Here’s the war you requested, Mr. President: Open thread

Donald Trump is a fucking idiot and a moral monster. He can’t be allowed to stay in power, and he needs to suffer some kind of non-violent punishment for all the evil he’s done. However, Redsilkphoenix’s idea would serve him right.

@Redsilkphoenix

Can we just dump this thing in Trump’s lap and have him and his adult family members out on the front lines?

Time for one of my favorite songs. It’s about the Iraq war, but it applies here shockingly well.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8mKsfngMRyg

Why don’t presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?

I agree. Let Trump and his cronies fight the war, bone spurs notwithstanding.

Ya know, occasionally I wonder if this really is the “dumbest possible timeline” as people have said. And further, if maybe that’s the only reason why we’re still alive.

I mean, like, what if in any “reasonable” timeline humanity would have wiped itself out several times over by yet another world war, but in this timeline, it was repeatedly derailed? And now “destiny” (note: I don’t actually believe in that concept) is scraping the bottom of the barrel in a desperate attempt to get it back on track? And then hopefully this particular stupid will ultimately be self-derailing, at least until the next existential threat. If it wasn’t for all this then we wouldn’t be here to witness it, or anything else.

I doubt it, but if there would be any way to prove it, then that would be a really strange application of the Anthropic Principle in action.

@Personalpest

I prefer the term “evil”, because it doesn’t downplay the very conscious choices he makes to make other people’s lives more miserable, instead of just disguising his actions under a perceived lack of knowledge or understanding.

The people who knew Trump before he ran for the presidency spoke up about his pettiness and obsession with revenge, a warning not too many took to heart only to realize how serious it was.

He reminds me of other malignant narcissists I’ve met over the years (some of them within my own family). Hellbent on power and control, and completely incapable of taking the least bit of criticism in any way, shape or form.

I’m sure Trump is no genius, but as far as I’m concerned, he isn’t ignorant enough to legitimately think there would be no war. No, that was his intent from the very beginning, and the pain and hurt it will bring to all parties involved is also part of his sickening little plan to get back at everybody and/or to consolidate his power.

@ Diego Duarte, yeah, even Drumpf isn’t that stupid. He knew people would get hurt and die over this – he just didn’t care. He thinks he can run the world the way he ran his sleazy real estate business and (as they say at TMP) the only way he understands winning is that he’s made someone else lose.

My vote is for a Trump wing at Leavenworth. Co-ed so we can put Ivanka and Elaine Chao there too.

I hate this so much.

Clearly the media, politicians and the rest of the establishment haven’t learned shit in the past 20 years.

I guess we’re going to find out if the American people have.

I’m not too optimistic.

Both sides want to avoid war, but what is much more important to them is looking strong. The difference is that Trump is known for being impulsive and Iran is surprisingly patient. Apparently “They have time but we have watches,” is a saying over there.
It seems the only justification for the killing is that Soleimani was a bad guy. Trump supporters accept this of course, but most people are just thinking about the people who could die, and may have already died. Iranian generals can see USA news, so I can understand why the Pentagon is vague or misleading at the moment.
I worry that in many right wing minds there is the assumption that morality requires that you fight a bad guy. Certainly that is the case in most video games and movies and comic books, but reality is different.

Not sure if this fits, but since this is still a feminist side and I’m something of a street worker and medic, I could offer some ideas for surviving in world headed for yet another stupid (possibly apocalyptic) war where every trick in the book is used to manipulate and dominate the populace. I have played enough Fallout and read enough stuff to feel safe-ish in this timeline and I care about civilians (should’ve joined the MSF instead of finding love but who cares now, it’s yet again about species survival and my genocidal country has a bit of a reputation for its teachers and self-righteous moralist)

It does not overly rely on technology, just feelings (so space, time, food etc. are important) and I think that feelings of right and wrong are still somewhat important. I do not want to discuss this in that other thread that currently seems to be a safe zone for victims, but I think it’s ok in a thread about war because this is not a place for people with spoons to worry about.

The first idea boils is a simple one: Do not trust them just because they are nice — or women.

@Naglfar

> Who should we trust? I understand that it’s a bad idea to trust simply based on whether someone seems “nice,” so how do I know if someone can be trusted?

Sorry but I cannot give a straight answer to that because it depends on the person. My personal answer as someone who has played with computers enough to understand that “User-Problem” can mean just about anything and that Layer-8 can be either totally the users fault or a lot of other peoples is this:

Use all your senses. Do not rely on technology, mediums books, modes of talking, modes of building trust etc. that leak information that can be used to disseminate false information etc.

In my opinion: Consider how much of a help your computer really is in a world where information is very cheap and simulating a thousand voices is a matter of technology, a graphical department, working time in the rest of the world and prices thereof.

For a lot of people who speak English but do not life in America or close to it (sorry if you do, I suck at remembering people at the moment, everyone seems to be on their way to check out, a healthy human brain has a capacity for about 200 names without technological crutches and I’m stressed) your media is a spectacle, your elections are a lot like your media and you ignore every advice given on this subject as outside interference. You ignore a lot of critics on the subject, it seems ok for your country to torture traitors, you currently torture Chelsea Manning, a trans woman.

A lot of you do not believe in history, philosophy or other things one normally talks about and you have the resources to back up that lifestyle. That’s why my English has a huge British and generally non-standard-american influence whenever I travel anywhere where I could be confused for an American.

Americans seem extremely reliant on new technology to me and most of them do not care a lot about basic education as long as it works fast and works for them.

