(10-12-2021, 03:00 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-09-2021, 01:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (snip)
We are in a 4T, and within the last five years at the most. COVID-19 has killed at a level characteristic of a Crisis-era war. In the last Crisis War people people died in war because they were shot, they stepped on mines, their ships were sunk, their aircraft were shot down, or their captors mistreated them. This time you want the shot if you are at all rational. People are dying while hooked up to ventilators in heroic efforts to keep people whose bodies COVID-19 has taken over can't keep up with the damage that the virus has done. People are being crippled, too, and people will get conditions that will shorten their lives.
The neoliberal era in economics that depended upon keeping prices low for retirees by sweating people who did the work and denying them opportunities to escape sweatshop conditions except through extraordinary effort, seems over. Prices were low and steady because real wages fell. Profits soared, especially in the property-rental business. Prices obviously rise when people start to get paid better.
700,000 lives lost? That is in between Washington DC (689,545 - 2020 Census) and Denver (715,522 2020 Census), 20th- and 19th-largest cities in the USA. We had a great national hissy-fit about the deaths from 9/11 about 3000 inexcusable deaths, and rightly so. That's about twenty times the nationwide deaths in an average year (it is actually in decline despite more miles driven), and we spend huge amounts of money to make highways and vehicles safer and dedicate much of the activity of state troopers to enforcing speed and DUI law, and set up red-light traps. The death toll from COVID-19 is more than 200 times that, and we have had days of death as horrible as. 9/11 or the Pearl Harbor attack. In war we cashier generals and admirals who have unexpected and inexcusable death tolls in combat. We whacked Osama bin Laden because he was never going to turn himself in.
We are going through some difficult and confusing times. Few were confused about loving or despising Donald Trump; there was little middle ground. There was little "I love his policies and hate his methods or character" or "He's a lousy President but I li9ke him any way" stuff. I can't fully compare Biden to Trump because we have seen him recently at his best in polling and still see him near his worst, and those are very different. Views of Trump were remarkably consistent in the electorate, and they are not so with President Biden.
Biden completely f----- up with Afghanistan. He wasn't unlucky as you say. He basically fucked himself, fucked his European allies, fucked the Americans who ended up being left behind, fucked Afghan allies, fucked the soldiers who died and fucked their families. Dude, America knows who was in charge and gave the orders at the time. All you are doing is making aimless excuses and pissing more Americans off by insulting their intelligence. Do you know what I've learned from Democrat's over the years? I've learned that the bulk of them are either clueless or dumb/ignorant or careless compared to those of us on the other side. The other thing I've learned, the majority of them are single today.
Trump cut the deal and stuck President Biden with the results. Yes, it stinks. This said, President Biden was in no position to give any aid to the Afghan republic when it was collapsing almost exponentially.
Nixon cut the accords that basically doomed the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to (ARVN) stand on its own against the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong. It couldn't. The government behind the ARVN was incompetent and corrupt. In 1975 the Communists took Saigon when Gerald Ford was President. In general, history books hold President Ford blameless. Carter did not use that against Ford in 1976.
It is too early to predict who the GOP nominee will be, but if that nominee tries to fault the Biden administration, then Joe Biden or his successor will turn the fault to Donald Trump. But maybe you could understand why beseiged garrisons surrendered in regional capitals:
The rapid collapse of Afghan resistance to the Taliban suggests structural failure of the Afghan army that we supposedly trained and whose loyalty the Afghan government bought. It would look now as if the regional commanders of the Afghan had reason to quit when the quitting was good. The Taliban has a reputation for brutal executions.
Quote:Najibullah was at the UN compound when the Taliban soldiers came for him on the evening of 26 September 1996.[8] The Taliban abducted him from UN custody and tortured him to death, and then dragged his dead (and, according to Robert Parry, castrated)[78] body behind a truck through the streets of Kabul. His brother, Shahpur Ahmadzai, was given the same treatment.[79] Najibullah and Shahpur's bodies were hanged from a traffic light pole outside the Arg presidential palace the next day in order to show the public that a new era had begun. The Taliban prevented Islamic funeral prayers for Najibullah and Shahpur in Kabul, but the bodies were later handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross who in turn sent their bodies to Gardez in Paktia Province, where both of them were buried after the Islamic funeral prayers for them by their fellow Ahmadzai tribesmen.[79][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Najibullah#cite_note-brother&brotherdead-79][/url]
That is quite an inducement to surrender.
