Picaro
Picaro's Journal
The US will not always be the only country with lethal armed drones
I once posted on some website (could have been this one) that the US would not always be the only one with armed drones.
This was actually in response to the many drone strikes during the previous administration.
The policy of raining death down, sometimes seemingly randomly, on the inhabitants of sovereign nations based on what was often flimsy intelligence seemed to be the most short sighted of policy.
I could (and can) imagine that when drone technology becomes generally available other nations doing the same to our citizens.
Imagine if you will a funeral procession or a wedding party where many vehicles are caravanning and missiles rain down on them. This actually happened in some Middle Eastern country. Our military and intelligence services barely bothered to say, "Oops...". The excuse at the time was that there might have been some terrorists, or militants, or something bad in that caravan and well...it was just a bunch of Arabs after all.
The stupidity of Donald Trump will impel us faster toward that dystopian future of automated remote asymmetrical warfare. The seeds we've planted will sprout some day. Trump is just ensuring that that day will come sooner.
So here we are...
That phrase has been echoing in my mind since this train wreck really got going shortly after the inauguration.
I have been incredibly naive in my life.
In 1974 Nixon resigned and the Republicans fell to such a low that they later lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. There was a liberal flowering. The country made a lot of progress in the 60s and the 70s.
We, the liberals and progressives, had won. I genuinely thought that the vast majority of the US citizenry thought as I did. Racism is wrong. Oppression of the weak and powerless is wrong. Our government should do what it can to redistribute income so that the homeless have homes, the sick and crippled can get healthcare that is affordable and of high quality, no one should be going hungry, those that can't afford to heat their homes should be helped to pay and utility companies should be legally constrained from cutting off utilities...
But in my heart, I knew that everything is tribal and for most people if you are the "other" then you are deserving of no mercy or support. We are unthinking primates much of the time.
The Republicans are all about the narrowest definition of the tribe. If you aren't white then you're not in the tribe. It is still as simple as that.
We are fracturing into our respective tribes with it becoming more and more common for members of one tribe to call for the violent death of those not in their tribe. Just last week Ted Nugent said that Democrats should be hunted down like coyotes.
Our so-called President nominated this woman and she very well could make it.
How do we stop this without this lurching into French Revolution violence? When they refuse to abandon their horrible ideas I feel violent. When Nugent spews his verbal diarrhea I want to kill him. This is not how a democracy survives and thrives. This is way worse than the 60s.
This is not sustainable.
How can we get back to where these ideas only lived in the shadows and were shameful things that no one would openly admit to? What kind of world do we now live in where a judicial nominee implicitly says that she doesn't agree with Brown vs The Board of Education, but because it is settled law she'll honor stare decisis?
God, this is depressing. It just won't stop.
You're a kind person spooky3
You are very kind.
This is the worst kind of writing. My focus on what I went through completely obscured my point.
Teaching is a very, very hard way to make a living. Those that do it usually have close to a vocation. That Barry Parker took it upon himself to assert that teachers don't merit more money because they are basically working part time and have a really cushy job is just another expression of assholeism.
That our states and our nation don't value education more is something very telling about our society.
That I taught and found it to be the most stressful job I ever had is really besides the point.
Thank for not blasting me. I pretty much deserved it.
I wish this man had not had the election stolen from him
This is an intelligent, perceptive man.
What is happening now is the culmination of a slow motion coup funded by a cabal of right wing billionaires.
The ideas and the policies that come from those ideas that we see so rapidly being effected did not suddenly spring from the mind of Donald Trump. There really is no mind of Donald Trump.
These ideas were developed and funded by the right wing think tank ecosphere (there is really no left wing equivalent despite all their bleating about George Soros) that was started by Scaife back in the Clinton years and was later injected with many, many millions by the Koch brothers. The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and American Enterprise Institute are just some of incredibly influential players in the Washington swap.
Trump is a very useful and easily led idiot.
Gore understands what has been going on and is keenly aware that Russia's hacking is at best a sliver of the story.
This leaves him and me and all of us to wonder what might have been.
Profile Information
Name: Ernie FergusonGender: Do not display
Hometown: Plano, TX
Home country: USA
Current location: Plano, TX
Member since: Thu Apr 30, 2009, 11:22 AM
Number of posts: 1,519