U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective

First, I agree that 24 did have mainstream appeal regardless of political ideology. Pretty much everyone I knew watched it.

Second, the appeal was not solely grounded in "Torture is good". I walked out or closed my eyes on a lot of those scenes, but watched the first few seasons because I liked Chloe's character and because the the format (every episode as one hour of the same day) was novel. Also because it was something I could talk about to friends and family - back when we all consumed the same media regularly.

But if you think back to the Bush years, it really wasn't until after the Iraq war, and Abu Ghraib in particular (2004), that democrats started to come out more vocally against Fox-news approved "enhanced interrogation". It wasn't that they were also pro-torture before, but I think it felt more theoretical to Americans on both sides back in 2001.

Later on anyone who was paying attention had to confront the reality of it. That's when the sides splintered and the Fox-news machine ramped up on normalizing/praising abuse and characterizing every individual ever captured as a blood-thirsty future Bin Laden. Relatedly, Gitmo was a huge deal to the dems back then, even Obama campaigned saying he would close it (it didn't close). He may not have won the nomination without that promise though.

So it was a real dividing line for a moment, but ever since the financial mess of 2008, the democratic voter base has been more engaged on economic and healthcare inadequacies, so when those took over the news, the party was grateful to not remind people about gitmo.

I will say there were pro-torture, war-hawk dems at the highest level. That's always been a problem for dems. But the tone on the ground was very consistently anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-torture (for a moment at least).

So I should change my mind, because other people are wrong and it's easier to simply be wrong with them and avoid insults and attacks? What kind of weak minded nonsense would that be? Oh right, it would be communism, because that is exactly how it works. Conformance through oppression.

> From saying you have a "duty" to stall communism, Everyone has the duty to stall communism. I never said it was only ours.

> to willingly destroying other countries for your own benefit

Cuba was destroying itself fine without our help. It had help from Russia, China, Venezuela and Spain yet despite that insisted on keeping its people poor and failed to maintain basic infrastructure. It has had increasing blackouts for years before the US intervened. This is not simply the result of sanctions, it's the result of extreme neglect. Even when it had steady oil imports from other countries, their energy grid was beginning to fail.

Venezuela had openly stated it was going to attack its neighbors and had moved its military into position. It had been breaking many international laws before that and there was widespread understanding that Maduro was a wanted criminal by countless countries. That's on top of keeping its people poor. Terrible Chinese communist construction collapsing during the recent earthquake killing thousands of people didn't help an already suffering and poor population. Venezuela was destroying itself and couldn't even maintain its energy infrastructure either despite help from Russia, China and so on. They spend their money on military hardware that didn't do them any good.

If you are worried about Iran being destroyed, you need to get educated on Iran. Iran is so bad even people from Iran generally want this. They are evil in the most pure sense of the word and nobody likes them. To Russia and China, Iran is just a useful idiot for a strategic purpose.

> if you want to count deaths from famines as "caused by the communists", whether it was the USSR or the great leap forward, at least have the decency of admitting that these countries were suffering from famines for centuries beforehand

Isn't that true of many countries? The difference is that the communists caused it directly in multiple countries as a result of horrifically bad policies which could have been avoided by simply asking other people their opinion. Different kinds of famines in the past with different causes are no excuse for extreme negligence and ignorance. If you are excusing that, you are lost. Cubans, Venezuelans and North Koreans have been starving for decades in extreme poverty, so even if you try to excuse past famines, keeping their people poor and hungry is a choice. At least Russia, China and Vietnam all made free market reforms.

> The US is perfectly happy to let a few dozen million die every year of famines, lack of access to medication, clean water, all things it has in large amounts and refuses to give because "it's not profitable".

The US has provided aid to countless countries, but the problem in many places is that the aid then gets stolen by the dictators and redirected for profit or whatever and the aid doesn't reach the population. If you think the US hasn't done a lot of things to help other countries despite it not being profitable, that is insane.

> War profiteers, murderers and dangers to the world.

We don't generally profit from wars. World War 1 and World War 2 were extremely expensive. We didn't come out of it richer, because we stole everyone's money and resources like grinches. Do you think we made a profit on Iraq? Afghanistan? Are we making a profit from Iran? Sure the defense industry and private contractors make money, but they don't decide what the country does.