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kessy-athena — Only One Question
#blue #democrat #election #party #patriotism #politics #red #republican #vote
Published: 2018-04-29 10:09:25 +0000 UTC; Views: 1558; Favourites: 1; Downloads: 1
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Gun control? Doesn't matter.Taxes? Doesn't matter.
Healthcare? Doesn't matter.
Immigration? Doesn't matter.
There's only one thing that matters: there's a traitor in the White House, and Congressional Republicans are protecting and enabling him.
For any real American, there's only one choice.
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"America's founding stock?" Most white people in the US are descended from immigrants who arrived well after the founding, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Immigrants who were invariably regarded when they arrived as not being "real" whites, or fit to be "real" Americans. For example, German immigrants were accused of being congenitally incapable of being full participants in a democracy. Germans were said to be lazy drunkards who stole jobs from "real" Americans. The existence of German language newspaper was frequently cited as proof of the impending collapse of American civilization as the US was gradually being overcome by genetically inferior foreign invaders.
On the other hand, most black people in the US are the descendants of slaves whose African ancestors arrived in America before 1808. Of course, being the descendant of slaves generally means being equally the descendant of slave owners. The fact of the matter is that if you were going to pick a demographic in the US today that most clearly represents the direct descendants of the founding generation, it'd have to be African Americans.
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"An Irishman was elected even when there was resentment against the Irish and he took out the central bank."
You mean Andrew Jackson? He was Scots-Irish, not Irish, you ignorant sod.
The United States is a Freemason project from start to finish. We were founded by Masons. Our government was created by Masons. School children pledge allegiance every day to the Mason ideals of liberty and justice for all. Deal with it.
Of course any argument about who's a real white is a farce. The entire idea of a white race is a farce. "White" has never meant anything other than "people we think are like us." Immigrants have always been defined as non-white, no matter where they're from or what their ancestry is. People are people - they are no significant biological or genetic differences between different groups of humans, and we're all descended from a muddle of all kinds of different people. Whiteness is a crutch for people who think they're entitled to high social status but are too lazy to work for it or know they'd never be able to earn it on their own merits.
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"My people have the right to live."
LOL Because you'd jut die if you had to actually work for your social status, huh?
Whether you like it or not, your people are humans. All humans.
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Well for starters the Russian Federation is closer to Fascism then Communism.
Second
Lefty: "Putin you've interfered with the election."
Putin (if he was honest): "Honey I've been interfering in with every election on the planet since I can into power. For you this whole this is a big deal. But for me? It is Tuesday."
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If you're talking about real world political systems rather than nineteenth century economic and social armchair theorizing, fascism and communism are basically the same thing. Ideology is bunk. All ideology. The world is the way it is, not the way we think it ought to be.
Yes, Putin and his predecessors have been attempting this sort of thing for a long time. So that makes it okay? Wouldn't that be like commenting on the arrest of H. H. Holmes, that okay so he murdered someone, but he's killed 26 people before so it's not a big deal? Doesn't the fact that the Russians have been trying to do this sort of thing for decades make it a more serious threat, not less? And doesn't that make Trump standing up and explicitly asking the Russians to intervene on his behalf even more inexcusable? Doesn't that make Republicans looking the other way at overt treason even worse? Neither of those things have ever happened before.
(Eyeroll) Oh spare me yet another Clinton conspiracy theory. Yes yes, I'm sure that Clinton totally did whatever crazy thing you're accusing her of, just like how she murdered Vince Foster and how she shipped the entire US stockpile of Uranium to Russia and how she eats babies for breakfast every Sunday. Yanno, I'm pretty sure that the Clintons have prolly gotten away with some stuff they otherwise wouldn't have simply because you guys make up so many crazy stories about them that no one takes accusations against them seriously.
In any case, Hillary Clinton isn't running for anything and isn't going to ever again. Anything she may or may not have done is completely irrelevant to whether or not we should allow a traitor and a criminal remain President.
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Well if that's the case then that means Trump's not a Fascist.
To be fare they are both totalitarian regimes but under Fascism there wishy washy on economics and will sometimes let you own things (or at least own them on paper.)
Putin:"If you commit one crime it is a tragedy. But if you commit a million? It is just a statistic." Not say it's Ok. Just that it's just another day in the life of the Mobster, God, Tzars of all Russian kind. It's like say water is wet.
