A year ago today:
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437
That aged well....oh, actually, it did. 🙁
One person I’d be glad to see go if trump loses is Kayleigh McEnany. How can someone so intelligent defend his constant blatant lies?
Because she is just as evil as he is.
Also never feel sorry for Melania for the same reason.
Looking at the fivethirtyeight poll forecast, it seems like it's pretty much in the bag for Biden:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
But some interesting reading here suggests that the fivethirtyeight model might be bit weird:
if Trump wins New Jersey, his chance of winning Alaska is . . . 58%???
More. Covid in the White House plus an attempt to cover it up.
The presidential campaign was roiled this weekend by a fresh outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the White House that infected at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Pence, a spread that President Trump’s top staffer acknowledged Sunday he had tried to avoid disclosing to the public. With the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit all-time highs. The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters that the country is “rounding the turn,” as the president put it at a rally Sunday in New Hampshire. Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread.
But some interesting reading here suggests that the fivethirtyeight model might be bit weird:
I haven't read that article yet, but I think people often don't understand what "model" means. A model is basically a theory about the world that simplifies reality to make it easier to understand some aspect of it. There's an old saying that goes something like, "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
A big problem with election forecasting is predicting who will turn out to vote. Polls can determine who people say they would vote for, the problem is that the sampling of the population needs to match the overall voting population. This is quite complex, so different polls conducted by different groups will have different results. The fivethirtyeight model seems to attempt to average across different polls, but also introduces some other sources of variance.
One thing I do know for sure about it is that it is designed so that the modeled unpredictability decreases as the election gets closer. The majority of voters will have made up their minds now, and it's clear that Trump is historically unpopular, so the question is really whether those voters actually cast a vote against him. There are quite a lot of low-probability things that could work in Trump's favour, so when all those are added together, he has a non-trivial chance of winning.
So, Biden has to be a very strong favourite, but models will never be able to reflect the true complexity of the real world. It won't be over until all the votes are counted and the winner confirmed.
You’re assuming that any/all of them would still be available and would want to return having been kicked out unceremoniously.
Biden could simply state "apologies for the manchild. You will be reinstated and his placemen thoroughly investigated for criminal behaviour".
In other news some of those clips from the 60 mins interview are staggering. Such a whiny child.
In other news some of those clips from the 60 mins interview are staggering. Such a whiny child.
Yeah, lots of interesting clips on their Twitter feed. McEnany at work...
https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1320516604216643584
Looking at the fivethirtyeight poll forecast, it seems like it’s pretty much in the bag for Biden:
We'll have none of that talk. I won't believe until I see him being carted out of the WH.
I won’t believe until I see him being carted out of the WH
Pretty much this.
But in a very real sense people such as Stahl and Fauci actually are the chief opponents Trump must contend with in the campaign’s final days. They are the figures he perceives to be standing in the way of his effort to conduct this campaign in an entirely invented universe that he’d hoped to manufacture for this very purpose.
https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1318930887581569024
@thols2 it’s worth having a read of the linked article about the 538 model oddities. It doesn’t make me doubt the usefulness of the model but I do think some of the choices made are in hindsight hard to defend. (And that they’ve only left them in so outcomes can be consistently tracked over time)
I won’t believe until I see him being carted out of the WH
Got to agree. This is a fight and he only really has to land one knockout that is in voters minds just before they vote. Thankfully a lot of votes are already cast but I'm glad to see there isn't a shred of complacency anywhere this time. Everyone knows what is at stake
Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread
Jesus...
Jesus…
You've got to the heart of Pence's secret weapon against the virus now.
Got to agree. This is a fight and he only really has to land one knockout that is in voters minds just before they vote. Thankfully a lot of votes are already cast but I’m glad to see there isn’t a shred of complacency anywhere this time. Everyone knows what is at stake
No premature counting of chickens, please....
Remember, Trumpy got where he is by appealing to people's inner asshole. Events in the last four and a bit years show there is more of a festering undercurrent of nastiness in your average person than first thought.
Did you see the story last night (Washington Post I think) about the failed plan by the Trump administration for a big vaccine publicity drive using Santa, Mrs. Santa and his elves? It was going to cost $250 million and the Santas had cut a deal that they got the vaccine first.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54686844
He's getting more and more shouty...
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1320708386476990464
The Santas turned it down in the end. Must've checked the Naughty List.
