Why do American "anti elite" types think the Kremlin is OK?

[X_4AD_84]

I just have to ask.

Y'all give Kremlin tools like Assange and Snowden a pass.

In your book:

"big bad Western elites" = the devil.

Seriously?

I will concede that Western Corporatism is not ideal.

But look at the current alternatives.

[Anthony '58]

I say the Kremlin is "OK" today for the same reason that it was "OK" during World War II:

Because it was/is the enemy of our enemy: Nazism then - and Islamo-Nazism now.

[Mikebert]

I don't approve of the Russian polity as Putin runs it.  But I don't see Russia as a threat to America.  Also what Russia says on foreign policy makes more sense to me than what America says.  That was NOT the case during the Cold War.  I can see how what Putin says applies to the world as I see it.  I do not see how what America says is supposed to make sense.  

Why was America so eager so see Saddam, Quadhafi and Assad replaced by an Islamic theocracy?  I don't know. 

Why do we want an aging (and possibly softening) theocracy in Iran replaced by an extremist Islamist group, as most Republicans seem to want. I don't know that either.

 I could be cynical and think that we want to spread fundamentalist Islam so as to recreate a far-away enemy so as to justify ignoring domestic issues, but I don't think this is really right.

 I am simply at a loss.  I think I used to understand our foreign policy during the Cold War. Now it seems bonkers.

[Mikebert]

(08-08-2016, 12:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-07-2016, 04:00 PM)Anthony Wrote: I say the Kremlin is "OK" today for the same reason that it was "OK" during World War II:

Because it was/is the enemy of our enemy: Nazism then - and Islamo-Nazism now.

Islamic derived violence and inter-Islamic war are minor blips on the geopolitical radar screen.

It is, as it always has been, the large, highly industrialized, high tech major nations, who are the real players.

There are only two that truly rise up on my own radar screen of dangerous adversaries. And since 16-JUL-2001 they have been in a marriage. It may or may not be a marriage of convenience but it is a marriage nonetheless.

Can you explain your thinking?  What exactly would be the benefits that China or Russia could gain by making war with the US? 

While you are coming up with a response ask yourself this.  Do you think the US maintenance of an global military presence (i.e. acting at the world's policeman) is worth the cost to the US? 

If not, do you think China or Russia want to take this project on?  It makes no sense for them (see below).

You may not remember the Cold War, but the USSR did not really gain anything from maintaining their international presence.  Their intervention in Afghanistan destroyed them.  They did this in response to us doing it which we did because we were spooked by the success of the Maoist insurgents in 1949.  That is a Chinese civil war created the modern day American empire that Donald Trump is now* questioning because it makes no bloody financial sense.

*finally (sigh)

[Ragnarök_62]

(08-08-2016, 04:08 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Can you explain your thinking?  What exactly would be the benefits that China or Russia could gain by making war with the US? 

While you are coming up with a response ask yourself this.  Do you think the US maintenance of an global military presence (i.e. acting at the world's policeman) is worth the cost to the US? 

If not, do you think China or Russia want to take this project on?  It makes no sense for them (see below).

You may not remember the Cold War, but the USSR did not really gain anything from maintaining their international presence.  Their intervention in Afghanistan destroyed them.  They did this in response to us doing it which we did because we were spooked by the success of the Maoist insurgents in 1949.  That is a Chinese civil war created the modern day American empire that Donald Trump is now* questioning because it makes no bloody financial sense.

*finally (sigh)

But, but, Mikebert haven't you heard, the US is the indispensable nation?

Without our 100's of offshore military bases, our cabal of NeoCON chickenhawks, our MIC shills, our grand and glorious history of CIA plots, the world would be doomed due to a lack of US penultimate wealth and wisdom showering down like bombs over Baghdad.

Russia and China are too busy living in the real world to bother with the above, man.

[pbrower2a]

(08-08-2016, 03:46 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I don't approve of the Russian polity as Putin runs it.  But I don't see Russia as a threat to America.  Also what Russia says on foreign policy makes more sense to me than what America says.  That was NOT the case during the Cold War.  I can see how what Putin says applies to the world as I see it.  I do not see how what America says is supposed to make sense.  

Why was America so eager so see Saddam, Quadhafi and Assad replaced by an Islamic theocracy?  I don't know. 

Why do we want an aging (and possibly softening) theocracy in Iran replaced by an extremist Islamist group, as most Republicans seem to want. I don't know that either.