I mean Trump as been cleared of all charges. So collusion
I mean the Uranium deal actually happened.
But yeah she's not President (and not going to be.)
But if you ask me it's the Democrat Party that are the traitors as they are trying to turn American Socialist.
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Don't bother reasoning with her she can't even be bothered to accept Muellers findings. hell I am shocked she hasn't changed it to Yellow and blue for Ukrainian hackers.
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I wouldn't really call Trump a fascist. The only thing he believes in or cares about or has any loyalty to is himself. So I don't think you can really apply any ideological labels to him at all.
No, Trump has not been cleared of all charges. In any way, shape or form. Mueller in his own words:
It is quite clear that Trump committed obstruction of justice and the only reason he has not been indicted is because of the DOJ policy against indicting a sitting President.
Also, being cleared of charges says nothing about the question of collusion, since collusion isn't a crime. To quote from the Mueller Report:
"In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of “collusion.” In so doing, the Office recognized that the word “collud[e]” was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation’s scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign “coordinat[ed]” — a term that appears in the appointment order — with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, “coordination” does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities...
The social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the Campaign conspiring or coordinating with Russia in its election-interference activities. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
No, there is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed a crime in his dealings with the Russians. Being disloyal to the United States is not a crime. I defy you to argue that it's not a compelling reason to remove an individual from the office of the Presidency.
Yes, the Uranium One deal happened. And no uranium whatsoever went to Russia. Also, Clinton was only one of many cabinet officials who were involved in approving the deal. While there are legitimate questions about the wisdom of allowing the deal to go forward, the hysterics coming out of the right wing media about it are complete nonsense. What actually happened: www.factcheck.org/2017/10/fact…
(sigh) I am getting so tired of the right's sudden obsession with the word "socialism." The United states has had socialism since the 1930's. It's right there in the name of the program: Social Security. The entire discussion of capitalism vs socialism is frankly silly. These labels are leftovers from a nineteenth century political pissing match and have no real relevance to today's world. It should have been obvious to one and all for a century that trying to run an economy according to ideological notions of how the universe ought to be is a fool's errand. Command economies don't work. Neither do economies left completely to unrestrained market forces and the law of the jungle. Managing an economy in the real world requires both the harnessing of the market and smart, reasonable regulation.
Regardless, are you seriously going to compare someone subscribing to economic ideas you don't like to a Presidential candidate getting up on national TV and explicitly asking a hostile foreign power to conduct a cyber attack against the United States to benefit his campaign? Do you really honestly see those two things as being at all comparable?
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And American as been in decline ever since the New Deal because of those socialist policies. It's precisely the same economic policies you call for that put us in this economic mess we are in. And it's not having a different opinion about economics that makes me say the Democrat Party are traitors. It's pushing America towards totalitarianism that is. And it's precisely The Government interfering with the economy that is causing the problems we have today.
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And while America has been in "decline" we've climbed out of the most severe economic disruption of modern times, won a world war against two of the greatest war machines in human history, faced down the Soviet Union in the Cold War, landed on the Moon, eradicated smallpox and a whole host of other diseases, split the atom, and created the internet. Among a great many other things. At the beginning of 1929, the US was a minor world power and an intellectual and cultural backwater. Today we're the leaders of the Free World.
Just look at the state of the economy. The US's real GDP is nearly twenty times greater today than it was in 1929. (source) Real GDP per capita is nearly six times what it was in 1929. (source) The poverty rate has dropped from 22.4% in 1959 to 12.3% in 2017. (source) Or consider the business cycle. The frequency and duration of recessions have dropped dramatically since the Great Depression. From December of 1854 to August of 1929 the US spent 506 months in economic expansion and 390 months in economic contraction. That's 43.5% of the time in recession. From October of 1945 to June of 2009 the US spent 642 months in economic expansion and 122 months in economic contraction. That's 16.0% of the time in recession.
In what conceivable way is cutting recessions to a third of what they used to be the US being in decline?
Totalitarianism is a form of government where that government exercises absolute control over all aspects of life and uses political terror to enforce its authority. Dissent or criticism of any kind results in extreme punishment. People's doors are kicked in in the middle of the night and they are dragged off never to be heard from again. North Korea toady, Nazi Germany, and Stalin's USSR are all totalitarian regimes.
