The Don's week in a nutshell

[luzribeiro]

The week ended so well. Hawaii governor David Ige tells CNN that someone "pushed the wrong button" during an employee shift change, sending out the false alert about an incoming ballistic missile...

Well, at least we know two things now. One, a button does exist after all; fortunately, it's not the one on Trump's desk. Thank goodness. Oh and two, the alert system works. Great!

By the way, the wonderful US president was playing golf at the time this happened. His excuse? That Obama had done the same during the NYC ebola outbreak. Just following the standard that's been set, you know. He works for an average of two hours a day, after all. And might be a bit busy right now fending off new allegations from porn actresses while his surrogates are occupied explaining to a quarter of the world how he didn't really mean what he said.

Naturally, Trump's being blamed for the false alarm in Hawaii. Who else.

Comments

[abomvubuso]

He's one very stable genius.

[dewline]

No, he's just being blamed for his refusal to pay any attention to that mess in Hawai'i.

[luzribeiro]

Actually no, he's being blamed for creating a paranoid, confrontational atmosphere with Norh Korea, which now reflects on the way US society reacts to threats, be they real ot imaginary.

[dewline]

That, too.

[halialkers]

Remind me how North Korea reacted to the 180 degree inverse treatment that Obama gave them? Oh, right, they were so horrendously treated by 'strategic patience' that they rescinded the armistice in response to the savage evil bullying of Barack H. Obama in 2013. Maybe that indicates that North Korea is at least half of the problem?

Remind me what savage barbaric provocative evil Obama did in 2009-12 that led North Korea to do this in 2013?

Trump simply doesn't care to pretend that the paranoid totalitarian regime that's firing missiles over Japan is a nice decent place with barbed-wire camps to give people industrious working vacations like every other President. The situation was just as dangerous under all the rest of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/world/asia/north-korea-says-it-has-nullified-1953-korean-war-armistice.html

Also if I remember right, wasn't there a diplomatic agreement brokered in 1994 to forestall a nuclear ICBM-equipped North Korea in the first place? How well did that work?

We do the situation no favors to pretend an actually sane and rational President would be facing something that truly different. Trump supporters can selectively delete the parts of reality they dislike on a whim. The rest of us should be better.

[luzribeiro]

The hell are you talking about, and what does it have to do with what I said?

[halialkers]

You said he created a dangerous confrontational atmosphere with North Korea. If they chose to rescind an armistice lasting from 1953 in its anniversary year where was this alternative peaceful non confrontational relationship with an impending nuclear war?

Trump makes it more dangerous. The delusion he created it or that North Korea wants negotiations in the first place is just that. Alternatively they built arsenals after agreeing not to because they are trustworthy negotiating partners. And rescinded the 1953 armistice because Obama was a much worse and far more evil monster than Trump.

Those are the only ways to believe the North Korea issue states in 2017 and the 1953 DMZ standoff with a massive military machine is a stable situation lacking confrontations and dangers of nuclear war.

[luzribeiro]

No I said HE IS BEING BLAMED for creating a confrontational atmosphere.

Why should *I* be "reminding" you of anything? It's not my argument. I'm transmitting someone else's argument. Again, why should *I* be arguing on someone else's behalf? The issue I'm discussing is NOT whether he's being rightly blamed for what he's being blamed, the issue I'm discussing is WHAT he is being blamed about. Are you incapable of sensing the nuance here?

Why are you strawmanning me, man?

[kiaa]

Too many people just read the title (or in cases like these, the first sentence; or rather, parts of the first sentence), and they've already got an imaginary argument they could exercise their rhetorical prowess upon.

And that's why debate has generally devolved to the level of third-graders.

[halialkers]

And my point is that he's being misblamed because people across the world, as Srebenica proved, will more readily blame the United States than the actual people doing wrongful acts if those people aren't already Americans.

He deserves censure and arguably the 25th Amendment by means extralegal if necessary for invoking a stupid-ass war. The blaming of Trump alone is standard evasion of the reality that economic hit men conspiracies aside, people in other parts of the world will do what they want to do without the American Empire's role being necessary or more than a cheap rationalization.

Rest assured, were we in Earth-Two with Hillary Clinton in the Presidency everyone blaming Trump for all this would blame her with the exact same rhetoric and it would be the United States' fault that North Korea is firing weapons over Japan.

[luzribeiro]

You didn't answer my question.

[halialkers]

You didn't like the answer I gave you, that doesn't mean I didn't answer it.

I said that Trump is misblamed because a mess decades in the making is accelerating under him. The rhetoric about evil warmongering Hillary would not wither on the vine if she threatened a nuclear war with North Korea any more than the realization that Mr. "Withdraw all US troops from NATO" might actually start one led to the appearance of that kind of rhetoric toward him.

