The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[W. Niederhut]

11 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

Take meds schizo, I posted no such thing.. 

Huh, Mathew?

You posted a Ron DeSantis commercial on the previous page of this thread last night.

In all fairness, your hero, Ron DeSantis, deserves some credit for shipping those Venezuelan refugees to Martha's Vineyard prior to Hurricane Ian.

But his Congressional vote against Federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims is more problematic.

 

Below:  Ron DeSantis cheerleading for Hurricane Ian first responders

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

   To put this in perspective, it appears that Putin is doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII.

    But Putin is, apparently, using Iranian-made kamikaze drones instead of V-2 rockets.

Live updates: Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine (cnbc.com)

Edited October 13, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matthew Koch]

45 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Huh, Mathew?

You posted a Ron DeSantis commercial on the previous page of this thread last night.

In all fairness, your hero, Ron DeSantis, deserves some credit for shipping those Venezuelan refugees to Martha's Vineyard prior to Hurricane Ian.

But his Congressional vote against Federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims is more problematic.

 

Below:  Ron DeSantis cheerleading for Hurricane Ian first responders

 

 

I posted a video of his wife talking about how good a guy Ron DeSantis, maybe you should watch it instead of assume what it's about...

 

[Matthew Koch]

1 hour ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

The president's job is to protect the country. Ukraine was not trying to actively harm Americans; Saudi Arabia is trying to harm Americans, interfere in our elections, etc. Do you guys see the difference?

 

[W. Niederhut]

Anyone watching the J6 hearings today?

Rep. Lofgren presented the damning evidence about Trump's pre-election plan to declare victory and claim the election was stolen/rigged.

Rep. Schiff presented the damning evidence that the Secret Service knew Trump's J6 MAGA mob was armed and intended to attack the Capitol.

Trump and his accomplices must be brought to justice.

Edited October 13, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Mark Knight]

4 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

Attorneys file discipinary complaint against Trump lawyer

Chesebro Press Release.docx (ldad.org)

MAGA = Making Attorneys Get Attorneys

[Douglas Caddy]

Highlight of the Jan 6th Committee hearing today was the committee members voting to subpoena Trump. One requirement is if he accepts, he must swear to tell the truth.

Other big highlight was that the FBI, including Director Wray (a Trump appointee), the Secret Service and Homeland Security all had advance knowledge 10 days before the insurrection that there would be a violent assault on the Capitol. None of these agencies alerted Congress or the Capitol Police.

 

Members of Congress stunned by Secret Service 'bombshell' at Jan. 6 hearing - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

Edited October 13, 2022 by Douglas Caddy

[John Cotter]

On 10/12/2022 at 4:51 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Dead wrong, John.  I already rebutted Chris's inaccurate "psychic contagion" post in relation to contemporary American politics. (See re-print.*)

Some of you guys have adopted Ben Coles' habit of ignoring specific rebuttals and re-posting the debunked theses.

IMO, if people take the time to respond to arguments here, you all should take the time to read the rebuttals.

Also, Democrats in the U.S. do not espouse Republican Trickle Down economics.

They voted against Trump's December 2017 Trickle Down tax cuts, and against the Bush/Cheney Trickle Down tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

*  

John Cotter and Chris Barnard have quoted Nietzsche, Goethe, and Carl Jung here, but they, obviously, don't understand how the social psychology concepts they referenced actually apply to American society today.

In reality, fear mongering and shared mass delusions are essential characteristics of America's Trump cult in 2022.

In contrast, we liberals don't belong to any organized political party-- we're Democrats.

True story.  I played golf today with an elderly gent who believes that Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Godless liberals will soon be destroyed in a kind of Rapture, while Trump is reinstated in the White House!

(Needless to say, I didn't tell the old guy that I'm a liberal Democrat.)  🤥

Trump came to power by fear mongering about Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, and invading immigrants at the borders.

And the Republicans are currently fear mongering about almost everything before the elections-- crime, oil production, election fraud, "woke" liberals, the border, and what-have-you.

As for the current crisis in Ukraine, I'm still waiting for John, Chris, Mathew Koch, and other Putin apologists to answer a simple question.