Having to pay taxes is not totalitarianism.
If you think we should have less of a social safety net (or even no social safety net at all) and commensurately lower taxes, that's fine. I disagree with that, but it's perfectly respectable political position. I will tell you that I think you're wrong and explain why, but ultimately a difference of opinion does not make us enemies. I'd appreciate it if you extended me the same courtesy. Extreme hyperbole just makes you sound silly.
And you never answered my question. Do you really consider someone having a political position you disagree with in any way even remotely comparable to a candidate getting up on live TV and explicitly asking a hostile foreign power to conduct an attack on the United States to benefit their campaign?
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Economists debate what the affects of the new deal were. But it is almost unanimously agreed that The New Deal did not end the Great Depredation (many agree it made it worse) www.cato.org/publications/comm… . And World war 2. well Amarican was one of the great war machines(the other was Germany.) Japan's infrastructure was super crappy (the only advantage they had was manpower.) And Fascist Italy was..... A total joke. Gemany loses the war for a number of reasons (fight a two front war with Europe and Russia, Hitler making incredibly stupid decisions, having Fascist Italy as a ally.) Note say that wasn't a great moment in America History. Don't mean America wasn't starting it's decline.
I known what totalitarianism is it's were the The State runs everything.
However
Long story short to say taxation is justified that means you don't actually own anything, but The State owns everything and is just letting you rent it (This applies to labor to as The State also taxes that to.) So taxes are inherently totalitarian in nature.
And Socialism is inherently totalitarian as it is forced collectivization.
And so pushing America closer to Socialism is pushing America towards totalitarianism. And that what the Democrat Party was been doing since The New Deal. Trump might be a corporatist but at lest he's pulling America away from totalitarianism.
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If you think that taxation is totalitarianism, then no you don't know what it is. In a totalitarian state posting something like this would mean that you and your entire family would be subject to arrest, interrogation, torture, and execution. In a totalitarian state having your door kicked down in the middle of the night is not a metaphor, it is completely literal. You really think that having to pay taxes puts you in the same category as the victims of the SS, the KGB, and the Stasi? Go watch this short video about the liberation of Dachau - this is what real totalitarianism looks like. youtu.be/sJSsilBjHd0 Look at those people so emaciated they look like living skeletons. Look at the bodies stacked like cordwood. Think about what those people went through. And then think about the fact that you just claimed that you having to pay taxes is the same thing. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Taxation is not theft. Taxation is the price of living in a civilized society. Without taxes there are no property rights. Because without taxes there are no police, there are no courts, there are no laws. Without taxes there contracts are meaningless. Without taxes there are no roads, no bridges, no sewers, no water. There are no schools or hospitals or firefighters. Do you think that you are somehow entitled to the benefits of living in this civilized society without having to pay for it?
People claiming that the New Deal made the Depression worse aren't economists, they're political hacks. And that's being kind.
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What you're describing is the definition of a tyranny (to be fare tyranny and totalitarianism overlap often because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.)
And I mean if you don't pay you're taxes The State seizes assets.
If taxation is not theft, then all the Sicily Mafia would have to do to legitimize itself is to declare itself a Government.
I mean the private sector is more than capable of providing those things.
And the Government doesn't create property rights (that's a Marxist straw man.) If anything The State is the number one violator of private property (infact The State violates private property by it's very existences as it force you at gun point to give up some of you're private to it.) If The Government gives you your rights, then you don't have any rights (because what The State gives The State can also take away.)
So to say that The State has a right to taxation is to say that The State owns everything (which is the definition of totalitarianism"All in The State and nothing outside The State.)
And if you say that's just the price we pay. Then I could say that mafia extortion is just the price we pay to not have bandits take all of are stuff and burn are house down.
And how are people who claim that the New Deal made the Depression worse political hacks? Is it because you don't agree with them.
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According to Merriam-Webster:
Definition of totalitarianism
1 : centralized control by an autocratic authority
2 : the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority
From Wikipedia:
Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism . Political power in totalitarian states has often been held by rule by one leader which employ all-encompassing propaganda campaigns broadcast by state-controlled mass media . Totalitarian regimes are often marked by political repression , personality cultism , control over the economy , restriction of speech , mass surveillance and widespread use of state terrorism . Historian Robert Conquest describes a "totalitarian" state as one recognizing no limits to its authority in any sphere of public or private life and which extends that authority to whatever length feasible.
