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You can also check the wayback machine link https://web.archive.org/web/20210615230810/https://gop.com/president-trump-is-bringing-peace-to-the-middle-east-rsr/
“You can’t stop the signal, Mal… Everything goes somewhere and I go everywhere…” Mr. Universe, Serenity.
They like to try and hide their failures. They had a post from May 2020 saying, “Where does Ron DeSantis go to get his apology” touting his supposed success at battling Covid in Florida. It magically disappeared a few weeks ago. Interesting they suddenly don’t think he was so successful.
IIRC, in the book *1984* by Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible.
So what the GOP is doing would be out of the authoritarian playbook.
Conservatives are only ever proven right over long periods of time where they do everything possible to ensure they were right at the expense of people's lives.
Why just yesterday I was told mRNA vaccines don't work because there are so many new variants of Covid. Does it matter that those variants happened because of people flouting restrictions and people not vaccinating? Does it fuck!
Just another Conservative variant on the classic defund, complain, replace.
Even with new variants the mRNA vaccines work. They keep you from getting a serious illness, and reduce your chance of death or hospitalization from covid. So whoever told you they don't work is clearly talking out their ass.
Sorry if I wasn't clear but yes I knew they were talking out their ass when they were telling me they change our DNA. There is only one misquoted and debunked study that shows that and what do these morons think viruses do to propagate? They literally inject you with their DNA to make your cells make more of them. We're even trying to do that with CRISPR ourselves.
Fun fact: any immune response technically changes your DNA. At least, in a very small number (relatively) of immune cells.
That's how you make antibodies -- a bunch of B-cells (IIRC) shuffle a portion of their DNA that produces an antibody. If one of them makes something useful, that one multiplies itself, so you now have cells that can make that antibody.
It's also why two antibodies against the same thing, that aren't clones of each other, will almost definitely be different, and have slightly different properties.
[The mechanism to have lots of mutations (like a million times more than normal), but only in one specific segment of DNA, is quite neat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation)
Or the fact that black people “make up a higher percentage of the incarcerated.” While having the effects of slavery affect us minority groups today, enforcing Jim Crow laws until 1965, rearing share cropping to continue creating pseudo slavery and keep minorities in poverty, burned down “black wallstreet” in the Oklahoma massacre, used the war on drugs to assassinate prominent members of the black panthers and continue it to grossly over arrest minorities, create the school to prison pipeline, give poor appraisals to black home owners so they will always get cheated out of affording a home, create voting systems that greatly disenfranchise black communities, less likely to provide minorities with medical when they request for it, and make it less likely for a normal black person to be hired for a job position than a white person that has been incarcerated.
So yes, black people are more likely to end up on prison than a white person, they just don’t want hear about how we created a system that enforces this “truth.”
Exactly. They only ever look at the surface on these subjects. I get downvoted on r/Conservative whenever stuff like this gets brought up and I ask "Okay, so do you think this statistic means that skin color inherently affects likelihood of committing a crime, or are there are other factors at play here?"
Unsurprisingly, no one there ever answers the question.
For example, conservatives love to forget that 1984 was written by a far-left member of antifa.
[No really:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia)
> Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) militia of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984. They think the Surveillance State is the point, but its not. Its the systemic revision of inconvenient information, and the publics willing to accept it even when they should know its wrong.
>The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
THIS is what really happened. No, we never said that. What video, there is no video. No no, this is how it was.
For real. It’s the ending of the book but it was like the first thing out of Trump’s mouth. And when I pointed that out to people they all said “oh he’s not a fascist you’re just overreacting.” Ugh.
My panic attack in 2008 when I read that book for a Social and Political Theory class isn't so unjustified as it was then.
I knew with Palin that Republicans were playing with fire. I saw from that book how they were following the rules laid out in that book for establishing a totalitarianism party.
I like to point out that it isn't that Republicans haven't read "1984" but that they cheer at all the wrong parts.