Unlike a lot of people I remember the media narrative about her in 2016 so I have very good reasons to believe she'd be seen as even more evil and warmongering than he is even if their actual deeds were about the same in bodycount and effectiveness.

Obama waged an eight year trainwreck in Yemen without accountability. Hillary probably would not get that or she probably would because we Americans love our empire dreams too much to admit the cost.

"He's being blamed for creating a paranoid confrontational attitude with North Korea" can only work if you literally delete the country's history since 1950 and act under the assertion that North Koreans are mind-controlled robots incapable of initiating any action on their own whatsoever and have no responsibility for their despots' building ICBMs with clear intent to use the things.

He's blamed to avoid dealing with the decades in the making disaster unfolding and how the world, globally, let the Korean standoff moulder until the Corpse Kingdom gained the arsenal and brutality to make itself a credible threat again.

[halialkers]

In short, if he's blamed for it, the people blaming him for it think the existing situation is what? Stability? Sunshines and rainbows?

It's been a tense mess that's stuck and ossified since 1953. I'm not strawmanning you, I'm literally noting that your words about the people blaming him are wrong.

If you can't remember what you typed, that's your problem.

[luzribeiro]

My question was very simple and very specific. I will repeat it again for clarity.

Why did you choose to use a strawman? Why do you expect me to defend a point I never made? You're doing it here again. I remember very well what I typed. I said he's being blamed for creating a confrontational atmosphere. And you asked me why I think he's creating a confrontational atmosphere. Except that's not what I said.

This is infuriating. If you really wanted to make amends with people, you're failing big time.

[halialkers]

I think the problem here is a failure to communicate.

I said that the blaming of him for creating that atmosphere is a selective adherence to reality by the people doing so.

When I asked you to defend an assertion you did not make, I made an avoidable error and I admit it and apologize to you for that.

Even so, the issue dates to the 1990s. The people blaming him are not using reality-based thinking to do so. And if we try to solve situations in reality without applying reality, that will fail 100 times out of 100 it's tried.

[luzribeiro]

The failure is not mine. I was very clear in my statement right from the onset. It was you who decided to respond to someone who wasn't even in the room, asking me to "remind you" of things that were relevant to some other conversation that I wasn't even having at the time.

Stop typing before thinking, and you won't have to apologize over and over again.

[halialkers]

Maybe. We'll see if that actually applies in the future. :)

[halialkers]

If I was North Korea I'd be taking notes and realizing that they just had a perfect case of what happens if they actually fire one of these things in real time. The odds they decide on a stratospheric test suddenly rocketed up.

[mikeyxw]

Naw. They know what would happen when a state employee at a state agency makes a mistake. The armed forces, the ones who would, hopefully, try to shoot down the missile and then turn Pyongyang into a bulls eye with a center of glass surrounded by concentric rings of ash and rubble, knew it was fake and didn't really react.

[abomvubuso]

Mentioning glass, reminds me of an old pseudohistorical conspiracy theory of a possible nuclear war of epic proportions in deep prehistory:

https://www.beyondsciencetv.com/2017/05/31/was-there-an-ancient-nuclear-war/

[mikeyxw]

There's a link, so it's for me. I'm going to think of Mad Max as a historical drama from now on.

[halialkers]

And then the USA would be kicked out of the UN for picking on an innocent nation that would never hurt a fly. Judging by how North Korean missiles over Hokkaido are all America's fault, anyway.

[kiaa]

Now you're going to hear the "but, but Putin does it too" argument again.

[kiaa]

Your call. ;)

[halialkers]

Well I could point to North Korea deciding on a total attempt to destroy South Korea in 1950 the *last* time the USA decided to foolishly remove its army there and give South Korea a light infantry army when the USSR gave North Korea tanks, bombers, and heavy artillery to conduct a full-scale combined arms war. I could point out to the reality that North Korea tried again in 1966-9 with something that failed utterly and that this is something its leaders understood enough not to try it again.

I could point out to Obama literally trying something no other US President tried only to see the armistice rescinded and that these missiles were not built because of Trump or Republicans but under a Democratic Administration foolishly believing diplomacy always works.

I could also point out the irony in appealing to Indigenous Americans as examples and that you'd expect someone who would honestly admit the USA is an Empire and yet in spite of that is NOT the one actually firing the fucking missiles at Hokkaido.

I don't expect actual evidence based on what literally happens on a regular basis with the Juche Corpse Kingdom to make that much impression however.

And I'd also note that North Korea really went downhill because the USSR collapsed and its misery reflects the same pattern as in Cuba except that the Castros abandoned the empire dreams and North Korea kept its.