Did you see the story last night (Washington Post I think) about the failed plan by the Trump administration for a big vaccine publicity drive using Santa
So much of the last 4 years has read like an article from The Onion but that one really takes the biscuit. I mean WTAF? They're living in a clown world.
Biden's campaign wasted no attempt in using mark meadows' comment that the trump admin have given up trying to control the virus spread.
Stark contrast - contradiction, really - with trump's continued lies about controlling the virus, turning a corner and a vaccine being just about ready to drop.
It may not have been part of trump's education but...keep on turning corners and you return to your original start point.
Doh - any fule no that.
Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread...
While I too would love to see Trump led out of office and into jail, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that everything that has caused post-2016 American society to fracture isn't just because of some emotionally and intellectually compromised rogue president. In fact, there's a vested interest from the GOP in allowing an emotionally and intellectually compromised rogue president run amok tweeting about locking people up while appointing key industry lobbyists to oversee the departments that they've been lobbying against, elevating blatantly unsuitable people to the Supreme Court in a concerted effort to undermine the rule of federal law and of course the abandonment of any semblance of the welfare state.
Simply put, the GOP has been co-opted by immensely wealthy people who not only believe that normal rules shouldn't apply to them, but that they are fully entitled to redefine society into something that works for them at the expense of the rest of us.
Booting the useful idiot out of office does nothing to redress the structural degeneracy of the GOP as it stands.
To put it bluntly, those who fund the GOP have absolutely no interest in people's lives or indeed spending any money to save lives during a pandemic.
Simply put, the GOP has been co-opted by immensely wealthy people who not only believe that normal rules shouldn’t apply to them, but that they are fully entitled to redefine society into something that works for them at the expense of the rest of us.
Where the USA leads we follow.
Where the USA leads we follow.
Succinctly put. The Conservative Party has been co-opted by disaster capitalists, fringe lobby groups and financiers with the same aim - erode regulation, the rule of law and invite authoritarian rule by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
The terrifying this is that Trump(ism) feels like an experiment that only went a little bit too far. 2018 Trumpism was a dangerously powerful thing. In 2020, people are seeing behind the veneer and it's all falling down a bit. People are seeing Emperor Trump's bare flabby ass (sorry for the visual), not because the tactics were bad, but because he's perhaps too much of a narcissistic ogre who simply can't stick to the script.
But all the other factors that have lead to the rise of Trump are still there. Indolent racism, manipulation of Facebook / Twitter groups, sowing distrust, fabricating narratives - those things can all happen again. There is nothing to strop a respectable candidate with more restrained tactics from running in 2024. And that's the real worry.
But all the other factors that have lead to the rise of Trump are still there. Indolent racism, manipulation of Facebook / Twitter groups, sowing distrust, fabricating narratives – those things can all happen again.
Like for example a senior board member of Facebook being linked to various far-right groups and "big data" analytic Palantir, who subsequently donated to various libertarian and Republican causes.
There is nothing to strop a respectable candidate with more restrained tactics from running in 2024. And that’s the real worry.
It can and will happen again. IMHO The only real defence that we have against the manipulation of the media is to follow the model set by Scandinavian countries and teach critical thinking skills from an early age. Unfortunately, public education in both the US and UK is very much at the whim of libertarians who seek to dumb down, not educate.
The Conservative Party has been co-opted by disaster capitalists, fringe lobby groups and financiers with the same aim – erode regulation, the rule of law and invite authoritarian rule by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
And how did they manage that? They've always been there, they've always wanted that. So why are they getting it now?
follow the model set by Scandinavian countries and teach critical thinking skills from an early age.
We to to some extent; what we don't teach is philosophy, politics, media studies or economics.
And how did they manage that? They’ve always been there, they’ve always wanted that. So why are they getting it now?
That's an extremely good question. This article (from 2014) goes some way to explain the polarisation in modern American politics - Spend more to win more.
And here from the LSE (from 2010) 50 donors supplied more than half the Conservative Party's donations
Political parties see little gain in taking pocket-fulls of cash from small donors, hence why billionaires with fringe views are making larger donations.
I think Facebook has helped. I don't think Republicans (or Tories) all do dirty tricks, however IF you are someone who is happy to play dirty then you are highly likely to be Republican. And Facebook is ripe for exploitation by such people.