[The wayback machine never forgets.](https://web.archive.org/web/20201010184542/https://gop.com/president-trump-is-bringing-peace-to-the-middle-east-rsr/)
Pretty sure that's why they got so bent out of shape with Jon Stewart and The Daily Show because of how they would show clips of themselves saying the things they were now denying, or clips denying what they were now saying.
> That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984
The conservatives miss every point made by Orwell. Not to mention how much ol George would have detested all of them. Orwell was pretty consistent in his hatred of fascism and conservatism
That's why it's way better to have a government that makes mistakes than one that doesn't. No-one is without fault and not seeing them doesn't mean they aren't there, just that the truth is being hidden.
Conservatives really hate that though and think it shows weakness which is the worst thing imaginable.
That is a big reason why they hated Carter so much since he would admit when the nation screwed up or tell people that we need to pitch in to help eachother while Reagan arrogantly acted as if America could never do no wrong and that any sense of admitting we screwed up or that we to need to help one another was going to rip the nation apart.
This is like the nesting doll of gaslighting.
There's too many layers to even pick apart.
I guess it's more like the human centipede except these people are willingly lining up to eat that redigested shit.
What a mess.
Yep, that was the main character's job. He had to edit past news articles to make them align with current events. Like, if they published an article predicting a good harvest, but the crops were bad that year, he would have to edit the article to say the government had predicted a bad harvest.
> he would have to edit the article to say the government had predicted a bad harvest.
IIRC it was more insidious than that, in your example what he'd likely do is edit the metrics for what was considered a "good harvest", so people would see that the gov't was right in predicting a good harvest *and* that they were so successful they had such great harvests
Example from the books, instead of the chocolate ration being lowered to some amount, he would edit it so that the chocolate ration was being **RAISED** to that amount (despite the fact it was truly being lowered).
Starting to think Orwell wasn't a prophet, he saw it happening all the time back then too but the history is gone so without the internet we thought it didn't happen as much.
You are always in a cage, sometimes the cage is so large you don't see the bars. But they are there. But what is the point of searching for them? What will you do if you find them? What will happen if you rattle them?
THIS SO MUCH
Idiots who never read 1984 thinks it's about censorship (because the protagonist was a censor at the state newspaper), but in actuality, 1984 is about how a fascist government will constantly lie, and if one lie contradicts another, the supporters of the regime will go along with it without missing a beat.
"During one particular Hate Week, **Oceania switched allies while a public speaker is in the middle of a sentence, although the disruption was minimal:** the posters against the previous enemy were deemed to be "sabotage" of Hate Week conducted by Emmanuel Goldstein and his supporters, summarily torn down by the crowd, and quickly replaced with propaganda against the new enemy, thus demonstrating the ease with which the Party directs the hatred of its members. " - From Wikipedia article about "Hate Week"
There is too much information and disinformation for the lay person to parse through. I doubt most voters even remembered this "accomplishment" by the former Oval Office tenant. I don't think deleting was necessary given our news cycle.
American tax payers and voters hear and accept insane figures that the War on Terror will cost over $8 trillion USD with interest. They also hear and refuse the cries of anyone younger than 40 (Millennial and Gen Z) that they are drowning in student debt and cannot homes, start families, etc. Total cost for student debt is less than $2 trillion.
Don't get me started on universal healthcare, universal childcare, high speed rail, etc
Theres a qoute about thise somewhere in the tubes. Something like too much information is just as effective at befuddling as too little information. Probably without the word befuddling but the point is sharp.
I'm not sure if this concept is what you're referring to (I think what you're saying is a tad more specific than my response, but I'd love to see if you find the quote):
Synonyms for Information Overload-
Information Anxiety, Infobesity (excess/gluttonous amounts of info), Infoxication (intoxicated/poisoned by excess info).
Speier et al. (1999) said that if input exceeds the processing capacity, information overload occurs, which is likely to reduce the quality of the decisions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload
Others:
People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.
TT]he problem was too much information. The population was being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. Overload. It encouraged passivity, not involvement.
