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Alter Ego posted:I'm not sure Jill Stein held the same allure for the group of people that voted Nader in 2000, but she attracted a whole new coalition of self-righteous "leftists" and anti-vax nutbags. Your message remains sound, however. Very true. I would write up a post on alternate voting systems rather than first past the post and why they are potentially better ideas in terms of figuring out true voter preference but it's a bit out of scope for a thread about Presidents.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:59
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Eh, even if you replaced the system nationally with like proportional voting and such, there are still lots of arguments to be made against ever voting outside The Big Two anyway.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:57
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axeil posted:And also why everyone in their 30s and over were begging students/20somethings not to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. We had all seen this play out already in 2000 and once again, if you add the Dem+Green votes in PA, WI and MI the Dems would've won just like in 2000 in Florida.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:06
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axeil posted:And also why everyone in their 30s and over were begging students/20somethings not to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. We had all seen this play out already in 2000 and once again, if you add the Dem+Green votes in PA, WI and MI the Dems would've won just like in 2000 in Florida. the number of votes gary johnson would have given to trump is, of course, politely ignored it is important, to be able to blame the left, for people not wanting to vote for the democratic candidate
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Apr 5, 2018 22:03
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Ze Pollack posted:the number of votes gary johnson would have given to trump is, of course, politely ignored It's important to be able to blame Jill Stein voters for wanting to vote for Jill loving Stein. She wasn't any better of a candidate than Hillary was--and given her anti-vaxx tendencies and coziness with Russia, she was actively worse.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:31
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Ze Pollack posted:the number of votes gary johnson would have given to trump is, of course, politely ignored Republicans shouldn't vote for 3rd party candidates either but it helps keep their idiots from getting elected so I don't care if they make tactical mistakes.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:43
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Alter Ego posted:It's important to be able to blame Jill Stein voters for wanting to vote for Jill loving Stein. She wasn't any better of a candidate than Hillary was--and given her anti-vaxx tendencies and coziness with Russia, she was actively worse. I used to vote for the Green party (in local elections) until Jill showed up. At that point I decided if she's the best they could come up with I clearly had misread their mission statement.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:44
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Alter Ego posted:It's important to be able to blame Jill Stein voters for wanting to vote for Jill loving Stein. She wasn't any better of a candidate than Hillary was--and given her anti-vaxx tendencies and coziness with Russia, she was actively worse. Yeah, I'm fine with voting for a 3rd party if you genuinely believe the person would be the best at the job, but anyone who sincerely thinks Jill Stein would have been a better president than Hillary Clinton is absolutely insane.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:46
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axeil posted:Republicans shouldn't vote for 3rd party candidates either but it helps keep their idiots from getting elected so I don't care if they make tactical mistakes. Third-party voting is like guns: it would be far more effective to just make third-party candidates illegal to be on the ballot than to try and dissuade people from voting for them.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:48
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I would like to request an effortpost on either Chester Arthur or Grover Cleveland.
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Apr 5, 2018 23:00
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axeil posted:Republicans shouldn't vote for 3rd party candidates either but it helps keep their idiots from getting elected so I don't care if they make tactical mistakes. the moral of today's story, children, is that blaming voters for the crime of not being convinced to vote for your candidate is a transparent exercise in deflection
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Apr 5, 2018 23:28
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Deteriorata posted:Yeah, I'm fine with voting for a 3rd party if you genuinely believe the person would be the best at the job, but anyone who sincerely thinks Jill Stein would have been a better president than Hillary Clinton is absolutely insane. A Jill Stein Presidency would not have been able to get anything passed, which certainly would've been better than Hillary passing tax breaks for the rich and starting wars. axeil posted:And also why everyone in their 30s and over were begging students/20somethings not to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. We had all seen this play out already in 2000 and once again, if you add the Dem+Green votes in PA, WI and MI the Dems would've won just like in 2000 in Florida. Or maybe the democrats can nominate somebody worth voting for who stands for something.