Totalitarian regimes are different from other authoritarian ones . The latter denotes a state in which the single power holder – an individual "dictator ", a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite – monopolizes political power. "[The] authoritarian state [...] is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty".[8] Authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature".[8] In contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens.
So if you think that taxation is a form of totalitarianism, you literally do not know the meaning of the word.
You claim that the government having the power of taxation means that the government owns everything. How? Why? You assert it almost as an article of faith, without justification or support. Every government since the beginning of human civilization has levied taxes in one form or another. By your argument, there has never been any such thing as private property. And yet it is manifestly obvious that the concept exists and has existed since time immemorial. How can this be if what you say is true?
In a protection racket the mafia provides nothing in return for the money they extort. The government does provide services. Saying that the private sector could provide those services is acknowledging that there are services being provided. And if the private sector did provide those services, they would charge a fee for them. Taxation is no different - it's a fee for services. Yes, if you don't pay your taxes the government can take your stuff. And if you don't pay your debts to private companies they will take you to court and the same thing will happen. The entire repo industry is all about private entities seizing your assets by force if you don't pay your debts.
(This is a tangent, but actually most of what organized crime does is a form a business not outright theft and extortion. They do provide services, just illegal ones like prostitution, loan sharking, illegal gambling, illicit drugs, etc.)
You can argue if you want that various government functions should be privatized. Now with most things the government does there's a good reason the government does it instead of the private sector, but that's debatable. But it's not an argument that there is something illegitimate about the very concept of taxation.
However, there are certain things the government does which I really don't see how private industry could replicate. How do you run a court system for profit? how can you have confidence that you'll get a fair hearing if the courts earn their living by being paid by litigants? How do you avoid a situation where people only have rights if they can afford to pay? We have issues with that now, when judges are paid by the taxpayers.
I am not talking about a philosophical discussion about the origin of rights. I am talking about the fact that as a practical matter rights only have an impact if society enforces and protects them. And the mechanism that society uses to do that is the government. If there is no societal consequences for violating someone's rights, then those rights don't really have any practical force. If nothing happens to people who rob you, what good are property rights? In that situation your "rights" become whatever you can protect - or take - by force. You can say the in principle the victims of Nazi Germany still had their rights to life, liberty, free speech, and so on, but it didn't do them any good until the Allied armies arrived to enforce those rights.
Why are people who claim that the New Deal made the Depression worse political hacks? 1937.
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The differents is taxation isn't voluntary (if you don't pay it The State seizes your assets) because it isn't voluntary the only logical justification for it is if The State owns everyone because if it didn't it wouldn't have a the right to take it by force.
And the Mafia also provides you with a serves. It's the protection part of
protection racketing.
You can chose which private companies you will give your money to. You can't do that with The State. You can't even chose were your money goes. The State spends it as it pleases.
Privet Courts exist and are used in disputes not deemed worthy of State Courts. This video will help explain assuming NPC Youtube hasn't taken it down youtu.be/Ql4M0VkWa-w and the Non YouTube version
www.bitchute.com/video/JNTejP7…
If some one tries to robs you. You beat then up. The Cops are not a deterrent (they arrive to late to stop any crimes.) Armed citizens are.
The victims of Nazi Germany were being victimized by there own Government. And World War 2 is a messy situation as if Hitler never invade Poland they could have been are allies against The Soviet Union.
So FDR got reelected people though The New Deal was working at the time (just like people thought Socialist Venezuela was working.)
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Actually, strictly speaking, paying taxes is voluntary. It depends of course on the particular tax you're talking about, but in general taxes are tied to specific sorts of economic activity. If you don't want to pay the taxes, don't engage in that particular sort of activity. If you strike off into the wilderness and live self sufficiently off the land, you won't participate in the formal economy and you won't pay any taxes at all. At less of an extreme, if you don't like the tax policies of a particular jurisdiction, you are in general perfectly free to move to a different one. In fact, a lot of people do exactly that for exactly that reason. So yes, you do have exactly the same choice of which state to give your money to that you have with private companies. And you have no more control over what private companies do with your money after you pay them than you do with a government. And if you're complaining that living off the land is impractical, so is forgoing the services of many private companies. And as I've already pointed out, private companies will use force to collect debts from you just as much as the government will. And in point of fact there are plenty of circumstances where private companies exercise more control over your life than the government does. In a lot of place you have one choice of where to buy your groceries. Or medications. Or various other things. And that's not even getting into historical examples like company towns. So explain to me how there's any fundamental difference at all between a government and a large powerful private company. Or any other powerful social organization, for that matter.