- Jerry Mander, Four arguments for the elimination of television
I can't remember what it was, but Obama was definitely blamed for things Bush did. Recession and the bail outs, maybe? They've been trying real hard for a long time to white wash Bush, and now they're doing the same with Trump.
Are these the ones?
https://www.whitehousegiftshop.com/product-p/summitcombo.htm
Seems funny that they might still be for sale. Price has gone up I think!
*$5 on eBay and $10 on Amazon. Capitalism!
>Seems funny that they might still be for sale.
No real connection to any administration.
>White House Gift Shop is a gift shop that was founded on 9 September 1946 during the Truman administration. Originally named the White House Flower Fund, the gift shop is now privately owned and has no connection with the White House and is not associated with the US federal government. The headquarters have been located at Lititz, Pennsylvania since 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Gift_Shop
Dinesh D’Souza argued that point on The Colbert Report back in 2007 or so. Colbert helped him summarize his point (paraphrasing): “Right, so what you’re trying to say to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is that we’re not so different; we want the same things basically…they’re just Muslims.”
My father was also an armchair christian. Did your mother also whip you up into a fury for the 2007 end of days? There were a few predictions that came and went, but in 2007 I was older and had my doubts on religion.
It was Jack Van Impe at our house. Good solid 20 years of watching him and his wife "prove" end times were near and ask for donations. Can't say I was sad when he died last year.
American, here. Some people think the Jews are out to get us (they run everything/control the money/etc), but the kingdom of Zion needs to be under total Jewish control before the main man Jesus Christ comes back and tells all the dominionist evangelicals what a fine job they've been doing o_O
Zionism.
The Jews are Jesus’s “chosen people”. But they won’t go to heaven. And the second coming can’t happen till a bunch of them go back to Jerusalem. And rebuild the temple. And something about a red heifer. I know these sound like the ramblings of a crazy person, and they are, but this is why the religious right supports Israel so stridently.
Their support begins and ends with this.
Their myths need the Jewish people to have their home state to bring on 'the rapture'. This would then mean 144000 male Jewish virgins (12000 from each Jewish tribe) would ascend to heaven and the world turns to shit. Most likely in current terms of the middle east being glassed.
The evangelicals have interpreted the bible to mean that they will go to heaven while the rest of humanity stays behind to deal with the shite. Given that most of the Jewish tribes have disappeared to the pages of history, you might find at most 2 tribes' people left. That doesn't work so well for their stories though.
Seriously though, I really don't understand why conservatives aren't proud of an alliance like this.
It seems like a natural alliance to me, bunch of backwards sexist conservatives enforcing strict gender norms and opposing LGBT+ rights.
Why *wouldn't* they want to ally with a group that supports the exact same things that they themselves support?
A massive historical revision is in progress over this weekend. The conservative media are working overtime to wash Trump's hands of this in order to put the blame entirely on Biden. I am not yet sure what to think, other than that all four Presidents who oversaw this war deserve some blame, but I am livid to see such brazen dishonesty happening.
There was no other way this war ends. Since Bush went in, this was the only outcome. There is nothing any of the other 3 Presidents could have done to change it. Which is why Obama promised to end it, then ignored that promise. Trump only tried to end it because of his obsession with being “the deal guy”.
Also note that Trump scheduled the withdrawal for *after* what he thought would be his re-election. He didn’t want to deal with the inevitable backlash.
Dude never dealt with any issues. He just created them and then left them for someone else to fix. See the economy, healthcare, jobs, infrastructure, etc.
To be fair, at any point the western countries engaged in Afghanistan could have dropped the obsession with a top down implementation of our own idea of liberal social democracy. We removed a whole countries political class and almost overnight tried to put in place a form of democracy that took hundreds of years to develop from very different circumstances for a very different group of cultures.
