I heard several similar sentiments around the office this morning. Hatch appears to be on the same page as his constituents.
The idea that people actually believe that somehow international relations operates on the same scale and with the same considerations as, I dunno, a bar argument or a locker room dispute should be mind-boggling, but isn’t. This is what we’ve had to deal with for decades, only until now the people actually calling the shots mostly understood that the occasional pandering to constituents with “tough talk” was just that, pandering, and not to be taken seriously.
Now, though, the president himself is endorsing this infantile and extremely dangerous idea that nations and individuals are just alike. And not only that, he’s effectively saying that nations and individuals are alike in being stupid, macho, posturing fools.
For years many, many Americans have pretty much buried their heads in the sand when it comes to foreign affairs, and refused to understand that getting results, rather than making yourself feel good, is the goal. Of course, most Americans over the years have had a difficult time figuring out what results we should be going for, other than total American domination of the world with zero consequences for us.
How the GOP still trades on its entirely undeserved-in-the-first-place “adults in the room” reputation on national defense, I have no idea other than Adam’s Razor.*
(*) if a phenomenon can be explained by the American electorate being fucking dumb as hell in aggregate, that is the most likely explanation.
Most Americans have a hard time getting any deeper in their analysis than, “hurf durf, Merica Strong!”
…
We’re fucked.
This is an image that comes up when I google image searched hurf durf:
I think you’re about right.
I really wish that dog was US President instead.
Dog and His Bone for 2020!
MInd you, I don’t believe it’s that we are, as a nation, a bunch of dumb fucks, not really. It’s that our historical experiences have been, well, atypical to say the least, when compared to everyone else’s in the world, and like most people, everywhere, Americans simply draw conclusions from what they collectively have experienced. In the absence of real leadership, to guide folks in understanding just how different those experiences have been from the norm and how unlikely it is that that sort of exceptionalism will continue to be true, it’s pretty predictable that most folks just stay the course in their thinking.
This is not a failure of the average American so much as a total, utter, and catastrophic failure of the class of people who set themselves up as our leaders.
Americans are just unable to conceive of things in the long term.
England. Spain and France all had long runs of being nigh-undefeated. Those runs all ended rather spectacularly.
And since we never learn about European history… or really any history other than our own, we think we’re somehow special in that regard.
I don’t see why this is being classed as an American thing. Especially in the last few years you see plenty of examples of this happening in other countries. It’s just that the US is so large and has such a mass of population (and power) that it makes the headlines more.
Edit: People as a whole are extremely short cited and can’t look long term, and there are always politicians who will take advantage of it. The internet allows the minority to band together now and sound much more vocal than ever before in history and allows reinforcement of a lot of dumb propaganda.
The disparity of power is fairly unique in all of history as well.
Spain thought they were powerful, but they didn’t possess technology that vastly exceeded most other nations. You’d think we’d have learned from Vietnam that technological superiority isn’t everything, but we’ve convinced ourselves it was those pesky politicians… as we enter the 16th year of a war with a bunch of goat herders.
I meant power in political terms (even though we are on a decline) moreso than technological power.
The American attitude now is IMO very similar to the Athenian before the Peloponnesian Wars. They had colonies and allies everywhere, including Sparta, but in their extreme arrogance they thought they were superior to their neighbors due to culture and breeding. And they threw it all away so quickly, too. They pissed off their allies totally unnecessarily, turned them to enemies, and lost their colonies. And then of course the Macedonians cleaned house with both sides.
I think you need to read more about the current UK political situation. We are in deep trouble, it’s just less obvious and immediately harmful than Trump. But it may be more permanently damaging.
Americans appear little different to Brits in their ability to vote for the stupid or the impossible, on the back of some belief that we are somehow ‘special’.
Damn, I thought Jon Meachum dug back into the far past for lessons of history repeating itself!
Best typo.
People do need to do more scientific research. :P
woops :P
And we see Wombat’s point in action. Indeed, most Americans don’t care. Why? Because they are thousands of miles away from being directly affected from any of this. We are our own worst enemy, since, “out of sight, out of mind,” applies to nearly every military action we’ve had for many years now.
Kevin, I would ask one of those constituents how they feel about the war in Afghanistan? Or even better, ask them how they feel about the war in Iraq (which is over, but I’m betting they will go on and on about it as though it were still anything more than us assisting in aerial bombardments against ISIS.)
Most American’s also don’t put those two former items together with a total cost (Iraq War and Afghanistan War) of between 4-11 trillion and counting, depending on how much you add back in the total cost of borrowing money to pay for it, and effect on the American economy.
With a total U.S. debt of around 18 trillion and growing, the lions share of that went to two wars that to this day netted us … what result exactly?
It netted revenue into peoples pockets. If you view this as wealth transference form the public state to the private individual it works better.