U.S. Politics

[snowychap]

9 hours ago, A'Villan said:

There are the quotes. Apologies if I've misconstrued your message.

You have, it seems.

I was outlining that your argument was using it as a benchmark whilst, elsewhere in your post, you claimed not to be.

I can see how you might read that as an accusation of being in denial, I suppose from one angle it is but it's not really the important thing to take from it. I only included the bit about what you claim to highlight its inconsistency with your actual argument and its your argument not your separate claim which is the more important thing to talk about.

 

 

[OutByEaster?]

10 hours ago, bickster said:

That'll be parties then

To a certain extent, and certainly here in the UK that's true.. In the US, it's the corporate structure - whoever is paying the campaign funds.

[peterms]

Thread where the US Army asks for people's experience of army service, and people tell them.

 

[Lichfield Dean]

11 hours ago, peterms said:

Thread where the US Army asks for people's experience of army service, and people tell them.

 

This is just awful to read... 

[peterms]

If you want to criticise a neocon, ask an actual conservative.

Mike Pompeo: American Jacobin

Quote

Given contemporary events, one of the most interesting figures of the 18th-century French revolutionary period was Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a leader of the Girondins, the neoconservatives of revolutionary France.

Brissot believed that the animating universal ideals of the Revolution had made France, as one of his allies put it, “the foremost people of the universe,” not just better than all earthlings, better even than Martians. Yet, despite France’s position as the exceptional nation, the Girondins worried that universal ideals were under siege by a complex array of conspiracies hatched by the absolutist powers surrounding France.

The only way to confront these foreign conspiracies, he believed, was preemptive war. Robespierre, who hated Brissot, was skeptical. Robespierre believed that war would strengthen the monarchy, which was wobbly but still intact in 1791, and that foreign adversaries would be formidable military opponents. Robespierre famously quipped: “No one loves armed missionaries.” In true neoconservative fashion, Brissot countered that the people of many nations who were longing for liberty, especially the Dutch and Flemish, would welcome France’s revolutionary army with open arms. Sound familiar?

But, Brissot had a problem. When he rose to prominence in the Assembly in 1791, the monarchists and other traditionalists still held significant sway, and Louis XVI was still on the throne. How to persuade these traditional French nationalists to launch crusading wars to spread universal ideals when these retrogrades understood the only sound French foreign policy to be one that advanced France’s interests, its raison d’état?

Brissot’s solution was pure genius: couch the ideological crusade for universal liberty simply as wars for French national glory. As one scholar put it, Brissot argued that, “patriotic virtue would emanate out of these cosmopolitan ideals and their diffusion, thus allowing France to once again become a ‘great nation.’” Brissot co-opted the language of traditional French nationalism paving the way for the Assembly and Louis XVI to embrace war with Austria and Prussia.

Brissot’s dilemma when facing the French nationalists of his time was precisely the dilemma of contemporary neoconservatives when Donald Trump was elected president. Trump’s criticism of the Iraq war and his nationalistic America First rhetoric was a direct repudiation of the central tenet of neoconservatism, the need to spread universal ideals with American military power. Or, as George W. Bush speechified, to seek “the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

In reaction to Trump’s criticisms, some of the less-savvy neoconservatives, such as Max Boot and Bill Kristol, simply went out into the public square and lit themselves on fire in protest. These self-immolating Never Trumpers will likely never wield power again.

But the clever neoconservatives, such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo, adopted the Brissot strategy. Continue the military crusade for universal ideals, continue to treat all non-democratic regimes with belligerence, continue to disparage the traditions of all other nations and cultures by asserting American moral superiority—but adopt and co-opt the language of Trumpian nationalism. Cotton and Pompeo are, after all, good Straussians, admirers of the late political theorist Leo Strauss. They understand that the masses live in dark ignorance and that smart philosophers can manipulate them into supporting universal ideals through the use of cant phrases like “Make America Great Again.”

In Pompeo’s May 11 speech at the Claremont Institute, the bastion of the West Coast Straussians, the Brissot strategy was on full display and, understandably, was met with raucous cheering by the neoconservatives in the audience who understood that Pompeo and John Bolton had succeeded in hijacking Trump’s foreign policy for neoconservatives, a significant accomplishment. While Trump’s rhetoric is still the husk of American foreign policy, when it comes to core principles and political practice, “America First” is out, the “Freedom Agenda” is in. “Getting along” with other nations is out; regime change and belligerence is in.

Like Brissot, Pompeo accomplished this bait and switch by rewriting history. He argued that the framers of the American Constitution were not skeptical of entangling alliances, standing armies and global commitments; they were actually warlike neoconservative crusaders.

He argued that the “foreign policy of the early republic” could be characterized by three words: “realism, restraint, and respect.” This is fine as far as it goes, but he then proceeded to define these terms in ways that would have made them unrecognizable to the Framers. Alexander Hamilton defined realism, Pompeo argued, as forever war: “Conflict is the normative experience for nations.” Quoting Thomas Jefferson, he defined “restraint” as the willingness to go to war, because “the temper and folly of our enemies may not leave this in our choice.” Finally, without a hint of irony as the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group was steaming to the Persian Gulf in search of monsters to destroy, Pompeo quoted John Quincy Adams on the need for respect in international relations. Adams’s admonition was to respect other nations. Pompeo turned this upside down by warning other nations to respect us—or else.