Has Putin committed war crimes in Ukraine?

The only deflective response to my question all day was a post by Mathew Koch claiming that liberals were celebrating a "war crime" -- the demolition of the Kerch military supply bridge!  

Matt Allison isn't suffering from a mass delusion when he, appropriately, condemns Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine.

That's reality.

William,

 I’m not going to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of this post because it has already been rebutted.

Take for instance, Prof John Mearsheimer’s thesis on the Ukraine situation which I adduced. You responded to that thesis by posting Prof Stephen Kotkin’s purported rebuttal.

I in turn pointed out a fatal flaw in Kotkin’s rebuttal, namely that he was clearly projecting when he falsely imputed to the Russians an aspiration to be the world’s greatest power – when in fact it is the USA which not only aspires to being, but has actually established itself as, the world’s greatest power by dint of its militaristic and “full spectrum dominance” foreign policy.

Insofar as your/Kotkin’s “rebuttal” is thus untenable, you have validated Mearsheimer’s thesis.

That is the state of play on that topic.  

Kotkin’s and your absurd projection can reasonably be interpreted as a symptom of the kind of mass hysteria or psychic contagion typical of times of war.  Such insanity is deliberately fomented in order to, as Shakespeare put it, “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”.

“As for going mad, don’t you wish you could? The trying thing is to be sane with everyone else (except the rogues who are taking advantage of it) as mad as hatters.” These words were written by George Bernard Shaw, who was blacklisted by many newspapers and magazines and ostracised, including by many of his literary and intellectual friends, for denouncing World War 1 jingoism.

And by the way, the accusation by one poster here that I am anti-American is typical of war hysteria. If I’m anti-American, so too are John Mearsheimer, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and other Realist foreign policy experts. The accusation is obviously baseless and absurd.

Edited October 13, 2022 by John Cotter

[Ron Bulman]

I don't think the former prez will acknowledge the subpoena much less answer any questions.  But as the last part of this article mentions they have given him the opportunity to formally respond to their questions in person.  That's important, I think.  It was kind of funny watching Roger Stone take the fifth, then others simply saying "fifth" and nothing else.  30 of them all together.

5 takeaways from the latest Jan. 6 hearing (msn.com)

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, John Cotter said:

William,

 I’m not going to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of this post because it has already been rebutted.

Take for instance, Prof John Mearsheimer’s thesis on the Ukraine situation which I adduced. You responded to that thesis by posting Prof Stephen Kotkin’s purported rebuttal.

I in turn pointed out a fatal flaw in Kotkin’s rebuttal, namely that he was clearly projecting when he falsely imputed to the Russians an aspiration to be the world’s greatest power – when in fact it is the USA which not only aspires to being, but has actually established itself as, the world’s greatest power by dint of its militaristic and “full spectrum dominance” foreign policy.

Insofar as your/Kotkin’s “rebuttal” is thus untenable, you have validated Mearsheimer’s thesis.

That is the state of play on that topic.  

Kotkin’s and your absurd projection can reasonably be interpreted as a symptom of the kind of mass hysteria or psychic contagion typical of times of war.  Such insanity is deliberately fomented in order to, as Shakespeare put it, “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”.

“As for going mad, don’t you wish you could? The trying thing is to be sane with everyone else (except the rogues who are taking advantage of it) as mad as hatters.” These words were written by George Bernard Shaw, who was blacklisted by many newspapers and magazines and ostracised, including by many of his literary and intellectual friends, for denouncing World War 1 jingoism.

And by the way, the accusation by one poster here that I am anti-American is typical of war hysteria. If I’m anti-American, so too are John Mearsheimer, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and other Realist foreign policy experts. The accusation is obviously baseless and absurd.

John,

      Where to begin?  You're wrong about Russian history, and about the "projection" misdiagnosis.   To deny Putin's goal of re-incorporating former Soviet republics into his fascist police state is to deny 21st century reality.  To accurately perceive what he is up to is no "projection."  Look at what he has done in Chechnya and Ukraine.

