211–220 of 301 posts
There are people walking around today who voted Bush twice and regretted it and now voted Trump three times and regretted it. I wonder what war they'll regret next?
The big problem is that if the USA doesn't start wars, other countries are certainly more than willing to start them against us.
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Or guns. I find it crazy that the US gave up a ton of freedoms to stop the terrorists, but refuse to give up their guns. The guns clearly and obviously kill more people every year than the terrorists. Make it make sense.
Oh yeah, good point. Gun deaths each year amount to like 15 x the twin towers attacks deaths. I'm sure deaths from our terrible unaffordable healthcare system are way higher, but we spent our healthcare money on invading the middle east and paying for a bunch of obsolete fighter jets, so at least terrorism isn't a problem anymore.
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> and defer overly to expert opinion That... doesn't sound so bad?
its also not true, if we listened to expert opinion more often we wouldnt have had numerous extreme economic and policy failures in my rather short life. Austerity, Brexit, Covid, Public Order Act 2023, every moment of those last Tory years.
Lots of experts favour austerity. The trick with economics (and many other things) is to find the experts who agree with out.
The government did listen to experts over covid. Whose idea was lockdown? Who advised them that a rapid vaccine rollout was required. The government did get confused by experts having different opinions (as one would expect with a novel disease) but once convinced which experts they listened to they did follow them. The main fault was not balancing advice from experts in different areas (e.g. balancing physical health, mental health and economic impacts of lockdown correctly) which is exactly what I was complaining politicians fail to do
FTA: "In 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy." I like the sly use of "what they saw" - typical British snark.
There's plenty of American historiography that questions the motivations of the American revolution and how tyrannical the British monarchy was actually.
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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.
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In the UK there is a big element of sheer incompetence. Politicians who have not experience of life outside politics are really will-equipped to understand the consequences of what they do, and defer overly to expert opinion. Of course the police or intelligence services say they need more powers, it takes judgement to balance this against other considerations.
> and defer overly to expert opinion That... doesn't sound so bad?
Bush did far more evil things and non-legal killings than Trump. He CREATED Ice, homeland security, etc.. So yeah, Bush was THE authoritarian, no need to jump forward 15 years, that's just TDS. Trump for the most part is just reinforcing existing laws, something that simply stopped happening during Biden's term. If you really think Trump is more authoritarian, then you forgot. Never Forget.
I can't tell if he is just simple minded or what. He always appears to be well meaning, and it's tempting to blame his advisors for all the awful stuff that happened on his watch.
Maybe the real test of a leader is to see who he chooses as his advisors. Bush was terrible, and Trump is even worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the UK there is a big element of sheer incompetence. Politicians who have not experience of life outside politics are really will-equipped to understand the consequences of what they do, and defer overly to expert opinion. Of course the police or intelligence services say they need more powers, it takes judgement to balance this against other considerations.
> and defer overly to expert opinion That... doesn't sound so bad?
The term 'expert' here actually means well-funded lobbyists who pay to have access to the politicians. They are able to present decision-makers with convincing arguments to pass laws that are favorable to the ones funding the lobbyists. They are smart and they are experts, but they are also laser focused on using that expertise to get what the funders want. This is almost always an outcome that is bad for regular people.
There are people walking around today who voted Bush twice and regretted it and now voted Trump three times and regretted it. I wonder what war they'll regret next?
The big problem is that if the USA doesn't start wars, other countries are certainly more than willing to start them against us.