 I could be cynical and think that we want to spread fundamentalist Islam so as to recreate a far-away enemy so as to justify ignoring domestic issues, but I don't think this is really right.

 I am simply at a loss.  I think I used to understand our foreign policy during the Cold War. Now it seems bonkers.

American foreign policy under Barack Obama has come to resemble what Ronald Reagan got away with, and Hillary Clinton seems to be adopting much the same. So perhaps it is American foreign policy that is aging. To be sure, Marxism-Leninism is dead everywhere but North Korea (China and Vietnam are practically capitalist, but even Marxism-Leninism as remains in North Korea remains as despised under Barack Obama as the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era. Then there is Daesh, which seems to be fascist Jihad.

Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi were murderous tyrants, and Bashir Assad is one too. Murderous tyrants in command of second-rate or lesser powers have a tendency to implode over time.

[Cynic Hero '86]

External factors like Russia are largely irrelevant to many Xers and Millies decision to back Trump. Xers and Millies are simply tired of the boomers tyranny. Iran, China and ISIS are seen as examples of the Boomers ineptitude and give Millies yet more reason to shove boomers out of the halls of Capitol Hill.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Compare what the boomers created with what their predecessors the missionaries/lost built and you can clearly see the subpar performance of the boomers. The last saeculum had strong leaders like the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chiang, Antonescu, Pavelic, Tito, Kim-il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Gloriu-dej, Ceaucescu, Sukarno, Suharto. While the boomers and their selfish "awakening ideals" rammed worldwide mediocrity down our throats. Only in remote regions of the world did the old glorious values survive in leaders such as Idi Amin, Khomeini, Saddam, Milosevic, Tudjman. The first 2/3rds of the 20th century (and basically the entire century in remote regions such as the middle east, the balkans and southeast Asia) was a "bureaucratic adventurer's" Dream world: Adventurers such as Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Tsuji, Shiro Ishii, Lin Biao, and countless lower ranking Generals and Colonels from numerous different countries (many of these countries often warring against each other) over the decades were able to make names for themselves as liquidators: The worldwide selfish Boomer awakening put an end to all of this. THIS is the era the TRUMP movement seeks to restore, do not see the trump movement in isolation, All those forces worldwide that lost out when the Boomers decided to wreck civilization are backing Trump. Think of the Joker from the movie "the dark knight" and you will see the leading edge of the manifestation, TRUMP 2016.

[Eric the Green]

YOu mean The Donald, that quintessential example of everything that's wrong with Boomers?

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have gotten some things wrong in foreign policy, but nothing like George W Bush or even his father, or Nixon and Johnson. I think, going forward, the "idealistic boomer" Hillary will help the forces of revolution when the alternative is genocide by a tyrannical maniac; help financially and diplomatically that is, but not by invading the rebels' land. And she will work with the institutions of global security rather than making pre-emptive wars with coalitions of the willing.

What to do about the provocations of the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon? I think the bottom line is that our security arrangements with NATO and the force of international law require the USA to help defend an ally that is being invaded for conquest. And to help in other such situations too, IF the international community agrees that world law and order has been broken. Invading other nations for conquest is not legal. The USA can no longer be the world's policeman. But in a world where maniacs roam the streets and threaten nations, there need to be policemen, employed and deployed by the community by law, and not vigilantes. The values of Cynic Hero, ruthless conquest and exploitation by egomaniacs, might have been tolerable in the agricultural age, but not today. International law and order is what makes civilization.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Assad is the closest thing there is to the "good guy" in Syria.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-10-2016, 12:17 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Compare what the boomers created with what their predecessors the missionaries/lost built and you can clearly see the subpar performance of the boomers. The last saeculum had strong leaders like the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chiang, Antonescu, Pavelic, Tito, Kim-il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Gloriu-dej, Ceaucescu, Sukarno, Suharto. While the boomers and their selfish "awakening ideals" rammed worldwide mediocrity down our throats. Only in remote regions of the world did the old glorious values survive in leaders such as Idi Amin, Khomeini, Saddam, Milosevic, Tudjman. The first 2/3rds of the 20th century (and basically the entire century in remote regions such as the middle east, the balkans and southeast Asia) was a "bureaucratic adventurer's" Dream world: Adventurers such as Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Tsuji, Shiro Ishii, Lin Biao, and countless lower ranking Generals and Colonels from numerous different countries (many of these countries often warring against each other) over the decades were able to make names for themselves as liquidators: The worldwide selfish Boomer awakening put an end to all of this. THIS is the era the TRUMP movement seeks to restore, do not see the trump movement in isolation, All those forces worldwide that lost out when the Boomers decided to wreck civilization are backing Trump. Think of the Joker from the movie "the dark knight" and you will see the leading edge of the manifestation, TRUMP 2016.

