• AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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    19 days ago

    Has Trump put the lives of innocent American hostages at risk for his political gain?

    Note that I’m not saying that he wouldn’t, just that he hasn’t yet to my knowledge.

    I would say that Reagan’s treasonous acts were in fact even worse than Trump’s, considering that Trump’s impeachment treason was to put a foreign country at risk.

    Note that that isn’t to say that Ukrainian lives matter less than American hostages or that what Trump did wasn’t bad, just that putting Americans at risk is “worse” on a scale of treasonous actions.

    Another way that things are in fact getting better is that unlike Reagan, Trump actually got impeached (even if the conviction failed at the end).

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      19 days ago

      how do you feel about the whole iranian general missile thing. that felt like it could have gone very, very wrong. Keep in mind to that he was largely still using the established beuracracy when he came in and this go round he has a lot more intended people and many military people said they had to keep him in check.

      • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        My understanding is that Soleimani was responsible for the deployment of a type of anti-vehicle mine in Iraq that killed hundreds to perhaps in the low thousands of US soldiers. A lot of the military brass wanted him dead for personal reasons and Trump was too weak to resist their urging he be taken out. Trump may have avoided immediate consequences because Soleimani was more useful as a martyr to the Iranian leadership at this point. In the long run it fueled another generation’s anti-US animus.

      • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        If you’re talking about Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani, then I have to admit that I’m less familiar with thr details there since it happened while I was out of commission.

        From the wiki article, it looks like the root problem was Trump being an idiot and loose cannon by reneging the Iran nuclear deal, leading to a crisis in the Gulf, which he then tried to solve by killing that guy.

        Can you expand on the question?

        • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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          19 days ago

          yeah it was a moment when it was like. did he just start ww3. I mean I think everyone was bowled over at how small the response was from iran. it was just a dangerous as fuck thing to do.

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Do you remember how Trump chose not to address COVID for political gains when it looked like it was hitting primarily democratic cities? I’ve seen some calculations that half a million more Americans died from COVID because of his reaction to it. That’s treason on a level nobody has reached

          • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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            17 days ago

            After thinking about these a bit more, especially The Lancet article, I have a hypothesis.

            For wealthy neoliberal elites, COVID was babby’s first trauma, so they overestimate how badly it impacted the average worker. It was so much worse than anything that had happened in their privileged lives up to that point that by comparison it was a world-altering traumatic event that changed everything.

            Working people are used to surviving hardships (especially medical hardships) while those in power ignore them. COVID and the Trump administration’s lack of response was just business as usual. Compared to other widespread diseases that get routinely ignored and for which poor people routinely get denied care, COVID was minor (albeit more infectious) and easily forgettable.

            That’s my best guess for why the libshits can’t grok why the little people reacted with such indifference while they lost their fucking minds.

            • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              That is part of it, but there is also a long-running thread of medical denialism in society. People want to believe their home remedies, homeopathic cures, chiropractic adjustments, or bleach enemas can cure things just as well or better than certified doctors can. To be fair to them, it has only been about 130 years since doctors learned they should wash their hands before surgery. The average person isn’t educated enough to understand how safe, effective, and trustworthy vaccines are.

              The other part of it is explained by the lottery. Millions and millions of people play the lottery regularly even though the odds of them winning are about the same as getting struck by lightning while getting bitten by a shark. The average person is shit at understanding odds. They think that they will be lucky enough to beat the odds.

              That applies for avoiding Covid. They don’t understand that being harmed by the vaccine is far fat less likely than being harmed by the disease. They think they can beat the odds by not getting the disease and still avoid Covid. Some won, but most lost.

              • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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                17 days ago

                Yeah. Medical and science denialism is a big problem. It gets fed when medicine and science are presented as absolutes with no room for debate or discussion, just blind fealty to experts. As a trained scientist who has worked professionally as a scientist for 12 years, I don’t trust several disciplines because they project this attitude. I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical of those who ask for blind trust in authority.

                • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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                  16 days ago

                  I’m a former scientist in the environmental field and we deal with similar denialism for similar reasons. As science and technology get more complex, the average person simply doesn’t have the background to understand the problem, let alone possible solutions. A certain amount of trust in authority is necessary unfortunately.

                  • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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                    15 days ago

                    I have to disagree.

                    If you tell people to trust authorities about climate change instead of fostering critical thought and understanding, who is to say that their authorities will align with yours?

                    Your assertion is a recipe for pushing people to believe misinformation because they feel that they can trust their pastor or their employer or the guy on the news more than some nerd.

          • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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            18 days ago

            For me, Trump’s handling of COVID specifically and the COVID pandemic more generally were such a minor blip in the timeline of horrors and chaos that I witnessed and partook in and only barely escaped from between 2018-2022 that it’s hard to register the pandemic as a significant event in that timeline.

            • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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              17 days ago

              I work with elderly people mostly so the absolute terror was probably magnified for me. Regardless of their politics, they knew they were the most vulnerable and it scared the shit out of them.

              • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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                17 days ago

                I was unfortunately very separated from society from 2018-2023, so I’m reliant on written records and memes to understand how others responded to it. As someone who missed it, I really get the impression that it was mostly the wealthy who freaked out, either from trying to process that our society’s medical infrastructure is shit, or from being sociopaths who were selfishly upset that their workers wanted time off.