Trump revokes security clearances of Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Dems
Trump revokes security clearances of Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Dems
Surely this will lower the price of eggs?
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Any day now, Trump will lower them!
...Any second now...
See, eggs! Wait no, that's blood...
WhY do you SuPoRtE GeNoCiDe?
I play Skyrim. In that rpg video game you can be an assassin. After you kill Grelod the Kind, a child abuser, one of the children she tortured says:
"Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities." - Runa Fair-Shield.
When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy? I can see how bumping off many crazy men (and right now I can only name male dictators but I guess women could be just as bad) would make the world safer - well, safer if we assume it would not trigger a backlash and WW3.
Maybe we could assassinate Kim and North Korea would rejoice not set off nukes? Maybe we could assassinate MbS and the Saudis would just shrug and appoint a new Crown Prince with a less murderous tendancy towards journalists and dissidents? But could we assassinate Putin, Trump, Xi, or Modi and not release hell?
If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?
Note: this is a thought experiment - outside Skyrim, I never killed anyone, never worked as an assassin for hire, and have no desire to change that fact. I just want to read your thoughts on this topic - I think we've all wondered if there is a shortcut back to normality in face of current events but are we fooling ourselves?
Good people don’t become assassins, something bad people don’t have problems with.
It’s never Hitler, Putin, Stalin or Trump who get assassinated. Always JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby, …
Putin and Xi...I'm pretty sure that, if they were topped, there's enough institutional Authoritarianism that either there would be a "clean" and immediate change to someone with the next highest authority....or it would fall into civil war with just as much speed, rounds of assassinations back and forth until the power vacuum is filled by someone able to pull everyone left to heel....or the whole government falls apart....
The Chinese would certainly just appoint a new president, no problem. Xi might be in charge, but the Chinese communist party isn't some vestigial organ. Russia, however... Putin's been exclusively in charge for long enough and with no immediately clear successor that I'm almost certain that his death is going to result in a power struggle and civil war.
You'd have power vacuums.
In America it's not too late. We have a clear succession strategy. It sucks...I think you'd have to pick people off till you got to Rubio to get back to something closer to normal. He's #4. If you don't stop there...it gets a lot worse before it gets any better.
China, Russia, and especially Best Korea are so deeply entrenched, I don't think succession would go as cleanly.
I know too little about Russia to know who is a contender to replace Putin or if when he goes the system that created him will go too. I am trying to educate myself on that.
As for China, I know a bit more but I am no expert. Given my limited insight, I am surprised that Xi is still in power. I expected the Communist Party to have 'neutralised' him, not necessarily bumped him off but to have taken away his power and reduced him to a figurehead, especially after he mishandled the pandemic and has struggled to fix China's economic woes. He is basically a thug. If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But you cannot beat a pandemic with a hammer nor fix inflation or unemployment or pollution with one. You must have as many tools as possible - Chinese perfected the toolkit of government over thousands of years. Sophisticated people in Chinese government must think Xi is an ignorant lout. I suspect they keep him in place because its better for the people who really run China to have a useful idiot as a puppet than to go through the uncertainties of replacing him - more or less how they handled the Kim regime in North Korea until lately. Putin and Kim collaborating on Ukraine must have really angered China which is probably why Chinese are considering sending 'peace-keeping' troops to Ukraine. Xi is a pig in a drawing room and the real government is just working around him.
It is hard to tell how much of the reportage about Xi is 'smoke and mirrors'. I recently saw a viral report on Reddit and in The Guardian newspaper (probably going around all the news outlets) about Chinese military exercises and some special navy vessels (biggest of their kind! etc) they had which were supposed to provide support for amphibian landings of tanks etc. Every report spins this as 'China war games is preparation for invading Taiwan - shock!'. I am very sceptical. Xi is apparently the driving force behind sabre-rattling rhetoric against Taiwan and building up PRC military might (his new bigger hammer), but I reckon most of Chinese government are not interested in a war with anyone least of all Taiwan - I think they expect to recover Taiwan eventually, by peaceful means, and are happy if it takes a century cos that long timescale is how Chinese think. So, given this split between Xi and the rest, I have the sense this whole media story is just a performance - whether it is to fool the world about China's military aggressiveness (advertising Xi's policy) or is some part of Chinese administration doing this to fool Xi he's still in charge (covert anti-Xi policy), I cannot tell. I just don't have enough facts to judge what these military manouvres tell us about Chinese government or, on the bigger scale, what real difference it would make if Xi was not around.
