January 6th Trial

[RiverDog]

Drone assassinations are not speculation. It is occurring. Did you give consent for it? Did I give consent for it? Do you think drone assassinations conducted by secret courts are a ok? No moral or ethical problems with them? How is that not a something of questionable legality and ethics that was put in place by powerful people to pursue their interests under the guise of protecting the United States that we don't truly know is used strictly for this.

They aren't being used domestically. It's pretty hard to hide the death of anyone even relatively notable. I'm certain that they're being done overseas in places like the Middle East, along with a lot of other discrete activities that would be a political scandal should if the public were to ever find out. But the underworking's of the CIA that's being utilized against individuals, groups of individuals, or governments that are hostile to the US or its citizens is not what I consider to be a 'conspiracy.' Illegal yes, cooperative effort yes, so technically it's a conspiracy. But that's not how I understand the term as we've been using it.

That's why I didn't consider Iran-Contra a 'conspiracy.' They had a noble goal, ie release of the hostages and support for anticommunist guerillas that our elected POTUS had specifically said that he wanted to help, but their sin was that they were going against Congress's wishes as the activity had been specifically prohibited in an act called the Bowland Amendment. It was an internal battle between two branches of the government. Although Reagan never specifically approved it, ie plausible deniability, his people assumed, IMO correctly assumed, that he would have approved it had he known. That's not a conspiracy in the sense that we use the term today.

What I consider to be a conspiracy would be if the CIA bumped off a sitting POTUS, such as was used to explain the JFK murder, a group of rouge members acting completely on their own behalf ala "Three Days of the Condor", a spy flick from the '70's.

[Aseahawkfan]

They aren't being used domestically. It's pretty hard to hide the death of anyone even relatively notable. I'm certain that they're being done overseas in places like the Middle East, along with a lot of other discrete activities that would be a political scandal should if the public were to ever find out. But the underworking's of the CIA that's being utilized against individuals, groups of individuals, or governments that are hostile to the US or its citizens is not what I consider to be a 'conspiracy.' Illegal yes, cooperative effort yes, so technically it's a conspiracy. But that's not how I understand the term as we've been using it.

That's why I didn't consider Iran-Contra a 'conspiracy.' They had a noble goal, ie release of the hostages and support for anticommunist guerillas that our elected POTUS had specifically said that he wanted to help, but their sin was that they were going against Congress's wishes as the activity had been specifically prohibited in an act called the Bowland Amendment. It was an internal battle between two branches of the government. Although Reagan never specifically approved it, ie plausible deniability, his people assumed, IMO correctly assumed, that he would have approved it had he known. That's not a conspiracy in the sense that we use the term today.

What I consider to be a conspiracy would be if the CIA bumped off a sitting POTUS, such as was used to explain the JFK murder, a group of rouge members acting completely on their own behalf ala "Three Days of the Condor", a spy flick from the '70's.

There is ample evidence the Contras were engaged in murderous criminal activity against non-combat targets including children. There is ample evidence we backed them prior to the hostage situation. I don't believe the Iran-Contra situation was in any way noble. More an operation to support an already existing operation using El Salvador as a staging ground to attack the Communist supported Sandinista, who proved to be less vicious than the men we were supporting. Back then that was the game: Communism versus American Democracy to the death.

That's the real world we live in. Even if you somehow found out JFK was assassinated, oh well, job was done. Conspiracy successful. Who cares if you punish or try to punish people after the fact. There is ample evidence the government is untrustworthy, must be watched closely, and has abused their power extensively over the years murdering many people in the process mostly outside America to consolidate power.

This whole world is a competition. By the definition of conspiracy, there are a lot of people trying to do harmful things for personal gain. Trump and his supporters are some of them insofar as Trump's only concern is himself and his supporters only concern is he has the votes to win the White House and push their agenda. You oppose him by not voting for him or those that support him. That's about the best you can do. Just like if you found out Kennedy was assassinated or your government is doing evil crap to people you didn't approve or aligned with evil nations that treat their people like trash, best you can do is be against candidates that support these alliances. If other Americans choose to be sold on the "noble goals" of Trump, not much you can do about it but vote against it.

That's why I accept conspiracies are real, happen all the time, and I can't do much to stop them. I may not believe in some of the really whacky stuff like UFOs or the faked Moon Landing or the JFK Assassination, if some evidence came out later that proved me wrong I'd shrug about it. And it still wouldn't change much for me as I'm a small fish without much pull or sway in the world. I'm not some billionaire or powerful politician involved in coordinating alliances and movements of nations. I'll do what I can, but won't sacrifice my sanity trying to stop all the crazy in the world whether done by some local drug addict nut or some power hungry reality TV star loon with the backing of billionaire political party supporters looking for lower taxes and deregulation.

Life is too short to try to stop all this. Even men that are supposedly the children of God or some kind of prophet or some powerful king or speaker couldn't stop it, no way I'm gonna stop it. Or many others. Human competition is a powerful driver of human activity and there are people that play that game far better than I ever could or want to willing to sacrifice lives for it. So I'll do what I can for the causes I consider right and conduct my life to the best of my ability. But I can accept the duality of harmful conspiracies existing around me all the time, while focusing on what I can manage within my extremely small sphere of influence.