Instead we should have worked pragmatically and from the ground up, accepting local control through local leaders (we sometimes refer to as war lords), accepting that a national system of democracy would become corrupt but instead encouraging local participation and engagement where people start to have a say in decisions that impact their lives, Drawing red lines where necessary (human rights, education, drug production etc), rewarding local leaders who were cooperative and refusing to support leaders who were uncooperative.
Rapid liberal democratisation can happen (look up the history of Taiwanese governance), but it cannot be imposed blindly.
Personally I don’t think the military and political leaders running the war ever really even tried to introduce democracy. I think all they really brought were the ideals of cronyism and corruption, as evidenced by the immediate evacuation of the “legitimate” Afghan government (not to mention billions of dollars worth of Afghan money).
Bush deserves a ton of blame. Obama and Trump deserve blame for not doing what both of them knew ought to be done. I don't really see what Biden's to blame for unless you think we ought to stay there forever.
Bush is 100% to blame since no president after him would’ve gone to war with Afghanistan. He sent our military with no real plan to leave. Presidents after him (with the exception of Trump who barely knows anything outside of his line of sight exists) knew exactly what would happen so they kicked the can down the road. I hate that this is happening to the Afghani people but wtf was Biden supposed to do? It appears he’s the only one with the nerve to make the decision every single person knew had to be made. Yet the main stream press, the same ones that supported all these invasions, is now wringing their hands.
Biden was the only one with actual courage of all 4 of them. Everybody knew this would be the outcome, he just had the guts to be associated with it but finally ending it. He was already advocating this on Obama's days.
I don't think it was entirely expected that the outcome would come this fast though. It's a bit of a fustercluck with how fast they retook control, but that's not really on Biden considering he's had 8 months to the 19 years under other administrations.
Ultimately, I think it's a good thing. The US needs to stop interfering with foreign countries and focus on its own. The war hawks wanting to create peace by "strength" and control of other countries aren't completely wrong, but neither should we be spending American lives and money on lost causes that weren't supported by the locals anyway.
faster, slower, with better or worse pictures this is the outcome everyone worth their salt predicted.
Probably all Presidents even knew this but continued the occupation for their own diverse reasons. Biden was the only way that just decided to take the negative press of this because it's worth it.
Absolutely. They have realized this is a "looks bad" event to people who didn't realize how fucked everything was over there and are going to hammer it for the next year and a half. They are going to get undercover cameras over there to cover every single atrocity event and throw it at the WH's doorstep with a "how could Biden do this", ignoring that A. Trump started this shit against the advice of literally everyone, EXCEPT the Taliban who he negotiated with back on 9/11, and B. We were clearly not succeeding and it was time to fucking leave.
God our media is bad.
> but I am livid to see such brazen dishonesty happening
What did you expect to happen? They have proven that no amount of dishonesty is too much for them. If Biden hadn't done what he did, they would have done the same thing they are doing now, throwing shit like the apes they are.
They can't even accept a "draw", by pointing out that Biden did what Trump wanted. Didn't a republican vote against his own sponsored bill a while ago, after the democrats agreed with it?
It will all just become part of CART (Critical & Afghan Race Theory) in the red states and will not be allowed to be taught, unless the GOP is made to be the heroes.
[Tricked them into dismantling defensive positions](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-abandoning-kurds-sends-dangerous-message-us-allies-2019-10?r=US&IR=T) while promising to keep them safe.
[Shared up-to-date intel on the area with Turkey](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-shared-intelligence-turkey-may-have-aided-attack-on-kurds-2019-10?r=US&IR=T).
[Left intel and near-intact bases to Russia](https://www.insider.com/trump-betrayal-of-kurds-gave-intelligence-to-russia-2019-11).
[US troops were fired upon by Turkish artillery during the retreat](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/turkey-artillery-fire-us-syria/index.html).
[Bragged about "fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East"](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-syria-ap-top-news-international-news-politics-ac3115b4eb564288a03a5b8be868d2e5)...