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Quote:The issue with the vaccine is COVID-19 is only deadly for some people and that it's no worse than the flu for most people. Plus, the vaccine isn't a cure either. They say about one hundred million Americans have already been infected and survived. I know more people who have died from something other than COVID-19 than died from COVID-19 over the last year and a half. Biden is fighting a losing battle over COVID-19 because most Americans are better educated and more familiar with COVID-19. Oh, did you know that more people have died from COVID under Biden than Trump so far. So, what changed since he's been in office? Do you think the current border crisis that Biden and his ilk caused is having an impact and resulting in more Americans dying from COVID-19?
Who says that about one hundred million Americans have been infected and survived? Who? You need a credible source. Maybe more people died of the usual heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and vehicle incidents. Reputable sources hold that those who survive COVID-19 get lasting harm from organ damage and diabetes that might shorten their life expectancy, COVID-19 also causes sexual dysfunction, which by all accounts is miserable. Survivors often endure cognitive loss (which means that they end up stupider) and thus less competent on the job.
The real fault on COVID-19 is that people who could easily get the inoculation for free have not gotten it. They are the vast majority of people getting COVID-19 and even among those are the ones dying of it. Even before that there were people failing to mask themselves in public.
Comparing COVID-19 to influenza is like comparing HIV/AIDS when it first appeared to the venereal diseases that were then easy to treat if treated early. Maybe medical treatments will catch up... sort of... with COVID-19 as they did after far more years with HIV/AIDS. When HIV/AIDS was infecting and killing the sexually-reckless and IV drug users there were reliable ways in which to avoid it. COVID-19 might be sexually transmissible, but that is not its primary means of transmission. Unlike HIV/AIDS there is a nearly-foolproof way to avoid it that is even easier than abstaining from sex. Just get your @$$ to a clinic or a pharmacy (I will name names -- Wal*Mart, Rite Aid, Walgreen's, Meijer, Kroger, Spartan-Nash, and oodles of independent pharmacies in my general area), bare your arm, and take a nearly-painless jab. Then wait fifteen minutes to ensure that there are no quick repercussions. Repeat one month later, and your risk of dying from COVID-19 practically disappears.
It would be one thing if the American Right concerned itself solely with promoting economic growth by creating a business climate that puts profits first and treats workers badly while fostering corrupt deals and ravaging the environment. Such has some logic (if not morality) behind it. The anti-vax garbage is irresponsible as well as irrational in the extreme. In the past people used to say that they didn't want to wear a seat belt in a car because they did not want to be trapped in a burning car. Well, it's far easier to get out of a car if a seat belt has kept you from being paralyzed and unable to escape without help.
Quote:The issue with the economy is that it's getting worse with every stroke of Biden's. Biden and his ilk clamped down on domestic oil production resulting in higher gas prices. America is no longer energy independent like it was under Trump. Plus, the COVID related mandates are taking their toll on production and the workforce as well. Biden seems content with America moving towards another depression and civil war. So, what was the rest of the world doing as America was fighting its last civil war?
COVID-19 imposes something close to wartime economic conditions. Free market economics is impossible in a war or quasi-war. President Biden has not imposed wartime price and wage controls. It is not clear whether we have labor shortages or supply shortages. It is safe to assume that inflation will end when the economic mess that COVID-19 has inflicted is over.
Since when does a mask over a face reduce productivity?
Oh, by the way -- COVID-19 itself implies a huge increase in spending at all levels of government in medical costs alone. Add increases in welfare payments. Note also (and this was inevitable for reasons other than COVID-19) that real wages for industrial and clerical workers have generally fallen since the 1970's despite increases in productivity due to technological gains. That was not going to last.
Your guess is as good as mine on who the people dying of COVID-19 are. One obvious demographic is the MAGA types, and I suspect that they are heavily represented among truck drivers, warehouse workers, and salesclerks.
When it comes to action against COVID-19, Big Business did its role very well -- far better than Trump. President Biden has let Big Business do what it wants with mask and vaccine mandates. OK, so President Biden no more has the means for having people emerge from black helicopters to remove vaccine-resisters to detention camps so that they can be inoculated against the disease (presumably also while getting subjected to political indoctrination in Woke Culture and Critical Race Theory -- snark intended).
You claim to be for freedom, yet you cannot recognize that being sedated while on a respirator gives one less freedom than a prison inmate. It may be hyperbole on your part, but your attitudes toward inoculation against COVID-19 that some prominent people hold and defend, can grossly endanger life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You see yourself as a defender of freedom and life; I see you as the opposite. I expect to get a booster soon.
Death to COVID-19, and let the American People (whatever their traditions) enjoy freedom again!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.