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Apr 6, 2018 05:59
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axeil posted:It was both although Reagan was far more involved. Like JFK vs LBJ on Vietnam. But the Soviets were/are inhuman imperialist monsters so it's all good by me. lmao axeil posted:Russia delenda est is my foreign policy philosophy. double lmao. "these people are inhuman monsters. exterminate the brutes!"
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Apr 6, 2018 08:05
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Get you some Preferential Voting like in Australia. I wouldn't know how to feel in America if I had to vote for the Democrats solely because I wouldn't want to enable a Republican. I think leftists might need to try reforming the Democratic Party while agitating for overhauling the voting system, but then again I think there might be 0% chance of achieving that anyway?
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Apr 6, 2018 09:07
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hypothetical question time: if you could peer into an alternate reality where the dividing point was a change in one presidential election result, which would be most/least interesting? Would you look at an America in 2008 after Gore beat Bush in 2000? Or what the 80's would have been if Carter had beaten Reagan? Or what Vietnam would have looked like if Nixon had topped Kennedy in 1960? Or alternately, would 4 more years of H.W. Bush mattered all that much? Or would the end of WWII have been all that different if FDR had not won his 4th election?
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Apr 6, 2018 10:25
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DC Murderverse posted:hypothetical question time: if you could peer into an alternate reality where the dividing point was a change in one presidential election result, which would be most/least interesting? Would you look at an America in 2008 after Gore beat Bush in 2000? Or what the 80's would have been if Carter had beaten Reagan? Or what Vietnam would have looked like if Nixon had topped Kennedy in 1960? Or alternately, would 4 more years of H.W. Bush mattered all that much? Or would the end of WWII have been all that different if FDR had not won his 4th election? I would invite you to read "Then Everything Changed", by Jeff Greenfield. It contains some seriously well-written alternate histories such as: --Instead of dying at the hands of an assassin in 1963, Kennedy is blown up by a madman in Palm Beach, Florida in December 1960. America faces a constitutional crisis--who will be certified the winner of the election? --Robert Kennedy survives his trip through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. --Ford defeats Carter in 1976. --Without Carter in 1980, Gary Hart rises to battle Reagan in the election--and wins. Fritz Coldcockin fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 11:30
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DC Murderverse posted:hypothetical question time: if you could peer into an alternate reality where the dividing point was a change in one presidential election result, which would be most/least interesting? Would you look at an America in 2008 after Gore beat Bush in 2000? Or what the 80's would have been if Carter had beaten Reagan? Or what Vietnam would have looked like if Nixon had topped Kennedy in 1960? Or alternately, would 4 more years of H.W. Bush mattered all that much? Or would the end of WWII have been all that different if FDR had not won his 4th election? I used to believe that Gore defeating Bush in 2000 would have had huge impact on American domestic and foreign policy. I then remembered that Joe Lieberman would've been similar to Dick Cheney on the warhawk bullshit (still would have invaded Iraq) while eliminating the public option years earlier before Obama. So, not much difference, really.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:38
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viral spiral posted:I used to believe that Gore defeating Bush in 2000 would have had huge impact on American domestic and foreign policy. I then remembered that Joe Lieberman would've been similar to Dick Cheney on the warhawk bullshit (still would have invaded Iraq) while eliminating the public option years earlier before Obama. So, not much difference, really. Joe Lieberman as Vice President would have had orders of magnitude less influence than Joe Lieberman as tipping point Senator in Congress. Unless you think Gore was as weak-willed and stupid as Bush, that is.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:41
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A lot of it would really depend on 9/11. Does it become a rallying call for the President, his party, and a vastly increased security state as it did historically, or do the Republicans, Fox News, and the "both sides *must* be the same, so let's blame Democrats for everything" mindset combine to turn 9/11 into a major scandal that Gore should have prevented? Assuming, of course, that you don't subscribe to the fantasy that because Gore would actually read memos, he would also somehow be able to get the FBI, CIA, and local authorities to work together in a way they had never done before and actually prevented 9/11.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:40
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skeleton warrior posted:A lot of it would really depend on 9/11. Does it become a rallying call for the President, his party, and a vastly increased security state as it did historically, or do the Republicans, Fox News, and the "both sides *must* be the same, so let's blame Democrats for everything" mindset combine to turn 9/11 into a major scandal that Gore should have prevented? I believe that in response to that August 6 PDB that Gore would have drastically stepped up airport security measures, at least. He would have listened to his counterterrorism experts.