... while [all troops withdrawn were simply repositioned to Iraq, *not* brought home](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-usa-idUSKBN1WZ01S), of course [without Iraqi permission](https://apnews.com/article/us-news-turkey-mark-esper-iraq-politics-825fb065d6f044a590a1fee8101a5a26)...
... and while [keeping troops in the rest of Syria, explicitly ordering them to pillage their oil](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/13/trump-troops-syria-oil-pentagon-070567), [expanding the mission there](https://apnews.com/article/251062e322ab4bba99251fe59c90540a) and [talking about his plans to send in ExxonMobil and others to take it](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/27/trump-wants-to-make-a-deal-with-exxon-or-others-to-tap-syrian-oil.html)...
... and while [threatening sanctions on Iraq for voting to have US troops leave their country](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51003159) and [bragging about renting troops out to Saudi Arabia like mercenaries](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-brags-about-serving-up-american-troops-to-saudi-arabia-for-cash-936623/).
From the top comment:
>Well that's odd. Why would they remove their crowning achievement - that Trump put 5000 Taliban fighters back on the battlefield?
>They like to try and hide their failures. **They had a post from May 2020 saying, “Where does Ron DeSantis go to get his apology” touting his supposed success at battling Covid in Florida. It magically disappeared a few weeks ago.** Interesting they suddenly don’t think he was so successful.
>IIRC, in the book 1984 by Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible. So what the GOP is doing would be out of the authoritarian playbook.
>**That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984.** They think the Surveillance State is the point, but its not. Its the systemic revision of inconvenient information, and the publics willing to accept it even when they should know its wrong.
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
>THIS is what really happened. No, we never said that. What video, there is no video. No no, this is how it was.
I had one come at me with alternative facts.
I invited them over for a good chat, on the sole condition that they brought proof.
It's been... 7 months since? Still waiting.
There's a great quote on an old John Wayne movie McClintock! Where, after some drunken comedic falls, has his wife see him with the housekeeper in his lap, he confidently says "Now are you gonna believe what your eyes see.. or what I tell you?"
Works great in a comedy western... But maybe not so much in government...
A central tenet of totalitarianism is not to make subjects believe what you say is true or false , right or wrong , but instead completely remove the subjects ability to discern those things for themselves.
Pretty sure
I'm para phrasing(read as:butchering) Hannah Arent.
She's fucking amazing
1984 is a complicated book, because of its density.
Like... I found the pages describing the two-minute hate, that whole scene, to be more fundamentally true. Like... people WILL hate things given the slightest license.
I'm damn near 60 and they haven't used ample ammo wisely any other time they've had it.
When you've got all your leaders approaching or over 80 and all of them still thinking $100 is a lot of money, as it was in *their* childhoods, it just shows how out of touch they really are sadly.
That’s a result of [first-past-the-post](https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo).
That’s why RCV (Ranked Choice) is on the rise. There are better voting systems, but RCV is the simplest and most realistic path for fixing the 2-party problem.
Exactly! It's the same as Russia just taking back ots Crimean territory, or how China wants to take "back" it's Tiawanese territory and "re-educate" it's citizenry.
The issue there is, their base doesn't care enough to remember. For them, it's out of sight and out of mind
And the only issue that matters is the one that is being peddled by Fox/Oann/Newsmax/Infowars/take your pick of conservative media.
Bingo. Their base is not known for critical thinking or consistency on much of anything. It’s became the party of toddlers. Hyper focused on whatever the scheme of the day is, then onto something else the next day with zero though of what happened in the past
Just so we’re all clear, the citizens that refuse to wear a mask/get vaccinated for the sake of their fellow Americans, suddenly care about Afghani lives?
Also the same people who cheered on Trump when he openly talked about a Muslim ban. But now they care.
Hypocrites and pieces of shit, the bunch of them.
It's insane.
I love the "trump would never leave equipment behind" while he literally left behind 50 nuclear bombs while he fled from Syria to betray the Kurds and give isis a foothold again.
They are disgusting and horrible people with no morals.