Sometimes one can take a really out there post and use it as a take off point to say something meaningful.  This particular post poses a challenge in doing that.

In the Agricultural Age of one man rule, the only time and only way one could achieve peace and plenty was with a very strong leader who could suppress infighting and greed among the middle levels of government.  This style of strong man tyranny has its merits in a country that has never seen democracy or human rights.  Many Agricultural Age cultures and their modern decedents just don't have the values that make democracy work.  Thus, The Donald spoke truth in his not so long ago praises for how Saddam Hussain was a praiseworthy leader...  Assuming Saddam was practicing Agricultural Age values, that Iraq was saturated with people immersed in Agricultural Age values, and assuming Trump is championing Agricultural Age values.

This rather ignores the fact that Industrial Age cultures centered on democracy and capitalism have kicked the butts of Agricultural Age style countries and governments.  Tyranny is a particularly weak and inefficient form of government.  Modern tyrannies vary from impoverished to failed states.  See Syria and North Korea as examples of how well tyrants run their economies... and without an economy one isn't going to have a strong boots on the ground type military.

In other threads I've tried to distill the essence of the Red and Blue patterns.  The GIs initiated the Blue.  Americans working together for the common good can achieve great things.  "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

The Red?  Government is inherently corrupt and inefficient.  Any attempt to do any good through government action is apt to fail.  To prevent such failures, cut taxes, cut entitlements and do as much as possible in the private sector.

I've been struggling to say how both approaches have merit, have their place in American values.  Towards the end of the 1960s, the Democrats had been in power too long, were a bit too ready to throw money at problems, were allowing their bureaucracy to get too corrupt and inefficient.  The GIs and to some extent other generations had been bearing too many burdens, paying too many prices, for too long.  Try to keep that up indefinitely and you get into political trouble.  Through the 1970s a lot of folk watched the government's efforts repeatedly fail.  

I believe it possible to have government that is too big, and too small.  I can see successes in both sets of values, and I can see both approaches taken to very destructive extremes.  Both factions have some merits.  Both sets of ideas, if they are not limited and moderated by the presence of the other, can be highly problematic.

Anyway, we have Red Boomers, we have Blue Boomers, and they are very very different.  We also have Xers and Millies in both colors, also very different.  Anyway, anyone who is looking at generation gaps as our basic inherent problem rather than finding the proper balance between FDR and Reagan isn't seeing our problem.  

Anyway, I see blaming a certain age group is no more constructive or meaningful than blaming and making enemies of people who have a particular shade of skin, or who worship God in a different way.  We have problems of economic inequality, a racially unequal justice system.  The Middle East has similar problems with economic inequality, 'governments' enforcing religious prejudices and a culture of fighting conflicts by terrorizing the civilian population.

And there is a hint of Truth in what Cynic Hero is saying...  Only a Stalin, a Saddam Hussain, a Genghis Kahn would be a ruthless enough terrorists to intimidate everyone but his own people into cowering in fear and surrender.  Assad is dropping barrels full of explosive into market day crowds of civilians.  That makes him a 'good guy' as he is using the only sort of tactics that have worked in those countries?

I'm not ready to become that sort of 'good guy' or endorse that sort of 'good guy'.  The world has been slowly shifting away from Agricultural Age tyranny.  It is a long, slow, painful and deadly process.  How many revolutions and civil wars did the English and Americans have to fight in establishing their current styles of government?  I think the French are on their Fifth Republic?  Do we need a recount?  Russia is struggling with its First, and China hasn't really got that far yet?  How ugly were their Revolutions, and how far have they yet to go?

It's not going to be any easier in the Middle East.  It might well be easier in the short term to cling to the past than to try to move forward.  That's in effect what the Baathists and Islamists are both trying to do, cling hard to various flavors of yesterday's tyranny.

Moving forward isn't going to be easy and isn't going to be fast.  It should still be attempted.  It isn't going to get done by putting enough boots on the ground to suppress any and all insurrections.  Bush 43 demonstrated how expensive that approach is in blood, iron and gold.  It is not going to happen.  We are not going to be able to force cultural change at gunpoint.  Obama and Hillary have at best been muddling along, using force with much moderation, not achieving anything decisive through force, and persistently attempting to cool things down using diplomacy.  That's not an approach that will be satisfying if you are naive and impatient enough to think there are quick and easy solutions.

