In the Age of Nuclear Cheeto, Year 1, Day 78
I see the Senate has illegally confirmed Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. Which is about right - to paraphrase my sister, a legitimate president who actually won the majority of his votes for both terms and strove to remain ethically even-keeled can't choose a justice even when he goes to effort to pick a candidate like Merrick Garland to appeal to both parties ... but a literal loser who is under investigation by the FBI for collusion and potentially treason can.
Okay. We'll see if this dude is anywhere near as nonpartisan on the bench as he presented himself to be in the hearings every time he invoked "there's a precedent already in place" on every issue he was asked about.
When I read the news last night about the U.S. bombing Syrian military soil, I tried to consider if my "doNOTwant" immediate reaction was just because it was Trump who ordered it. I'm not a mindless follower; I do try to think over things relative to the situations at hand and not just the people involved. And I remembered a few years ago when we came this!close to strikes in Syria, when Kerry was negotiating on chemical weapons and Obama was having to decide whether to go with diplomacy or military action (for some reason, you know, since we're World Police). And I remember being relieved when the non-strike option won out, and so I know my reaction to a strike back then would have been "don't do it, you imbecile" ... because that's what I was thinking AT THAT TIME. I remember, in fact, being borderline ready to punch Obama over the Libyan military action - I have a really strong reaction to anything resembling us invoking war after the last 15 years.
Viscerally, I too want to punch anyone who is gassing their own people and killing children. I do. But that's not the reason Trump ordered the strike on Assad, and even with that reason out there, I don't approve of the strike. Above anything else, we don't have the resources to get into another war, especially not one that doesn't directly involve us and isn't purely defensive. We've wasted enough treasure and lives on both sides in Afghanistan and Iraq. (And I'm NOT a pacifist; I prefer to be selective about military action, is all, and reserve it for when it's really needed.)
But another angle on this is, even if you were a space alien who just happened upon the Earth and its goings-on and you thought Trump genuinely changed his mind from when he used to harass Obama via Twitter about how stupid it would be to launch a military strike in Syria because of dead civilians and children: How do you justify a military strike when you are the same person steadfastly refusing to accept any refugees from that same country? Not only refusing, but using it as a cudgel to whip up support from a voter base by badmouthing those same refugees as likely terrorists and wanting to resolutely lock every single one of them even with clean background checks?
Okay. We'll see if this dude is anywhere near as nonpartisan on the bench as he presented himself to be in the hearings every time he invoked "there's a precedent already in place" on every issue he was asked about.
When I read the news last night about the U.S. bombing Syrian military soil, I tried to consider if my "doNOTwant" immediate reaction was just because it was Trump who ordered it. I'm not a mindless follower; I do try to think over things relative to the situations at hand and not just the people involved. And I remembered a few years ago when we came this!close to strikes in Syria, when Kerry was negotiating on chemical weapons and Obama was having to decide whether to go with diplomacy or military action (for some reason, you know, since we're World Police). And I remember being relieved when the non-strike option won out, and so I know my reaction to a strike back then would have been "don't do it, you imbecile" ... because that's what I was thinking AT THAT TIME. I remember, in fact, being borderline ready to punch Obama over the Libyan military action - I have a really strong reaction to anything resembling us invoking war after the last 15 years.
Viscerally, I too want to punch anyone who is gassing their own people and killing children. I do. But that's not the reason Trump ordered the strike on Assad, and even with that reason out there, I don't approve of the strike. Above anything else, we don't have the resources to get into another war, especially not one that doesn't directly involve us and isn't purely defensive. We've wasted enough treasure and lives on both sides in Afghanistan and Iraq. (And I'm NOT a pacifist; I prefer to be selective about military action, is all, and reserve it for when it's really needed.)
But another angle on this is, even if you were a space alien who just happened upon the Earth and its goings-on and you thought Trump genuinely changed his mind from when he used to harass Obama via Twitter about how stupid it would be to launch a military strike in Syria because of dead civilians and children: How do you justify a military strike when you are the same person steadfastly refusing to accept any refugees from that same country? Not only refusing, but using it as a cudgel to whip up support from a voter base by badmouthing those same refugees as likely terrorists and wanting to resolutely lock every single one of them even with clean background checks?