Disagree. The GOP is certainly no longer a grownup in the room.
But the COVID mask/vaccine debacle is because foreign agents/governments have manipulated our social media in order to convince Americans to not take proper steps against the infection. This allows them to kill nearly a million Americans without firing a shot. Theyâve simply created a âmovementâ using misinformation, and the GOP are more likely to buy into the illogical argument of âfreedom.â
Tyranny, Episode 3,415 How Outrage Over Vaccine Mandates Became a Mainstream G.O.P. Stance Resistance to vaccine mandates, once a fringe position, has entered the Republican mainstream. But the governors fighting President Bidenâs Covid-19 vaccine requirements impose mandates of their own.
Like other Republican governors around the country, Tate Reeves of Mississippi reacted angrily to the coronavirus vaccine mandates President Biden imposed on private businesses. Declaring the move âterrifying,â he wrote on Twitter: âThis is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants.â
There is a deep inconsistency in that argument. Mississippi has some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the nation, which have not drawn opposition from most of its elected officials. Not only does it require children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and seven other diseases to attend school, but it goes a step further than most states by barring parents from claiming âreligious, philosophical or conscientiousâ exemptions.
Resistance to vaccine mandates was once a fringe position in both parties, more the realm of misinformed celebrities than mainstream political thought. But the fury over Mr. Bidenâs mandates shows how a once-extreme stance has moved to the center of the Republican Party. The governorsâ opposition reflects the anger and fear about the vaccine among constituents now central to their base, while ignoring longstanding policy and legal precedent in favor of similar vaccination requirements. (...)
âHow many terrorists will Joe Biden bring to America?â asked.
I believe on this issue former President Trump is absolutely correct. The USA is already FULL of terrorists. Born and bred. There is no more room for more terrorists.
P.S. Gotta love the way Donald J. Trump's apparent views will shift depending on how the wind blows. That demonstrates the kind of flexibility that made him a Man of Great Stature and America's best president ever.
i'm think this guy said we have biometric data on practically everyone that worked with the troops if we (and other countries/allies) do maybe we could/would use that data and be able to identify those involved just a thought
Moreover, they're hypocrites. Remember how a major core of their supposed philosophy (when they had one that wasn't Trump) was to leave businesses alone. Except now they're passing laws about whether private businesses can/can't have mask mandates. The GOP has long since crossed over into reprehensible racist illogical clown territory. When I predicted, ten years ago, that we were watching the collapse of the party, I really didn't expect this to be how they spent their final years, being despicable.
obviously desantis should let the school boards hash it out and decide definitely some over-reach here (political puffery) i think mask compliance will be very high (it was in the past) other half is a public teacher in miami-dade (pre-k, k, 1st) saw flyers that she will send out on the first day with requested materials/supplies masks were on the list and the schools have a supply on location along with sanitizer, etc kids aren't eating in the cafetorium, they grab their breakfast and lunch and head back to the classroom they are maskless for 30 minutes at each meal there are the usual challenges with the little ones like constantly adjusting, diddling, poking, scratching, etc. we personally bought a month's supply of smaller children's masks (colors and cute artwork) we'll see how it all works out
Moreover, they're hypocrites. Remember how a major core of their supposed philosophy (when they had one that wasn't Trump) was to leave businesses alone.
Except now they're passing laws about whether private businesses can/can't have mask mandates.
The GOP has long since crossed over into reprehensible racist illogical clown territory. When I predicted, ten years ago, that we were watching the collapse of the party, I really didn't expect this to be how they spent their final years, being despicable.
Thanks kcar for making me aware of that version of events. I simply was not aware. And I do understand the potential for the other version to be wrong. For similar kinds of things that happens far too often.
As for the hindsight is 20/20, etc., remarks, if you were alive and aware back when the US invaded Afghanistan, there were plenty of pundits in elite media reminding us of the legacy of failed imperial initiatives in Afghanistan. The potential for Afghanies, including civilians, to die to in a protracted war funded by the USA should have been well known given the experience for other similar conflicts.
Perhaps it is ultimately all about aesthetics but I did and still do not support the proxy wars that the USA and the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China fought in poor developing countries. Decisions to commit wholeheartedly to those kinds of wars are risky and from my reading of post-war are more likely to be big disasters than anything else.
The USA lost the Vietnam War, for example, and in the process of doing sacrificed 50,000 citizens, sacrificed trillions of dollars of wealth, eroded US social cohesion and solidarity, actually weakening the USA relative to its Cold War rivals.
In Afghanistan, it did not take long before SU soldiers became demoralized due to the nature of protacted guerrilla warfare, and many got hooked on smack.
Large numbers of Afghani and Vietnamese civilians died in these conflicts. Similarly, the USA took a partisan side in the Syrian civil war and has accomplished nothing except prolong the misery and suffering in Syria.
"Perhaps it is ultimately all about aesthetics but I did and still do not support the proxy wars that the USA and the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China fought in poor developing countries. Decisions to commit wholeheartedly to those kinds of wars are risky and from my reading of post-war are more likely to be big disasters than anything else."
I think the US and Russia/USSR TODAY would likely agree with you about the fruitlessness of those proxy wars and the unexpected loss of national prestige that resulted from those wars. But just as most people playing pool can't predict the consequences of shoot the cue into the group of racked balls to start a game, the superpowers likely couldn't predict the long-term effects of their international interventions. The superpowers had to deal with conditions and crises in the present. They were trying to salvage desperate situations and prop up regimes that its citizens did not support.