But that's the way we've got to go.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Xers and Millies are very dissatisfied with how the boomers are running things. I'll state my point using the weather as an analogy. Under the boomer leadership, America has essentially been a giant area of high-pressure. Xers and Millies despise this state of Affairs and want America to act as analogous to a deep area of low-pressure.

[Eric the Green]

(08-10-2016, 01:18 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: Assad is the closest thing there is to the "good guy" in Syria.

Strange thing to say, when he's by far the worst guy there, or anywhere.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-10-2016, 08:46 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-10-2016, 01:18 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Assad is the closest thing there is to the "good guy" in Syria.

Strange thing to say, when he's by far the worst guy there, or anywhere.

It all depends on what your definition of 'good' is.  Cynic Hero's is really really strange.

[Ragnarök_62]

(08-10-2016, 08:46 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-10-2016, 01:18 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Assad is the closest thing there is to the "good guy" in Syria.

Strange thing to say, when he's by far the worst guy there, or anywhere.

Even worse than IS ?   So, now please sort the following from least icky to most icky.

1. IS
2. Assad
3. Failed state

[pbrower2a]

(08-10-2016, 12:17 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Compare what the boomers created with what their predecessors the missionaries/lost built and you can clearly see the subpar performance of the boomers. The last saeculum had strong leaders like the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chiang, Antonescu, Pavelic, Tito, Kim-il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Gloriu-dej, Ceaucescu, Sukarno, Suharto.

Holy cow! Most of those people are just simply evil! If I am to praise people like those I must also praise the likes of Ed Gein, Charles Whitman, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Geoffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Alton Coleman...

Why not Karl Mannerheim?  He was a spectacularly-competent wartime leader, one of the greatest ever. But he did not leave a trail of dead bodies (except enemy soldiers behind). No, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no half-dead survivors of work to exhaustion on starvation rations, no hostages taken and shot, no people disappearing into the night.... He well saved his own skin.

Imagine the Axis Powers with leaders like Mannerheim as the rule and not the exception, with the Allies as evil. A hint: it is a bunch of Imperial Wizards and Grand Dragons who get called to account for bodies stacked like cordwood, hostages taken and killed, people disappearing into the night, and cadaverous persons milling about in labor camps that the Germans and Japanese liberate.

It is far easier to win a war if one leaves the defeated foe nothing to fight for. Think of the long-lasting resistance analogous to the Polish Home Army that bedeviled the Americans in Germany, Italy, and Japan for several years. Oh, it didn't?  Let's see -- give people free elections, strong unions, and prosperity without exploitation... in my alternative history novel, the Americans who don't flee the "Dominion of Oregon" find themselves steadily adopting Japanese culture.

Quote:While the boomers and their selfish "awakening ideals" rammed worldwide mediocrity down our throats. Only in remote regions of the world did the old glorious values survive in leaders such as Idi Amin, Khomeini, Saddam, Milosevic, Tudjman. The first 2/3rds of the 20th century (and basically the entire century in remote regions such as the middle east, the balkans and southeast Asia) was a "bureaucratic adventurer's" Dream world: Adventurers such as Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Tsuji, Shiro Ishii, Lin Biao, and countless lower ranking Generals and Colonels from numerous different countries (many of these countries often warring against each other) over the decades were able to make names for themselves as liquidators: The worldwide selfish Boomer awakening put an end to all of this.

...and I will take Mohandas Gandhi over all the vicious militarists and rabid nationalists. Agricultural-age society? better his spinning wheels than the wheel of medieval torturers. If you want to see agricultural-age values at their best, then contemplate the Old Order Amish.

[/quote]

Quote:[quote pid='7039' dateline='1470849460']
THIS is the era the TRUMP movement seeks to restore, do not see the trump movement in isolation, All those forces worldwide that lost out when the Boomers decided to wreck civilization are backing Trump. Think of the Joker from the movie "the dark knight" and you will see the leading edge of the manifestation, TRUMP 2016.

[/quote]

The end of the Crisis Era typically sees the best Idealists prevailing -- the ones who recognize that they can never be as pragmatic as the Reactive generation or as logical and technologically-savvy as the Civic generation of the time. They have toned down the self-righteousness of people like Donald Trump who basically says "My way or the highway!

[Ragnarök_62]

Cynic Hero Wrote:The last saeculum had strong leaders like the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chiang, Antonescu, Pavelic, Tito, Kim-il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Gloriu-dej, Ceaucescu, Sukarno, Suharto.