He then, like Brissot, laid out the threats and conspiracies that erode “America’s power.” The only solution to this challenge was to “proudly” associate with “nations that share our principles and are willing to defend them.” How about George Washington’s warning against permanent alliances? What Washington really meant in his Farewell Address, Pompeo said, is to have many, many alliances “based on ‘policy, humanity and interest.’” If he were president today, Washington would welcome America’s alliances with Israel, Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea in order to make certain, for example, that “each Indo-Pacific nation can protect its sovereignty from coercion.” Washington was really a neoconservative, you see.

There is here not even a faint resemblance to what Washington actually believed, but Pompeo’s ideological hucksterism drew a warm reception from the Claremont audience, composed in part by people considering themselves scholars of 18th-century America.

Pompeo’s rhetoric represents the transvaluation of the Framers’ foreign policy restraint into those of neoconservatism. It is hard to know if Trump is aware that his foreign policy principles have been hijacked, but given his apparent disdain of intellectual pursuits, the answer is probably in the negative.

Toward the end of the speech, Pompeo proceeded to redefine the meaning of “America First” to make it agree with a neoconservative agenda. “Here is what this really means,” he said. While Trump has expressed no desire to spread the American model, “America is exceptional—a place and history apart from normal human experience” (emphasis mine) and “among political ideas, there is none better than the American idea.” As compared with this metaphysical American exceptionalism, the cultures, traditions, and political histories of all other nations shrink into illegitimacy and nothingness.

George Washington’s view of Pompeo’s puffed up triumphalism would be that a nation that hubristically pounds its chest and claims exceptional moral purity and righteousness may just be a nation that has lost its virtue. The American Framers were well aware that the great republican experiments in ancient Greece and Rome ended with prideful imperial overreach.

In 1792, when Louis XVI read, “in a flat, faltering voice,” the war proclamation against Austria he understood it to be a death sentence for the French monarchy. We should know that if neoconservatives are able actually to carry out the wars that their ideology and will to power suggest, it would be a death sentence for the American republic.

 

[Xann]

Mueller won't be voting for Trump then.

 

The superior book to 'How To Strangle A Man' is 'How To Make A Man Strangle Himself'.

Get the dimwits in your adversary's country to f*** their own country up.

[HanoiVillan]

If this was just a one-off, you wouldn't even notice it. But he just seems to love holding on to young girls. 

Edited May 29, 2019 by HanoiVillan

[snowychap]

 

[Xann]

 

Quote

 

US energy department rebrands gas exports 'molecules of freedom'

US energy officials appeared to rebrand natural gas produced in the country as "freedom gas", in a statement announcing an increase in exports.

The US Department of Energy said the expansion of a Texas facility meant more "molecules of US freedom" could be produced and exported worldwide.

The facility, based in Quintana, produces liquified natural gas (LNG).

The move was a clear indication of US commitment to promoting clean energy, the statement said.

 

BBC

'The Onion' might as well shut down, how do you outparody that? 

 

[Xann]

Escalating tariffs on Mexico linked to attempted crossings into the US.

Surprised he didn't do it a while back.

It would be cynical to suggest he moved his own money away from potential harm before announcing this. I mean, I've no idea if this is true? It's just a guess.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Xann said:

Escalating tariffs on Mexico linked to attempted crossings into the US.

Surprised he didn't do it a while back.

It would be cynical to suggest he moved his own money away from potential harm before announcing this. I mean, I've no idea if this is true? It's just a guess.

Guess who it hurts the most? yup, 'muricans

[villakram]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

Guess who it hurts the most? yup, 'muricans

It is not as clear or as simple as that, unfortunately.

The bigger issue here is that the US reputation is now heading into the mud, with first Libya (abandon nukes and your cool, nope), then Iran (nuclear deal, nope) and now potentially throwing Mexico and new NAFTA deal in the bin. This portends to China never signing a deal with an unreliable partner, which is the issue of real importance here.

[bickster]

10 minutes ago, villakram said:

It is not as clear or as simple as that, unfortunately.

The bigger issue here is that the US reputation is now heading into the mud, with first Libya (abandon nukes and your cool, nope), then Iran (nuclear deal, nope) and now potentially throwing Mexico and new NAFTA deal in the bin. This portends to China never signing a deal with an unreliable partner, which is the issue of real importance here.

Are you quoting random posts whilst answering a different one?

[villakram]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

Are you quoting random posts whilst answering a different one?

Errr... just trying to add to the conversation. The initial discussion of tariffs was all that the seller suffers, then people said no it's the buyer that will absorb it and it turns out that there will be losers all over, and winners.

The discussions I was listening too and reading so far today, have begun to consider the broader implications of this particular tariff. China being the big issue.

[snowychap]

 

[Keyblade]

What, and I can't stress this enough...the ****?

[NurembergVillan]

 

[Chindie]

6 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

 

They've also projected some of Boris' old comments on Trump, that aren't very flattering, somewhere prominent as well I understand.

[Keyblade]

24 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

 

Cringe.

One of the few things Donald Trump has been right about, through no real insight of his own mind you, was to be embarrassed by John McCain.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Keyblade

[Xela]

Even Donald gets it right every now and again...