We (in UK) get 24/7 coverage of Trump's idiocies but not real information on other political leaders. I am European and I could not name five European political leaders, let alone predict the outcome if one were assassinated. As for politics in rest of globe, I am just clueless for the most part but I do try to educate myself. I have to create my own news feeds because the MSM is worthless.
Biggest problem is that all of these people that you and me consider assholes do have a huge support. It's not like a dictator can be a dictator without any support.
I agree with you but I got side-tracked because of the way my childish mind thinks and started chuckling to myself as I imagined an enormous 'dictator's support'. The Trump Truss (patent pending). I am visualising something Steampunk style with polished brass, gears and levers, and puffs of steam - a bit like the walking house in Howl's Moving Castle but bolted around the Tangerine nethers. Cheered me up!
“Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities.” - Runa Fair-Shield.
The whole of human history is solving a problem which then creates bigger, more complicated problems to solve.
See also: The assassination of Franz Ferdinand
See also see also: The Treaty of Westphalia
Creating bigger problems. Exactly why I ponder if assassination does any good or just recoils on you. But I think that its usefulness is contingent on who kills whom.
I guess that is why there are so few assassinations of elite figures - it threatens the stability that protects the elite so the elite do not assassinate each other.
However, assassinating non-elite people - terrorists and revolutionaries is routine. The elites (governments of nation states, their sub-contractors) have even mechanised assassination by using remote-controlled drone attacks. This stabalises their control.
So, if elites assassinate those that threaten them, it typically works in their favour. But if non-elites do it to elites, does it empower them or not? If it causes chaos and instability amongst the elite, and the chaos spreads to wider society, and does harm to bystanders or even brings about war, is this a price worth paying, or even a good and necessary outcome?
Honestly, I am still struggling with these questions. Part of me thinks 'sauce for goose, sauce for gander' and the tyrants deserve to die by their own methods turned back on them. Another part of me knows war is terrible, especially for 'ordinary people' and for the environment, and should be avoided. But there is such a thing as 'a just war' and armed struggle can be morally good or even our duty.
So, I go back and forth.
When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy?
According to the Supreme Court, it was a presidential option back while Biden was still in office.
Interesting... Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea ... and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).
The big problem is the state which has such extreme power.
The big part that makes those states work is default compliance, which allows that state to commit violence using everyone who complies (which is everyone by default). Individuals being non-compliant directly translates to power being syphoned away from the state. This is why morality and ethics education are so Important, as the state cannot do anything immoral if individuals refuse to do immoral actions. The second most important thing is transparency, since states utilize opacueness as a means to obfuscate the morality of actions. This is one reason why dense hierarchies are utilized in governments - to obfuscate actions and provide personal deniability to members of the state infrastructure.
Very clear statement, very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct in your analysis. I know that one reason I play video games is to help myself become aware of my 'ethics' (derived originally from my Roman Catholic childhood and still full of that mentality despite decades of 'personal development' and consciously trying to break free from false religiosity) and to start questioning them. I am a vegan, literally avoid hurting insects let alone humans. I recoil from violence ... and it makes me easy to abuse and exploit. I have been trodden on all my life one way or another because I am too 'nice' - I am not a Christian but I still 'turn the other cheek'.
I play Skyrim and one story arc allows you to be an assassin who eventually assassinates the Emperor which, as a republican who finds monarchy morally offensive, is fine by me! But before you kill him, you have to kill a list of 'ordinary' people and it is hard to justify doing so as most of these targets are just eccentric or annoying rather than political threats deserving of execution on behalf of those they oppress. I struggle to do this mindless killing (which the game presents as a cultish sacrifice on behalf of a 'daedric' demi-god and/or service performed for pay/capitalist commodity) and as I play the game I am trying to understand my anxieties about 'killing' pixels, and trying to achieve a visceral sense of it being okay to use violence in specific situations, to feel good in myself about using my own power/agency, so I am not constantly second-guessing myself and thus conceding the initiative to others who are bad actors. I do not find it easy.
I am currently playing The Outer Worlds which is explicitly about the act of rebellion or revolution against tyranny. One of the characters revels in killing the evil corporation's mercenaries. I am like a child, looking on and trying to understand the lessons, trying to imagine feeling the same about the work of liberation. It is ironic that capitalist products are helping me become a revolutionary but everything can be a learning experience and whatever the developers think they are creating, the players make their own experiences.
I think when Julius Ceasar was assassinated it turned the republic into an empire, IIRC. Might need more people to go to avoid some shit like emperor Vance.
Sigh… I dunno anymore man. What insane times.
Beware the Ides of March, huh?
If I recall, Shakespeare's Caesar says to Antony:
*Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*
Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it's just a coincidence.