I once heard someone quip that libertarians are just liberals who haven't realized yet that power can be abused by anyone who has it, not just the government.
In any case, the idea that having a claim to a portion of the revenues from something implies ownership is patently absurd. Consider two situations. In the first, a company sells stock in order to raise funds for a capital investment. In the second, a company gets a bank loan to fund a similar capital investment. In both cases you have fundamentally the same transaction going on. In both cases investors give a company funds for a capital investment and in return get a portion of the proceeds generated by that investment. But the terms and arrangements are different. One involves partial ownership of the company, the other doesn't.
Besides, when you have a system where labor is actually owned by another party - i.e. slavery - the owner is generally entitled to all of the revenue generated by that labor.
Logic is an important tool, but fundamentally what it does is tell you if a certain set of propositions are consistent with each other or not. It does not tell you if something is actually true or not. Logic is entirely dependent on the assumptions made, and you are making assumptions that are frankly flatly contradicted by reality. In point of fact you really haven't been presenting a logical argument at all. You are basically presenting an assumption. You simply claim that the government having a legal claim to a portion of someone's income (or sales or whatever) implies ownership without support.
An organized crime protection scheme does not provide any sort of service because the only thing they're protecting you from is themselves. That's just plain extortion.
I will concede that private courts are theoretically possible. I'm still extremely dubious such a scheme could be successfully applied on a large scale, but that's really another discussion.
"If some one tries to robs you. You beat then up. The Cops are not a deterrent (they arrive to late to stop any crimes.) Armed citizens are. "
-_- Really. And just how many times in your life have you used armed forced to defend your property? And if there were no police force at all, what do you suppose the situation would be? And you haven't answered my question: if your right to your property is defined by your ability to defend it by force, how does that not also imply that whatever you can take by force is also your property? There are places in the world where such conditions do actually prevail. They are ruled by warlords and armed gangs who simply take whatever they can.
(Facepalm) By the spring of 1937 the economy had recovered significantly from the Great Depression. GDP had grown from its low of $56.4 billion in 1933 up to $91.9 Billion. Unemployment had dropped from 24.9% in 1933 to 14.3%. In light of the improving economy, FDR was under a great deal of political pressure for a return to normalcy, and so he agreed to major cuts in government spending and a rollback of New Deal programs. The bottom promptly fell out of the economy. Unemployment shot back up to 19%. Industrial production fell by almost 30% The Recession of 1937 is only "minor" and forgotten because it's completely overshadowed by the Great Depression. Had it occurred on its own, it would be remembered as one of the great economic catastrophes in US history. So when John Boehner got up in front of the cameras and intoned, "We firmly believe that cutting spending will create jobs," that was completely and totally batshit crazy. We tried this experiment. It blew up in our faces in a truly spectacular fashion. The debate is over, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either utterly ignorant of history or is simply a flat out liar.
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And your love of a dictator who had one of his critics shot in the shadow of the Kremlin walls a short distance from his office window is equally obvious. Putin is a died in the wool Soviet who's had the old USSR national anthem and various other bits of Soviet iconography brought back. You really want to live in a system where people are literally dragged from their homes in the middle of the night to be worked to death in a forced labor camp?
Hillary deserves to be shot? Awwww, you poor ickle guy. I almost feel sorry for you that you have such a tiny penis that you feel compelled to try silence any challenge to your supposed manhood with violence. Almost, but not quite. At least society doesn't have to worry about the likes of you passing on your genes.
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Ah yes, because it's completely crazy to think that Russia would invade another country like Ukraine or Georgia or outright annex a substantial territory like Crimea. -_-
Putin is a bad actor on the world stage, actively trying to undermine both Western democracies and the international order that's kept the peace since WWII. And you're defending him.
And I'm sure you have completely rational and non-misogynistic reasons for hating Hillary Clinton. And I'm equally sure you want to see her shot for a real, non-fictional crime other than coming this close to becoming the first female President of the US.
