The risk of nuclear war under Trump
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Thursday, May 7, 2026 16:28
VIEWED: 18293
PAGE 12 of 16
Quote:From my POV, American government kills foreigners because Americans are who they are. You might want to claim they have been sheltered from the consequences of drone killings and firebombings in WWII, but I know it is not sheltering; Americans actively don't want to know. It would force them to change, and why would they want to do that when they are so busy with being entertained? The governments we get at all levels are exactly what you'd expect from politicians much like other Americans with small, selfish minds who dislike every other American who is dissimilar to them. Woe to the foreigner who is very unlike the politician. The foreigner will be nuked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
From my POV, SECOND, you're as guilty of religious-thinking as the people you disdain. YOUR religion isn't god tho, and it isn't militarism; it's partisanship. YOUR magical thinking revolves around the Democratic Party. You focus all of your ire on THE GOP!! TEXAS REPUBLICANS! TRUMP!!! ... with an occasional (and misdirected) shout-out to RUSSIA!! as if they are the source of all of our problems and if we only got rid of "them" all would be well! And we BOTH know that that isn't true.
I would expect Obama to be less likely to nuke a foreigner. He was aware of being considered not an American. To Trump, Obama is a foreigner and I clearly remember what Trump and Texas Republicans said about Obama being no American citizen they would recognize.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I'm not doing an explanation for every last American. I only need to explain the largest group. It isn't even the majority, but their numbers are large enough to push the whole U.S.A. in the direction it is going.
Originally posted by THGRRI:
SECOND, your and sigs attempt to pigeon hole Americans is week tea. We are more than 310 million strong, come from all the different continents and are as ethnically diverse as can be. Yet you speak of us as if we are all made from the same cloth. Like I said, weak tea.
Time to watch an episode of firefly I think.
I'm a white male. In all my years I have been amazed at all the different opinions we have about this and that. Sorry, weak tea.
T
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Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are understood as related but different concepts. Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component and often occurs without conscious awareness, whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping and discrimination is one of the behavioral components of prejudicial reactions. In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.
T
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Quote:I remember 9/11. Nearly all Texas Republicans wanted revenge. It was as if they could not understand that all the hijackers were dead. The Texans wanted to murder them, even if there were none left. Killing Osama bin Laden did not justify what the US has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, elsewhere. At least Bush didn't drop a nuke just to make the Texas GOP happy. This nasty attitude of a certain class of Texans is why the US has a ten times too large nuclear arsenal. And Trump has promised to make it ten times larger than it is now. Trump can say such things because enough Americans agree with him.
Originally posted by THGRRI:
I'm a white male. In all my years I have been amazed at all the different opinions we have about this and that. Sorry, weak tea.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4969772/Trump-generals-grow-U-S-nucle
ar-arsenal-TEN.html
www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-wanted-dramatic-increase-nuclear-arsena
l-meeting-military-leaders-n809701
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Quote:True. But.
From my POV, American government kills foreigners because Americans are who they are. You might want to claim they have been sheltered from the consequences of drone killings and firebombings in WWII, but I know it is not sheltering; Americans actively don't want to know. It would force them to change, and why would they want to do that when they are so busy with being entertained?
I have to write another long explanation because I don't know exactly how to say what I'm trying to express: Humans are like squishy computers with multiple inputs. People make decisions based on those inputs, many that they're not even aware exist. So for example, I'm sitting at the PC, typing. I'm a little bit frustrated by the discussion, sort of cold, kinda hungry, I need to pee somewhat ... but it's not until my nose itches that I actually get up to pee. It was that last little irritant that "motivated" me (caused me to move).
People are usually motivated by what they FEEL. The reason why people haven't changed is because the situation kinda worked for them: There was a minimum of negative consequence; a minimum of effort; rewards were sort of maximized for the effort involved; there was a LOT of input telling them not to think (ads), what was real (news) and how to feel (opinion); and besides - nobody wants to change their ideas anyway!
People from other countries tell me that the propaganda here is relentless. Again, given that THIS is the military that ensures the elites' wealth, THIS is where the elite exert their strongest effort. So given that people are people, and that people here are being snowed from the day of their birth and steeped in magical thinking, I guess this is what about I'd expect.
Quote:Woe to anyone who has a different opinion, foreigner or not.
The governments we get at all levels are exactly what you'd expect from politicians much like other Americans with small, selfish minds who dislike every other American who is dissimilar to them. Woe to the foreigner who is very unlike the politician. The foreigner will be nuked.
Quote:that's what I thought (past tense) about Obama too: not because he was half-black, but because he was raised in another country. But I have to say, he was a big disappointment; I thought he would stand up to the deep state at least somewhat, but he didn't seem to be at all concerned about the death toll racked up on his watch. The only thing that he seemed to be worried about was that the deep states' foreign policy goals be accomplished QUIETLY, with a minimum of American military losses. Which is why he relied so much on drone strikes, proxies, contractors, CIA, and exploiting internal divisions within the target nation. But even without the military at least a half-million people were killed thanks to his policies.
I would expect Obama to be less likely to nuke a foreigner. He was aware of being considered not an American. To Trump, Obama is a foreigner and I clearly remember what Trump and Texas Republicans said about Obama being no American citizen they would recognize.
