I was actually talking to one of them the other day about Iraq and Afghanistan. He supported the wars (Bin Laden and WMD threat) but is displeased that we’re still there without a game plan or end goal. He was critical of Trump for sending more troops without a specific goal/measurement for them to be withdrawn.
For some background, this person was a reluctant Trump voter who held his nose and felt like he voted for the unknown evil versus the known evil of Hillary. I wouldn’t label him a Trump supporter at all, more like your traditional red state conservative/Republican.
I work with a few of those as well. Some more vocal about Trump, but most seem to have stepped back from any talk of him at all which makes me think they regret that specific vote, maybe.
I’ve only asked one about North Korea, but he is former Army and knows anything we do there will be extremely costly and bad, bordering on epically dangerous depending on the weapons used.
I fear for our country if the leading GOP constituent opinion is go all in vs North Korea.
EDIT: Speaking of, what’s the polling for military action against North Korea?
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
The US will end up a fractured, toxic wasteland mired in corruption with an oligarchy aristocracy and slave subclass, as one country or many city states. Or you’ll have a French-style class revolution and put them up against the wall. This isn’t sustainable. I’ve watched the fall of an empire and the impoverishing of the working and middle classes in my adulthood alone . This can’t go on for many more generations.
I don’t think so either. Perhaps this millennial generation will be the ones to throw their hands up and demand accountability. Sadly I don’t think so. I feel like we’re on a roller coaster that was never completed, and we’ll go down when we hit the missing track.
It’s actually the other way around. If you take much of this “identity politics” to its logical conclusion (imo) you end up splitting the country. It’s the slowly dying off old folks that still believe in a single nation. If you’re a millennial who genuinely believes that America is nothing but an endless history of racism, sexism, patriarchal and white male supremacy - and nothing else - why would you fight to keep it all together? After all shared identities and values are the basic foundations of a nation, and increasingly what those values and identities are is being challenged. Right now the mass of inertia is with the status quo. When these Millennials and sub generation are, say, 60 years old? When Gen X falling like leaves and the Baby Boomers are long and welcome gone? Already Millennials tend to be the most skeptical of democracy of any generation alive, and it’s only getting worse.
It will take some as yet unknown voices to enunciate a system of shared values that can unite the people again. What this election has showed however is that foreign actors would like nothing more than to split the country apart - the Independent Texas Facebook page seems to have been put together by Russian proxies, for ex., and disappeared when Facebook purged those Russian pages a few years ago. Imagine China promising California, Oregon and Washington State Most Favored Nation trade status and billions in investment and subsidies to “help” them get on their feet if they secede.
Sadly, that force has more often than not been hardship. That’s probably what it will take this time as well.
No matter how many times I see that quote, it makes me feel less crazy that a President who served saw through everything that was a part of that and made that statement. We need thoughts like that in our leadership now.
When I read the report today from the “defector” accusing Kim of executing musicians and taking sex slaves, I couldn’t help but remember the accusations against Uday Hussein. I mean, they’re probably true for all I know, but it sure feels like the start of a media campaign to gin up support for war.
Because Americans believe in America. That’s why we get so combative internally when we run across sub groups that try to define what American Values are differently than we like. If you look at our history we are pretty consistent about wanting one big huge country. Hell look at the Civil War. The Union didn’t like the idea of the CSA seceding and once the issue was settled with arms, they were promptly re-integrated. I realize that’s not a perfect example because there’s a lot going on in that complicated situation, but one of our cultural constants is believing we are one big awesome county that does better together.
I’m sure there all small groups that want various parts to secede, but mostly the people with super militant views want their views to be reflected nationally.
Erm, a good chunk of the country decidedly did not want unity in 1861. And I’d argue that that same half of the country has never really bought into the post-1865 structuring of the United States of America.
I suspect we’ll get both. Eventually will people realize the 2nd Amendment doesn’t mean much when the police have tanks.
Then they’ll go after the people that give the orders.
Yep, next month there will be a story from a distraught NK refugee about how Kim Jong Un’s soldiers are ripping babies out of wombs and loading them on missiles to be fired over Japan.
To be fair, I think Trump must have paid off the entire marketing department of Jesus, Inc. because they pushed for him as a candidate for the conservative Christians in the U.S.
“Today I‘m announcing a new executive order, just signed, that significantly expands our authority to target individual companies, financial institutions, that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea,” Trump told reporters.
“Our new executive order will cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea’s efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind.”
Trump said North Korea’s textiles, fishing, information technology, and manufacturing industries were among those the United States could target.
He said the order enhanced the U.S. Treasury Department’s authority to target those that conduct “significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea.”
“For much too long North Korea has been allowed to abuse the international financial system” to facilitate funding its nuclear and missile programs, Trump said.
Trump did not mention Pyongyang’s oil trade. Four sources told Reuters China’s central bank has told banks to strictly implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea.
China’s central bank told the country’s financial institutions that they are to cease all business with North Korea and obey United Nations sanctions, Reuters reported.
Chinese banks were told this week to refuse new clients from North Korea and begin winding down business with existing customers. The move comes after Beijing faced increased scrutiny for not doing enough to control the nearby unpredictable North Korea.