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Apr 6, 2018 18:50
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Would've bin laden even have still gone through with 9/11 if someone more competent than Bush was in the oval office?
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Apr 6, 2018 21:52
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Grouchio posted:Would've bin laden even have still gone through with 9/11 if someone more competent than Bush was in the oval office? considering plans for the attack started in 1999 at the latest, i would say....no
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Apr 6, 2018 23:52
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Alter Ego posted:Joe Lieberman as Vice President would have had orders of magnitude less influence than Joe Lieberman as tipping point Senator in Congress. I think there's a decent chance Gore being elected would have prevented the Iraq War. That's the biggest thing that comes to mind. Climate Change would still be a problem (any change pushed by the Democrats would have been very limited, and even if it wasn't the US has limited influence on its own compared with the rest of the world), and you'd still end up with a Trump or Trump equivalent in the future since the fundamental issues facing the American public would have stayed the same. The Great Recession would have still occurred, etc. axeil posted:Russia delenda est is my foreign policy philosophy. This is actually really stupid though. I mean, I don't really know how to put it other than that. Russia/Putin are definitely bad and the US should address their actions during the 2016 as best they can without provoking open conflict, but viewing Russia as some unique evil, particular relative to the US, is just an astoundingly ignorant perspective. It might fly due to contemporary circumstances surrounding Russia and general public ignorance about the US's historical role in the world, but that doesn't make it any less wrong and ridiculous. You could use the exact same logic to call for the destruction of the US, and you'd probably have more justification for doing so (due to the US having more of an impact worldwide and more power in general). If you're talking about the USSR, the US almost definitely comes out looking worse than them on the whole. Even with contemporary Russia (which is considerably worse than the USSR in terms of outcomes for its own citizens), the US likely comes out worse due to the Iraq War alone. axeil posted:And also why everyone in their 30s and over were begging students/20somethings not to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. We had all seen this play out already in 2000 and once again, if you add the Dem+Green votes in PA, WI and MI the Dems would've won just like in 2000 in Florida. This is deeply illogical, because you can't assume those people would otherwise have voted Democrat. It's no different than pointing to Republicans or non-voters and saying "if a bunch of Republicans/non-voters voted Democratic, the Democrats would have won!" It is also extremely suspect how more negative sentiment is directed by many liberals towards people like Nader/Nader voters than more "moderate" Republicans (or anti-Trump Republicans in contemporary times). None of these actions are consistent with someone who is genuinely concerned about supporting the left and hurting the right. Blaming the Supreme Court for Bush is reasonable, but it isn't reasonable to blame third parties. And it also isn't remotely pragmatic; you aren't going to magically mind-control people into supporting the Democrats, particularly after years of the Democrats doing nothing to put a real dent in the problems facing most people in our country. The only possible path to change is for the party itself to change, yet for some mysterious reason you folks choose to focus more on leftists and third party voters than the party apparatus itself. It's almost like change isn't actually the goal! Ze Pollack posted:the moral of today's story, children, is that blaming voters for the crime of not being convinced to vote for your candidate is a transparent exercise in deflection Well, folks like axeil are nearly always privileged enough that they don't really give a poo poo if people continue suffering under the status quo. I'm sure they sorta care in some kind of intellectual way, but it's not really driving them emotionally (i.e. there's no sense of "oh crap, millions of people are suffering while the rich get richer, we need to do something about this inexcusable poo poo as fast as possible!"). But any disruption to the status quo, either bad (Trump) or good (the left), is something they want to avoid, because it represents a risk and they have more to lose than your average American who is living paycheck to paycheck. (One of these days I'm going to make a post like this and the person is going to be like "actually I'm poor" and I'm going to feel like a doofus, but somehow I've managed to go at least a year with this assumption always keeping true.)