I figure you do about the same believing what allows you to sleep best at night and control what you can control. Best way to keep your sanity in this world.

[RiverDog]

They aren't being used domestically. It's pretty hard to hide the death of anyone even relatively notable. I'm certain that they're being done overseas in places like the Middle East, along with a lot of other discrete activities that would be a political scandal should if the public were to ever find out. But the underworking's of the CIA that's being utilized against individuals, groups of individuals, or governments that are hostile to the US or its citizens is not what I consider to be a 'conspiracy.' Illegal yes, cooperative effort yes, so technically it's a conspiracy. But that's not how I understand the term as we've been using it.

That's why I didn't consider Iran-Contra a 'conspiracy.' They had a noble goal, ie release of the hostages and support for anticommunist guerillas that our elected POTUS had specifically said that he wanted to help, but their sin was that they were going against Congress's wishes as the activity had been specifically prohibited in an act called the Bowland Amendment. It was an internal battle between two branches of the government. Although Reagan never specifically approved it, ie plausible deniability, his people assumed, IMO correctly assumed, that he would have approved it had he known. That's not a conspiracy in the sense that we use the term today.

What I consider to be a conspiracy would be if the CIA bumped off a sitting POTUS, such as was used to explain the JFK murder, a group of rouge members acting completely on their own behalf ala "Three Days of the Condor", a spy flick from the '70's.

There is ample evidence the Contras were engaged in murderous criminal activity against non-combat targets including children. There is ample evidence we backed them prior to the hostage situation. I don't believe the Iran-Contra situation was in any way noble. More an operation to support an already existing operation using El Salvador as a staging ground to attack the Communist supported Sandinista, who proved to be less vicious than the men we were supporting. Back then that was the game: Communism versus American Democracy to the death.

Please take a little more time reading my comments. Note the part I highlighted in bold. I didn't say that the Contras were noble. I said that their goal, ie the release of the hostages and challenging the Communists, was worthy. Big difference.

Life is too short to try to stop all this. Even men that are supposedly the children of God or some kind of prophet or some powerful king or speaker couldn't stop it, no way I'm gonna stop it. Or many others. Human competition is a powerful driver of human activity and there are people that play that game far better than I ever could or want to willing to sacrifice lives for it. So I'll do what I can for the causes I consider right and conduct my life to the best of my ability. But I can accept the duality of harmful conspiracies existing around me all the time, while focusing on what I can manage within my extremely small sphere of influence.

I figure you do about the same believing what allows you to sleep best at night and control what you can control. Best way to keep your sanity in this world.

There are three elements to every crime: Means, motive, and opportunity. Conspiracy theories are no different. Conspiracists tend to concentrate on just one or two elements. For example, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK is known to have said that he wanted to "blow the CIA into pieces and scatter it into the wind", so people will take that statement and use it to support their theory, that the CIA had ample motivation to take him out.

But the theory runs into multiple fatal objections. The first is the physical evidence, proving that even if they wanted to, which is highly debatable to say the least, and had the means to carry out the task, of which they unquestionably did, they did not have the opportunity at 12:30pm CST on 11/22/63. Secondly, there's the smell test. Why would the CIA arm their assailant with a $12 bolt action rifle? Why wouldn't they have provided a getaway plan, or assign someone to eliminate him immediately after completing the task rather than allowing him to get arrested by the police? It's preposterous to believe that an organization as professional and sophisticated as the CIA would make such huge oversights that the simplest of minds wouldn't make.

Such a conspiracy theory would have required the cooperation of hundreds of people scattered thousands of miles apart and all sworn to secrecy, many in very high political places. They would have had to have been prepared to fake autopsies at three possible locations: Parkland Memorial Hospital, Bethesda Naval Hospital, and Walter Reed Army Hospital, and done so within hours of the murder.

And that's just a snapshot of one example. So yes, my default position is that I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but it's not because I prefer a good night's sleep to a restless one. The vast majority lack the 3 elements to a crime nor do the pass the smell test.

[RiverDog]

I gotta tell you about this guy that I debated the JFK assassination with. He was arguing that Ruby was part of the conspiracy, that the CIA had hired him to silence LHO. After I showed him, with links showing the physical evidence and testimony, that 3 minutes before Ruby shot Oswald, there was undeniable proof that he was standing in line at the Western Union office, waiting patiently for his turn, so he could wire $25 to one of his strippers that had called him earlier that morning. Ruby had closed his club due to the assassination, and she needed rent money. When he was arrested in the basement of the city jail, Ruby had a time stamp in his pocket from a clock that was calibrated every morning. There were multiple witnesses at the Western Union office, both customers and employees, including the Western Union clerk that processed Ruby's transaction, that testified under oath of Ruby's presence and that could validate their own presence with their transactions.

The second piece of information is that Oswald was scheduled to be transferred several hours earlier but it kept getting delayed, once due to LHO's own request to change clothes.

