"We're going to bomb them back to the stone age -"
The president said.
"Where they belong."
And there was anger in his voice when he said this, it was not a joke, or hyperbole. Although, no one really believes he will do anything he says, I do think this is what he really *feels* and I don't get it.
Why? Why do the 93 million people who live in Iran 'belong' in the stone age? What did they do to the USA to deserve such contempt and violence?
The US has destroyed most of Iran's planes and military vessels. What is more interesting is that we [edit: looking some stuff up about this, I get US meddings mixed up sometimes. The more general point is that the US has 'been involved' they don't just 'hate us for our freedom' as W would say. ]
I think Iran knew this would happen and they don't seem hindered much by having the old tools of war gone. They have been expecting this. And this seems to confound our president.
And what has this got to do with me or you if you are in the US too? He'll send the kids in our army there to die or be injured. He'll waste our money, burning and blowing it up... all while making us less safe every single day. He doesn't know how to negotiate. Only how to make threats.
If the US makes threats we get threatened right back.
He thinks because we have the bigger army we automatically "win" so much so that he thinks they should just not even fight back. Just give the US whatever it wants.
Because that's what *he'd* do were he the weaker party in a war. Not everyone is a coward. I don't even think most Americans are. But this president?
I have nothing but contempt for bullies, but the kind of bully who makes threats and then doesn't follow through on them? IDK. I'm glad in a practical sense that his words have so little weight and respect. I do not challenge him to learn to never make a threat you won't live up to. I guess he doesn't understand how weak and clownish that makes the US look?
Like... I'm not someone who hugs and cries over the flag but it's humiliating for America.
Trump is angry because he's personally been humiliated and *he doesn't know why*. He just knows he *feels* less powerful, and all of a sudden people who were kissing his ass are not even taking his calls.
He was promised the war would cement him as a Great President Spreading Freedom. That it's what everyone wanted, they were just too cowardly to do it. People would sing of his bravery.
Narcissists always act this way when reality intrudes
I'm ready to describe the US as part of the Axis of Evil, even if that does sound like I'm calling them the Great Satan.
"Might makes right" is a philosophy of cowards.
The philosophy of people who would abandon their family, their values their nation if they are bullied. Though the people saying "might makes right" never think about what their expectations of capitulation say about their own values.
@futurebird
“Might makes right” is the motto of the military industrial complex. The owners and shareholders and their employees make all the money, the folks who use all the shit they make—soldiers, pilots, sailors, and their variations—make all the sacrifices, literal and figurative. And the rest of us tend to ignore it all, or cheer them all on.
Pretty sure that's his experience as a child rapist talking. He threatens violence, the victim freezes, and he gets to take what he wants.
@futurebird Might Makes Right is the core principle of authoritarianism. For those who have succeeded through life by intimidating, manipulating, and coercing others, this is their tested method of getting their way, so they feel justified in taking this position because they think it will always work to make them top dog in their little world adjacent to their ideological allies.
But even towards their ends, from a completely selfish standpoint, this worldview holds a fatal flaw.
If you allow that you can take from others by force and manipulation, then you allow that you can be taken from by the same means. Maybe you *think* no one can take from you, but nowhere in any place in history or nature, has any one strategy been completely undefeatable.
There is always a way around any fortress wall. There is always some weakness in the greatest military. Even the best liars can be out-lied. This is the fundamental flaw of an abuse mindset. You have set up the rules such that you are fair game, and someone WILL take what you have eventually. No matter how much you bluster, you can never sleep easy, because deep down you know this.
The only sure strategy for winning safety and success is an even playing field, where the rules apply the same to protect all, where all interests of all people are shared, where all succeed or fail together.
@futurebird I have wondered whether the targeting AI is easy to fool with mockups and decoys.
Then we have videos of fake targets being sent back for a fake president’s daily highlights reel.
When did the US give Iran military weapons? Was this the illegal Iran-Contra exchange?
He was told that if they killed the head of state as they did in Venezuela this would be over quickly and the US public would cheer and rally around the flag.
And none of that is happening. All of the best solutions to this require skills he lacks like being subtile, building respect, things like that.
It goes back to the hostages in the 70’s and the Ayatollahs’ contempt for the US since then.
For a lot American nationalists these are still intolerable insults.
Nobody under 45 even knows what that is.
Unnecessary. Part of the culture now.
I keep asking myself "How are we going to stop teaching so many people to applaud these sentiments?"
Much harder and more important than a colony on Mars.
@futurebird The man only cares about himself, so there must have been a personal slight at some point in the past.
Chances are, he simply doesn't like them because they don't please him, and someone stoked the fires to make him spout even more extremist nonsense.
Or maybe dementia finally got the better of him, and he's regurgitating decades-old rhetoric.
Either way, it feels difficult to search for a rational explanation when he hasn't acted rationally for so long, to the detriment of millions of innocent people.
that man is
reprehensible. unforgivable. disgusting.
every terrible thing.
ugh. it all makes me ill.
there's never a bottle-fed baby beaver around when you need one.
Hegseth has said he has nothing but contempt for international law. It's for women or something. And he is a man. You must understand he's a MAN.
And you might say "I see you are a man that's fine" but he keeps insisting "I am a man" like he didn't even hear what you said.
myrmepropagandist
MarvinFreeman
John
Petra van Cronenburg
NovaNaturalist🇨🇦🇩🇰🇬🇱🇺🇦
Brian Nicar
DJDarren
qurlyjoe
Clayfoot
laen🪻
Diane
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸
Fishercat
BashStKid
Jack the Waterlogged Count
Phosphenes
Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️
Captain Superlative
Eric Lawton
Marijke Luttekes
D
Luka Rubinjoni
Jeremy le fou
Я⊛ḶḶ model ☭
Nazo