To all the people who thought Biden couldn’t “put a lid on” once he was POTUS every time there was something unpleasant he didn’t want to deal with, apparently you were wrong.
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I thought he would be a less divisive force (at least for the US) so it didn’t really matter who was president as long as it wasn’t Trump, which I feel is the most important thing regardless of where one might stand in terms of ideology, but it seems I was wrong. I sorely underestimated the influence of both mainstream (including FOX) and alternative media.
One big lesson I learned from parenting, volunteering in hospice care, lifting, jiu jitsu and bouncing is that producing kindness when kindness isn’t easy can only flow from a position of strength. The weak fold when it matters or can’t help improve things to begin with.
A little off-topic, but after an adolescence and adult life spent as an atheist, Catholicism has been knocking at my door in ways I can’t help but notice. I haven’t been excommunicated, so I think the Pope would be cool if I show back up.
For now I will pray my non-denominational atheist prayer equivalents for the people of Taiwan and everyone across the world who have their freedoms, livelihoods and safety threatened or denied to them. Hong Kong and Afghanistan have fallen, putting tens of millions of people back under the boot. This isn’t how I imagined the world would be when it looked like the good guys were winning.
This is serious, folks.
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Is .38 Special or Whitesnake stuck in the tape deck?
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It was Whitesnake, but I swapped out the tape deck for a CD player back in '06. Like all good things, it takes time for it to come together. She still needs an engine, but I’ve been keeping an eye out on Craigslist.
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Why should he have? Trump’s plan was hugely beautiful.
You do know the point was to get those troops out of there without any violence? There was also the whole Afghan military which surrendered faster than any expert, Trump, or you, could have imagined.
Yeah, they should have. Or maybe, the whole Afghan army thing played a part.
Maybe emboldening a terrorist, I mean legitimate political party, to the point they were retaking parts of Afghanistan before the ink dried on the agreement played a part. When you tell the enemy you just want to leave, don’t want anymore fighting, you kind of give them license to kill everyone but you. And you stand by as it happens.
I don’t see China making any movements towards Taiwan with regards to military force in the near future. This is regardless of any US intervention. China people think of Taiwanese as their own. Their only gripe is about their independence, which is a just an issue of real estate and identity if you really break it down. They generally won’t be in support of any acts that involve casualties.
Hong Kong was always going to be handed back to China under the agreement with the Brits. The only part the CCP went back on was allowing them to preserve their autonomy until 2047. Most of the laws the CCP invoked with regards to sedition were from British law.
@dt79 I get all that, but I’m not so sure about Taiwan being safe. China has real capabilities now, purpose-built for this task. Have Weapon - Will Hunt.
The broader point is that people are going back under the boot, which is shitty no matter how the powers that be end up putting people there, and not just in Hong Kong and Afghanistan.
That’s just my gut about Taiwan. Like I said up-thread, I have not spent a great deal of time informing myself about US foreign policy specifics, let alone how an evacuation of US citizens and allies could have been done better.
I agree there’s a possibility given all the weird shit the CCP is doing internally at the moment, but the probability isn’t very high. Almost every able-bodied male citizen is military trained and most people under 40 will be deployed if they’re attacked. Any invasion would have to be large scale, which will inevitably result in mass casualties. Targeted attacks with missiles would be even worse for their image and Taiwan, unlike HK (HK has no military), has the military means to retaliate. It may even lead to real internal chaos amongst the population in China.
It’s not a good look when you need to invade, and kill people you consider your own, when you have been claiming it was your land the whole time. You don’t conquer your own country.
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If you thought the division had anything to do with the President, you certainly were. The “Left” and “Right” are divided, and not reuniting.
I would argue, especially after meeting him, they did see him as weak. That’s what made him scary.
Good thing most people are in the middle.
I was talking about his international image. People, especially in South Asia, may have hated him but they also had some amount of respect for him because some parts of the media tried to portray him as a “dictator”.
I’ll put it this way. If he was running for president in China, he would have massive support if he didn’t fucking tweet(!) and had a more “wholesome” private life. His nationalist rhetoric would especially appeal to them.
I disagree with this.
The woke extreme and their allies in powerful positions are driving tons of policy. Why? Because we let them. They’re now in a race against reality, which is why censorship and the election takeover legislation HR1 are open priorities of the Democrats right now.
A lot of people are still asleep, politically-speaking. I’ve spent roughly half of my adult life in this sort of mode, paying very little attention and generally thinking “same stuff on both sides” and giving politics no real thought.
The woke will not like it when waves of Americans are awake.
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Wanna see a pic of the home gym I built during lockdown? If you’re interested I’ll post a quick pic in my covid in Aus thread.
Built a squat rack, deadlift area, bench press area, deadlift platform is being built… Pull-up bar, area for dips, area to hang a heavy bag etc.
Invested in an Olympic bar with 180kg of bumper plates. It’s not THAT much weight, but I can do sets with higher reps for deadlifts.
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Says tons but mentions one. I think we heard this before, with Obama.
Keep dreaming…
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Maybe, for the time being. But both are growing, and:
Which will drive more to identify with one side or the other. (BTW, @twojarslave, I can’t tell what you disagreed with…seems like we were saying the same thing…)
But the President is always just a symptom.
They have also been flexing their military might as if it will be a walkover if they were to invade Taiwan. Taiwan has got big ass guns and shit too and they’ve had decades to fortify their surrounding islands against exactly such an invasion. There’s literally no other reason for the military, let alone compulsory military service, to exist other than for defence against China. They’re constantly getting intel on China’s weaponry and tactics just to counter them.
If they were to, for whatever reason, merge with China, they’d start singing “kumbaya” and eliminate compulsory military service altogether and all the regular officers would be spending all day watching The Price is Right and playing pool in the mess lol.
China has minimal combat experience and a high level of cronyism in the upper military ranks. If they were to really invade Taiwan, it will be a massive bloodbath with way more casualties on China’s side, at least in the earlier stages. Their own citizens won’t put up with this.
In fact, I predict such a large initial shitshow the US will end up be laughing at them. I’m pretty sure they know this and won’t take such a risk. They can have the best of both worlds at the moment. Continue flexing with the knowledge that Taiwan would never be the aggressor and the US isn’t going to do shit either. There’s really no incentive to change. Build more economic ties amongst key industries and slowly increase dependence on mutual trade. They already did that with India despite all the political bullshit and the recent skirmishes and now they’re gouging them on raw material prices.
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I posted last year after mountain skirmish that China balked on admitting for a while - India was upsetand decided to quit buying so much from China.
Then realized they weren’t able to produce in country.
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