We have a tendency to think of these problems like mechanical systems, where if you pull one pin, the machine stops. It’s better to consider them like weeds… you have a dandelion in your yard, yes, but there is a field of green flat little plants growing before the first cotton bandit sticks its head up. To deal with a weed infestation, you either need to get every single one, make the environment inhospitable to the weed, or introduce something you want that crowds them out.
Whatever gets everybody the closest to no violence, including systemic, is best.
A world at peace, true peace based on justice and happiness not enforced by oppression and brainwashing, is my hope. It's what humans need. It's what I need :-) I would prefer democracy, votes, laws, regulations, social norms all coming together to deliver that. Right now, it is others who are 'moving fast and breaking stuff' so my puzzle is how to slow 'em down and mend stuff before it goes too far to save anything good. Can I do that without violence or not? I prefer not but is it my choice? I am not the powerful one here, it's the guys with guns and nukes who are running this show, and they seem hell-bent on violence. Do I let them roll over me or take a stand, however token? I am old enough to remember Tiananmen Square protests and that guy standing in front of a column of tanks asking the soldiers to go back to barracks and not brutalise peaceful protesters. I witnessed the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. I ask myself have I the guts to do as much? Will I be a coward and let the tanks roll? Just being honest and thinking aloud. And worried, very worried, about where things are headed.
I kind of wonder where the jfk shooter is, if he is doing all right? If he is thinking about going back to active duty…
That reminds me of a news story from a few years back: a series of bank robberies in Germany, Holland, Denmark - all the same modus operandi and all done by white-haired robbers. Interpol (international police force) said they thought it was elderly members of 1970s terrorist organisations like Bader-Meinhoff gang stealing money because they had no retirement pensions as they destroyed their state records when young/had no savings accounts/criminal records etc and had to find some way to pay for elder care. It just paints an hilarious picture in my mind: Zimmer-frame Zapatas!
Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby a long time ago.
I know you're making a joke.
If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?
You mean take the current unstable genocidal dictators who are deeply connected with the current political climate and have definite limitations and restraints placed upon them, and replace them with all the associates, wormtongues and ideological puritans that surround these authoritarians and are there simply for the reason to seize any level of control and power that they can?
To say nothing of the lesser-recognized dictators-in-waiting who surround these nations and will look for any opportunity to strike a rival when they're down.
You may help things, or you may make everything far, far worse. The devil you know and all that. We get hung up on the idea that single individuals control outcomes, when really those people are just the face of a movement or agendas spanning across thousands of people.
Use your red button on the wealthy elite of the world who retain vast surpluses of hoarded (stolen) wealth from billions of people, you would do a lot more good, particularly if that wealth is just lost forever. Better it burn than be used to control populations.
What the fuck is this comment bro? Killing people is wrong. Trying to use videogame logic as your excuse is disgusting.
Killing people is wrong.
TIL the allies of WW2 are evil.
Sure, the Japanese invaded my ancestral homeland, done the horrible massacre in Nanjing, but "killing people is wrong" so I guess my ancestors shouldn't have fought back and let them slaughter my people?
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Yes, it is. So when there is someone going out to kill a large number of people, what should we do about it?
I think we have to explore moral questions. I think it immoral to just refuse to think. It is wrong to simply assert 'killing people is wrong' instead of arguing a case. Games, imaginary scenarios, give us laboratories in which to test out our ideas without hurting anyone.
Like you, I am very reluctant to harm any sentient being. But is it always wrong? Example of a thought experiment: you are passenger on an airplane, a terrorist hijacks the plane, says he is going to fly it into a hospital and kill thousands of people. You just came out of the rest room and are behind him, he has not realised you are there, you could jump him but he has a gun, you might have to wrestle for the gun, and he, or you, or a bystander might get killed. What do you do? If you must never kill, then you must not take the risk of killing him, or yourself, or a bystander while you wrestle so you just have to let him fly the plane into the hospital and kill thousands. Or you might argue it is morally better to act, risk killing someone rather than do nothing, and as a result thousands die.
For thousands of years (probably far longer) humans have asked themselves 'what if...?' questions. We did this with stories around the camp fire, with theatre, with novels, with radio, movies, t.v., cartoons, comic books. Now we do it with video games. Speculating and questioning and debating is how we develop moral views. This is how humans do human. This is the way we got to having courts of law to argue cases, democratic institutions to argue over what is best government. Asking a question is not immoral. Refusing to ask questions is - those who do not think for themselves, often have their thinking done for them by others, and that is at best infantalising, a refusal to do adult, and at worst a form of willing slavery. That's my view.
Yes, Jan 6 murders were very wrong. Tesla vandals are morally superior, I agree wholeheartedly.
