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America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

theatlantic.com

71–80 of 128 posts

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deep state is any agent of meaningful power/influence that works for the government or is very closely entangled with the government, and that retains some or all of their power/influence from one admin to the next. That includes for example powerful figures in the Pentagon or intelligence agencies that remain from one admin to the next. These people all have agendas of their own, and they network as people do. D…

There is this building where guys wearing masks wheel you into a room behind locked doors at dawn and then use drugs to knock you out. They then take sharp knives and cut you open and rummage around your insides, sometimes taking organs out. Blood goes everywhere. The footage is gory. When they're done with you it may takes you weeks to recover. The rest of just call his "surgery at a hospital". My point is that you'…

I think the distinction between the one that you're describing and the one that the person you're replying to is describing is crime.

People like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheneye were part of a criminal conspiracy to rob the America people and destabilize the US to make it ripe for further hijacking.

That's the deepstate -- it's everything you mentioned above + a criminal conspiracy mindset.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#72

The single most interesting thing that will come out of the Iran war, is it's giving the go-ahead signal for China. I don't mean morally specifically, I mean practically: China is plainly seeing the US can't sustain a long campaign what-so-ever. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in weeks, 20-25% of its stock. Again an opponent that wasn't that hard to knock down in terms of air to ground / ground to air, and s…

on the other hand the us interventions have betrayed that chinese radars e.g. don't "work as advertised", to the point that there have been purges at chinese military industrial manufacturers. on top of the recent purges in the military hierarchy, it seems like action against Taiwan is delayed for a few years. conversely the US brass now has a fire lit under its ass due to low ammo stockpiles and and excuse to replen…

> to the point that there have been purges at chinese military industrial manufacturers.

I'd like to learn more about this, do you have any sources that I can read?

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#73
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this building where guys wearing masks wheel you into a room behind locked doors at dawn and then use drugs to knock you out. They then take sharp knives and cut you open and rummage around your insides, sometimes taking organs out. Blood goes everywhere. The footage is gory. When they're done with you it may takes you weeks to recover. The rest of just call his "surgery at a hospital". My point is that you'…

Calling it "civil service" instead of "deep state" does not make it any better. We don't have either in the Constitution so whatever you call it, it has to be removed from power.

And then what? The spoils system? Rampant incompetence?

And, we have to get rid of it because it's not in the Constitution? You know what else isn't in the Constitution? DHS. The IRS. ICE. An enormous number of other agencies.

The Constitution gives very little guidance on the Executive Branch, other than the President and Vice President. That does not mean that hiring people in federal agencies is unconstitutional! It just means that the Constitution is silent on the topic, neither requiring nor prohibiting very much.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#74

Can't read the Atlantic any more since it became private, but nobody can deny that America's more of a rogue and less super than it was a year ago.

> Can't read the Atlantic any more since it became private It has always been in private ownership, never having been owned by a publicly traded company: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic#Ownership_and_edi... Currently majority ownership is with Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of Steve Jobs).

Good information, but this is a time I don't mean stock ownership.

More like "members only" for the website where they don't accept "strangers" like they used to do :(

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "civil service" instead of "deep state" does not make it any better. We don't have either in the Constitution so whatever you call it, it has to be removed from power.

And then what? The spoils system? Rampant incompetence? And, we have to get rid of it because it's not in the Constitution? You know what else isn't in the Constitution? DHS. The IRS. ICE. An enormous number of other agencies. The Constitution gives very little guidance on the Executive Branch, other than the President and Vice President. That does not mean that hiring people in federal agencies is unconstitutional!…

Then back to the system defined in the Constitution, it gives enough guidance. If you think the President is not enough for the Executive - amend the Constitution, used to be enough for ~200 years though.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deep state is and always has been the ultra-wealthy. Rampant, uncontrolled consolidation of media, PACs, lobbying, and granting cushy jobs to retired congresspeople all give the wealthiest individuals extremely outsized control over what happens in the US government.

I think the problem is that the "deep state" really came into public consciousness with Trump, on his first run. While I agree with your definition of the deep state, that is not what most people think of in current days, and Trump is probably the deepest of deep state you can legally be. He ran against the deep state, while being deeply embedded inside it. It was just easier to pass off because he wasn't a politicia…

It’s just funny he ran on releasing all of the Epstein Files, didn’t, and when we caught a glimpse of a slither of it, it turned out he was in there so much it could have been renamed the Trump Files

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#77

The single most interesting thing that will come out of the Iran war, is it's giving the go-ahead signal for China. I don't mean morally specifically, I mean practically: China is plainly seeing the US can't sustain a long campaign what-so-ever. The US has burned through ~850 Tomahawks in weeks, 20-25% of its stock. Again an opponent that wasn't that hard to knock down in terms of air to ground / ground to air, and s…

China is not going to militarily take over Taiwan. The most likely outcome now is a "three state" China where it joins the fold voluntarily and becomes a puppet state of China. Given the way the world has gone, it's the only rational choice.

Given what happened to Hong Kong, that is not an option that Taiwan is going to seriously consider - not for the next 50 years or so.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#78
post #16

How times have changed when a neoliberal institution (not quite as bad as The Economist) openly says this: > Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two…

The American presence was in opposition to the Soviet Union. There was a Cold War. It is very easy to show that the Soviet role in the production of Islamisant terrorism is infinitely greater. It is a universal feature of 21st c anti-yankee claptrap that it simply memory holes the Soviet Union.

Unlike Uncle Sam, the Soviet Union no longer exists, so the Economist, written by well-heeled 30-something media class types, sees nothing to blame.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? The spoils system? Rampant incompetence? And, we have to get rid of it because it's not in the Constitution? You know what else isn't in the Constitution? DHS. The IRS. ICE. An enormous number of other agencies. The Constitution gives very little guidance on the Executive Branch, other than the President and Vice President. That does not mean that hiring people in federal agencies is unconstitutional!…

Then back to the system defined in the Constitution, it gives enough guidance. If you think the President is not enough for the Executive - amend the Constitution, used to be enough for ~200 years though.

The Constitution does not define a civil service system. You seem to interpret that as saying that any system is unconstitutional until the Constitution is amended to define one. That is... let's just call it "very much a minority interpretation".

We are not going to either amend the Constitution nor abolish the civil service just because some pseudonymous online account says we should.

Re: America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not going to militarily take over Taiwan. The most likely outcome now is a "three state" China where it joins the fold voluntarily and becomes a puppet state of China. Given the way the world has gone, it's the only rational choice.

Given what happened to Hong Kong, that is not an option that Taiwan is going to seriously consider - not for the next 50 years or so.

Seriously,Taiwan have to consider
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