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-_- Propaganda is somehow dishonest or deceptive, and you just defended the Third Reich as a victim of American aggression. Do I even need to comment on that? Perhaps you've heard of a little thing called the Holocaust?
Yes, the West has kept the peace since the Second World War. If we hadn't, neither of us would be here right now. There have been no wars between great powers since 1945, and worldwide combat deaths have declined dramatically since then. ourworldindata.org/grapher/bat… The fact is that for all our problems, we live in one of the most peaceful, prosperous periods in history.
Yes, the US did some pretty bad things in the immediate post war period with supporting coups and such. However, there were major reforms in the mid 1970's that put the US intelligence community on a much shorter leash, and such things have been quite rare since then. Allende was actually one of the last victims of that.
Bill's an idiot who doesn't know how to keep his pants zipped. And for that you think his wife should be shot? Yeah, I can see what a big defender of women's rights you are.
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That stack of Pravda's you've been reading was a pack of lies when it was new. Today it's just laughable. The US kept Germany from being reunited? Ha! That's a good one. Riiight, and the Berlin Wall was built to defend against Western aggression too. NATO kept West Germany from being conquered by one of the most brutal and repressive transnational empires in the history of the world. How can you claim to be a nationalist with a straight face and then take the side of the Soviet Union, which brutally massacred national independence movements on several occasions?
You talk about tyranny and oppression when you clearly haven't got the faintest idea what those words mean. You should read up on what the Stasi - one of the most effective and repressive secret police forces ever - did the the people of East Germany.
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The overarching thing you don't understand is that ideology - all ideology - is bullshit. "Communist" and "capitalist" and "socialist" are all labels from a nineteenth century political spat that have really no relevance to today's world. Tyranny is tyranny is tyranny. The only difference between Hitler and Stalin was about 2,000 km. The hammer and sickle has been the symbol of Russian authoritarianism for the better part of a century, and if you have a problem with that take it up with Stalin.
I'm pretty sure that Robert Mueller has an IQ above 90.
"The social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the Campaign conspiring or coordinating with Russia in its election-interference activities. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
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Actually, I have read Marx and while I think he made an insightful diagnosis of the social ills of the nineteenth century his prescription for a cure is naive at best. Thinking that you can create a classless society and get rid of the human instinct to compete for social status is as silly as the Christian cults that thought they could get rid of sexuality. As the Soviets discovered, even if you outright execute the ruling class, a new one just arises to take its place. As the Soviets also discovered, market forces will operate whether you want them to or not. Thinking you can banish them by decree is like thinking you can legislate the weather. "From each according to their ability and to each according to their need," sounds great in theory. In practice, how exactly do you go about determining either?
At this point it should be beyond obvious that anyone who tries to run an economy according to how they think the world ought to be instead of dealing with how things actually are is an idiot and their project doomed to failure. Strict command economies simply don't work very well. Neither does ideologically pure laissez-faire. Making a real economy actually work requires both the harnessing of the free market and a well thought ought and implemented government program of regulation and a social safety net.
The Soviet Union was a tyrannical supranational empire that varied from outright totalitarianism to mere authoritarianism over the course of its history. Between 1930 and 1953 the Gulags worked to death at least 1.6 million political prisoners. Some estimates place the figure as high as 6 million. The Holodomor - the genocidal famine in Ukraine orchestrated by Stalin in 1932 and 33 designed to crush the Ukrainian independence movement - killed between 3 to 12 million. Stalin's Great Purge of 1936 - 1937, which included the notorious NKVD Order no. 00447, killed between 680,000 and 1.2 million. Soviet tanks ruthlessly crushed both the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968. The East German Stasi were notorious for a technique of psychological warfare called Zersetzung in which the Stasi would covertly sabotage their target's personal and professional lives, orchestrating failures at work, sending fabricated compromising documents and photos to the victim's family and friends, even breaking into the victim's home to subtly change the contents as a form of gaslighting. Many victims felt they were losing their minds, leading to mental breakdowns and even suicides.
And I'm sure I'm forgetting several things that belong on any brief summary of the crimes of the USSR. And that's not even touching on what happened in China under Mao. so yes, the Soviet Union was the enemy. It was evil, and it was absolutely on the same level as the Third Reich. And I'd suggest you sit your ignorant ass down and actually read up on a little history before trying to defend one of the most oppressive, blood stained regimes in human history.