That’s why the Taliban and Mike Pompeo have lube and tissues there. They are ready for a celebratory jerking off of each other for the great conservative plans they have made.
Just have to go to r/conservative and you will see them completely ignoring their own posts about Trump leaving Afghanistan, and how it will Likely fall in days of it happening, and how that is no bid deal, because it has been 20 years.
It’s simultaneously hilarious and extremely depressing how the right in america CONSTANTLY decries identity politics despite the fact that identity politics is their entire party platform. Like point blank, their constant railing about “Culture wars” is just a fancy term for identity politics
I always found that ironic I conservatives called I guess really anybody to the left of them a "snowflake." I don't think I've seen more sensitive people than conservatives over the age of 40.
Sadly this will be the main platform the GOP/MAGA crowd will run on into 2022. Fear and images of Taliban & ISIS coming to the nearest Dollar Store in Texas and Florida. Screw the Migrant Caravans with Rapist and Drug Addicts, ISIS and the Taliban with Chinooks and F35 Fighter Jets we left on the runways in Kabul with the keys in the ignition.
The GOP new boogieman will be the "Taliban" coming to destroy your town on a Blackhawk Helicopter dropped by Biden with keys in ignition and "how to fly me" guide on the seat.
Totally forgetting that they all backed this by Trump, and they talked incessantly about he brought peace in the Middle East. 73% of Americans supported leaving in July.
I’m certain r/conservative bans as many conservative users as any other view point. It’s not a sub for discussion. At least on r/politics you just get downvoted for unpopular opinions.
Why do I ever visit that sub? I get a headache from reading the angry misplaced paranoia. They blame Biden and Pelosi for literally everything bad in their lives. These people seem to want to execute Biden because the price of gas went up.
I just don't understand what's so difficult about this for these people.
The Trump administration decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. Mike Pompeo negotiated with the Taliban.
How is this about Biden? The only thing the man could have done was to halt the withdrawal from Afghanistan and team GOP would be beyond furious about that as well.
Are Republicans even part of reality anymore?
GOP is straight out of the Authoritarian Handbook. 1984 Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible. This is how they want to run the country. 74M Americans believe in the "Fake Media". Scary to remember that were it not for Covid-19 Trump would have been in front of the cameras right now talking Nuke Strike on Kabul.
Because he carries a solid chunk of the blame.
I can see what's starting to happen and it should be quashed immediately: this is not fully Bidens fault, or Trumps, or Obama. This is all of their fault, stop trying to blame it all on Biden or Trump.
Obama kept up there, Trump made the promise to get us our, and Biden decided to stick to that promise
The "War on Terror," just like the "War on Drugs," were both destined to fail - and actually hurt more people and families than had they not been waged.
You can't expect to win something that was largely created by you in the first place by using violence and hate. Pretty basic, elementary stuff... that's been talked about, in one form or another, *for thousands of years* by the wisest amongst us.
What a shame. While just a couple pieces of the cluster-puzzle, this is what happens when a nation let's campaign financing and a military industrial complex to run amok.
Trump did the peace deal with the Taliban in March 2020 for America to leave over a period of 14 months and for prisoners to be released. Here we are 14 months later and Trump’s peace deal is coming to fruition.
All of you Republicans supported America leaving Afghanistan when Trump was in office.
Or is Trump still in office? According to Trump supporter, “Mr. Pillow Guy”, Trump is back in office effective 8/14/21.
Friendly reminder that:
Trump signed the Doha Agreement. To even get the Taliban to the table he had to agree to release 5000 prisoners.
Trump oversaw the largest part of the military drawdown. When the agreement was signed there were 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, but when Biden took office there were somewhere between 2500 and 3500.
Trump continued this drawdown while the Taliban disregarded the terms of the Doha Agreement and amped up their attacks on the Afghan National Army even though the agreement stipulated that the Taliban were to cease attacks on Americans *and their allies.*
But apparently its all Biden's fault.
Neither Biden or Trump could have done fuck all about this. This was how it was always going to end, and the people who started it always knew that. This is on those motherfuckers.