      Stephen Kotkin is a professor Russian historian at our highly prestigious Princeton University here in the U.S.  He has written a number of acclaimed books about Russian history.  You have simplistically misrepresented his thesis and accurate criticism of Mearsheimer's Putin apologetics.

     I should mention that I have had a longstanding interest in Russian history, literature, and culture.  I have even served as a cantor in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR) during the past quarter century.   And the man who wrote the definitive history of the ROCOR has been a personal friend of mine.

     Stephen Kotkin is quite correct about the history of Russian imperialism.  Obviously, the Russian Empire has been one of the great empires in world history-- spanning one-sixth of the world's land mass.  They played a decisive role in crushing Napoleon and Hitler.  We owe them a debt of gratitude for their defeat of the N-a-z-i  Wehrmacht in WWII.  80% of N-a-z-i military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

     As for Ukraine, Russia's imperialist aspirations for control of the Don Cossacks and the Crimea was first achieved by Potemkin during the reign of Catherine the Great.  But the Ukrainians have also had longstanding nationalist aspirations.  Petlyura's regime succeeded the 1918 Hetmanate before the ultimate triumph of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, and its incorporation into the U.S.S.R.'s police state. 

     In the 1930s, the Soviet government was directly responsible for the genocidal Ukrainian famine of the Holodomor.

     Then, voila!  Ukraine achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

     So, like Kotkin, I tend to view Putin's aspirations to annex the Ukraine as part of a centuries-old autocratic, Russian imperialist tradition.  It's not a projection.  It's reality.

    The imperialism of the Romanov's Russian Empire was transmuted by the Bolshevik revolution into the "imperialism" of Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Comintern.    Eastern Europeans have had no illusions about it.  Recall that Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.  

     Then, look at the fate of the Baltic republics and Warsaw Pact nations in the post-WWII era.   

    What is the attitude toward Moscow of people living on Russia's boundaries?  Estonia? Lithuania? Poland? Chechnya?  Georgia?

    As I said, I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for the atrocities of the CIA and U.S. military in the post-WWII era.  At the same time, I pointed out to you the contrast between the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after WWII.

     Would you have preferred to live in Dresden or Munich in the 1960s and 70s? 

     As for the present, what you think about Putin doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII?

     Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

Edited October 13, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matt Allison]

As I posited a few months back, there are MAGA traitors embedded in the FBI.

IMO it's likely Merrick Garland has been pointedly making sure his 1/6 investigation is not infiltrated by them.

 

A week after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a person warned a senior FBI official that a “sizable percentage of the employee population” of the agency “felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol,” according to an email made public Thursday.

The sender, whose name is redacted, told then-FBI Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate that those FBI employees believed the riot was “no different than the [Black Lives Matter] protests of last summer,” the email shows.

The Jan. 13, 2021, message, titled “Internal Concerns,” was made public under the Freedom of Information Act, NBC News reported.

The writer listed several examples of alleged FBI sympathy with the rioters, including the claim that a “senior analyst from my first unity who retired less than 2 years ago has a Facebook page full of #StoptheSteal content.”

“These are not one-off events -- they are representative of a larger group within the organization,” the email alleged.

The FBI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the email.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/house-january-6-committee-hearing-live-updates.html

[John Cotter]

43 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

John,

      Where to begin?  You're wrong about Russian history, and about the "projection" misdiagnosis.   To deny Putin's goal of re-incorporating former Soviet republics into his fascist police state is to deny 21st century reality.  To accurately perceive what he is up to is no "projection."  Look at what he has done in Chechnya and Ukraine.

      Stephen Kotkin is a professor Russian historian at our highly prestigious Princeton University here in the U.S.  He has written a number of acclaimed books about Russian history.  You have simplistically misrepresented his thesis and accurate criticism of Mearsheimer's Putin apologetics.

     I should mention that I have had a longstanding interest in Russian history, literature, and culture.  I have even served as a cantor in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROCOR) during the past quarter century.   And the man who wrote the definitive history of the ROCOR has been a personal friend of mine.