Given those undeniable facts, if Ruby was, indeed, a hired hitman, why wouldn't have been laying in waiting much sooner?

There's also a smell test item. After Ruby shot LHO, they discovered that he had brought his pet dog, Sheeba, that he loved dearly, with him that morning and was in his car when police arrived to search it. You're going to execute a CIA hit and you bring your dog with you to the crime scene? What kind of sense does that make?

The guy went off on a tangent, started talking about MKUltra, a CIA plan from back in the 50's and 60's of mind control that used LSD, that could explain Ruby's odd behavior. You can't argue with people like that which refuse to acknowledge undeniable facts and instead, create these fantastic solutions. I soon ended the discussion.

[Aseahawkfan]

There are three elements to every crime: Means, motive, and opportunity. Conspiracy theories are no different. Conspiracists tend to concentrate on just one or two elements. For example, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK is known to have said that he wanted to "blow the CIA into pieces and scatter it into the wind", so people will take that statement and use it to support their theory, that the CIA had ample motivation to take him out.

But the theory runs into multiple fatal objections. The first is the physical evidence, proving that even if they wanted to, which is highly debatable to say the least, and had the means to carry out the task, of which they unquestionably did, they did not have the opportunity at 12:30pm CST on 11/22/63. Secondly, there's the smell test. Why would the CIA arm their assailant with a $12 bolt action rifle? Why wouldn't they have provided a getaway plan, or assign someone to eliminate him immediately after completing the task rather than allowing him to get arrested by the police? It's preposterous to believe that an organization as professional and sophisticated as the CIA would make such huge oversights that the simplest of minds wouldn't make.

Such a conspiracy theory would have required the cooperation of hundreds of people scattered thousands of miles apart and all sworn to secrecy, many in very high political places. They would have had to have been prepared to fake autopsies at three possible locations: Parkland Memorial Hospital, Bethesda Naval Hospital, and Walter Reed Army Hospital, and done so within hours of the murder.

And that's just a snapshot of one example. So yes, my default position is that I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but it's not because I prefer a good night's sleep to a restless one. The vast majority lack the 3 elements to a crime nor do the pass the smell test.

Your focused every much on conspiracy theories amongst the popular culture crowd. These I view as distractions to the very real conspiracies that occur in the open that people tend to ignore even though they are criminal in nature, openly executed, and no one is answering for them such as the long, documented, and problematic alliance with Saudi Arabia to control oil which passes the smell test for a crime, but nothing is done about it.

Means? Control of the apparatus of government, the ability to make treaties and alliances, means to use the intelligence network of the American government, etc.

Motive? Control of the global oil supply, specifically price and the type of currency that can be used to purchase oil to ensure U.S. dollars are used as the global reserve currency thus making the dollar the most valuable and used currency in the world. The currency of international business.

Opportunity? We had the opportunity after World War 2 as the remaining dominant Super Power whose nation had not been torn apart by the war to assert ourselves as the dominant international player in oil and commerce. We took advantage of it.

The Crimes? Too numerous to list but include nation building, installing leaders, providing intelligence, weapons, and support to dictators used to murder competitors, defeat opposition groups, and install murderous dictatorial regimes who could provide stability in oil producing regions that agreed to take only U.S. dollars for oil.

Have we Americans greatly benefited from this move? Yep. Our corporations more than than the individual citizens, but our citizens as well.

This is an open conspiracy. Why folks like yourself have fun taking shots at the "looneys" who want to debate something like who murdered JFK or whether UFOs exist, I view that as more of the distractions humans use to avoid thinking about the real, well documented conspiracies that occur every day that lead to far more pain, suffering, and tyranny in the world than who shot JFK or whether a UFO landed because they know they are absolutely powerless to stop the real conspiracies in the world that do the most harm.

Even the invention of the atomic bomb was a conspiracy driven by global competition for control and power, not for the benefit of regular humans who will be burned to ashes in wars between powerful nuclear capable nation states.

My point is there are criminal conspiracies every day that you do nothing about. You are focusing on conspiracy theories you can easily make fun of because everyone does it, while you ignore the very real conspiracies committed by people in America often in collusion with people from other nations that are harmful to us and to the people in those nations. You ignore these conspiracies because to do otherwise would invite the kind of insanity you see from conspiracy theorists. I don't imagine you to be a person with no moral sensibilities, so I would think some of this stuff American involves itself in would not align with your idea of right and wrong.

The world is a competition. The rules aren't the same for everyone. I think not believing conspiracies is not in line with the evidence. There is a lot going on in the world and a lot of conspiracies all the time. The whacky conspiracy theories are just distractions from the reality of what is being done to hold power in this world. JFKs assassination is small potatoes compared to what is done to hold power and even if you proved who did it, who cares. Far worse has and will be done in this world in the global competition for power and money.

I'm hoping as communication world wide gets better, it will be far more difficult to manipulate large groups of people into conflict. We get used far too often as pawns in the world power game to tragic ends.

