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[Antioch]

Unless you also plan on exclaiming punching ISIS is immoral and wrong? If so, props to you for at least being self-consistent.

The way we're doing it? Absolutely. Our drone strikes, particularly our signature strikes and our double-taps, are not only unconscionable but also counterproductive in the long term: it's a hell of a lot easier to radicalize people to fight the folks who routinely kill emergency responders en masse with flying death robots.

Incidentally, I should probably remind the people in favor of punching Nazis that the last time we did that, they didn't actually go away. There have been neo-Nazi groups worldwide ever since. We punched Nazis so well that they've been part of us for the past seventy years -- and as long as we keep punching and just punching, we have no reason to expect that to change.

It's enough to make you wonder if maybe that's the point. Maybe people don't actually want to run out of Nazis and other terrorists to punch, because then they'd have to stop punching.

Damn just read about those double tap attacks, that's pretty nasty.

[MorleyDev]

You know, when people talk about "Opening a dialogue" with the Nazis, they aren't talking about compromise. Right? It's not "Well they want complete genocide, we want no genocide, so let's negotiate down to only a little genocide".

Dialogue means just that. Dialogue, conversation. A common trend in people who leave the 'life of hate' is that their "My god, what have I done?" moment isn't some big, grand gesture. It's sitting down and having an honest-to-goodness conversation with one of the people they thought they hated. Finding out they both support the same football team, or both like the same music. Something that removes their ability to dehumanise them as 'others', and eventually cripples their entire belief system of hatred.

Sure, not all Nazis are willing to listen. But some of them have the potential to be 'redeemed', those who talk about opening a dialogue simply are, call it naive if you like, of the opinion that the majority of them have that potential.

[martinuzz]

In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump promised to destroy North Korea if it continues pursueing weapons of mass destruction.
"There is no other choice but to destroy North Korea if it continues on this path. If 'Rocket Man' continues down this road, it is going to happen".
He added that "The United Nations are on this planet earth to make that possible".

[Frumple]

Is... like, I'm kinda' busy and not paying attention. But is that a direct transcript? Actually what was said, not translation, paraphrase, or parody?

[martinuzz]

Is... like, I'm kinda' busy and not paying attention. But is that a direct transcript? Actually what was said, not translation, paraphrase, or parody?

It's been translated to dutch by my newspaper, and translated back to english by me, but it should be pretty close to the transcript (it's a live blog in the Volkskrant updated every few minutes), no parody. He really said 'Rocket Man'.

EDIT: NYT link here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/world/americas/united-nations-general-assembly.html?mcubz=3

EDIT2: heh, my newspaper changed it a bit now to "there is no choice but to completely destroy North Korea if they continue down this path, and the US or other nations are forced to defend themselves", and "Rocket man is on a suicide mission".

[smjjames]

It's the same rhetoric that Trump has thrown around. Though refined a bit since he's doing a prewritten speech on teleprompter (what, you thought he'd do all out impromptu for something so important?).

It had the usual Trumpian flair to it, but it was generally okay. Seems to have thrown red meat to his supporters in a way by conflating communism with socialism in general since I don't know if what Venezuela is doing would rightfully be called Communist or it's in some other branch of Socialism. Or possibly red meat to former communist countries as he did get a round of applause over it.

[MorleyDev]

What, you thought he'd do all out impromptu for something so important?

Come on, would anyone have been surprised?

conflating communism with socialism

Well Communism is Socialism, but so is Social Democracy. Socialism is the wider collection of ideas, communism one of the 'extreme ends' of it. Usually when people talk about Socialism in the 'western mainstream' of politics they mean the more Social Democracy side of the spectrum though, whilst the USA seem to still conflate it with the 'Red Menace'.

I believe the technical term for Venezuela is "clusterfuck". Tied their entire economy to a single produce, oil, and made no successful attempts to move away from that. So when the value of oil inevitably dropped their economy got completely screwed up. It's a story that has repeated itself many times, in government and business: When your bus factor is so low the removal of a single element can cripple everything, everything will eventually be crippled.

[RedKing]

In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump promised to destroy North Korea if it continues pursueing weapons of mass destruction.
"There is no other choice but to destroy North Korea if it continues on this path. If 'Rocket Man' continues down this road, it is going to happen".
He added that "The United Nations are on this planet earth to make that possible".

In related news, Sir Elton John was killed by a US drone strike today...

And based on the Twittersphere, Trump's cultists are eating this shit for breakfast and asking for seconds.


@scriver: No, I wasn't going to use the "you'd all be speaking German" thing, because that would be stupid. It's very easy for European liberals, or affluent white liberal elites in the US to say "Now now, we must take the high road and not engage in fisticuffs with the rapscallions...why, that might hurt our image and our electoral chances, and we can't have that!"