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Apr 7, 2018 23:12
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Ytlaya posted:If you're talking about the USSR, the US almost definitely comes out looking worse than them on the whole. Even with contemporary Russia (which is considerably worse than the USSR in terms of outcomes for its own citizens), the US likely comes out worse due to the Iraq War alone. Ytlata you are really glossing over a lot of Russia's colonialist history with this take.
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Apr 8, 2018 00:24
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DC Murderverse posted:hypothetical question time: if you could peer into an alternate reality where the dividing point was a change in one presidential election result, which would be most/least interesting? Would you look at an America in 2008 after Gore beat Bush in 2000? Or what the 80's would have been if Carter had beaten Reagan? Or what Vietnam would have looked like if Nixon had topped Kennedy in 1960? Or alternately, would 4 more years of H.W. Bush mattered all that much? Or would the end of WWII have been all that different if FDR had not won his 4th election? Is it a cop-out if I say 1788-1789? Because trying to see the early United States stay in one piece without George Washington at the helm would be a fascinating thing to watch. 1812 would be less interesting in DeWitt Clinton's actual tenure than it would be in the decades after. I cannot imagine the United States having such a rosy image of Madison, Jefferson, and their ideals if they had gotten kicked out of office in the middle of a war because of their completely incoherent policies. I would be super interested to see how William Jennings Bryan actually functions in the White House, especially in 1896. Bryan advocated a radical departure from accepted economic orthodoxy and would terrify the economic interests that supported Benjamin Harrison. He expressed an interesting in using the full powers of the presidency in an era where the presidency generally avoided aggressive action, which could cause some conflict with Congress. Also, he's going to try to get involved in ~~so many wars~~ to rid the world of imperialism, though probably wouldn't outright annex the Philippines, Puerto Rico, or Guam. He'd also probably continue Cleveland's policy of not annexing Hawaii, which could have some pretty dramatic effects. It's probably beyond the constraints of the question, but a world where Bobby Kennedy survives 1968 is probably a better place. E: i also support any changes that keeps richard milhous nixon as far away from the white house as physically possible QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 12:22
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joepinetree posted:He's obviously far from perfect. But he is the only president in at least the last half century who actually did something for human rights in places like Latin America. That alone makes him far better than all the presidents that followed him on foreign policy. El Salvador. Look it up. Also Carter's reputation among people who knew him was always a sleazy guy who told people what they wanted to hear. Maybe he made up for some of that post-presidency, I don't know, but his political career was still no good Mia Wasikowska fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 13:31
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Really though I don't know why everyone always talks about Chile and Nicaragua and never El Salvador. It's also a perfect demonstration of the continuity of brutal interventionist foreign policy regardless of the party in power. A lot of people ascribe the worst of it to Reagan but really in the case of El Salvador that's mostly because of rhetoric - the real decisions and a lot of the blood belongs to Carter, and it's because of the exact same prevailing cold war cynicism and paranoia that infected both parties, and turned so much of Central and South America into a playground for death squads with US guns and US support Mia Wasikowska fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Apr 8, 2018 |
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Apr 8, 2018 13:39
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Well the "What if?" book mentioned how close we were to Henry Wallace being POTUS. Like, what if he stayed on the '44 ticket? I don't remember what the essay's author said about that hypothetical, but I found him to be one of the more interesting VPs who served. He described himself as socialist, but his politics were a bit all over the place later in life.