I'm sure you one of those folks that doesn't spend much time thinking on existential matters like this. I spend too much time on it. So I'll move back to the thread topic now as this could go on endlessly. Most people just aren't that interested in an existential discussion on global competition between human power groups for control and wealth.

[Aseahawkfan]

I gotta tell you about this guy that I debated the JFK assassination with. He was arguing that Ruby was part of the conspiracy, that the CIA had hired him to silence LHO. After I showed him, with links showing the physical evidence and testimony, that 3 minutes before Ruby shot Oswald, there was undeniable proof that he was standing in line at the Western Union office, waiting patiently for his turn, so he could wire $25 to one of his strippers that had called him earlier that morning. Ruby had closed his club due to the assassination, and she needed rent money. When he was arrested in the basement of the city jail, Ruby had a time stamp in his pocket from a clock that was calibrated every morning. There were multiple witnesses at the Western Union office, both customers and employees, including the Western Union clerk that processed Ruby's transaction, that testified under oath of Ruby's presence and that could validate their own presence with their transactions.

The second piece of information is that Oswald was scheduled to be transferred several hours earlier but it kept getting delayed, once due to LHO's own request to change clothes.

Given those undeniable facts, if Ruby was, indeed, a hired hitman, why wouldn't have been laying in waiting much sooner?

There's also a smell test item. After Ruby shot LHO, they discovered that he had brought his pet dog, Sheeba, that he loved dearly, with him that morning and was in his car when police arrived to search it. You're going to execute a CIA hit and you bring your dog with you to the crime scene? What kind of sense does that make?

The guy went off on a tangent, started talking about MKUltra, a CIA plan from back in the 50's and 60's of mind control that used LSD, that could explain Ruby's odd behavior. You can't argue with people like that which refuse to acknowledge undeniable facts and instead, create these fantastic solutions. I soon ended the discussion.

I never spent much time on JFK. To me that's just a money making conspiracy a lot of people like to talk up like JFK was some good guy, when he was some politician from a family who built their wealth running moonshine who talked a good game, but didn't have the greatest background. I don't think much of JFK as a president, but everyone I know said he was great at making people feel good about America and that is what people want some times. Another populist good at manipulating the masses at the right time when America was going through major cultural changes. I'm still not sure what he really did as a president. From what I understand he was part of the reason we ended up in Vietnam because behind the scenes he was listening to his advisers who felt we had to assist in that are of the world, which turned out to be a very bad idea.

I know that was a big conspiracy theory during your time growing up. I saw a lot of it as well. It wasn't that big to my generation. My generation was more concerned with these nation building alliances with dictatorial scum. That's why it occupies my mind and the fact it is still going on is irritating.

I have to take a realistic view on it. That's global competition. Other nations are trying to take power to and we have to go against them or they might get an upper hand on us and screw us before we screw them. But at some point the people in each nation have to stop letting these guys do this crap we're going to end up screwing each other at a societal and family level. The tragedies that occur because of this are the basis of human evil. I hope improved communication allows us to move past this stage of global competition. We have efficient enough human resource systems to not have to engage in the current paradigm of global competition. I hope the younger generation moves to a more coordinated and cooperative system of global resource management.

[RiverDog]

I never spent much time on JFK. To me that's just a money making conspiracy a lot of people like to talk up like JFK was some good guy, when he was some politician from a family who built their wealth running moonshine who talked a good game, but didn't have the greatest background. I don't think much of JFK as a president, but everyone I know said he was great at making people feel good about America and that is what people want some times. Another populist good at manipulating the masses at the right time when America was going through major cultural changes. I'm still not sure what he really did as a president. From what I understand he was part of the reason we ended up in Vietnam because behind the scenes he was listening to his advisers who felt we had to assist in that are of the world, which turned out to be a very bad idea.

I know that was a big conspiracy theory during your time growing up. I saw a lot of it as well. It wasn't that big to my generation. My generation was more concerned with these nation building alliances with dictatorial scum. That's why it occupies my mind and the fact it is still going on is irritating.

I have to take a realistic view on it. That's global competition. Other nations are trying to take power to and we have to go against them or they might get an upper hand on us and screw us before we screw them. But at some point the people in each nation have to stop letting these guys do this crap we're going to end up screwing each other at a societal and family level. The tragedies that occur because of this are the basis of human evil. I hope improved communication allows us to move past this stage of global competition. We have efficient enough human resource systems to not have to engage in the current paradigm of global competition. I hope the younger generation moves to a more coordinated and cooperative system of global resource management.

The fact is that the conspiracy theory industry is a huge, money-making industry. The vast majority of the literature and movies on the JFK assassination is conspiracy orientated even though none of the evidence supports any of them unless you alter them by introducing stuff like staged autopsies and mind control. Conspiracy theories sell. No one wants to read about or watch a movie of a lone nut that just happened to be at the right place at the right time. It's much more intriguing to have this huge, intriguing, sexy plot involving powerful people ala James Bond. Oliver Stone has made a fortune off it.