I think Facebook has helped
No question, but the signature tool of the modern (far) right is to use social media to misrepresent and/or to spread outright misinformation. An (infamous) example is the use of Russian sponsored botnets to spread misinformation during the referendum campaign.
Also, ostensibly "respectable" new news outlets like Breitbart are following the exampleFrom the NY Times.
I recall being sent a Breitbart article and accompanying picture photo by an angry (now former) friend ostensibly showing massed migrants at a railway station ostensibly on their way to claim asylum in the UK. Not surprisingly, that turned out to be false. That wasn't enough for my former pal though, even though she knew that the image and article were false, she still wanted something done about it. The seed had been planted by one malicious article.
The aim is absolutely clear - to reinforce the notion that we are not in control of our borders and that migrants are taking jobs, causing crime and even starting forest fires in California.
Naturally, the solution to all of this is to close borders, roll back globalisation and repeal supranational legislative alignment, which has the added fringe benefit of making it easier for corporations to lobby for deregulation. They're not doing it out of misplaced patriotism, even.
If you feed angry people the notion that everything that is wrong with their lives is because of some tangible thing then people want to lash out at it "...he's not hurting the people he needs to be...".
These people will happily forgo state subsidised healthcare just because they want to make sure that people they don't approve of also forgo it too.
I don’t think Republicans (or Tories) all do dirty tricks...
So why don't the governing conservative governments on both sides of the pond simply explain their justifications for cruel and hugely divisive policies in detail instead of tweeting about "lefty do gooder lawyers" for example?
So why don’t the governing conservative governments on both sides of the pond simply explain their justifications for cruel and hugely divisive policies in detail instead of tweeting about “lefty do gooder lawyers” for example?
Because some of the people who are happy playing dirty are also in the top jobs. Perhaps because they play dirty.
These people will happily forgo state subsidised healthcare just because they want to make sure that people they don’t approve of also forgo it too.
Some yes, some no. Plenty of them are using medicare and trump has promised to protect that for them. For some highly technical reason that some cynics might just consider hypocrisy it doesnt count as state subsidised healthcare.
Thats the really crap thing about the US system. The government actually pays more per capita than the UK does and yet fails to provide universal healthcare.
I think a big part of it is that the world got big and complicated and scary, and so small and simple and comforting answers gain in popularity. PRobably more or less inversely to how useful they are.
TBF, I've never been a person to accept simple answers or to take solace in obviously comforting false answers, and that's a big reason why I've spent most of my adult life depressed! I can definitely see the appeal. Imagine how good it'd be to actually believe you can solve all your problems by shooting some mexicans or leaving the EU.
^^ Some good points there.
Absolutely, trump (& Brexit) are simple answers to complex questions
The fact is that 3 word slogans work on many people,
build the wall
Lock her up
Take back control
The Lincoln Project are pushing out new stuff every day it seems...
Imagine how good it’d be to actually believe you can solve all your problems by shooting some mexicans or leaving the EU
I would settle for shooting johnson, cummings, gove and patel followed by saying hello to our european friends.
Absolutely, trump (& Brexit) are simple answers to complex questions
The fact is that 3 word slogans work on many people,
build the wall
Lock her up
Take back control
Feed our children?
I think a big part of it is that the world got big and complicated and scary, and so small and simple and comforting answers gain in popularity. PRobably more or less inversely to how useful they are.
Agree with this 100%, and this is force-multiplied by the fact that Politicians have figured-out that the "simple answers" don't need to be true, or even remotely true/have a basis in truth. Politicians have always lied, but I feel like we are truely living in a (political) post-truth world. Choose the right lie, and so many people get behind it that you can get yourself in a position of power.
As with everything, it's most brazen in the US, but it's rife in the UK as well..... just lies lies lies lies, all the time.
Yeah the whole lying stuff is just going to get worse unless laws are implemented to make lying in public office have actual consequences but the turkey's aren't going to vote for Christmas. What a world we live in where we now rely on social media platforms fact-checking and stemming the flow of bullshit from our elected 'leaders'
Absolutely, trump (& Brexit) are simple answers to complex questions
The fact is that 3 word slogans work on many people,
build the wall
Lock her up
Take back control
I've lost count of the number poorly spelled twitter responses I've read asserting "simples" to every complex Brexit related issue. Remember Michael Gove's statement "people have had quite enough of the experts"?