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Apr 8, 2018 13:56
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Echo Chamber posted:Well the "What if?" book mentioned how close we were to Henry Wallace being POTUS. Like, what if he stayed on the '44 ticket?
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Apr 8, 2018 18:08
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Grouchio posted:I spend a good amount of time contributing to alternate history timelines with other writers on another forum - like if 1980s Britain was magically transported back to 1730.
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Apr 8, 2018 21:50
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Echo Chamber posted:I never ventured down that internet rabbit hole but I always had a weird vibe from the Alternate History community.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:29
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Zas posted:El Salvador. Look it up. I am familiar with that part of the history. I never argued that he was good. Only that he was substantially better than what came before and after him.
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Apr 8, 2018 22:32
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Echo Chamber posted:Well the "What if?" book mentioned how close we were to Henry Wallace being POTUS. Like, what if he stayed on the '44 ticket? this is usually the jumping-off point for alternate historians to posit a communist world since he advocated friendly relations with the soviet union. i'm skeptical this would have been allowed even at the time, but it is interesting to think about
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Apr 9, 2018 01:05
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Part 3: The Post-Truth Society (Or: How (I am hoping that fans of the TV show “Rome” will understand the reference.) When we last left George W. Bush, he had ruined Ann Richards’ reputation, and with the help of Karl Rove and the Felonious Five, stolen a Presidential election. He and Dick Cheney now run the show.  Does anyone remember the early parts of 2001? Like the first few months after Bush’s inauguration? How the economy was good, everyone had jobs and poo poo was peaceful? Well, George W. Bush looked at all that and went Well that ain’t gonna work. Let’s shake things up a bit!” George W. Bush’s first term in office is really defined almost solely by foreign policy. There was, of course, the massive tax giveaway to corporations that every Republican President since Nixon has sworn a blood oath to execute when they are in office, but other than him being a blithering moron who could barely talk, Dubya was little more than a morbid curiosity for many Americans until about August of his first year in office. On August 6, 2001, he received a fateful Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”. It’s important to know, however, that the warnings began well before then. As early as April and May, counterterrorism experts were warning that there was a terror cell in the United States planning a major attack. We had some advance warning that bin Laden’s group, Al Qaeda (“The Base”, in Arabic) was making a move. Where was Dubya’s attention, of course? Well, it was obsessed day and night with this charming fellow:  As we all know, Saddam Hussein was the current dictator of Iraq and ever since the first Gulf War had become the Bush family’s bete noire. The first question Bush asked was whether or not Bin Laden was working with Saddam. Given that Saddam was a secularist and Bin Laden was a fundamentalist, this idea was of course ridiculous, but Bush’s gang of rear end in a top hat neocons carried the day. What rear end in a top hat neocons, you ask? Let's meet the fellas! The lovely, lovely Foreign Policy Team of George W. Bush  Dick Cheney was the Vice President, and, as I mentioned, a snarling, unpleasant neocon rear end in a top hat. No one liked Dick Cheney. I’m fairly certain even his own mother hated him.  After serving as Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford, Donald Rumsfeld was returning for another go. Coined the phrase “Known unknowns”. Was a greasy, slippery liar that made you want to punch him when you saw him speak.  A graduate of Stanford and former advisor to the HW Bush administration on Soviet and Eastern European affairs, Condoleezza Rice was another lying quisling whose favorite pastime was apparently going on morning shows and lying nearly as blatantly as Kellyanne Conway does now.  The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell became Dubya’s Secretary of State and later was the lone voice of opposition to the Iraq invasion. Which is ironic, because in this image he’s lying to the United Nations about Saddam possessing biological weapons.  Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary. What makes Paul Wolfowitz really scary is his membership in PNAC, the Project for a New American Century. The group also includes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, incidentally. This is some flag-humping cult poo poo that you should read if you never wanna sleep again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century  The only one of these shitbirds who ever served actual prison time for his misdeeds, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. He was indicted on five counts in the Valerie Plame case (a whole other gross topic we’ll get into later, legal experts, please help me on this one) and convicted on four: two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of lying to federal investigators. These are just some of the lovely, lovely people responsible for us being in Iraq and Afghanistan forever. ___ On the morning of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was in Florida, reading to schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County. For those of you who are curious, the book was “The Pet Goat”. At 8:46 am, the first plane crashed into the North Tower. At 9:03 am, the second plane hit the South Tower. Dubya was notified shortly after. Tell me, does this face say “Dear God, we’ve been attacked! I need to remain calm and dignified so as not to scare these children” or “...drat, I shoulda remembered to get milk”?  