If you need proof, look at how many people believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Last I saw it was around 35%, including 70% of all Republicans. 31% of Gore voters think that Bush stole the 2000 election. 20% believed that the Covid vaccines had microchips in them. Hell, 10% of Americans believe that the moon landings were faked. That's a huge market for entrepreneurs to exploit, about 30 million in the US alone. Like PT Barnum once said: There's a sucker born every minute.

You're right, the JFK assassination was a huge thing with my generation. It was the first major world event that I have a clear recollection of as I was 9-year-old 3rd grader at the time, which is how I became so obsessed with it, doing my own research by reading numerous books and watching countless documentaries. It trained my mind to question these other theories.

JFK was, indeed, on the ground floor of the Vietnam War. Bobby Kennedy was a huge proponent of it during the early 60's even though his brother Teddy eulogized him by saying "...saw a war and tried to stop it". What a croc! Most of JFK's close advisors, ie Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, held over into the Johnson Administration and pushed him to escalate it. Yet people believe that had Kennedy lived, we wouldn't have gotten involved in Vietnam. It's insane.

[Aseahawkfan]

The fact is that the conspiracy theory industry is a huge, money-making business. The vast majority of the literature and movies on the JFK assassination is conspiracy orientated even though none of the evidence supports any of them unless you alter them by introducing stuff like staged autopsies and mind control. Conspiracy theories sells. No one wants to read about or watch a movie of a lone nut that just happened to be at the right place at the right time. It's much more intriguing to have this huge, intriguing, sexy plot involving powerful people ala James Bond. Oliver Stone has made a fortune off it.

If you need proof, look at how many people believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Last I saw it was around 35%, including 70% of all Republicans. 31% of Gore voters think that Bush stole the 2000 election. 20% believed that the Covid vaccines had microchips in them. Hell, 10% of Americans believe that the moon landings were faked. That's a huge market for entrepreneurs to exploit, about 30 million in the US alone. Like PT Barnum once said: There's a sucker born every minute.

You're right, the JFK assassination was a huge thing with my generation. It was the first major world event that I have a clear recollection of as I was 9-year-old 3rd grader at the time, which is how I became so obsessed with it, doing my own research by reading numerous books and watching countless documentaries. It trained my mind to question these other theories.

It's interesting to see how the time we grew up in focuses our priorities. The JFK assassination for your generation. I remember going to college for in the late 80s after I graduated High School. I had a liberal, little bit of a hippy teacher. I really liked her. Nice lady. She introduced me to all this history of what we were doing in Latin and Central America and our government policy of control in that region because we did not want foreign interference within our immediate sphere of influence. The murderous dictators and groups we supported. The Contras, General Noriega, Somoza Family in Nicaragua, the paramilitary training we provided groups that ended up working for drug cartels, the C.I.A. running drug operations in Latin and Central America to support clandestine operations, the War on Drugs we pushed in America while not really doing much to stop them at the source. Just so much slimy stuff going on and all documented and tracked and known about by our government, but overlooked under the auspices of combating Communism.

I imagine Americans didn't get much info on all this stuff when you were growing up and the murder of an American president for the first time since what? McKinley? That was in 1901, so 60 plus years prior must have been shocking, especially a well loved president like Kennedy. I always wondered if you liked Kennedy or were too young to even think much of it. Didn't you say your dad didn't like Kennedy because he was a Democrat?

[RiverDog]

It's interesting to see how the time we grew up in focuses our priorities. The JFK assassination for your generation. I remember going to college for in the late 80s after I graduated High School. I had a liberal, little bit of a hippy teacher. I really liked her. Nice lady. She introduced me to all this history of what we were doing in Latin and Central America and our government policy of control in that region because we did not want foreign interference within our immediate sphere of influence. The murderous dictators and groups we supported. The Contras, General Noriega, Somoza Family in Nicaragua, the paramilitary training we provided groups that ended up working for drug cartels, the C.I.A. running drug operations in Latin and Central America to support clandestine operations, the War on Drugs we pushed in America while not really doing much to stop them at the source. Just so much slimy stuff going on and all documented and tracked and known about by our government, but overlooked under the auspices of combating Communism.

I imagine Americans didn't get much info on all this stuff when you were growing up and the murder of an American president for the first time since what? McKinley? That was in 1901, so 60 plus years prior must have been shocking, especially a well loved president like Kennedy. I always wondered if you liked Kennedy or were too young to even think much of it. Didn't you say your dad didn't like Kennedy because he was a Democrat?

We've supported a lot of dictators. Francisco Franco of Spain. Manuel Noriega of Panama. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. Sadaam Hussien of Iraq. The Shah of Iran. The prince of Saudi Arabia. I could go on and on. We've always operated on the principle that the end justifies the means. And at least to some degree, I can understand why. Sometimes it's a necessity, a choice between the lesser of two evils. Other times not.