And it's easy because those people have never had a black friend or Latino friend get their ass beat for the crime of being black or Latino. They've never had a trans friend get fucked up for being trans. They live in gated communities where they don't have whooping rednecks flaunting a Confederate flag as an act of provocation on a regular basis. (Or they live on another continent which, while it has its own problems with extreme right-wingers, they're fewer and less brazen.)

I'm not asking you to agree. I'm not asking you to punch Nazis. I'm asking you (and a lot of other people) to stop treating the people who are willing to go there as part of the problem, rather than...y'know, the ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS. Otherwise, you're no different than Trump with his "both sides are equally to blame" Charlottesville bullshit.

[Descan]

IIRC the guy in that video who got laid out had, before that video, been harrassing (both physically and verbally) minorities in the area. Including throwing a banana at a black guy and calling him an ape or monkey.

[Trekkin]

@scriver: No, I wasn't going to use the "you'd all be speaking German" thing, because that would be stupid. It's very easy for European liberals, or affluent white liberal elites in the US to say "Now now, we must take the high road and not engage in fisticuffs with the rapscallions...why, that might hurt our image and our electoral chances, and we can't have that!"

And it's easy because those people have never had a black friend or Latino friend get their ass beat for the crime of being black or Latino. They've never had a trans friend get fucked up for being trans. They live in gated communities where they don't have whooping rednecks flaunting a Confederate flag as an act of provocation on a regular basis. (Or they live on another continent which, while it has its own problems with extreme right-wingers, they're fewer and less brazen.)

It is equally easy to assume that everyone who isn't as violent as you has suffered less than you and has no idea "what it's really like." The Nazis do it all the time.

[redwallzyl]

What, you thought he'd do all out impromptu for something so important?

Come on, would anyone have been surprised?

conflating communism with socialism

Well Communism is Socialism, but so is Social Democracy. Socialism is the wider collection of ideas, communism one of the 'extreme ends' of it. Usually when people talk about Socialism in the 'western mainstream' of politics they mean the more Social Democracy side of the spectrum though, whilst the USA seem to still conflate it with the 'Red Menace'.

I believe the technical term for Venezuela is "clusterfuck". Tied their entire economy to a single produce, oil, and made no successful attempts to move away from that. So when the value of oil inevitably dropped their economy got completely screwed up. It's a story that has repeated itself many times, in government and business: When your bus factor is so low the removal of a single element can cripple everything, everything will eventually be crippled.

social democracy is not socialism.

[scriver]

@scriver: No, I wasn't going to use the "you'd all be speaking German" thing, because that would be stupid.

So what's the difference from the one you made then?

It's very easy for European liberals, or affluent white liberal elites in the US to say "Now now, we must take the high road and not engage in fisticuffs with the rapscallions...why, that might hurt our image and our electoral chances, and we can't have that!"

And it's easy because those people have never had a black friend or Latino friend get their ass beat for the crime of being black or Latino. They've never had a trans friend get fucked up for being trans. They live in gated communities where they don't have whooping rednecks flaunting a Confederate flag as an act of provocation on a regular basis. (Or they live on another continent which, while it has its own problems with extreme right-wingers, they're fewer and less brazen.)

I bet some of your best friends are black/latino/trans!

I'm not asking you to agree. I'm not asking you to punch Nazis. I'm asking you (and a lot of other people) to stop treating the people who are willing to go there as part of the problem, rather than...y'know, the ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS. Otherwise, you're no different than Trump with his "both sides are equally to blame" Charlottesville bullshit.

The only reason I feel the need to take the focus away from the Nazis in the first place is because people like you and Max react like immature children and approving of lynchmob mentaliy in the first place.

Also, please stop with the internet tough guy act. You are not willing to punch a Nazi. You never would, and if you tried, he would likely just winced a little and then beat the shit out of you, because you are a huge nerd and the only fights you've ever been in are the ones where you got beat up by bullies. You just approve of other people punching them so you can feel big and tough by proxy.

[MorleyDev]

social democracy is not socialism.

Except that it is? Social Democracy is a branch of Socialism. So is Communism. Socialism is a wider term used to refer to a collection of political/economical ideologies.

"Chapter 1 looks at the foundations of the doctrine by examining the contribution made by various traditions of socialism in the period between the early 19th century and the aftermath of the First World War. The two forms that emerged as dominant by the early 1920s were social democracy and communism." - Michael Newman. Socialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2005. p. 5

Starting point for a wikiwalk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#Social_democracy_and_liberal_socialism

[scriver]

I want stay out of that discussion because we literally just had it a few weeks ago, but yes, MorlyDev has it right.

[redwallzyl]

I want stay out of that discussion because we literally just had it a few weeks ago, but yes, MorlyDev has it right.

No