The Maelstrom of Violence

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-22-2017, 02:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-22-2017, 10:24 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The big thing missing in your analysis is the Cold War.  The big lesson falling out of World War II was the domino theory.  Supposedly, the military must be maintained to contain autocratic rule, mostly in the form of communism.

Domino theory itself is not a direct consequence of WW2, rather it is a consequence of Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe following WW2.  Your premise is flawed from the outset by this.

World War II was fought by authoritarian powers to expand territory and resources, though racist motivation played its part.  The Soviet Union's post war political influence zone was determined by how far west their army got  Oh, there was a little negation with the allies once it was clear the war was ending shorty.  Some allied armies stopped while the war is on to avoid spending lives on land they had already negotiated away.  For the most part though, the post war influence zones followed the results of the war.  As the negotiations with the allies took place during the war, the notion that land was taken after the war seems strange.

The allies tended to restore the old governments from before the war started rather than pushing influence grabs, though the Domino Theory came into play early.  Churchill's Iron Curtain speech might mark the formal public debut of the theory.  It's safe to say less public maneuvering came before.  Regardless, whether or not you think advancing armies had any thing to do with the soviet land and resource grab, the Domino Theory was a result of the clash of Hitler and Stalin and shaped western tactics for decades.  The core of the theory was that Stalin's grab should go no further, though the basis and perceived importance of the theory drew heavily from Hitler's approach before the war went hot.  You do not let autocratic government slowly nibble on easy targets, and thus get stronger, strong enough perhaps to take on bigger targets.

And waving your hands to change when Stalin took control of various areas and resources doesn't change that a bit.

(08-22-2017, 02:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-22-2017, 10:24 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The domino theory was first challenged by the peace movement during the Vietnam era.  It was challenged again externally, by France and Russia, during Bush 43’s Iraq war, as well as domestically in the stay the course v cut and run debate.  Both France and Russia were dealing for Iraq’s oil before the war started, and took exception to a sole superpower playing at neo colonialism.  Iran had it’s own ideas on local balance of power.  The western world was to a great extent willing to look away from the American Empire while the Cold War was in effect, but even an extremely competent and practiced Bush 43 foreign policy team didn’t anticipate how much opposition they would face when the sole superpower seriously twisted arms going for neo colonialism.

Yes, and no.  Domino theory was firs challenged during the awakening, mostly at first by the civil rights movement.  As Mohammad Ali said:  No Vietnamese ever called me nigger.  The so-called peace movement was largely ineffective both in the 1960s and the 2000s.  Rather what ended the Vietnam war was pressure put on the political class by GIs and Silents who were tired of seeing coffins being sent home on their Tee-Vee every night at 6PM.  (I actually had to think about using the 12 hour clock since I think in 24 hour.)  In the 2000s yes Russia and France opposed the American Empire, but honestly we yanks have never cared what smelly foreigners (particularly of the cheese eating surrender monkey kind) have ever had to say.  You can call that arrogant or whatever you want, but that is the reality of the current and traditional attitude of Americans to foreigners and foreign things.  Seriously it is next to impossible to get us to use the metric system like everyone else--never mind that doing so would make life exponentially easier in many ways too numerous to mention in this thread.

My 'Vietnam era' overlaps your 'awakening'.  I'll suggest 'Vietnam era' is the more accurate label as the Domino Theory conflicting with the peace movement is better described thus.  The awakening could be seen as extending before the height of the peace movement, thus arguably I chose the more accurate label.  Otherwise, your presentation is more or less accurate and consistent with my point.  After Vietnam, we spent a lot on the military, we postured a lot, but seldom engaged large numbers of boots on the ground.

Yes, Americans tend to demonize war opponents, political opponents, the newly immigrated, races, genders and likely others that aren't popping to mind just now.  I would and have opposed this, but it's tribal thinking.  We aren't the only nation to do it.  Not all of us do it.  Some are starting to become more aware of this and resist it.  I see tribal thinking as a character flaw to be fought, not an excuse for bad behavior.  Some seem to embrace it, though.  Does this make it right and proper to demonize those that demonize?