As far as my liking JFK, I was a bit too young, 9 years old when he was assassinated, and I was influenced by my dad, who was a hard core Republican and thought he was soft on communism. I can remember dad during 1962 say that we ought to turn Cuba into the world's largest parking lot. I did gain quite a bit of respect for JFK in my post high school years, that unlike his brothers, that he was a stand up guy, that as a PT boat officer, would jump into the water with his crew and help them scrape barnacles off the hull, how he towed a wounded crewman several miles to safety. He was not the spoiled rich kid that his older brother Joe Jr. was, and certainly not the spoiled rich kid that DJT is.

[Aseahawkfan]

We've supported a lot of dictators. Francisco Franco of Spain. Manuel Noriega of Panama. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. Sadaam Hussien of Iraq. The Shah of Iran. The prince of Saudi Arabia. I could go on and on. We've always operated on the principle that the end justifies the means. And at least to some degree, I can understand why. Sometimes it's a necessity, a choice between the lesser of two evils. Other times not.

As far as my liking JFK, I was a bit too young, 9 years old when he was assassinated, and I was influenced by my dad, who was a hard core Republican and thought he was soft on communism. I can remember dad during 1962 say that we ought to turn Cuba into the world's largest parking lot. I did gain quite a bit of respect for JFK in my post high school years, that unlike his brothers, that he was a stand up guy, that as a PT boat officer, would jump into the water with his crew and help them scrape barnacles off the hull, how he towed a wounded crewman several miles to safety. He was not the spoiled rich kid that his older brother Joe Jr. was, and certainly not the spoiled rich kid that DJT is.

I knew JFK was better than some. He was a real war veteran, like GW Sr. I can respect more than many of these draft dodgers pretending to be tough guys.

I hear that "turn this place into a parking lot or glass" and I wonder if they really believe murdering all those innocent people including women and children is some kind of answer. Pretty ridiculous. Vast majority of people are trapped in their nations, not participants. Same as most Americans are here by luck, not some intelligent action they or their ancestors took. America was not always as comfortable as it is now. Most people don't read or comprehend history. They just don't care and don't have to care as they won the life lottery by being born here where the suffering is lower and the chances of something bad happening to you is extremely rare even though some people in their mind's make it seem far worse than it is.

That's why so many of these comments about the end of Democracy and other such garbage is foolishness. Americans need to be sent to places where the issues of starvation, crime, and such are daily and real. Not I get to tweet some alarming comment on twitter to sound like America is in really dangerous times because it sounds good. It's so damn ridiculous. We get comparisons to Rome and such. We are nothing like Rome. Technology sustains society at this point. The reason past societies collapsed is a lack of technology to make life as easy as it is now. It's going to get easier and easier and easier. I would worry more about society if we lost electricity. Then things would get bad. Trump and politicians arguing is more of an annoyance. I'm glad we aren't locked down any longer. That kind of craziness spawned by lockdowns is what can cause a Civil War to break out. You gotta keep humans busy or they start losing their minds.

[RiverDog]

I knew JFK was better than some. He was a real war veteran, like GW Sr. I can respect more than many of these draft dodgers pretending to be tough guys.

It was a different day and time. WW2 was an extremely popular war. My mom used to tell me that if you were a healthy male between the age of 18-35 and walking the street and were not in uniform, you had some explaining to do. There were over 16 million men in the armed forces during WW2, about 11% of the population at the time and an even larger percentage of young males, out of which about 75% served overseas. Vietnam had half a million, or about 3 tenths of 1% of the population. Would JFK and Bush 41 have behaved like they did if conditions were like they were in 1968 instead of 1942? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that both HAD to serve if they knew what was good for them. They had no viable option. That doesn't mean that I don't have respect for them and what they did, just that we have to keep things in the proper context.

I hear that "turn this place into a parking lot or glass" and I wonder if they really believe murdering all those innocent people including women and children is some kind of answer. Pretty ridiculous. Vast majority of people are trapped in their nations, not participants. Same as most Americans are here by luck, not some intelligent action they or their ancestors took. America was not always as comfortable as it is now. Most people don't read or comprehend history. They just don't care and don't have to care as they won the life lottery by being born here where the suffering is lower and the chances of something bad happening to you is extremely rare even though some people in their mind's make it seem far worse than it is.

That's why so many of these comments about the end of Democracy and other such garbage is foolishness. Americans need to be sent to places where the issues of starvation, crime, and such are daily and real. Not I get to tweet some alarming comment on twitter to sound like America is in really dangerous times because it sounds good. It's so damn ridiculous. We get comparisons to Rome and such. We are nothing like Rome. Technology sustains society at this point. The reason past societies collapsed is a lack of technology to make life as easy as it is now. It's going to get easier and easier and easier. I would worry more about society if we lost electricity. Then things would get bad. Trump and politicians arguing is more of an annoyance. I'm glad we aren't locked down any longer. That kind of craziness spawned by lockdowns is what can cause a Civil War to break out. You gotta keep humans busy or they start losing their minds.

I agree. Every American needs to visit a 3rd world country. I've been to three, all on different continents: Mexico, Peru, and Kenya. Oddly enough, although the living conditions are what we would consider deplorable, the people are not living in hunger and despair. Most are healthy and happy. We have this urge in this country that we must Americanize everyone, that if they live in a shack with a dirt floor, we must save them, that unless they have a 3 bedroom house with two cars in the garage, they can't live a happy and productive life.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe in economic assistance to the third world, to the contrary. My point is that there's a huge difference between our perception of the conditions and the reality of them.

