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The war on terror primed America for autocracy

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Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#181
post #137
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The longer things stay vague, the more I become concerned that this may be a scenario that is so common that it has an enduring meme [0], where: 1. The person claims that a broad swathe of facially reasonable and views are being rejected or forbidden in a way that is an unfair overreaction. 2. Pressed, they refuse to provide any concrete details, even in a safe context. 3. They are actually facing difficulty from a m…

yep, the very first response tweet had confirmed my immediate assumption about the kind of people that 'meme' would be 'enduring' with.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. HN is very lightly, and fairly, moderated.

Lightly and fairly as in: removing anything that gets 4 flags no matter what it is What gets 4 flags? Certain things. Such as inconvenient facts

You won't get flagged if you state facts without insults. Just spit it out. Even if it did get flagged because you broke the guidelines, we'd still be able to see it. Id vouch for it even if you broke the rules so you can understand better and we can see the facts

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#183
post #147
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Failure to integrate” is one way to describe the Goths sacking Rome. But I agree the barbarians did them in at the end. My point was that the Iran fiasco is more like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where Rome backed off after taking a beating. That didn’t mark a transition away from Empire, simply a retreat after a military loss.

The Iran fiasco is Suez Canal 2.0

Did you mean the 1956 Suez Crisis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#184
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country in the world responded to 9/11 with enhanced airport security. After the end of "shoes off" last year, I don't think the US is stricter in any meaningful way than the global norm.

Not all of them have the same kind of enhanced security, actually. For example, if you transfer from a flight from Africa to Europe to one from Europe to the USA you sometimes have to go through security again, as the African security didn't meet American standards.

I’m struggling to read your comment in good faith but I’m going to get there by saying that you don’t travel and are repeating hearsay as fact. If you have an international inbound flight which includes a transfer in Europe, it doesn’t matter where you embarked or what the security regime was like. Whether you have to recheck your bag depends exclusively on whether your transfer is at the same airport and your airline’s policy (eg Ryanair make you pay extra not to have to recheck). In general in Europe you only clear customs at your final destination and at tge airport you transfer to leave Europe but this wouldn’t apply if you need to transfer at a different airport or between two airlines that don’t have an agreement. It certainly never depends on the European transfer countries opinion of security at your country of embarkation.

https://www.trip.com/guide/info/check-through-baggage.html

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#185
post #165

I agree that 9/11 primed America for totalitarianism, but as someone who was tear gassed protesting our invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, I don't think we're living in an autocracy. I've lived in too many autocratic countries now to think that that's anywhere close to the truth..America cannot possibly be compared to China or Russia in terms of the freedom living in the country to say (and do!) what you want, pro…

The Military Industrial Complex is the autocracy - the revolving door between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR - which are the entities really running the country (for the purposes of massively profitable military mis-adventures). https://www.transparency.org/en/corruptionary/revolving-door From a certain angle, it actually looks less like an autocracy and more like a military junta which has captured both 'side…

That's nonsense, clearly, because we've just elected two - no, make that four Presidents in a row who used the Military Industrial Complex in radically divergent ways to different ends.

If we test the theory that American Presidents are beholden to the military industrial complex and not vice versa, compared to actually authoritarian countries in which the military basically is the government, we can see all sorts of civilian controls which restrain our government versus the others.

When I said it was like Argentina in the 60s, I meant that it definitely could become a quasi-mitary autocratic regime, but at the present moment it is not. It's just in the throes of populist movements which might ultimately lead to such a thing. Any objective glance at actual military regimes, any knowledge whatsoever of the rest of the world's history, proves immediately to a casual observer that the United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship.

The attempt to frame it as one, however, is blatantly ignorant of the current state of the world, to the degree that the motivation behind doing so is suspect. Really, only a shill for a dictatorship is interested in trying to prove that America is analogous to an autocratic state. An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#186
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. You’re trying to be edgy without any understanding of reality. It’s like saying History will record Gavrilo Princip as having won WW1. Huh? America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits. Both of which are happening in every developed country, having nothing to do with 9/11. The foreign interventionism is a 100 year tradition in the US, nothing new under the sun. The only th…

I do think spending a trillion dollars on Iraq might have something to do with the deficit.

Did France, Germany, the UK, etc. spend a trillion dollars in Iraq? How did they get themselves in the same ballooning deficit death spiral?

The US did spend a Trillion on Iraq. But during Covid they spent nearly $5T...in 1/4th the time they spent 1 in Iraq. They also spent $9T on QE.

Iraq is a drop in the bucket. The real problem is a structural one with modern democracies. Turns out when you can legally take your citizens money at gunpoint and also tax the entire world via inflationary money printing with few short term consequences, this power gets abused.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#187
post #19

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed. Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had…

Oh come on. You’re trying to be edgy without any understanding of reality. It’s like saying History will record Gavrilo Princip as having won WW1. Huh? America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits. Both of which are happening in every developed country, having nothing to do with 9/11. The foreign interventionism is a 100 year tradition in the US, nothing new under the sun. The only th…

> America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits.

American problem is one sided right wing radicalization, not polarization. If left of center moved the the right even more, the issues would remain.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#188
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think spending a trillion dollars on Iraq might have something to do with the deficit.

Did France, Germany, the UK, etc. spend a trillion dollars in Iraq? How did they get themselves in the same ballooning deficit death spiral? The US did spend a Trillion on Iraq. But during Covid they spent nearly $5T...in 1/4th the time they spent 1 in Iraq. They also spent $9T on QE. Iraq is a drop in the bucket. The real problem is a structural one with modern democracies. Turns out when you can legally take your c…

Germany dont have the same ballooning debt problem: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/germany/usa?sc=...

Their economies have problems, but USA leads in debt.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#189
post #19

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed. Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had…

What surprised me, was the indifference of people when all this was happening. Saying that the American response to the terrorist attacks was essentially the aim of the terrorist at first place and that they won just went unregistered - no counter arguments or rage or anything, no one cared about this claim.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#190
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did France, Germany, the UK, etc. spend a trillion dollars in Iraq? How did they get themselves in the same ballooning deficit death spiral? The US did spend a Trillion on Iraq. But during Covid they spent nearly $5T...in 1/4th the time they spent 1 in Iraq. They also spent $9T on QE. Iraq is a drop in the bucket. The real problem is a structural one with modern democracies. Turns out when you can legally take your c…

Germany dont have the same ballooning debt problem: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/germany/usa?sc=... Their economies have problems, but USA leads in debt.

They do have the same problem.

You're not adjusting for growth rates.

Also, Germany's debt isn't in the global reserve currency, so their problem is arguably worse. The actually have to pay for it using their 0 growth economy.

The US will just tax the entire world to pay for its debts by printing more of the global reserve currency and inflating it away.

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