     Stephen Kotkin is quite correct about the history of Russian imperialism.  Obviously, the Russian Empire has been one of the great empires in world history-- spanning one-sixth of the world's land mass.  They played a decisive role in crushing Napoleon and Hitler.  We owe them a debt of gratitude for their defeat of the N-a-z-i  Wehrmacht in WWII.  80% of N-a-z-i military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

     As for Ukraine, Russia's imperialist aspirations for control of the Don Cossacks and the Crimea was first achieved by Potemkin during the reign of Catherine the Great.  But the Ukrainians have also had longstanding nationalist aspirations.  Petlyura's regime succeeded the 1918 Hetmanate before the ultimate triumph of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, and its incorporation into the U.S.S.R.'s police state. 

     In the 1930s, the Soviet government was directly responsible for the genocidal Ukrainian famine of the Holodomor.

     Then, voila!  Ukraine achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

     So, like Kotkin, I tend to view Putin's aspirations to annex the Ukraine as part of a centuries-old autocratic, Russian imperialist tradition.  It's not a projection.  It's reality.

    The imperialism of the Romanov's Russian Empire was transmuted by the Bolshevik revolution into the "imperialism" of Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Comintern.    Eastern Europeans have had no illusions about it.  Recall that Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland before Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.  

     Then, look at the fate of the Baltic republics and Warsaw Pact nations in the post-WWII era.   

    What is the attitude toward Moscow of people living on Russia's boundaries?  Estonia? Lithuania? Poland? Chechnya?  Georgia?

    As I said, I'm the furthest thing from an apologist for the atrocities of the CIA and U.S. military in the post-WWII era.  At the same time, I pointed out to you the contrast between the U.S. Marshall Plan in Western Europe and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after WWII.

     Would you have preferred to live in Dresden or Munich in the 1960s and 70s? 

     As for the present, what you think about Putin doing to Ukraine what Hitler did to England during WWII?

     Do you approve of Putin bombing civilian targets in Ukraine?

That’s all fine and dandy, William, but you’ve missed the point.

The point being the distinction between being a great power and the greatest power or the aspiration to being the greatest power.

Since I’ve already explained the significance of this, I’ll leave it there.

[Matt Allison]

A great amount of how malevolent or benevolent U.S. foreign policy functions are is based on who is elected President every 4 years. It isn't static. The legacies of George W. Bush and Joe Biden will  not be the same.

[Matthew Koch]

Lololololols
Ben, I think you're going to enjoy this!
Matt and William what's the cope going to be? 


 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Matthew Koch

[W. Niederhut]

49 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

That’s all fine and dandy, William, but you’ve missed the point.

The point being the distinction between being a great power and the greatest power or the aspiration to being the greatest power.

Since I’ve already explained the significance of this, I’ll leave it there.

John,

    I don't view this Ukrainian invasion/annexation as a pissing contest between the U.S. and Russian imperialists-- i.e., as a transmuted version of the Cold War.  Everyone knows that Soviet communism is defunct.  Even Putin and his KGB associates anticipated its collapse in 1991.  (See Catherine Belton's Putin's People.)

    In my view, Putin's Ukrainian invasion seems more like another chapter in Putin's broader war on liberal Western democracy, and his goal of confiscating and controlling other people's lives and property.  It's about theft and control-- precisely what we experienced in the ROCOR when Putin and the FSB seized our churches in 2007.

    At the time, a Russian friend of mine said, "It's a shame the Kremlin took over our church."  The Russians here had no illusions about what Putin was doing!

    What does he resent about Ukrainian democracy and autonomy?  The Ukrainians had no offensive military agenda toward the Russian Federation.  Putin wanted their property, and control of their population.

    Putin has spent the past 20 years establishing his totalitarian police state in the Russian Federation.  He is openly contemptuous of liberal democracy. 

    That is why he has actively supported right wing fascist politicians in the U.S. and Europe-- including the Trump cult here in the U.S. 

     What amazes me are the illusions many people in the West still have about Putin's police state-- despite the daily atrocities we are hearing about in Ukraine, including the bombings of civilian targets.

     Many well-intentioned people have wanted to believe that Putin is some sort of enlightened autocrat.  In reality, he's the son of a man who served in Stalin's NKVD Destruction Brigades, and the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Edited October 14, 2022 by W. Niederhut