So I would suggest to use what works and to take a good hard look at every technology that uses a lot of energy (like computers that are — yet again — mostly there to display fancy graphics and a smooth experience while the cloud (i.e. a lot of other computers) does the heavy lifting). Keep in mind that those technologies were always a devils bargain and that you cannot solve human problems by simply trowing more technology at it — you just export the problems.

Think about what you want to do and how you want to live. How you want to structure your human relationships in a world headed for yet another showdown. I don’t know about time frames because I usually get a phone call in some tone of voice and decide to act based on how urgent it sounds. It would work a lot of better in person and it definitely does not work when people do not understand that they can cause psychotrauma to me when talking in a vaguely alarming way about someone “not feeling too well” on a medium that does not fit my needs to decide quickly whether this means an emergency or not before my adrenal gland which are influenced by my estradiol level, satiation, previous stress etc. decide that for me.

So I would personally suggest to look for little people and to talk to them. To read books made out of paper instead of the much comfier (but so much easier to change) bits. To learn (again?) how to read people, rooms, items and so on. Maybe look at prepping if it makes you feel safer….

Generally we do not have the same experience of time. I personally like to be calm and I like to pause for a moment to consider the next step if this seems a good idea. Also, I can hume to the tune of the *M*A*S*H title song . My life is mine to live and therein lies calm.

Who should we trust? I understand that it’s a bad idea to trust simply based on whether someone seems “nice,” so how do I know if someone can be trusted?

I know that talking about this is an offer that is possibly traumatizing, but as I said, I do not think that there are people here who lack spoons.

I guess that the argument I am trying to make is that feminist in general have overplayed their hand in the whole look-at-us-suffering-spiel. A lot of them have the option to not have kids, not increase population size and not make the world a place where the species is over capacity — they simply choose to because they can afford the medicine. Of course, the patriarchy, represented in their usual institutions has their hand in it (and women have their hand in that). It simply seems odd to me that we are in a world where women are the majority and have a lot of influence, they are still automatically seen as the victims by default. A lot of people choose to ignore the fact that it’s very easy to influence people nearby by example, manipulate them if need be and to pass one off as the other.

Anyhow, they got that option by medicine which they tested on the less privileged. They talk about trans people being monsters for daring to rape the female form or some other play on words to evoke strong feelings that basically boil down to emotional manipulation. Your last election was full of tricks like that (Hillary is still quite good at being a damsel in distress) and even though I think that she would have been better than Trump, the Obama years seem to have been a bad compromise too. It was a good year for trans people (earned my third gender, yay) but it had a horrible cost (a few more names for my private list for IDAHOT which thankfully is not long enough yet to require paper)

I do not know a lot about politics, I just know what hurts me and I try to make decisions based on that. I do not know which parties in Germany have the lowest probability of killing sisters of mine, hurting my family (traumatized by WW2, mostly good people who try their very best to help, desperate to help me and confused that I won’t let them), my friends etc. If you talk about nuclear war, I think about the species and how I could be helpful and nice to survivors (I have some preferences but nuclear probably does not care that much and I also have protocols), provided of course I am one of them. It’s a bit of eustress compared to being criticized by just about everyone for my life choices including my way of talking, dressing, walking in a space, moving my hands — you know, being hard-to-educate regarding things that structure time, space, feelings and the other human necessities. I currently have the luxury to not have a working cellphone and I don’t have to have one for at least two hours and this topic is more interesting than my other life problems at the moment.

I must admit that I am not that good at politics because it seems to me that you either have to either:

1. know a lot of people and be overly friendly with them (more than I can remember or be polite to when even a little stressed) ,
2. be an asshole who does not care about how many of the people you talk to have a chance to talk to you
3. cheat by using technology and an organization which often enough turns out to be 2 with the help of technology.

For anyone interested in this mode of thinking I would recommend looking at ancient greece and the link between population size, methods of control and the consequences thereof. Oh and kong fuzius for the trias structure.

regarding politics:
I have avoided voting green because their more radical fringes do not like trans people and people who are too green and talk too much about saving animals and equate murder of one species to the murder of another (like humans) seem mean to me. I have some plans to learn more about nature in the near future.

I prefer to talk to people like in real life and try to avoid “social” media which only shrinks the distance and means that someone is listening in.

I learned this lesson in a very hard way because I was equated by a politician to terrorists and pedophiles at an early age for daring to use the internet unsupervised and I seem to have been a highly sensitive kid who is good at learning about recent German history and bad at communicating boundaries. This ruthless mode of education has left traces in my mind. I am also very good at hiding my life from scrutiny to get the hormones that I want, so I have pondered the implications of this experience and for a while. Turns out I am good at understanding people and having empathy with so-called monsters without becoming one.

regarding so-called monsters:
It’s trivial to construct humanism or religion or any other system that organizes the cooperation of humans and conveniently leave out a small portion of the population. For feminists, I would recommend looking at men. It seems odd to me that in a world that has more women than men and where women often do have a choice to not have kids, the old mode of talking about being forced to do everything bad in this world works too well.

I could offer some stories I have heard or otherwise noticed (no names, no identifieable data….) on victims of parental abuse from a male perspective (trans guys, kids who where abused) and my interactions with them if anyone wants.

Notice how impeachment seems to be out of the news? Mission accomplished?

YAY, I have a working data cellphone for surfing if need be.
Now to see if it can also act as a simple cellphone and stress generator…