Weakest weinie ever...
Then we would have eyeliner wearing Venereal Disease Vance and he’s just as worse!! It’s an “evil vs evil” situation and the only people who lose are the American people who tried to change the narrative! I legit feel like I am walking in real time through some “Idiocracy” film set watching for Luke Wilson to pop out and say JK, but NOPE… here we are! :/
Failed last time. Unfortunately. I cannot wait to see that he died.
What a fucking child.
😆 I hope you're all legally armed and proficient.
man trump and repubs cannot keep these people out of their heads can they?
I lurk the conservative subreddit sometimes. A couple months ago they posted that “I don’t think about you at all” meme about democrats. The funny thing is that 50-75% of their posts, consistently, are about leftists and democrats lol
so this will make things cheaper, right? right?
At least the article calls it for what it is: A purge.
Will the Americans ever wake up and look around?
Our best bet right now is acceleration.
The administration is trying to boil the frogs slowly enough that people forget their discomfort and worry, so people get used to being without services like social security or medicare slowly enough that America just keeps running but with less benefits for the citizens and more prosperity for the wealthy.
If the administration moves too fast, people will connect the dots and associate their discomforts with the presidency, and there will be popular movements to oust leadership, peaceful or otherwise.
What you're likely going to see happen soon is an "economic stimulus" check program with Trump and Musk's names on checks sent to every American to try to get people to associate them with wealth again. Stick everyone with a 3k - 5k check, while stripping us of tens of thousands of dollars in benefits a year. And it will likely work amazingly well, because our population has memories of goldfish.
So we want them to make more stupid moves faster, we want more people to feel the pain of losing public sector jobs and services, we want chaos and recession and consequence, that is the only way American people will move.
I promise you, he will execute the 3 former Democrat presidents, before he goes total-war against Canada.
Biden, Obama, & Clinton, he will have executed.
This is just a minor escalation in the way of his Purge, this ISN'T anywhere-near what it is going to be, in less than 3y.
_ /\ _
I would really like them to try, they are toeing a line right now because Trump and his closest people aren't there for ideological reasons, they're just trying to make a recession happen so they can all gobble up devalued assets and blame biden or trans kids or something. The outliers are the Millers and Bannons who tried before and will try again to assert an ideological presence to bring about the Fourth Reich, but their hold isn't as strong as the oligarchs who just want money and security for their business empires.
You don't sustain a business empire when popular political figures are getting jailed, much less if they're being executed. That would signal the beginning of the actual overthrow of Democracy and if they do it too fast, that would immediately trigger massive popular uprisings and they would lose a lot of control. As it is, the donor-class is looking at the administration right now with a LOT of apprehension about current market destabilization.
Capital doesn't want instability, and would rather go back to a country of rules and regulations than see the entire market literally burn to the ground, so we would see a sudden and dramatic tone shift in politics broadly, we would see media channels turn on Trump's administration instantly, we would see prominent republicans in house and senate suddenly start forming opposition groups, we would see impeachment.
Let us make no mistakes about what's happening. There are people who do indeed want to turn America into a monarchy and they have longer-term plans to do so, and may succeed, but they want it WITH the wealth and prosperity that we have now, they don't want a banana republic, they just want a really big class-divide so they can have while we have-not.
He won't, at least one person in his administration knows that's a fast track to civil war. We didn't love those leaders dearly, but we recognize that they did their duty more or less honorably and patriotically. They are much more useful to Trump as scapegoats than martyrs.
Hillary Clinton must be happy for platforming Trump in 2016.
This classified material?
Yes that's one of the actual pictures from the indictment they brought against him. He apparently had like 300 different documents of varying levels of classified status. There's a couple more iirc of different places like a bedroom and a ballroom stage too. Basically it seems like he had his goons just hide anything he could get his hands on in random boxes of what were supposed to be just irrelevant personal effects
He was only indicted specifically for like 30 of them but my understanding is they specifically chose ones they were willing to have potentially entirely exposed.
That’s not even the worst of it. Several rooms full of documents were found at his property and, though everyone seems to focus on the toilet one, IMO the worst is the one of a storage room full of classified documents plus a scanner/printer.
no the entire archival institute that had to dig up this shit (because it was missing) which he then lied about giving back, trump then got subpoenaed for lying about it.
Yeah no this is literally a criminal conspiracy as far as the government is concerned.
Remember the old days, when the bathroom reading material was a stack of Reader's Digest on the back of the toilet?
I hope he's in there one day tweeting his atrophied brains out on the toilet, and that chandelier drops on his head, and ends him. The only more fitting end would be him choking out during auto-erotic asphyxiation.