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Henry Kissinger Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#521

Post by aniforprez »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #519
aniforprez wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the default response that I haven't "engaged or understood" the "other side of this debate"? What's the "other side" here? That I have sympathy for this man? Where is this whole thing going? Is doing research on what he's done and perpetrated and quotes by his own voice not enough? And how does that lead to me not understanding modern day Kissingers? I refuse to give this any more headspace. This sage-like alm…

> That I have sympathy for this man? No. That you understand how it happened. > That I have sympathy for this man? That’s fine. Stay away from geopolitical decision making. Most people shouldn’t have to weigh moral systems.

Please ask the people of Laos to "understand how it happened". A country where thousands have died after they were bombed to hell and back because of the unexploded bombs which still makes farming unviable. I don't need to understand the "how" because there is no "how" beyond imperialism which I understand perfectly well enough. There's no complex morality here

People here should really stop pretending that reading "both sides" of everything is some form of enlightenment. It is delusional

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#522

Post by Mainan_Tagonist »

reducesuffering wrote: post #195
protocolture wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a semi apocryphal story that one of Kissingers friends warned him before he started working under clearance, that once he had access to "Intelligence" that other people didn't have, he would lose his humanity to the spooks, and assume he was smarter than the people without clearance. Which seems to be sort of what happened.

> assume he was smarter than the people without clearance Idk, it's actually wild how HN is almost entirely "Kissinger is a war criminal" meme-ing with little actual specific policy substance behind it. Meanwhile, if you read any Kissinger, you'd realize he understood history and the international relations better than 99% of these comments. Truly, word-for-word basis you will undoubtedly learn far more about history…

Thanks for pointing this out, his book title Diplomacy was very enlightening.

One thing of note in the spew of bile aimed at Kissinger in the HN comment thread is that it appears to emanate from people who were children or not even born during the cold war, and who seem to base their opinion on the comments of rock n' roll stars, cooks, leftist journalists/activists (sometimes turned neocon in their later life, surprise!).

I lament the decline of comment quality on HN whenever a somewhat controversial figure is brought up. It's almost as bad as Ars Technica in those cases, and closely resembles the what comes out of the comment section of the worst right wing news cloaca.

I'll order biography by Niall Ferguson in the meantime.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#523

Post by Hikikomori »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #514
__loam wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People defending him simply don't know what he did.

[flagged]

So he cannot be a war criminal because he's not in the military? And being part of the war cabinet and directing which villages to bomb on a map is somehow not commanding the military?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#524

Post by rufus_foreman »

csomar wrote: post #125

Kissinger is way over hyped. What I find more interesting is the total deflection of the blame of everything that happened to his person. I believe that Kissinger is talented but far from being the person who orchestrated a world order. He was a tool. A very nice and charismatic persona who took the fall when events went south. He was paid for it and protected up until his death.

His value was similar to the value of consulting companies to a CEO.

When a CEO decides he wants to do a layoff, he can either show up one morning and say he has decided to fire 7% of the workers, or he can hire a consulting company to prepare a thorough and very expensive report which the CEO knows will contain advice to layoff precisely 7% of the workers.

Firing people is sometimes necessary in a budgeting process, and bombing people is sometimes necessary in a war, but it's better if it looks like it is someone else's decision, even when the responsibility obviously rests with the executive.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#525

Post by andyjohnson0 »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #457
leobg wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. What a refreshing directness: > He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. How come they could publish this without getting sued into oblivion?

There's a little known law in the USA which states the following; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It's not always followed but it does remain fairly important in the mind of Ame…

The first amendment prevents censorship, by the US government, of the press or individual speech. It doesn't prevent an individual or legal person from suing over something written or said in public about them.

What would stop the Atlantic from "getting sued into oblivion" is that the person that the article was about (Nixon) was dead when it was written, and the dead can't be defamed.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#527

Post by bell-cot »

forinti wrote: post #485
bell-cot wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Third World" is very much a Cold War term, with roots in French history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World#Etymology While often used in condescending or pejorative ways...do consider what happened to the French First Estate and Second Estate during the French Revolution.

I prefer to use "peripheral economies". It's even more pejorative but it shows the way and better describes the situation. "Third world" actually seems like an euphemism to me. It makes me think of a race and gives you the false hope of improving in the future by just playing along the same game.

> "Third world" actually seems like...

False hope for the downtrodden, if they just keep playing the game - that was an age-old feature of human society, back when they were stuck building pyramids for their dear departed betters.

OTOH, a number of nations which seemed hopelessly stuck at the bottom of the pyramid back in 1952 are now doing pretty well, some even by First World standards.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#528

Post by mhh__ »

estomagordo wrote: post #484
leobg wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dead have estates.

As an outsider, it seems like the lawyer population must be approaching 100% of Americans soon. Is there anything or anyone Americans can't sue?

Does this like look a man who has had all he could eat?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#529

Post by ithkuil »

caskstrength wrote: post #506
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With good custom instructions, it almost never happens... "Treat me as an expert in all subject matter." "No moral lectures - discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-obvious." "If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest acceptable response and explain the issue." "No need to disclose you're an AI." "If the quality of your response has been substantially reduced due to my custom instructions, explai…

Yeah, but you are paying 20$ per-month subscription _and also have to sweet-talk the stochastic parrot into giving you the result you want_ while it keeps lecturing you in condescending tone.

It's not human, why are you offended by how it talks to you? It's a tool. Many tools need some adjustment before they can be useful for what you do. You surely won't be viscerally upset if you pay $20 for a tool that occasionally spills oil on you if you hold it wrong. You'd still think the tool is crap because its designers made an UX decision you hate, but you surely would not throw away the tool out of principle, right?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#530

Post by monocasa »

leobg wrote: post #443
scandox wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't libel the dead

The dead have estates.

They're not saying there's no one to sue. It's that as libel and slander are legally defined, they don't apply to the dead. The estates have no standing for a suit.
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