[halialkers]

By amping up pressure you mean drawing a red line and failing to enforce it?

Geopolitically that's called 'walking yourself into an own goal that was easily avoidable.'

And frankly put drone bombings don't exist to the global Left at any serious level or Obama would have seen the kind of protests LBJ did in the 1960s. Did you see any of that? I sure didn't.

They sure don't to antiwar Americans, and yet every time I make that point people react like I personally insulted their mothers.

[halialkers]

Or wait, maybe amping up pressure was regular Russian bombings of US satellites done to deliberately openly provoke the USA that got a series of sternly worded letters. Yes, that'll make an impression on the people whose idea of sending a message is dropping bombs on people!

The claim that the Obama Administration was even generic US Democratic levels of pugnacious is belied by literally every other Administration before it. Bill Clinton wouldn't have let the Russians do that, nor would Shrub, nor would H. Dubya, nor would anyone else since 1945.

So......I must have missed this warlike swaggering Obama who seems to have made such an impression. Guy literally waged a real direct conflict with another nuclear state and nobody gives a damn. Nuclear armed North Korea fires missiles over Hokkaido, Trump imposes sanctions, and the USA is responsible for the missiles over Hokkaido and not the people firing them. Obama responded to Pakistanis killing American soldiers by killing Pakistanis.

Trump responds with sanctions and wretchedly written tweets probably composed between snorting lines of coke and the guy who *isn't* actually bombing the hostile people is seen as a greater danger than the one who did. Does that reflect reality or some kind of double standard?

I'd say so, yes. But what it does not reflect is the empirical deeds of the USA and North Korea in this situation. One side escalates with missiles, the other with Twitter.

[halialkers]

You would be mistaken.

Rather what I said was that when Obama literally blew up Pakistanis in an actual shooting war with a nuclear power nobody reacted like this was going to provoke a nuclear war when actual literal bombs are more likely to do so than Tweets in response to missiles.

Trump responds to missiles over Hokkaido with vulgar penis jokes and he's treated as a bigger existential threat to a point you could be forgiven for thinking the USA, not North Korea, is the one firing the missiles and threatening nuclear war with the more heavily armed state easily capable of destroying it assuming Trump can even enforce such orders and his generals would obey them, none of which is particularly clear.

It's directly relevant.

You asked how many people North Korea destroyed.

I pointed out to you these people are self-destructively stupid and blatantly so.

You claimed Obama's actual actions were more warlike than not, I said even if they were nobody reacted with the global hysterics over nuclear war to a direct war between two nuclear states. Where now, Tweets vs. Missiles is presented as an equal threat because.......I don't know why, honestly.

I hate Dorito Benito. I'm trans, I have every reason to. I also have every reason to believe that most of the concern trolling over US evil relative to North Korea isn't about Trump at all in the first place but more kneejerk impulse to proclaim the American Empire is the only state capable of initiating events and that anything that happens must be its fault because clearly nobody else would ever risk their own destruction in folly.

[halialkers]

I suppose it's 'not relevant' to note the Korean War happened, or the DMZ Conflict in 1966, or how often from 1950-2017 North Korea hostilities are initiated by North Korea with zero equivalent from Seoul or Washington.

I suppose literally pointing to North Korean actions in a North Korea thread is irrelevant because if it comes to actual evidence your statements on this have no evidence to back them, you know it, and you prefer to dismiss these words as textwalls rather than have to prove anything you say or why you say it about how the USA and Trump's tweets are causing North Korea to live-fire test missiles over Hokkaido.

Clearly when 98 out of 100 incidents of hostility between North Korea, South Korea and the USA are North Korean initiated and range from full-fledged wars to repeated shelling and capturing US ships for hostages it's anyone's responsibility but the dictators authorizing the raids in the first place.

Heaven forbid the grandchildren of the Corpse King have to own their actions. How dare people suggest that North Korea might be inflexibly hostile and in a mire of its own making for reasons where the USA is a convenient excuse but not a cause.

[halialkers]

All of the people Obama blew up in Pakistan and Yemen would certainly agree with you. In a more just world playing with a literal nuclear war danger in some ways far more real than this North Korea issue is unless we go full 1914 level 'fuck it, burn it all' would have damaged his Administration measurably. He was never interpreted as a conventional politician by supporters or opponents.

None of that alters that missiles vs. sanctions and tweets is a rather different case and the USA reacting by more sanctions the Chinese and Russians render worthless like every other Administration since 1945 for as long as we have the current SecState and SecDef in charge is treated as morally far more evil than North Korean firing the actual missiles in question.

Only one country is firing missiles here. It's not the USA. Not with North Korea and not even under the Idiot Oompa Loompa.

[mikeyxw]

Trump, the global face of America, is very easy to hate.