I think a big part of it is that the world got big and complicated and scary, and so small and simple and comforting answers gain in popularity. Probably more or less inversely to how useful they are.
Pretty much this, also.
Simple answers are contagious. I worry that some (too many) people will now see Joe Biden as a "simple answer" - get Biden elected and the problems of the Trump years will go away. What will instead happen is that with a lot of effort, things will (hopefully) start getting better. But people were expecting a simple answer and sunlit uplands, so will get disillusioned and that will give the opportunity for a new Trump-like tosser to make a play for power.
...so will get disillusioned and that will give the opportunity for a new Trump-like tosser to make a play for power...
The issue is that the Trump like tossers are a symptom of a wider problem, not the actual problem itself. Part of the problem as I've discussed before is to do with funding, in that a small number of wealthy political donors can disproportionately skew policymaking.
We have three difficult options - one, we lobby governments to impose strict limits on the amount of money that may be donated to political causes, two that we as consumers actively organise ourselves to deprive billionaire business owners of our custom until they stop giving money to despots, or three that we actively lobby governments to break up monopolistic big businesses and make it more difficult for multi-billionaires to amass the sort of wealth that can and does erode the social and democratic fabric of nation states.
We have three difficult options – one, we lobby governments to impose strict limits on the amount of money that may be donated to political causes, two that we as consumers actively organise ourselves to deprive billionaire business owners of our custom until they stop giving money to despots, or three that we actively lobby governments to break up monopolistic big businesses and make it more difficult for multi-billionaires to amass the sort of wealth that can and does erode the social and democratic fabric of nation states.
As a billionaire, you're untouchable.
The Government aren't going to put limits on how much they can be given (and as we've seen, it's so ridiculously easy to get around that anyway using shell companies etc that it's merely one more loophole for them to jump through).
Consumers aren't going to stop buying whatever it is because the companies are so vast that they're not dealing with consumers as in "the person on the street". Ineos for example - billionaire Brexit-backing tax-avoiding arse owner - is involved in making so many millions of products that they are effectively insulated from anything but the most global of protests. Same with Amazon - people hate them for their tax avoidance and then buy all their Christmas presents from them because, convenience.
And it would require a truly socialist Government to prevent the build up of that amount of wealth and they'd be accused of all sorts of nanny-stateism. Even though anyone with half a brain can see that £1bn is more than an individual could spend in a lifetime unless you're doing a LOT of massively charitable things. Never mind "several" billion. That is an absolutely obscene amount of money for one individual.
Imagine someone gave you a million pounds and told you to spend £1,000 every day and come back when you ran out of money. You would return, with no money left, in three years. If someone then gave you a billion pounds and you spent £1,000 each day, you would be spending for about 2,740 years before you went broke. (ignoring for the sake of simplicity interest accrued)
Delusion taken to a new level...
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/523013-white-house-science-office-says-trump-ended-covid-pandemic-as-us-hits
Covidical Ali
Branch Covidians seems apt given their current policy towards the virus, which seems to involve burning everything down.
Worth watching Newsnight tonight on iplayer for the interview with John Bolton
Remember under Dubya when we all thought he was a completely insane warmonger?
Right now he’s the voice of reason telling his story of trying to reign Trump in and failing. A man who he describes as ‘stunningly ill-informed’.
He’s railing against the same brainless populism that gave us Boris
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1321242249456504834
Here's what the map looks like if Pennsylvania is set as a toss-up. Trump would need to win all the toss-ups, plus something else. Unlikely, but can't be written off as impossible.
SuperSpreaderMan strikes again.
https://twitter.com/jeffzeleny/status/1321291021146357767
https://twitter.com/omaha_scanner/status/1321303763982888961
Remember under Dubya when we all thought he was a completely insane warmonger?
He was and is. At least part of his current dislike of Trump was that Trump didnt agree on which wars to fight.
Did anyone catch The Comey Rule on Sky? Brendan Gleeson pretty impressive as Trump. Would be great if they continue with this and dramatise the whole presidency, bit like The Crown.
Remember under Dubya when we all thought he was a completely insane warmonger?
W. was an utterly terrible president, but there's a structural problem with the American system of having the President as Commander in Chief because it makes military force one his main tools of foreign relations. Trump is right about questioning U.S. involvement in so many conflicts (but that's pretty much the only thing I can think of that he's right about). Problem is that a president cannot afford to look weak, so there's constant pressure to send troops all over the globe to try to resolve local conflicts. Obama tried to unwind some of that, but couldn't because it's almost impossible to untangle yourself once you're involved.
