politics require a politician. Lincoln was a politician. So was FDR and LBJ, and so is Hillary Clnton. Politicians are ruthless, manipulative, two-faced bullshit artists, because that's the required skill set. Because they're not dictators. Dictators can just do stuff. If only the world had better dictators, everything would be awesome.

I'm beginning to think Trump may surprise us. He may be magnanimous in defeat, and help bring the country together. It's his best chance to be the good guy, and that's what he wants, more than the presidency. He could become a beloved national figure, without all the boring paperwork of being president. If he's willing to stop grabbing women by the pussy, I'll wish him a happy and successful return to private life.

What happened? What the fuck do you think happened?

I think Keith will be his old self at the election. Someone has to do this. Someone needs to be the shrill, shrieking, annoying, not at all entertaining voice of doom. I don't think there's going to be a civil war. But somebody needs to be talking about the worst case scenario, He's the man for the job

*after the election