this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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It’s hard to say. Bush Jr. gave us both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both of which stretched into decades and cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, however, I’n not sure that any other Republican wouldn’t have done the same. Within 48 hours of 9/11, it seemed like they were already discussing how to tie it to Iraq, which made it seem like it was the plan all along. 9/11 just provided a convenient excuse. Those conflicts also stretched across multiple presidencies, Obama didn’t actually end either one.
Trump, on the other hand, could potentially spell the end of the US as we know it. The court cases against him give me some hope that he himself will be stamped out, but even without him, his followers are still just as dumb and malicious and they’ve infested every nook and cranny of the government like maggots.
The deeper problem is the Russian propaganda machine that helped a dipshit like Trump rise to power in the first place, which is what makes Ukraine so important. If we can break Russia’s back, we can potentially disrupt it at its source, but maybe the vacuum would just get filled by some other foreign power looking to destabilize the US. Trump is a symptom of a deeper issue in America, that someone like him even had a chance in the first place. If anything, we actually got lucky he’s as incompetent as he is and that we’re not already living under a dictatorship.
It's not just Russian propaganda unfortunately.
Conservative media as a whole is in a self destructive feedback loop in which -> the craziest lunatics and the angriest ideas get the most market engagement -> thus the media gives them the biggest platform, so they can make the most money -> thus those guys get elected and get talk shows-> thus rewarding both politicians and media companies for spreading anger and madness -> that made us money -> DO IT 10 TIMES MORE -> we found even crazier, angrier lunatics to run for office and host talk shows -> repeat. I'm not sure how to break this. It's profit driven, like so many of our problems that we can't solve.
Meanwhile, there are literally well funded, well organized conservative conspiracies to take over the world. NOTHING like that exists on the left. I wish it did. I wish we had an alliance of monied interests on the left who were like "We need to fight these assholes!"
Wow mate, let's not go so far... Maggots are at least good in some situations, as they can remove rotten flesh and speed up recovery, saving people's limbs and sometimes lives under the right circumstances. If anything, I would say we need maggots in there, to get rid of the rotten ones.
They were planning to invade Iraq way before 9/11 actually. When bush told the Saudis and even Tony Blair that Iraq was behind this (were talking September 12th) they were super perplexed.
Memos came out in early 2000s showing that post-saddam Iraq was already planned for.
Yeah, I remember watching a documentary video that showed alot of the discussions that were happening in the administration right on and after 9/11. Iraq was brought up pretty quickly, within 24 hours of the Towers coming down. It was pretty clear that while the rest of the world saw a huge tragedy, the Bush Administration saw a huge opportunity.