No U.S. President could have not sent troops into Afghanistan after the World Trade Center, there was a smoking ruin in New York with a couple of thousand dead American civilians, so any President who didn't set out to get OBL would have been political toast. Bush was really dumb to invade Iraq, but there was political pressure on him to deal with Hussein. Having the President as Commander in Chief pretty much guarantees that they will blunder into stupid mistakes like that because they cannot afford to let the opposition party portray them as weak (which was a major political problem for Obama, IIRC).
I think a big part of it is that the world got big and complicated and scary, and so small and simple and comforting answers gain in popularity. PRobably more or less inversely to how useful they are.
see also everything by Adam Curtis
Simple answers are contagious. I worry that some (too many) people will now see Joe Biden as a “simple answer” – get Biden elected and the problems of the Trump years will go away. What will instead happen is that with a lot of effort, things will (hopefully) start getting better. But people were expecting a simple answer and sunlit uplands, so will get disillusioned and that will give the opportunity for a new Trump-like tosser to make a play for power.
I think a lot of people, can't believe that again they have such a poor choice to make for president. However there is a good chance the democrats will take control of both houses, so we shall see, will they make structural changes that really count, that empower voters equally for every election from now on. Will they de-politicise appointments to the judicial system instead of stacking the supreme court their way. or will they as most suspect just roll back a few of the trump policies (but not the tax cuts for the richest of course) and just go about business as usual.
It isn't just because people get disillusioned with simple answers that provide the grounds for the populists, it is because both sides are really just serving the billionaires and corporate lobyists while people are living from paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay their mortgages worrying about feeding their children and praying their car or boiler doesn't break down and send them further into debt.
It wasn't just that Trump offered simple answers, he offered them any answers, most knew it was probably bullshit, but this is what life is like for most working people and they are completely ignored by policies of wage stagnation and asset inflation since the early 80's, So any answer was worth a role of the dice instead of the usual ignorance on offer, the hope for many was that it might bring a reaction to make things right. Unfortunately the political powers idea of making things right is to paper over what went wrong, and pretend Trump never happened.
Dubya's agenda was set by the Republican party of the day. As far back as 1998, the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) project and it's acolytes like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al were pushing for "regime change" in Iraq.
The factors that led to the failure of PNAC are there for all to see, albeit with the benefit of almost two decades' hindsight. The doctrine itself wasn't universally accepted across the Republican Party, Colin Powell was half-hearted in his support given that the subsequent invasion of Iraq was conducted unilaterally by the USA, Powell wanted an international coalition to occupy Iraq but ultimately failed to convince the UN that Iraq represented the sort of threat to world peace that it had back in 1991.
By contrast, the modern Republican Party might seem to be entirely without doctrine or aim and with a puzzling unanimity in spite of some utterly bizarre and cruel policies but the Trump doctrine is there if you look hard enough - deregulation across the board which will entail the dismantling of the apparatus of the state, abandonment of any form of social welfare and labour market protections. These policies are not vote winners, especially for America's poorest and most vulnerable, this is where populism and voter manipulation comes in to play.
The best parody is when you aren't quite sure if it's a parody or not right till the end.
https://twitter.com/blaireerskine/status/1321394578952495105
Hmm, still not entirely convinced that's a parody.....
Thanks for posting thols2 ,that scanner feed sure paints a picture 😉
"Eppley Police Chief and the Secret Service are having a pissing match".
"Boys Town 912 enroute to Lil' Creighton Code 2 with a 65 y/o male who "got a little excited about what President Trump was talking about" and began to experience weakness".
"Medics treating numerous parties with medical issues as they are walking out".
Woman stranded at MAGA rally in Omaha says Trump wanted to teach them a lesson
Sounds like she had an extra bowl of crazy for breakfast
https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1321608091503366144
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1321617545858895878
And in Britain's time of crisis, Farage is out there on the stump with Trump.
