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this affirms to me why humans will never survive.
I can’t help it. I love humanity. But should we survive? If we take the proverbial “god’s eye-view” — not in the religious sense, but in the widest possible, most perfectly objective, disinterested sense — should we?
No other creature on this planet has come within light years of being so destructive. We’ve wiped out more species than all other life on this planet combined. And, unlike them, we all too often did it because it pleased us to do so. We do it maliciously and with self-conscious cruelty.
As far as we know, no other animal has that trait.
The caveat to the above, at least for me: I think the vast majority of that has happened because hierarchical societies have dominated the last several thousand years. Those at the top have ordered that destruction, primarily to protect, defend and expand their power. “The people” largely had to go along with that or die. If we are to truly end the biggest structural/systemic reason for that destruction, cruelty and maliciousness, we need non-hierarchical alternatives.
And how much more of a deterrent do you want than our total domination in military matters? We’re the world’s undisputed hegemon. The Cold War is long gone. We don’t have several hegemons. It’s just us. And doesn’t the desire to increase our military power contradict the desire to stop being the world’s policeman, not to mention “making other nations pay their fair share”?
We have all the deterrent we need times a thousand. And we actually have more active ships now than we did under Dubya.
Our surface Navy is outdated. Both China and Russia have brought online weapons systems that will destroy our surface fleet within 14 days of fighting. Our anti-missile defense is overhyped and rendered archaic to the latest offensive systems of Russia and China. Our sub fleet should fare much better though with both Russia and China actively upgrading both BeiDou and GLONASS military satellite systems with BeiDou far more accurate than our GPS and slated to go global. All three nations are actively pursuing space weapons to defend? their satellite systems.
When one of our carriers is lost with its 4000 member crew, how long do you think it will take for the conflict to go nuclear? Wouldn’t it be better to modernize and upgrade both the Navy and Air Force to dissuade an aggressor?
bnw,
None of that is true. We’ve poured trillions into modernization. No one comes close to our military — not for advanced tech, capacity, speed, or any other metric. Do you really think the Military Industrial Complex ever misses a chance to score major contracts with endless updates? Come on. You’ve just bought into Trump and the GOP’s despicable fearmongering and scapegoating. In reality, we have long spent waaaay too much on behalf of Corporate America, and that didn’t change under Obama.
Whatever you say Billy since you’ve been proven to be correct despite reality. Its your thing.
bnw,
It’s beyond obvious that you were wrong about Trump’s supposed mass appeal. Again, he lost the popular vote to Clinton, one of the least liked presidential candidates ever. He lost to her. And he received fewer votes, total, than Romney or McCain, who both lost bigly to Obama.
He has no mandate. He has no mass popular support. He has his dead-ender, white-nationalist base, plus some folks who always vote for the GOP candidate no matter who it is.
Just as the Dems made a huge mistake in assuming Clinton had this in the bag, you and your fellow Trump supporters are kidding yourself if you think Trump is beloved by anything close to a majority. He’s actually despised by a majority of Americans. A strong majority said he was unfit for the office. They didn’t like Clinton either, of course. But Trump’s numbers were worse.
That’s reality.
And how much more of a deterrent do you want than our total domination in military matters? We’re the world’s undisputed hegemon. The Cold War is long gone. We don’t have several hegemons. It’s just us. And doesn’t the desire to increase our military power contradict the desire to stop being the world’s policeman, not to mention “making other nations pay their fair share”?
We have all the deterrent we need times a thousand. And we actually have more active ships now than we did under Dubya.
Our surface Navy is outdated. Both China and Russia have brought online weapons systems that will destroy our surface fleet within 14 days of fighting. Our anti-missile defense is overhyped and rendered archaic to the latest offensive systems of Russia and China. Our sub fleet should fare much better though with both Russia and China actively upgrading both BeiDou and GLONASS military satellite systems with BeiDou far more accurate than our GPS and slated to go global. All three nations are actively pursuing space weapons to defend? their satellite systems.
When one of our carriers is lost with its 4000 member crew, how long do you think it will take for the conflict to go nuclear? Wouldn’t it be better to modernize and upgrade both the Navy and Air Force to dissuade an aggressor?
bnw,
None of that is true. We’ve poured trillions into modernization. No one comes close to our military — not for advanced tech, capacity, speed, or any other metric. Do you really think the Military Industrial Complex ever misses a chance to score major contracts with endless updates? Come on. You’ve just bought into Trump and the GOP’s despicable fearmongering and scapegoating. In reality, we have long spent waaaay too much on behalf of Corporate America, and that didn’t change under Obama.