If you get a chance, watch Ken Burns' documentary on the Vietnam War or the mid-80s PBS documentary centered on Stanley Karnow's book. Both series had eye-opening, jaw-dropping moments where you could see why the US felt it HAD to dramatically increase American troop strength in Vietnam, and why even that massive increase was bound to fail. For instance, Burns' documentary discusses how American sergeants in country agreed with each other that the South Vietnamese regime was within weeks of collapsing shortly before the US under LBJ started sending US troops over to control the countryside.
Yet in the Karnow documentary, Undersecretary of State George Ball recounted how he and his colleagues applied statistical analysis used during WWII to supply the French resistance to understand how much the US military would have to suppress the supplies sent via the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Viet Cong resistance in South Vietnam. Ball concluded that the US couldn't cut off the flow of supplies sufficiently to stop the Viet Cong. The South Vietnamese government struggled to control its own rural territory, even with a massive US military presence.
Many people don't realize the US was heavily committed to fighting Communism in Vietnam starting in the 50s. IIRC, the Burns series recounts how President Charles de Gaulle of France told the US that France would lose Vietnam without American support and that the French economy might collapse as a result. de Gaulle also suggested that France might consequently have to turn to becoming an ally of the USSR. So Vietnam quickly became a crisis with serious international implications that the US could not ignore. The US was paying for about 70% of France's presence in Vietnam by the end of its occupation.
The US effort to prop up the French turned into propping up the French-speaking Catholic elite of the South Vietnamese people. America decided it could fight Vietnamese Communism by reneging on its pledge to honor national elections and installing a puppet, Ngo Dinh Diem. But the US was building a sandcastle on quicksand: Diem was no puppet and alienated the people of his own country. The South Vietnamese government struggled to function effectively after Diem's assassination and never held the loyalty of its people for very long.
Once the US committed to multiplying its troop presence in country by a factor of eight from 1964 to '65, it could not disengage and abandon South Vietnam. Its national prestige was at stake and its declaration of fighting the fall of dominoes in SE Asia was on the line. The US as I see it failed in the Vietnam for two reasons: it failed to understand the extent of support for Ho Chi Minh throughout the country (even in the South) and the fight for national liberation from foreign occupiers. It also failed to estimate the difficulties of fighting asymmetric warfare against highly motivated guerillas who could blend into the non-combatant population in a country 8500+ miles away from its shores.
"Similarly, the USA took a partisan side in the Syrian civil war and has accomplished nothing except prolong the misery and suffering in Syria."
With all due respect I think you're quite wrong on this. The US under President Obama was not heavily involved in the Syrian War. The Obama administration did try to create a force of Syrians and Kurds to fight the Assad regime but it quickly fell apart. The US supply of military material was slight compared to supplies from other countries such as Russia. The story of the Syrian civil war is a sign of the consequence of the US superpower NOT intervening. Obama did not want to get the US involved in another war in the Middle East while he tried to get the US out of Iraq. While the Obama administration was against the Assad regime it did not move strongly against Bashar Assad. The US was not significantly involved in the miseries of the Syrian people.
Under CIA's Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States and Saudi Arabia provided $40 billion worth of financial aid and weapons to almost 100,000 Mujahideen and Afghan Arabs from forty Muslim countries through Pakistan's ISI. British journalist Jason Burke wrote that "He did not receive any direct funding or training from the US during the 1980s. Nor did his followers. The Afghan mujahideen, via Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, received large amounts of both. Some bled to the Arabs fighting the Soviets but nothing significant." Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-stargeneral in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI. According to some CIA officers, beginning in early 1980, bin Laden acted as a liaison between the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) and Afghan warlords, but no evidence of contact between the CIA and Bin Laden exists in the CIA archives.
"The smart, cost-effective strategy would have been to let the Soviets do their thing in Afghanistan."
Hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to play armchair quarterback to military action taking place 40+ years ago. There was no guarantee that the Soviets would have tired of occupying Afghanistan or changed their strategy in the region to relinquish Afghanistan. The US did make the mistake of ignoring Afghanistan after the USSR left but as I think we can both agree, even a non-military American presence in that country might not have prevented it from becoming a safe haven for ObL.
Thanks kcar for making me aware of that version of events. I simply was not aware. And I do understand the potential for the other version to be wrong. For similar kinds of things that happens far too often.
As for the hindsight is 20/20, etc., remarks, if you were alive and aware back when the US invaded Afghanistan, there were plenty of pundits in elite media reminding us of the legacy of failed imperial initiatives in Afghanistan. The potential for Afghanies, including civilians, to die to in a protracted war funded by the USA should have been well known given the experience for other similar conflicts.
Perhaps it is ultimately all about aesthetics but I did and still do not support the proxy wars that the USA and the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China fought in poor developing countries. Decisions to commit wholeheartedly to those kinds of wars are risky and from my reading of post-war are more likely to be big disasters than anything else.
The USA lost the Vietnam War, for example, and in the process of doing sacrificed 50,000 citizens, sacrificed trillions of dollars of wealth, eroded US social cohesion and solidarity, actually weakening the USA relative to its Cold War rivals.
In Afghanistan, it did not take long before SU soldiers became demoralized due to the nature of protacted guerrilla warfare, and many got hooked on smack.
Large numbers of Afghani and Vietnamese civilians died in these conflicts. Similarly, the USA took a partisan side in the Syrian civil war and has accomplished nothing except prolong the misery and suffering in Syria.
