Forgive. This is the Sy Hersch piece I was referencing. My mistake.
There is also this on the subject of who attacked Ghouta.
It sounds like everyone is pretty decided that Assad uses chemical weapons, and apparently the white house pretty much told Assad just days before the attack that they didn’t care what he did in his own country. We’ve known he’s the sort of fellow who uses poison gas to kill people for some time now.
I get why reasonable people conclude that Assad launched the most recent attack. I’m still frustrated that I can’t trust the US government’s version of events any more than Assad’s, and have to come to that conclusion from entirely different sources.
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I’ve come to the conclusion that only 1% of the population can trust the U.S. version of events under 45.
Dean hates her for slagging the DNC, so while I don’t agree with Dean I understand his motivation of trying to keep the party from fracturing and giving ammo to Trump. In the end Gabbard didn’t matter much, since Putin did a much better job.
The one that gives me the willies is Richard Spencer endorsing her for 2020.
The thing where she took dark money from Assad (probably unknowingly) to go on a ‘fact finding’ trip to Syria is a gross, though her parroting of Assadite propaganda is in line with her opposition to US involvement in Syria from the start, so it’s bad, but not as bad as it might be painted.
I really hope she flames our early in the 2020 primary, since she’s way too complicated, and already needs nuanced parsing to explain apparently terrible decisions.
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Doesn’t that describe nearly all Internet political discourse at this point?
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She didn’t seem too impressed about that.
Didn’t he get punched (and glitterbombed?) again?
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I try not to really pay much attention to Spencer, since he’s an idiot and a trolley, so I have no idea what his motivations were, though given her vote history and policy background you wouldn’t think he’d be thrilled to back her. Her response was good.
I’d heard he got punched again and glitter bombed, though didn’t read anything about it yet. I think glitter bombing the alt-right seems like a perfect tactic.
Also apparently Spencer’s gone anti-Trump over Syria, so his brief time as a darling of the alt right will probably fade quickly.
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I think it’s describes nearly all discourse on nearly every subject through any medium for all time.[quote=“nemomen, post:190, topic:98477”]
Also apparently Spencer’s gone anti-Trump over Syria, so his brief time as a darling of the alt right will probably fade quickly.
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I don’t think Spencer is going to fade, I think the alt-right is going anti-Trump. I think the movement (obviously not everyone in it) is genuinely isolationist and opposed to involving the US in foreign conflicts. I saw several tweets from alt-righters calling Trump a neo-con stooge. I think it’s interesting that the alt-right identifies neo-cons as their enemies, but I guess that’s why they are ‘alt-’ right instead of just ‘right’.
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Probably so. It’s not just Spencer - the alt-right is going to fade. The right’s central defining value is loyalty to authority. A right-wing movement that fails there has committed the unforgivable crime. The media’s driven by narratives from GOP power brokers who aren’t going to give the alt-right the time of day as thoughtcriminals.
I can get behind that. On the other hand, we’ll see if they have any influence to wield in 2018. Trump couldn’t have won without them (he needed every single break he got) and so far I don’t think he’s added a single voter to those backing him, so losing that contingent would make re-election impossible. (This is what I would have said, I guess, if it weren’t for the fact that firing missiles at brown people boosts your approval rating 6-8 points)
I have a bad feeling that in Oct. 2018 there will be a lot of missiles in the air all over the place. In theory the GOP should take a beating in 2018, though things have gotten so utterly weird that we’re in a bizarre territory where I can’t really trust the past or general principles derived from them too much. In 2018 the mechanisms of mass-scale voter suppression and disenfranchisement that got Trump elected will still be in place, so it’ll come down to enough white voters in GOP leaning counties being alienated, and those people could see a Republican’s skin suit melt off to reveal an insectoid draining the life force from a human child and still vote for them, since at least the baby-eating bug isn’t a librul.
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I think people overestimate how committed these voters are. The theory of them being so deeply committed predicted that Trump couldn’t win because he wasn’t really a conservative. A lot of GOP leaders sort of reeled as Trump won, asking “What happened to conservative values?”
Us educated types figured out we couldn’t change the minds of right-wing authoritarians with our fancy “truth” and “reason” but I think it’s a mistake to go from that to saying that their minds can’t be changed. Their minds change, and no one is very good and predicting how or when.
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The problem is usually overestimating Dem turnout. The GOP has a base that shows up pretty consistently - adjusted for population growth/greying Trump popular vote was in line with Romney and McCain. The Dems have more registered voters and much flakier/lazier turnout. The pain point is usually midterms where the GOP shows up consistently, and the Dems. tend to stay home. Dems and to show up more in midterms when there’s a Republican in the WH, though. No idea whether any of that applies to 2018, though, since we’re in a new, darker, timeline with the GOP continuing their progress on reinstating Jim Crow-class voter suppression. And thanks to an idiotic electoral system that’s been heavily abused, and was designed to heavily over-weigh rural states’ votes, the Dems need to beat the GOP by a pretty high percentage to win.
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The GOP also has way better organisation. Their get out the vote is better, and they usually do a better job of identifying and tracking their voters.
That’s true but I think you underestimate how many of these voters see themselves as “Team GOP” rather than Conservative.
Media in the US is shockingly partisan from an international perspective. If you have been told for 20+ years that the “liberal media” don’t have your interests at heart and that the entire Democrat party are essentially baby-eating Communists by Fox News et al, why wouldn’t you vote GOP just to make sure that Satan Himself doesn’t get the keys to the Oval Office, even if you despise the candidate?
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This strikes me as something that should be borne in mind. Dates from 2013 (post ghouta).
And this is the most detailed piece I have read on the attribution of the sarin attacks. Fwliw
Not like a military has ever used a no-no for little explicable purpose…
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Except educated white folk. Excerpt from a Pew breakdown:
Trump won whites with a college degree 49% to 45%. In 2012, Romney won college whites by a somewhat wider margin in 2012 (56%-42%). Trump’s advantage among this group is the same as John McCain’s margin in 2008 (51%-47%).
And there we have it…
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