Whatever you say Billy since you’ve been proven to be correct despite reality. Its your thing.
bnw,
It’s beyond obvious that you were wrong about Trump’s supposed mass appeal. Again, he lost the popular vote to Clinton, one of the least liked presidential candidates ever. He lost to her. And he received fewer votes, total, than Romney or McCain, who both lost bigly to Obama.
He has no mandate. He has no mass popular support. He has his dead-ender, white-nationalist base, plus some folks who always vote for the GOP candidate no matter who it is.
Just as the Dems made a huge mistake in assuming Clinton had this in the bag, you and your fellow Trump supporters are kidding yourself if you think Trump is beloved by anything close to a majority. He’s actually despised by a majority of Americans. A strong majority said he was unfit for the office. They didn’t like Clinton either, of course. But Trump’s numbers were worse.
That’s reality.
Only you Billy would claim I was wrong. The mass appeal of Trump despite the 17 month savaging he received from the establishment is something which cannot be denied. I’d say he had more supporters that didn’t vote than those that stayed home for Hildabeast. Next time don’t nominate a corrupt traitor.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
Also: I’m not one to generally use that word, and I never do lightly. But if anyone can be called a “traitor” in that race, it’s Trump. We now know he and the Russians were in contact during the campaign, even though Trump lied about that. We know Trump publicly encouraged Russia to hack into our electoral system. We know that the Russians did. We also know that Wikileaks focused solely on Clinton and the Dems, using Russian intel.
We also know that if the shoe had been on the other foot, and it was Trump and the GOP at the receiving end of this, they and their backers and the alt-right especially would have been screaming bloody murder, and likely a lot more than just “lock her up!” I have no doubt they’d be blasting her for being “traitorous” and calling for her head.
We also know IOKIYAAR.
She profited from selling the Russians 20% of our uranium resource. Bubba also was paid HUGE $$$$ to give a speech to a Russian bank in Moscow. Its the Clinton Crime Syndicate business model since they were in the White House selling US military technology to the Chinese communists. I don’t use the word lightly as they’ve earned it. TRAITORS.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
But are hierarchical structures really proof that we can’t have truly egalitarian ones instead? We used to. As far as we know, our first 200,000 years on this planet were very close to non-hierarchical and egalitarian, structurally. By no means perfectly so. But the norm in “traditional societies” was for pretty flat pyramids, with maybe one or two steps.
We now have hierarchies with thousands of them.
Given the fact that the vast majority of our time on this planet was spent within those virtually non-hierarchical societies — which in some parts of the world, lasted into the 20th century, btw — is it really accurate to say “human nature” prevents this?
i don’t know. haha.
my guess is as the population increases the need for hierarchy increases.
i could be wrong.
sometimes i imagine there’s a planet out there somewhere with an advanced society with the egalitarian values you talk about. the vulcan?
or maybe humans will become that eventually.
or maybe it’ll be a war of the worlds.
Only you Billy would claim I was wrong. The mass appeal of Trump despite the 17 month savaging he received from the establishment is something which cannot be denied. I’d say he had more supporters that didn’t vote than Hildabeast did. Next time don’t nominate a corrupt traitor.
No, bnw. I think any objective person would look at the results of the election, and all the data prior to it, and the exit polls, and all the video and audio of Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynistic statements/policy ideas, and the 4,000 lawsuits against him, and his six bankruptcies, and his bragging about being a sexual predator, and his endless lies, and reach the same conclusion.
As for your last sentence: I didn’t nominate her. I’m not a Dem and don’t vote in Dem primaries. And there is no proof she is a “traitor.” That takes intent. You have to prove she intentionally exposed classified documents with malicious intent. Just being tech-stupid, arrogant and careless doesn’t add up to “traitor,” unless you’re a part of the right-wing lunatic fringe.
His list of potential cabinet appointees include women, gays, and blacks. So much for being a racist, or homophobic, or a misogynist. And please. You can’t honestly believe that Killory is THAT stupid that she didn’t understand the lucid instructions given to her about the handling of classified information. Careless? lol. Intentionally defiant would be a more apt description. Let alone lying about it. Let alone allowing someone without security clearance (her maid) print out and view classified materials. And yes, that falls under the category of traitorism.
Do you honestly think that just appointing a diverse group of people negates all the vicious things he said, or the obvious oppression of minorities implicit and explicit in his policy ideas? Come on, man.
Also: The bar for “traitor” is a hell of a lot higher than that, bnw. Again, it takes “intent.” It takes purposely trying to undermine this country’s security, in that particular case, and there is zero proof that she did that.
I’m not defending her actions, at all. Again, I think she likely acted with arrogance and a sense of assumed privilege, and was tech-stupid to the nth degree. She also made things worse by going shields up during the GOP’s witch hunt. But none of that rises to the level of “treason.” Not in the real world. On the ultra-paranoid, ultra-partisan, lunatic right, yeah. But not in the real world.
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