So, are you spoilin' for a fight to support some leader like the above?   All the above had a huge draft you know. 






A special dedication for Cynic Hero.  

Quote:Only in remote regions of the world did the old glorious values survive in leaders such as Idi Amin, Khomeini, Saddam, Milosevic, Tudjman. The first 2/3rds of the 20th century (and basically the entire century in remote regions such as the middle east, the balkans and southeast Asia) was a "bureaucratic adventurer's" Dream world:

You like cannibals like Idi Amin?  That's weird, man.

Quote:Adventurers such as Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Tsuji, Shiro Ishii, Lin Biao, and countless lower ranking Generals and Colonels from numerous different countries (many of these countries often warring against each other) over the decades were able to make names for themselves as liquidators: The worldwide selfish Boomer awakening put an end to all of this. THIS is the era the TRUMP movement seeks to restore, do not see the trump movement in isolation, All those forces worldwide that lost out when the Boomers decided to wreck civilization are backing Trump. Think of the Joker from the movie "the dark knight" and you will see the leading edge of the manifestation, TRUMP 2016.

The Joker.  The joker seems more like an anarchist.

[Eric the Green]

(08-10-2016, 10:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-10-2016, 12:17 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Compare what the boomers created with what their predecessors the missionaries/lost built and you can clearly see the subpar performance of the boomers. The last saeculum had strong leaders like the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Chiang, Antonescu, Pavelic, Tito, Kim-il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, Gloriu-dej, Ceaucescu, Sukarno, Suharto.

Holy cow! Most of those people are just simply evil! If I am to praise people like those I must also praise the likes of Ed Gein, Charles Whitman, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Geoffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Alton Coleman...

Why not Karl Mannerheim?  He was a spectacularly-competent wartime leader, one of the greatest ever. But he did not leave a trail of dead bodies (except enemy soldiers behind). No, no bodies stacked like cordwood, no half-dead survivors of work to exhaustion on starvation rations, no hostages taken and shot, no people disappearing into the night.... He well saved his own skin.

Imagine the Axis Powers with leaders like Mannerheim as the rule and not the exception, with the Allies as evil. A hint: it is a bunch of Imperial Wizards and Grand Dragons who get called to account for bodies stacked like cordwood, hostages taken and killed, people disappearing into the night, and cadaverous persons milling about in labor camps that the Germans and Japanese liberate.

It is far easier to win a war if one leaves the defeated foe nothing to fight for. Think of the long-lasting resistance analogous to the Polish Home Army that bedeviled the Americans in Germany, Italy, and Japan for several years. Oh, it didn't?  Let's see -- give people free elections, strong unions, and prosperity without exploitation... in my alternative history novel, the Americans who don't flee the "Dominion of Oregon" find themselves steadily adopting Japanese culture.

Quote:While the boomers and their selfish "awakening ideals" rammed worldwide mediocrity down our throats. Only in remote regions of the world did the old glorious values survive in leaders such as Idi Amin, Khomeini, Saddam, Milosevic, Tudjman. The first 2/3rds of the 20th century (and basically the entire century in remote regions such as the middle east, the balkans and southeast Asia) was a "bureaucratic adventurer's" Dream world: Adventurers such as Beria, Himmler, Heydrich, Tsuji, Shiro Ishii, Lin Biao, and countless lower ranking Generals and Colonels from numerous different countries (many of these countries often warring against each other) over the decades were able to make names for themselves as liquidators: The worldwide selfish Boomer awakening put an end to all of this.

...and I will take Mohandas Gandhi over all the vicious militarists and rabid nationalists. Agricultural-age society? better his spinning wheels than the wheel of medieval torturers. If you want to see agricultural-age values at their best, then contemplate the Old Order Amish.

Quote:[quote pid='7039' dateline='1470849460']
THIS is the era the TRUMP movement seeks to restore, do not see the trump movement in isolation, All those forces worldwide that lost out when the Boomers decided to wreck civilization are backing Trump. Think of the Joker from the movie "the dark knight" and you will see the leading edge of the manifestation, TRUMP 2016.

I wonder if Cynic Hero would support Jeffrey Dahmer for president.

[David Horn]

(08-10-2016, 01:18 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Assad is the closest thing there is to the "good guy" in Syria.

Not taking you even a little bit seriously, but, for the record, Assad has butchered several hundred thousand of his own citizens.  Usually, we consider genocide to be at the top of the evil list, so your comment is simply bizarre and disgusting.

[Eric the Green]

Simply so.