No, you’re right, that’s a face that says “I wonder if I remembered to TIVO Spongebob”. Thing is, it wasn’t over yet. At 9:43 am, a third plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. It and the White House were evacuated. Bush did not depart from Florida until 9:57 am. By 10:10 am, three more things had happened--the South Tower collapsed into the streets of New York, a portion of the Pentagon had collapsed, and United Flight 93, which experts believe was intended to crash into the White House, crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It is believed that the passengers fought the hijackers and crashed the plane themselves. From then on it was chaos. Every federal building in DC was evacuated: the UN Building, the World Bank, State, Justice, all of them. Washington was a ghost town. And where was George, you ask? Well, he and Dick Cheney had been flown to “undisclosed locations”. Later these locations were revealed as Offutt AFB in Nebraska (Bush) and a bunker underneath the White House (Cheney). I should say that I don’t blame the Secret Service for wanting to squirrel the President away. That’s their job, and in the early hours of this nightmare we had no idea what was going on. Every American was glued to a TV set or radio at this point as news anchors, some of whom were visibly shaken themselves, attempted to talk us through what was going on. For all we knew, we were still under attack. What I do blame George W. Bush for, however, is the events that followed. In the days to come we were not treated to a President that maintained his dignity in the face of tremendous pressure. We did not see a man who kept an objective eye on the situation in the face of overwhelming emotion. As more and more details came out--the planes hijacked, the names of the hijackers, and their home countries (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Lebanon), we instead saw a President cynically use a national tragedy for enormous political gain. George W. Bush stood on that pile of rubble in New York with a bullhorn, like a loving SCHMUCK, and proclaimed that we’d get Osama bin Laden (who, much as the August 6 PDB said, claimed credit for the attacks shortly after) “dead or alive”.  I might have some readers here who are too young to remember George W. Bush telling us that we were going to “root ‘em outta their holes”. It was like Yosemite Sam was President. And the scariest part was that it didn’t seem to matter. His approval rating SOARED. At its peak, Gallup recorded him at 87%--the highest they’d ever rated a President. Those of us in that remaining 13% were afraid. I am proud to count myself among them--those people who never, not for a second, approved of this moron and his antics. Dubya and his minions weren’t done. The next year of our lives was a constant soap opera of “If you don’t support the President you don’t support America”. We knew that for any military action we would need the support of allies in the region, but as anyone who was there remembers, France was famously reluctant to support us. This led to a massive backlash from retards in this country--to the point where people started calling French fries “Freedom fries”. They were even renamed in the loving Congressional cafeteria. The press meekly fell into line. Conservative commentators ruled the airwaves--Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity blowing the war trumpets night after night, slamming anyone and everyone who disagreed with them as anti-American--and getting away with it because everyone was afraid what would happen if they didn’t toe the line. Not a good time to be a liberal in this country, especially a liberal who disagreed with the way things were going. On October 7, 2001, the United States took the ultimate step and invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist regime running the place, who had (ostensibly) been a state support of Al Qaeda. The codename was Operation Enduring Freedom. The guy who thinks up the names was apparently on vacation. As early as the Afghanistan invasion, however, W and his advisors had a bigger prize in mind--regime change in Iraq. See, I mentioned that ever since the first Gulf War, Saddam had become the monster under the Bush family’s collective bed--to them, the world blamed Poppy Bush for not getting rid of him then. Such anger was only exacerbated when, in 1993, it was discovered that there was a high-level plot to assassinate George H. W. Bush, by then the former President, by top Iraqi officials. This claim has since been contested, especially in light of the fact that Iraq was trying as early as 1991 to establish cordial relations with the United States: http://www.ipsnews.net/2004/10/politics-us-so-did-saddam-hussein-try-to-kill-bushs-dad/ But to W, it was gospel. So to earn Daddy’s love, Dubya was gonna do what he couldn’t--he was gonna kill Saddam. End of Part 3. In Part 4, we'll discuss how we got into Iraq and touch on the 2004 election. Part 5 will be the last part and it will be a bit more brief--Dubya's second term was incredibly lovely even by Presidential second term standards but it's very easy to pinpoint where the worst parts were.