Re: that Tucker Carlson "dog ate my homework" excuse, just a reminder that Fox News' own lawyers successfully argued that Tucker Carlson's show is fake news. He was sued for slander a few months back and the judge's decision in the case includes the following:
As Defendant notes, Mr. Carlson himself aims to “challenge political correctness and media bias.” This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” Fox persuasively argues that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes. Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson’s statements as “exaggeration,” “non-literal commentary,” or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same—the statements are not actionable.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv11161/527808/39/
For this reason alone, alone, Trump must lose.
I should warn you, that even by Farage's utter fawning standards this is puke inducing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/election-us-2020-54727921
Farage must be hounded for the rest of his life for backing this utter shit head of a president, let alone the tragedy of the Brexit to come.
No U.S. President could have not sent troops into Afghanistan after the World Trade Center, there was a smoking ruin in New York with a couple of thousand dead American civilians, so any President who didn’t set out to get OBL would have been political toast. Bush was really dumb to invade Iraq, but there was political pressure on him to deal with Hussein. Having the President as Commander in Chief pretty much guarantees that they will blunder into stupid mistakes like that because they cannot afford to let the opposition party portray them as weak (which was a major political problem for Obama, IIRC).
Its also a big failing of their strategy militarily - because the president is the 'head' of the military the US seems to think the way to defeat other regimes is by decapitation- remove the head - Saddam Hussain, Osama Binladen, or whoever, and the body will die. As if all the generals and foot soidiers operating under that leader are just mindless drones.
The problem is - no matter how nuts - we knew how Saddam Hussain thought and what he would do. When the head was cut off - the problem didn't die - it sprouted ten new heads - all battling between themselves for power and all plotting revenge, and all complete unknown quantities.
Re Farage's ass kissing moment
Its good in that it surely underlines to Leave voters that just possibly they might be on the wrong side here. They won't see it that way of course so it's just more anger fuel for the rest of us
But typical of Farage, seduced by US 'glamour' or told to by his alt right shady overlords, to paddle his little rowing boat over and board the Titanic just as it hits the iceberg
that Tucker Carlson “dog ate my homework” excuse
Maybe we should set up a gofundme page and buy Carslon's producers a fax machine
Having the President as Commander in Chief pretty much guarantees that they will blunder into stupid mistakes like that
Assuming that US foreign wars are "blundering into stupid mistakes" is a dangerous fantasy. History has shown time and again that the US is more than prepared to wage war on those states it chooses to without regard to the outcome, collateral damage, foreign relationships or cost. It's also worth noting that many former US foreign and war correspondents are pointing out that many of the types of tactics and counter insurgency policies of the CIA and US military are now being employed by local and Federal US police and other agencies (Bortac for instance) within the US mainland (Portland and Wisconsin)
Assuming that US foreign wars are “blundering into stupid mistakes” is a dangerous fantasy. History has shown time and again that the US is more than prepared to wage war on those states it chooses to without regard to the outcome, collateral damage, foreign relationships or cost
From what I understand, since Vietnam, the military leadership have tended to discourage Presidents from committing troops to deal with local problems because they know that nice tidy outcomes are very unlikely and that "boots on the ground" actually means American soldiers on the ground, some of whom will be shipped home in body bags. Problem is that some horrible atrocity appears on tv news and there's a public outcry to do something about it (gassing of civilians in Syria, for example). The President is then under intense pressure to send in troops to resolve a situation that is unresolvable just by blowing shit up. Anybody with any sense knows that you need to commit thousands of troops for an indefinite period to stabilize the situation and then to rebuild the country, but voters have a lot more enthusiasm for blowing shit up than fixing things afterwards. So, you end up with a guy like Obama, who I think was quite genuine about extricating America from the quagmire it's in, but it's impossible to get out once you're in.
The W. Bush administration were mind bogglingly stupid and incompetent in their Iraq catastrophe, but you need to remember that the American public and most Democratic politicians were in full support. Politically speaking, politicians had to support it. If they didn't and it succeeded, they would have been politically finished. If they did support it and it failed, then everyone was in the same boat so they were safe.
A single member of Congress voted against the declaration of war after the Pearl Harbor attack, a pacifist by the name of Jeannette Rankin. It was the end of her political career. No politician wants to repeat that mistake.
