saxitoxin wrote:Dukasaur wrote:Surprised to see nobody here talking about the Mattis resignation.
For the record:
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2018/12/mattis-letter2.pdfI'm of two minds here. On the one hand, Trump is a lying, cheating dirtbag and it's always nice to see anything that causes him embarrassment.
On the other hand, interventionism is almost always a bad thing. Ending America's pointless adventures in Syria and Afghanistan is the right thing to do.
Since the announcement of the Syria pullout, there has been a swarm of generals, former generals, diplomats, former diplomats, pundits and miscellaneous self-proclaimed experts lining up to condemn the pullout, coalescing of course around Mattis' resignation and other resignations such as McGurk's. If truth could be determined by numbers, they'd certainly be in the right. But they're not. You have to remember that this is the military-industrial complex, these are the people who earn their incomes from perpetuating wars, the people that we have been warned against by thinkers as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower and George Orwell, James Madison and Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman and Georges Sorel. The Mattises and the McGurks have earned their bread and butter -- a very nice grade of bread and butter -- from coming up with reasons why America should continue to fly around the world, beating the shit out of Third World countries who refuse to kowtow. Now that there is a chance the gravy train might slow down -- definitely not stop, but slow down just a little -- they are closing ranks to protect their jobs.
I hate liars, I hate cheats, I hate blowhards. For all these reasons, I hate Trump, who tells lie after lie from dawn till dusk, who has cheated millions, and who is the hardest-blowing blowhard ever. It would be great if I could just move with the mob and revel in his embarrassment over the Mattis resignation.
Nonetheless, if I am to remain intellectually and morally honest, I have to admit that this time he's doing the right thing. The military-industrial complex that is closing ranks against him are the long-term enemy. For all his wrongs, this time Trump is right, and it would be a shame if he was to back down in the face of the generals.
Trump is your broccoli. You agree it's good for you but you still don't like it;
- You liked Trump ending the Trans Pacific Partnership
- You liked Trump pulling U.S. troops out of Syria
etc., etc.
Rationally, you like Trump. Emotionally, you don't like Trump.
You may call it 'emotion', but I call it 'respect for ethics.' If ethics is emotionalism, then so be it, call me emotional.
I've never denied that I agree with plenty of Trump's policies. There's plenty of others that I don't agree with. But neither the policy areas where I agree with him nor the policy areas where I disagree with him are the really decisive things.
The first absolute unforgivable is the way he has elevated lying to a completely new level. All politicians lie, always have and always will. But in the past, politicians who got caught in a whopper have always had the decency to be ashamed or at least pretend to be ashamed. They apologize, issue corrections, walk back their lies, whatever. By showing remorse when they get caught lying, politician have kept at least some semblance of respect for the truth. Trump is the first major political character who shows not the slightest shred of remorse when he gets caught lying. He doubles down and repeats the same false statement 100 times. Whether it's something like saying he only took a small loan from his father, or that Micheal Flynn didn't negotiate with the Russians, or that the tax bill didn't benefit him personally, he just runs with it despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. The total disregard for truth will be Trumps most lasting legacy. Policies come and policies go, but the fact the politicians of the future will no longer even show a passing respect for the truth is probably the end of any meaning to the term "democracy" and you can lay it squarely at Trump's feet.
The second thing that is absolutely unforgivable is that he has exploited the peculiarities of the American legal system to build an entire empire on a policy of ripping off contractors.
This article (in Fortune, hardly a left-wing rag) describes in detail how it works. Basically, in most civilized countries, when you sue someone for non-payment, the loser pays the legal costs for both. The U.S. is pretty much unique in that it doesn't allow contractors who sue for their money to recover their legal costs. Thus, when Trump builds a hotel, agrees to pay $100,000 to a carpet installer and then only pays him $70,000, he does it in the cynical knowledge that the installer will decide to not bother suing for the missing $30,000 because legal costs would eat up the benefit of the lawsuit. Despite this, most American businesses choose to operate responsibly. Once again, though, now that Trump has made famous a policy of building an empire by ripping off contractors, others will follow suit. Just as his getting away with constant lying will change the political landscape forever, his getting away with constant thieving will change the business landscape forever.
He really is a despicable cretin. The fact that I agree with some of the policies of his administration doesn't change that.
Anyway, he deserves support for withdrawing from the imperialist adventure in Syria, and if he holds strong and doesn't back down in the face of the military-industrial complex, I will have at least one thing to respect him for.
