4008

Everyone doing evil thinks they have good intentions.

4009

Sometimes I don’t return the grocery cart to the grocery cart receptacle.

4010

In the past I was not kind. I didn’t rewind.

4011

As a digression, I read recently that the historical record doesn’t bear out Nero’s bad reputation and apparently he has basically been slandered by various successors.

Also, I’m assuming the boxing commentator referred to has some remarkable orange hued hair?

4012

I don’t think Trump did.

4013

Of course he did. He sees the world in terms of what’s good for him, and acted accordingly. Everyone acts for what they think is ‘good’. The problem is often their conception of ‘good’. But you can’t excuse obvious badness by saying that it was done for ‘good’. Dead Iraqis don’t care about GWB’s ‘good’ intentions, and we shouldn’t either. He’s fucked in the head, and does fucked in the head things, and people die.

4014

I agree entirely that it doesn’t excuse things, it’s why I was trying to make it clear I didn’t.

I just think the neocon ideals of “end of history, good for democracy” aren’t the worst ideals, and definitely beat “punch down on anyone you don’t like” and " white evangelical supremacy" ideals of today’s Republicans.

4015

The entire basis of the neocon movement was the idea that we should use our military power against other people in an effort to make them more like us, because we are better than them. I can’t really grasp the difference between that and punching down on people we don’t like.

4016

The difference is the first one is neocolonial, but “white man’s burden”, the second has no concern over what happens to the other.

To me, one is a lesser evil than the other. Think British colonialism vs Belgian colonialism. Both morally wrong, but one is in the utter horrors of history for a reason alongside Hitler.

4017

Exactly. If there’s one good thing you can say about the neoconservatives, it’s that they were driven by the same concept of American exceptionalism that drives some liberal politics. Any neoconservative worth his salt is aghast at what Trump and the GOP are doing today. I’d wager that a substantial number of them are Never Trumpers.

Ewww, gross, why are you capitalizing neocon?

As someone who shares your anger if not your willingness to sling around theological labels that obviously have no meaning to you, I wonder if you realize how nutty that sounds.

There are matters of degree, intentionality, and principles that differentiate Bush’s neoconservative administration, Trumpism, and the Tea Party movement. You might disdain all of them – I certainly do – but if you don’t understand the difference among them, you haven’t learned much in the last 20 years of American politics. You’re just fostering a pointless and frothy slurry of “us vs. them”, which is certainly your right, but it’s not terribly helpful in an actual discussion.

-Tom

4018

Blinks at Kenya.

4019

Trumpism is the next phase of the Tea Partiers. It’s their continued devolution into becoming the American Taliban. Neocon is a different and soon to be extinct branch of the Republicans, having been discredited and deservedly so by the failues of the Bushes.

Comparing Neocons and Trumpers is like comparing Blue Dogs and DSA members. (with the exception the Dems are doing things for good, at least most of the time)

4020

The beast at Tanagra.

4021

Are you disagreeing that there’s a difference between British and Belgian colonialism? Because it sounds like you’re disagreeing that there’s any difference and I’m pretty sure you know better. Or maybe you just got something in your eye.

-Tom

4022

I’m disagreeing with the idea that the distinction between the two makes one evil and one not-evil because of ‘good intentions’, but I think you knew that, since you wrote this:

I mean, how can you disdain them all if they aren’t the same!?

Phooey. Sell it to someone else.

4023

I disdain Nazis and also the Kardashians, but not equally.

4024

You should disagree with that idea. I do as well, and I made it clear that I considered both evil. One is just a lesser evil. I made it very clear that I wasn’t claiming the neocons were good in any way. The Neocons are what caused me to leave the Republicans, along with one realization about myself when I serving active duty, helped along by a young woman streamer who now has a good role in the game industry.

Evil is not just murder, arson, and jaywalking.

4025

Oh come off it, Tom. It is possible to have an internally consistent view of good and evil that is not rooted in Judeo-Christian doctrine or theology. The drive to view everything through that lens is in fact one of the most unfortunate things about our society.

And no, I do view them all as the same variety of evil assholes. Some of them are useful idiots and some of them are true believers and some of them are sociopaths, sure, but minus the elites that Strollen so adores at the Lincoln Project etc it’s the same coalition that has poisoned America for the entire post-Vietnam era for sure, and probably farther back if one cares to dig.

4026

This is an amazing sentence, in or out of context.

I think I might start a few conversations with it.

4027

I despise the Kardassholes. But I do not wish that they were injured.

Nazis on the other hand…