On December 8, Rankin was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan.[37] Hisses could be heard in the gallery as she cast her vote; several colleagues, including Rep. (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous—or at very least, to abstain—but she refused. "As a woman I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else."[38]
After the vote, a crowd of reporters pursued Rankin into a cloakroom. There, she was forced to take refuge in a phone booth until Capitol Police arrived to escort her to her office,[39][40] where she was inundated with angry telegrams and phone calls. One cable, from her brother, read, "Montana is 100 percent against you".[41] Rankin remained unapologetic. "Everyone knew that I was opposed to the war, and they elected me," she said. "I voted as the mothers would have had me vote."[42] A wire service photo of Rankin sequestered in the phone booth, calling for assistance, appeared the following day in newspapers across the country.[43]
While her action was widely ridiculed in the press, William Allen White, writing in the Kansas Emporia Gazette, acknowledged her courage in taking it:
Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery someway discounted its folly. When, in a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze, not for what she did, but for the way she did it.[44]
Three days later, a similar war declaration against Germany and Italy came to a vote; Rankin abstained. Her political career effectively over, she did not run for reelection in 1942.[7] Asked years later if she ever regretted her action, Rankin replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute."[45]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin#Second_congressional_term
A single member of Congress voted against the declaration of war after the Pearl Harbor attack, a pacifist by the name of Jeannette Rankin. It was the end of her political career. No politician wants to repeat that mistake.
Pearl Harbour was completely different from any of the recent conflicts the USA have been involved in. The fact that voting against war finished a politician's career in 1941 is quite right. The war had to be fought.
I don't think for a second that the Military Leadership has tried particularly hard to dissuade any 20th C US president (apart from perhaps the current) to go to war. In fact I tend to think to complete opposite. The US Chiefs of staff is filled to the brim with the sorts of supporters of the Project for the New American Century that got them into the mess they're in now. They drunk the Kool-Aid of the message of "Pax Americana" probably harder than any other branch of the US state.
That they now may be something of a reluctant restraining force on Trump is only in part to the recognition that he's a moron, and perhaps more to do with their own political futures. Once "political normality" is back in place, I fully expect the US to start interfering in other countries once again.
I don’t think for a second that the Military Leadership has tried particularly hard to dissuade any 20th C US president (apart from perhaps the current) to go to war. In fact I tend to think to complete opposite.
Nope. This was a major issue during the Clinton administration (Bosnia, Somalia, etc.) The Chiefs of Staff were very reluctant to get involved in local conflicts because they knew how intractable they are, whereas the civilian leaders were much more enthusiastic.
In the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the military guys warned that it would probably take 500 000 troops to be confident of success, whereas Donald Rumsford had a hare-brained idea that they could drop 50 000 troops into Baghdad and the country would greet them as liberators.
Civilian leaders are naturally biased towards the most optimistic outcomes and discount the difficulties. Military leaders are trained to look at the worst-case scenarios, so the smart ones are much more cautious.
Pearl Harbour was completely different from any of the recent conflicts the USA have been involved in. The fact that voting against war finished a politician’s career in 1941 is quite right. The war had to be fought.
That's right as far as it goes, but the political calculation is very short term. If the Iraq invasion had succeeded, anybody who voted against it would have suffered the same fate as the woman who voted against war against Japan and Germany. If it failed, everybody was in the same boat, so that was the safe vote. In the U.S., Congressional elections are every two years, while one third of the Senate face an election every two years (for six year terms). To survive in politics, you have to keep an eye on the next election. The success or failure of the Iraq invasion was something that wouldn't be known until after the next election, so voting against it was a very risky proposition for a politician.
There's an old saying that "If a monkey falls from a tree, he's still a monkey, but if a politician loses an election, he's no longer a politician." The only thing they can afford to care about is their next election.
Nope. This was a major issue during the Clinton administration (Bosnia, Somalia, etc.)
Bush had sent 25,000 troops to Somalia, the conflict there predated the Clinton administration, and it was the Clinton administration that had set limits on US involvement in any UN peacekeeping force becasue of the subsequent military failures. (clearly they were not enthusiastic militarists at this point). The Military was initially sceptical of involvement in the Balkans only because they saw no obvious strategic gains, and yet were still content to bomb it in 1999 when the US wanted Milosevic to come to the negotiating table.
I don't think you can separate the internal politics of the US and the external use of the Military in US politics, the two go hand and in hand, and even have effects in State politics because of the nature of the US military-industrial complex.
A real hint of 'enough of this bullshit' is creeping into Fox programming.
A real hint of 'if Angry Uncle doesn't win we no longer have any influence'.