[Aseahawkfan]

I agree. Every American needs to visit a 3rd world country. I've been to three, all on different continents: Mexico, Peru, and Kenya. Oddly enough, although the living conditions are what we would consider deplorable, the people are not living in hunger and despair. Most are healthy and happy. We have this urge in this country that we must Americanize everyone, that if they live in a shack with a dirt floor, we must save them, that unless they have a 3 bedroom house with two cars in the garage, they can't live a happy and productive life.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe in economic assistance to the third world, to the contrary. My point is that there's a huge difference between our perception of the conditions and the reality of them.

Humans tend to adapt to the conditions in which they live. Always have, always will. It's one of the reasons why heaven and hell are so unappealing to me. They aren't human. Humans living in eternal paradise or eternal suffering will just adapt and become accustomed to their environment and come to expect it. I feel like providing economic assistance causes humans to adapt to need that assistance. They won't seek improvement with subsistence assistance like we often provide. I don't mind assistance with standards that cause improvement, but this handing things out or supporting dictators is not my cup of tea. When we build schools or incentivize education or business, that is much better.

[RiverDog]

Humans tend to adapt to the conditions in which they live. Always have, always will. It's one of the reasons why heaven and hell are so unappealing to me. They aren't human. Humans living in eternal paradise or eternal suffering will just adapt and become accustomed to their environment and come to expect it. I feel like providing economic assistance causes humans to adapt to need that assistance. They won't seek improvement with subsistence assistance like we often provide. I don't mind assistance with standards that cause improvement, but this handing things out or supporting dictators is not my cup of tea. When we build schools or incentivize education or business, that is much better.

Well put.

But what I was speaking of was the attitude us Americans have about anybody that doesn't enjoy the same lifestyle as we do. With the best of intentions, we have this urge to 'save' people from what we perceive as being a living hell. There's a huge disconnect between how we perceive life as vs. those in the third world. A good example is our 36th President. LBJ tried to end the Vietnam War by offering Ho Chi Minh a huge, New Deal-like program with billions of dollars to build hospitals, schools, dams, roads, essentially Americanize Vietnam. It didn't impress Ho one little bit. Johnson thought of Ho as he would a garden variety politician like those in the US Congress, that Ho could be bought if he could find the right price. Two different men with two entirely different outlooks on life. That's why I think it important for every American to visit a 3rd world country. I know that it made a huge impact on how I view the world.

As far as supporting dictators, I have mixed emotions. Jimmy Carter had the same attitude, that of a moral superiority and unwilling to support what he viewed as dictators and despots. But sometimes, taking the high road doesn't get you to the common destination, forcing us to take the low one. The right and moral thing at the end of WW2 would have been to take on the Russians, and in retrospect, maybe we should have. Stalin was a dictator, every bit as ruthless as Hitler, and we knew it. Churchill warned Roosevelt and correctly predicted the cold war should we give into the Russians demands. But we had to cut a deal with the Devil if we wanted to keep from having to kill another 10 million people at a time when the world was weary of war.

[Aseahawkfan]

Well put.

But what I was speaking of was the attitude us Americans have about anybody that doesn't enjoy the same lifestyle as we do. With the best of intentions, we have this urge to 'save' people from what we perceive as being a living hell. There's a huge disconnect between how we perceive life as vs. those in the third world. A good example is our 36th President. LBJ tried to end the Vietnam War by offering Ho Chi Minh a huge, New Deal-like program with billions of dollars to build hospitals, schools, dams, roads, essentially Americanize Vietnam. It didn't impress Ho one little bit. Johnson thought of Ho as he would a garden variety politician like those in the US Congress, that Ho could be bought if he could find the right price. Two different men with two entirely different outlooks on life. That's why I think it important for every American to visit a 3rd world country. I know that it made a huge impact on how I view the world.

As far as supporting dictators, I have mixed emotions. Jimmy Carter had the same attitude, that of a moral superiority and unwilling to support what he viewed as dictators and despots. But sometimes, taking the high road doesn't get you to the common destination, forcing us to take the low one. The right and moral thing at the end of WW2 would have been to take on the Russians, and in retrospect, maybe we should have. Stalin was a dictator, every bit as ruthless as Hitler, and we knew it. Churchill warned Roosevelt and correctly predicted the cold war should we give into the Russians demands. But we had to cut a deal with the Devil if we wanted to keep from having to kill another 10 million people at a time when the world was weary of war.

That's the part we disagree on. We don't know if we had to cut a deal or how long the war would have gone on had we not dropped nuclear weapons. This reasoning is all brought up after the fact to make excuses for the actions taken. Stalin was an evil man who killed millions and led to a state of constant war costing lives and money for his entire existence. He is the reason for Vietnam and nearly every other war where we were ostensibly defeating Communism. I have also read that FDR was sympathetic to Stalin and Communism, which is why I don't have a great deal of love for FDR other than he must have been well-loved by the American people to stay in office for so long. Whether what he did was good for America, that I'm not as sure about.