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Apr 9, 2018 14:59
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Echo Chamber posted:I never ventured down that internet rabbit hole but I always had a weird vibe from the Alternate History community. a small amount of alternative history is exercises from historians or amateur history enthusiasts to explore counterfactual events within a tightly controlled, highly defined scenario the tremendous remainder is effectively slashfic
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Apr 9, 2018 16:35
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Alter Ego posted:Part 3: The Post-Truth Society (Or: How Added to the OP! My main memory of the pre-9/11 time was the Spy Plane Incident in China and I put a sarcastic "warning" sign on my bedroom door about spy planes having a large blindspot like we have for tractor trailors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident R. Guyovich posted:this is usually the jumping-off point for alternate historians to posit a communist world since he advocated friendly relations with the soviet union. i'm skeptical this would have been allowed even at the time, but it is interesting to think about Henry Wallace as VP in 44 and Trotsky winning out over Stalin (either through Stalin dying early or Trotsky winning outright). I don't know enough about Trotskyism to really contribute much other than the idea though. axeil fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Apr 9, 2018 |
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Apr 9, 2018 16:46
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Did you think I'd forgotten? Well I didn't. Part 4: Descent (Or: Bush Lied, Thousands Died) When we last left our heroes, George W. Bush had reached a mountaintop higher than any President except perhaps LBJ right after Kennedy’s assassination. Gallup had recorded him at almost 90% approval. Those few people who didn’t approve were ridiculed and all but driven into hiding. Muslims are being attacked in the streets by nativist assholes, and the French are reviled as cowards. Also we invaded Afghanistan, so there’s that. The Invasion of Iraq One of the things Dubya had on his “to-do” list when he “won” the the Presidency was deposing Saddam Hussein. No, that was never an expressed desire and it certainly wasn’t part of his stump speech, but after the Iraq War descended into an unwinnable quagmire and more and more documents and information came out it was discovered that regime change was always the goal of the neoconservative movement. But even with 90% approval he couldn’t just declare war on Saddam. People would ask questions. So how did we get there, you ask? Well, we’d sorta been here for a while. Donald Rumsfeld had come a long way from the events in this picture.  In 1998, it became the official position of the U.S. government that Saddam needed to go. This was after Iraq had kicked out weapons inspectors, and the Iraq Liberation Act (passed in 1998) provided almost $100 billion for “democratic opposition organizations” on the ground inside the country. We were actively opposing Saddam and trying to curtail his ability to make chemical and biological weapons. And yet we somehow made an even harder right turn in 2001 when Dubya’s gang of PNAC neocons came to power. After the September 11 attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in fact, had initially dismissed reports pointing to Al Qaeda’s culpability on the same day in favor of a bombing campaign against Iraq. Yeah, that’s how loving close we came, guys. There was no cooperation between Saddam and Al Qaeda. None. That needs to be made perfectly clear. These guys did not, under any circumstances, work together. And yet within hours after the towers fell we had people thinking about bombing Baghdad. In January 2002, at the State of the Union, George W. Bush gave his now-infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, in which he branded the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as state sponsors of terrorism who were all seeking to build nuclear weapons. Kids, this is why you should never loving trust David Frum, no matter how many anti-Trump tweets he writes or how many sick burns he lays down: he wrote this speech. He is part of the problem. Let’s skip ahead until September 2002 when Dubya began making his case. He went before the UN General Assembly and argued the merits of a full-blown invasion of Iraq.  We know now, of course, that the details he based his argument on were almost 100% fraudulent, but in 2002 anyone who voiced that opinion was shouted down as anti-troops and anti-American. And Dubya’s approval rating was still high enough that they got away with it. International reaction was mixed. Tony Blair’s United Kingdom jumped on board, but once again, France had misgivings, as did Gerhard Schroeder’s Germany. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1441, which authorized UN weapons inspectors and specified “consequences” for non-compliance. France and Russia, however, made it very clear that neither of them wanted to include military reprisal as one of those consequences. A report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency in February of 2003 stated that there was no evidence Iraq was trying to make nuclear weapons, and the UN committee formed by Resolution 1441 (chaired by Hans Blix) said that they had found no evidence Iraq was trying to manufacture any manner of weapons of mass destruction. The short version? There was no evidence of any of this poo poo. Didn’t stop the bastards lying about it, however. Remember that image of Colin Powell? Well, that speech took place in February 2003. He sat in front of the UN General Assembly and lied to the world about Iraq’s supposed capability and intent to manufacture biological weapons, as well as a false assertion that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together. Of course, he’s issued a mea culpa since then: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/politics/powell-calls-his-un-speech-a-lasting-blot-on-his-record.html I imagine the families of the thousands of young men that died can’t wait to buy him a beer. The UN reports didn’t matter. Republican lawmakers and the right-wing media went on a full-court press marketing campaign to sell the Iraq invasion to the American public. Due to a glut of misinformation and the fact that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly talk REALLY, REALLY LOUDLY, the vast majority of the American people supported intervention in Iraq. We unfortunately didn’t need much convincing. And Dubya didn’t need Congress’ approval either. In October 2002, the now-infamous Iraq Resolution was passed. It authorized the President to use the Armed Forces "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" in order to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.” Yeah. Our dumb loving Congress gave W a blank check and said “go to it”. This vote forever tarred the careers of future Presidential nominee and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, future Presidential nominee and Secretary of State John Kerry, and future Vice President Joe Biden, among many, many others. There are many liberals who still have not forgiven them, and I’m not entirely sure they should. And off we went. On March 20, 2003, George W. Bush went before the nation and announced that we were invading Iraq. We were invading a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, based on the false premises that a) yes, they did, they had worked with Osama bin Laden and b) that they were trying to build nukes and chemical weapons. They knew. They knew it was a lie and they did it anyway, and the vast majority of the country shut its mouth and closed its eyes. End of Part 4. In Part 5, the finale, we’ll discuss the 2004 election, torture at Abu Ghraib, and the highlights (or lowlights) of Dubya’s lovely, lovely second term in office. Legal expert goons: Please help me with the torture stuff. If someone could find (or write) a decent summary of the John Yoo memos and the justifications for “enhanced interrogation techniques” I’d be forever grateful. Fritz Coldcockin fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 16:40
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Who all remembers this from the debates? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6nW2Uow-zk Bush was such a goddamned liar.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:10
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I'm still more mad about the 2004 election than I am about 2016. It was the first election that made me profoundly angry about the nation's deep divides, culture war fault lines, and the lousy media. gently caress Bush. gently caress Cheney. gently caress the Swift Boat vets. gently caress the 24 hour news cycle.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:38
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Echo Chamber posted:I'm still more mad about the 2004 election than I am about 2016. Agreed. 2004 made me deeply angry as well. Especially about what happened to Howard Dean. I think if the 2004 election had happened where we have Twitter and social media Dean would've won the primary and probably the general.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:45
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