To get back to Americans and what they (we) think: I don't know if Americans will change in time to avoid catastrophe, and not necessarily nuclear Armageddon. Our economy, currency, budget, society, and foreign policy are all fucked up; and any of them can go catastrophically sideways in a hurry. Unfortunately, even a crisis doesn't cause people to stop and think - in fact, that's when people can be stampeded most effectively into doing something terminally stupid.
Sigh. So I'm not sure I see an exit sign on this path to the cliff's edge that we seem to be on. Wish I had a more hopeful post!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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"Trump can say such things because enough Americans agree with him."
Once we elect a president, Americans have not one normal political tool to hold him/ her to campaign promises. Trump can say what he wants, irregardless of whether or not any Americans at all agree with him.
eta: to expand a little bit on the idea - if this was a parliamentary system we could vote Trump out at any time during his term on a vote of 'no confidence'. It would keep the system somewhat more honest.
As it is, it's a system running without negative feedback controls. And this system creates a dysfunctional dynamic that degrades both the political process, and the people participating in it.
By experience, people have become very cynical, disenfranchised, and mentally lazy, about their presidential votes. Maybe they haven't linked it up to the political system we have now, but they know that presidential campaigns are nothing more than hot air, empty promises, and circus sideshows. They trusted in 'hope and change', and were bitterly disappointed by what didn't happen. (And if republicans had run anyone with a credible message of change, they would have won.) They trusted Trump to not be more of the same.
But when that doesn't work out, the only option they - we - have is to roll the dice again.
I guess 'The Framers'
wanted democracy, but not too much of it.
HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?
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Perhaps the US would not need thousands of nukes if it had not nuked two cities. Perhaps if President Truman had kept the secret weapon still a secret then today the US would only have an arsenal of hundreds of nukes, the size of France’s arsenal. But President Truman felt he had to kill two cities,
Months after the war was over, Truman made the entire world aware that he had an assembly line building even more nukes. He would have kept nuking until the Emperor surrendered. There were 72 million Japanese civilians and Truman would kill them all with nukes.
In the minds of Americans, the US needs thousands of bombs because the world might someday take its revenge for what the US had done and for what it would do if the Japs did not surrender. Jumping forward to Trump, he is playing into Americans’ fear of revenge. Most Americans can be trivially persuaded that they need ten times more nukes. It is all psychological because there is no military need to increase the arsenal to 70,000 when 7,000 is enough to kill the entire world several times. It is all about fearful Americans. It’s not about real dangers. And Trump is playing on their fears.
In the Home of the Brave, the Land of the Free, most Americans are chickens, not Braves. Trump knows this. He knows Americans will pay hundreds of billions ( no, make that trillions ) to calm their fears. But it makes the rest of the world more fearful of a physical danger, not just a psychological fear of revenge.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4969772/Trump-generals-grow-U-S-nucle
ar-arsenal-TEN.html
www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-wanted-dramatic-increase-nuclear-arsena
l-meeting-military-leaders-n809701
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Hmmmmmmm.....
I've been against every war we've been involved in since I was old enough to vote. Guess that means I'm not Republican too.
Well... it doesn't make me Democrat either since every war that Obama continued and started is just A-Okay with them.
I love your anti-American quote about the home of the chickens, Second. That doesn't look to be a part of either of your articles. I'm assuming you came up with that one all by yourself then?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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You are partially right. The Constitution makes Washington less responsive than, say, one of the better designed Parliamentary systems. But the big flaw is Americans. Their memories don't extend very far into the past. The proof is a very simple minded prediction scheme that has failed once (Trump. The professor assumed the Republican candidate, whoever it would eventually be, would have zero charisma. But Trump is full of charisma. If the professor had not assumed a zero charisma candidate, the model would have given the correct answer.) The simple model accounts for the outcome of every American presidential election since 1860, much longer than any other prediction system. Prospectively, the Keys to the White House has correctly forecast the popular vote winner of all seven presidential elections from 1984 to 2012, usually months or even years prior to Election Day.
https://pollyvote.com/en/components/index-models/keys-to-the-white-hou
se/
https://qz.com/1129587
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
eta: to expand a little bit on the idea - if this was a parliamentary system we could vote Trump out at any time during his term on a vote of 'no confidence'. It would keep the system somewhat more honest.
As it is, it's a system running without negative feedback controls. And this system creates a dysfunctional dynamic that degrades both the political process, and the people participating in it.
By experience, people have become very cynical, disenfranchised, and mentally lazy, about their presidential votes. Maybe they haven't linked it up to the political system we have now, but they know that presidential campaigns are nothing more than hot air, empty promises, and circus sideshows. They trusted in 'hope and change', and were bitterly disappointed by what didn't happen. (And if republicans had run anyone with a credible message of change, they would have won.) They trusted Trump to not be more of the same.
But when that doesn't work out, the only option they - we - have is to roll the dice again.
I guess 'The Framers' wanted democracy, but not too much of it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:That is direct experience. Why do you think the 1% can bully the other 99%? It certainly is not because the 1% are belligerent. It is because the 99% won't fight back. Instead, they get drunk, or wished they had a nuke to drop on their enemy, or voted in a secret ballot for a champion (Trump as the example) who will fight for them. None of those methods are as reliable as getting yourself into the fight for what you want. And I do mean fight, not wish and not passively hope. That is for chickens.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Hmmmmmmm.....
I love your anti-American quote about the home of the chickens, Second. That doesn't look to be a part of either of your articles. I'm assuming you came up with that one all by yourself then?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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