(08-22-2017, 02:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(08-22-2017, 10:24 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I can sympathize a lot with an alternate history shifting our heavy military spending and light domestic spending with the fall of the Berlin wall, but your partisan spin on history neglecting the Cold War is incomplete.  The West was going to contain communism.

Good.  But I'm not concerned so much with history as I am the future.  That is far less certain.  To put it simply empires are formed from the desire to amass power and resources (an animalistic instinct as I've pointed out previously), however, maintenance of these empires is a choice.  The Empire could collapse relatively peacefully and relatively easily just by it no longer being funded.

On the state level this is more difficult.  However, culture is shifting as to where largely speaking the Emperor has no clothes.  While the President himself is quite popular except with rabid communists (basically anyone to the left of John McCain) the federal government itself and its empire and its bureaucracy is not. 

I'm not crazy about polls.  I'll let others handle that side of things.  However, you seem to be becoming partisan blind about the popularity of the president.  When  you warp reality that badly, no one will take your arguments seriously.  Trump's popularity is plunging in the view of any who keep track of reality.

Not that the Congress is doing any better.  We have too many partisans of different stripes.  The divide is even enough than no one is achieving much.  It should be no surprise that they're not popular either.

(08-22-2017, 02:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I think you're stuck in a time warp if you believe that Trump and the Republican base is still interested in 3T memes.  Trump himself is a hostile take over of the GOP and a repudiation of the Neo-Cons (which are really Trotskites pretending to be Republicans).  The "new" GOP will be one taking its queues from a far older current of American political experience.

Indeed, the President's speech last night indicates to me that he's not interested in nation building, what he is interested in is creating a stable situation where American Troops can eventually be withdrawn and not in the cut and run, power vacuum creating way that Obama did Iraq.

Many of Trump's campaign promises echoed the unraveling memes.  Rural areas are still enamored of Reagan, and will tend to vote for anyone who best promises to try to implement his ideas.  To a great extent, the Republican establishment's inability to make these ideas work resulted in the election of an outsider who was seen as the best chance of implementing them.  Trump, of course, isn't an idea person.  He's intuitive, he does want he wants.  Thus, what he promised and what he's doing are quite different.  This is one factor in his extreme loss of popularity.

At the same time, many smart articulate people will advocate Republican ideas without embracing the unraveling memes.  You can't ignore the main line, yet attributing loyalty to the unraveling memes to those who don't embrace them would be a strawman.  While a few people stepping away from the unraveling memes is a nice start, keeping some loyalty to the real world is nice.

But it ends up in stuff like Bannon promising one day to go to war on Trump's behalf, and the next day he's making war on Trump's proposal for the Afghan war.  You can't peg all conservatives as pushing the same stuff.  It shifts absurdly, and I'm not claiming the progressives are united and cooperating either.

In some ways, I think Trump is learning.  The Trump of the week is less horrible than months ago.  He might pull out of his dive, given a chance.  However, he seems to have lost a lot of Congress critters, the coastal press is in a feeding frenzy, he still has a Twitter account, his polls are crashing, his allies keep hearing Trump's famous line, "you're fired", and the tendency to attack when frustrated hasn't faded.  

We'll see...  I confess I'm starting to worry that he won't last long enough to thoroughly discredit your party of stupid.

(08-22-2017, 02:02 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: We already have the best possible feedback loops available in the internet, political activism and electoral politics.  What is necessary is absolute adherence to free speech--something that is being actively combated by the so-called Left these days with their political correctness.

It should be noted that the very idea of political correctness itself is a mutation of a concept originally developed by the CPSU during the Stalin Era.

I guess I'll repeat my differences.  Representative democracy is flawed in in including representatives that can be corrupted.  Corruption and a broken campaign contribution system are key to resolving many of our problems.  We could throw in gerrymandering.

And while I agree that political correctness can be taken too far, there are nooks in our culture that still exclude people by race, culture, gender, etc...  So long as there is still blatant prejudice, political correctness and affirmative action have their place.  The more sensible elements of the Alt Right shouldn't be ignored out of hand, but neither should their principles be blindly accepted as overriding all others.  In the meanwhile a lot of this supposed high principle is being used as an excuse to exercise hate.  It's another of those divides that might be resolved if people on both sides would listen, cling less that tightly to their values and respect others, but this seems unlikely in many ways.