I'd never heard of Roy Cohn until Trump repeatedly mentioned him, so I know very little about him or the documentary, but he sounds like a truly awful person and his wish/desire for such a corrupt defender (which he may have found in Barr) speaks to his unsuitability for office, imo.
This is an honest-to-goodness real tweet from Mr. Trump:
As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...
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"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
V - you and I both had the same response to that tweet. I just put mine in a different thread.
I'm getting to the point where I cannot even, I just see a wall of red. I am starting to have difficulty keeping my calm when I even think about the Trump supporters I know in their aspect as Trump supporters - they still stand behind this stuff! Shrug it off because "Hey, the economy" or "Hey, the illegals" or "Hey, Democrats are just as bad / Hillary would be worse" and my head just cannot anymore.
It is awful. And congresspersons who are failing the American people by allowing one (unstable, foolish, and dangerous) person to run this country without checks and balances have to grow up, find their courage and take responsibility. I think much of the country is in a state of PSTD from the chaos and lies and breakdown of our institutions in favor of what Putin wants.
If one reads about cult leaders and how they control their follower and the tactics they use, Trump has checked pretty much every box. How to undo the damage.. I have no clue. I have great fear for our country.
It really fits better in Trump's America because this really is America: tens of millions of US citizens see nothing wrong with being a supporter of President Donald Trump. I bet a few millions of those are just getting off on knowing Trump does stuff that "liberals hate" and that's what's important to them.
Which is ... not a great thing for a representative democracy.
yovargas wrote:What prompted the weirdly aggressive stance towards Turkey all of a sudden?
Russia?
The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.
"Does anyone ever think about Denethor, the guy driven to madness by staying up late into the night alone in the dark staring at a flickering device he believed revealed unvarnished truth about the outside word, but which in fact showed mostly manipulated media created by a hostile power committed to portraying nothing but bad news framed in the worst possible way in order to sap hope, courage, and the will to go on? Seems like he's someone we should think about." - Dave_LF
Yov, it actually is just the opposite of that. Against the advice of the Pentagon, all foreign policy experts in both parties, and in the face of condemnation from everyone in Congress from Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham and Adam Schiff, Trump has unilaterally withdrawn U.S. support from our Kurdish allies in Syria (who have done most of the fighting and dying against ISIS) so that Turkish forces can obliterate them. The tweet in question is Trump pretending to be willing to stand up against his buddy Erdogan, when in fact he is sacrificing our allies and American interests in Erdogan's favor. Why? Because he continues to own massive property interests in Istanbul and elsewhere on Turkey, including the largest Trump Towers in the world. Trump himself admitted in an interview with Steve Bannon (when he was still running Brietbart before he helped run the campaign) that it was a conflict of interest. Really this is an even bigger scandal then Ukraine.
Or should be.
Sent from my LG G6 using Tapatalk
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.
"Does anyone ever think about Denethor, the guy driven to madness by staying up late into the night alone in the dark staring at a flickering device he believed revealed unvarnished truth about the outside word, but which in fact showed mostly manipulated media created by a hostile power committed to portraying nothing but bad news framed in the worst possible way in order to sap hope, courage, and the will to go on? Seems like he's someone we should think about." - Dave_LF
I am honestly sort of afraid for the world right now.
The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.
"Does anyone ever think about Denethor, the guy driven to madness by staying up late into the night alone in the dark staring at a flickering device he believed revealed unvarnished truth about the outside word, but which in fact showed mostly manipulated media created by a hostile power committed to portraying nothing but bad news framed in the worst possible way in order to sap hope, courage, and the will to go on? Seems like he's someone we should think about." - Dave_LF
So my understanding is that the Kurds entered the conflict in 2014, being neither anti- nor pro-government, but anti-ISIL, and established an autonomous area in northern Syria near the Turkish border, even though, or perhaps because they've had a long-standing conflict with the Turkish military, who consider them a terrorist group and don't want a terrorist group massing on their border.
So are we now obliged to stay there forever because the Kurds chose to create this volatile situation? I don't know why we entered this conflict in the first place, fighting alongside Al Qaeda affiliated jihadists against other jihadists, with both sides responsible for massive civilian casualties and atrocities -- probably because Russia came in on the side of the government, and we can't ever let a Russian move go unanswered, because we never, ever learn from our mistakes. And because there's always lots of money to be made from war if you know the right people.
So it's either stay in Syria forever to protect Kurds who could have settled somewhere where the neighbors wouldn't want to obliterate them, or risk the wrath of the Almighty and good people everywhere. Do I have that right?
Avatar photo by Richard Lykes, used with permission.
It's way more complicated than that. Like makes the Balkans look easy complicated. Like this is the result of how the Ottoman Empire got carved up with a soupçon of truly ancient history complicated. The Kurds were there before the modern borders were drawn and have chosen to remain in their ancestral homelands in the hopes that one day everyone else will remember that they were promised a Kurdistan. I'm not sure where else anyone would have them go. A special Kurd reservation somewhere? The US got involved with them in the fight against ISIS because they were doing a better job of it than anyone else in the region.
But, of course, if you ignore all the complications it becomes easy to renege on a bargain made with an ally in a volatile region because who needs trust anyway?
Hey Cerin, you forgot the part where we allied with this group of people to defeat ISIS, a group who's mass horrors lead to a vast global refugee crisis, and that when that brutal task was mostly completed by them, we abandoned them to destruction with no warning and with unclear, suspicious motivations.
Also - no, the only options are not "protect them forever" or "abandon them immediately without warning". But making such vast, false simplifications does make it easier to defend Trump's mad behavior so good job with that.
Everybody is utterly sick and exhausted of the endless Middle East conflicts, but defeating ISIS was clearly in the global interest. Betraying the people who did that for us on some seeming whim is sickening.
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
yovargas wrote:
Also - no, the only options are not "protect them forever" or "abandon them immediately without warning".
I'm not supporting a 'withdraw without warning' approach, but I don't see a 'withdraw with warning' approach being much different in effect if the Kurds are not willing to vacate the Turkish border area.
Avatar photo by Richard Lykes, used with permission.
Withdrawing with warning gives the Kurds a chance to shift away from the offensive posture they've taken against ISIS back to the defensive posture they've been maintaining since before any of us were born. Kurds at the Turkish border isn't a new thing. They've always been there.
Trump is literally killing people for profit now.