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Also this meme is pretty much the definition of xenophobia. Just replace "Russians" with "Jews" and see how xenophobic it sounds.
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If you don't understand the difference between being strongly opposed to the hostile actions of a foreign government and being bigoted against ordinary people because they belong to some out group, I don't know that there's any help for you.
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I mean Anti Semites say the say thing.
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The "hostile action" that anti-Semites claim is an imaginary global conspiracy where the Jews supposedly control global finance, media, government, etc. This is pure fiction. This is an obvious rationalization. And in their actions anti-Semites target ordinary people they perceive as being Jewish. After all, you can't exactly sanction a non-existent Jewish cabal. Anti-Semites do things like desecrating Jewish graves, vandalizing synagogues, and spray painting intimidating messages on Jewish homes. And, yanno, occasionally murder.
On the other hand the Russian government definitely does exist and definitely has engaged in very hostile actions against the US. Or are you going to deny that? Those advocating action against Russia are talking about targeted sanctions against the Russian government and diplomatic action, not burning down a Russian Orthodox Church in Philadelphia or beating up some ethnic Russians living in Chicago.
Or are you arguing that because anti-Semites can create a rationalized justification for their hate that any criticism of any organization for doing anything bad is automatically equivalent to anti-Semitism?
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Of course not. Just pointing out that Anti-Semites agree that don't hate a ethic group but a organization (that just so happen to be comprised of exclusively of members of a certain ethic group. But the Jewish cabal conspiracy theory is nonsensical (and at times hypocritical "the Jews are all greedy corporatists" "the Jews are all dirty Communists" pick on and stay with it certain German Totalitarian Regime that everyone loves to hate.)
And yes Russian is a treat to us (so is China, and North Korea is a treat to themselves,) but I don't want to start World War 3 (nobody wins in that scenario.)
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I largely agree with everything you just said.
However, I must continue to insist that drawing any parallel between anti-Semitism and the determination of every patriotic American to defend this country against the ongoing attacks of the Russians not only is suggesting a false equivalency but is patently absurd, for the reasons stated above.
No one is talking about starting a shooting war with Russia. As I said before, we're talking about sanctions and diplomatic actions. The sorts of things that Trump has done everything in his power to obstruct. And we're talking about improving election security, which McConnell has refused to even consider in the Senate. I could go on about the Republicans' shameful inaction, but I think you get the point.
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If Trump as done everything in his power to obstruct them. Why do we now have tariffs on China and Mexico (and why is Trump parsing them)?
And he refused to go to war with Iran because he decided to hurt them economy instead.
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I was talking about sanctions against Russia, not Mexico or China.
There is absolutely no reason for a trade war with Mexico. Or Canada. Or Europe. It's sheer insanity that Trump is doing any of that. And the fact that getting any change in China's behavior depends on having a unified front among all of us in dealing with them, Trumps actions have made his trade war with China hopeless and pointless.
The only reason there's any sort of crisis at all with Iran is because of Trump. He frequently creates crises for no reason other than so he can try to play the hero in resolving them by stopping doing the stupid crap he was doing. Well, to be fair, in the case of Iran Bolton and Pompeo seem to have been freelancing in throwing fuel on the fire, but that's again on Trump since he's letting them do it.
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With Mexico it's being used as a way to strong arm Mexico into helping with the border.
I'm against The Government interference in the economy as a whole. So this is one of the things Trump is doing that I disagree with.
If I'm not mistaken it was Trump's war hank advisors that almost pushed us to war because a oil ship and a dron was blow up.
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Like I said, Bolton and to a lesser degree Pompeo seem to have been freelancing in raising tensions with Iran. But ultimately Trump is President and it's his responsibility what his administration does. And it was Trump who broke the nuclear agreement with Iran and started this entire sequence of events.
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I would say so definitely. My position on the Israel-Palestine conflict has changed somewhat in the past few months. I'm not really anti-Israel anymore so much as pro-peace. I believe Israelis and Palestinians should find a way to get along and stop bombing each other.
As for the antisemitism in the Democratic party, they really should have seen it coming. I don't think the Women's March is necessarily antisemitic in itself, but they should have known that they were shooting themselves in the foot when they threw their support behind and Islamist leader, given all the hatred and tension that exists between the Jewish and Muslim communities.
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