I have no mixed emotions supporting dictators. I would pull support for them. They do more evil than good and don't create succession or long-term stability. They become dependent on American military power to maintain their position and using it violently.

It's better if we govern ourselves or the other side wins. Even Vietnam at this point who drove us from their nation is doing better now for having to learn to support themselves and build up their own country than having us there supporting a dictator. Latin America is a real example of failed nation building. People need to settle their affairs within their nation, then once they have a winner they can try to do business with us if we so choose or we need to govern as we did in Japan and Germany or take over as a military presence as we did in places like Korea and The Philippines. This picking dictators is bad policy that leads to all types of long-term issues as well as culpability in the cruel, criminal actions carried out by the dictators we support. American money should not be supporting leaders we would never tolerate in America who engage in murderous and criminal activities that make us culpable. It is one of the reasons why we never become part of The Hague International Criminal Court, we would be on trial there a lot for the things we've done and the people we've supported. If your country has done things and supported individuals who can put you trial for human rights violations, you're doing something you likely shouldn't be and the American people are asleep at the wheel letting you.

It's a real problem in my opinion that the American People, who are supposed to govern this nation, let our government engage in far too much nation building not aligned with our values and that really helps nothing and no one. It's just a grab for power often at the behest of our corporations.

Even now we're part of the reason Russia is able to carry out this Ukraine War, us and Europe. American oil companies helped Russia extract and sell oil internationally. Now once again a foreign policy decision allowing a dictator to accumulate a bunch of wealth is causing us problems on an international level. I keep wondering how many times we have to do this before we go,"hmmm. Bad idea. Costly in the long run." Same as we built up China into the economic power house it is without first requiring they have a more open and free society and now they working against us world wide. So once again another decision by the American government biting them in the ass because everyone wants to make a lot of money.

It's a provably stupid strategy of short-term thinking that ends up costing us in lives, money, and problems that aren't worth it. I'm glad as we get more information we are reining in some of this stupidity in.

[I-5]

Every American needs to visit a 3rd world country. I've been to three, all on different continents: Mexico, Peru, and Kenya. Oddly enough, although the living conditions are what we would consider deplorable, the people are not living in hunger and despair. Most are healthy and happy. We have this urge in this country that we must Americanize everyone, that if they live in a shack with a dirt floor, we must save them, that unless they have a 3 bedroom house with two cars in the garage, they can't live a happy and productive life.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe in economic assistance to the third world, to the contrary. My point is that there's a huge difference between our perception of the conditions and the reality of them.

Couldn't agree more with this. I'm actually traveling now in Mexico, and see both good and bad sides of Americanism here. I've been fortunate to have visited 21 countries in Asia, N+S America, and both Eastern and Western Europe. Besides being expensive and a lot of fun, the best part of traveling for me is 1) trying new foods and more importantly 2) seeing how others live and appreciating their culture. It makes me both glad to be American, but also teaches me that not everything about America is 'the best'. Riv is totally right, we don't have to see others living in a different way (ie dirt floor, or much tighter living spaces) and think we must save them. It's also ironic that some of the poorest communities I've visited look the healthiest, judging by their white teeth, clear complexion and lack of obesity...they simple can't afford to pay for and eat all the junk food that first worlders like us do.

[RiverDog]

Every American needs to visit a 3rd world country. I've been to three, all on different continents: Mexico, Peru, and Kenya. Oddly enough, although the living conditions are what we would consider deplorable, the people are not living in hunger and despair. Most are healthy and happy. We have this urge in this country that we must Americanize everyone, that if they live in a shack with a dirt floor, we must save them, that unless they have a 3 bedroom house with two cars in the garage, they can't live a happy and productive life.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe in economic assistance to the third world, to the contrary. My point is that there's a huge difference between our perception of the conditions and the reality of them.

Couldn't agree more with this. I'm actually traveling now in Mexico, and see both good and bad sides of Americanism here. I've been fortunate to have visited 21 countries in Asia, N+S America, and both Eastern and Western Europe. Besides being expensive and a lot of fun, the best part of traveling for me is 1) trying new foods and more importantly 2) seeing how others live and appreciating their culture. It makes me both glad to be American, but also teaches me that not everything about America is 'the best'. Riv is totally right, we don't have to see others living in a different way (ie dirt floor, or much tighter living spaces) and think we must save them. It's also ironic that some of the poorest communities I've visited look the healthiest, judging by their white teeth, clear complexion and lack of obesity...they simple can't afford to pay for and eat all the junk food that first worlders like us do.

I'm not much on the food aspect, but I will try things once just to say that I did. One of Peru's national dishes is guinea pig. Tastes like chicken.

You're right about the overall health of 3rd worlders in general. These images of starving children with swollen stomachs are highly misleading. They have a different diet as most of the foods they eat are fresh. I had a friend from China that grew up dirt poor, and he said that they bought what they were going to eat each day at a market.