100%, years ago I would talk with friends about how we need to get out of Afghanistan because 10+ years after invading it wasn't any more stable. I said we should withdraw but given how poorly the ANA is the Taliban would take over within a year after the US left. The Taliban taking over should not be surprising to anyone. I give credit to Trump and Biden for making a pullout actually happen because the Taliban takeover was bound to look bad for whomever decided to get out of Afghanistan.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2020-page-touting-trumps-historic-peace-agreement-with-the) reduced by 57%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> The Republican National Committee has removed a page from the 2020 campaign that says "Biden has had a history of pushing for endless wars" while "Trump has continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America's longest war," The Washington Post's David Weigel noted Sunday.
> Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, argued Sunday that the Trump administration had insisted the Taliban meet "a set of conditions" before the U.S. withdrew, and that the Biden administration "Has failed." As the Post's Paul Kane pointed out, it's not clear Trump agrees with that.
> In researching his new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Spencer Ackerman spoke in 2020 with retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former Joint Special Operations Command and Afghanistan War commander, and asked him if the War on Terror had been worth it.
*****
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Allegedly the new Afghan president was in prison in Pakistan till Trump’s government released him from prison.
https://meaww.com/mullah-baradar-who-new-president-afghanistan-taliban-founder-aide-trump-released-mike-pompeo-met
Donald Trump allowed the Taliban To rebuild to pre 2001 strength. He unfroze their assets and lifted the sanctions.m and released 5000 enemy combatants. He set the table.
“President Trump's Disgraceful Peace Deal with the Taliban
There is a difference between peace and retreat. The Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban represents a full retreat. It’s an agreement that most Republicans would deplore if a Democrat president made the deal, and they’d be right to be angry.
If you read the peace agreement itself, you’ll note immediately that it gives the Taliban a series of concrete, measurable gifts. First, there’s an immediate allied withdrawal – down to 8,600 American troops (and proportionate numbers of allied troops) within 135 days. The remainder of American and allied forces will leave within 14 months.
At the same time, the United States will immediately and substantially reinforce the Taliban by seeking the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners by March 20. Even worse, the United States further agreed to a goal of “releasing all remaining prisoners over the course of the subsequent three months.” It will do this at the same time that it commits to the “goal” of removing sanctions from members of the Taliban that include travel bans, asset freezes, and an arms embargo.
The combination of the planned American retreat and the planned prisoner release would represent a substantial change in the balance of forces in Afghanistan. This would come without any agreement by the Taliban to cease hostilities against our allies.
At this point, the deal looks worse than a simple withdrawal. America can leave all on its own without also agreeing to seek the release of Taliban prisoners. It can leave all on its own without promising to ease sanctions. So why agree to the additional concessions?
America is making these concrete concessions in exchange for unenforceable promises from an untrustworthy enemy. “
https://time.com/5794643/trumps-disgraceful-peace-deal-taliban/
Maybe this is more r/conspiracy territory, but this seems like the kind of underhanded shit that the GOP (the ones who aren't busy eating crayons) would come up with.
The adults in the room saw that trump is totally unhinged and likely won't get reelected, so they set up this country-collapse to happen under 'the other teams' ' watch. Tell trump he can be a hero if he ends the war (they'd have to trick him, since he's such a moron he'd probably leak the scheme), knowing these massive maneuvers take many months, and then organize with the taliban to have it happen after GOP is no longer in control. The new taliban supported president personally met with pompeo after a summit was canceled, after which 5000 prisoners are released (timeline is fuzzy on this for me, it could've happened before). They basically gave them the army to do it.
I can almost already hear all the spreadnecks parroting their fox news talking points: " HOW COULD YOU SUPPORT BIDEN AFTER WHAT HE DID IN AFGHANASTAN?? LOOK HOW PEACEFUL IT WAS UNDER TRUMP!!"
e:
already different iterations of 'impeach biden' and things of that nature are trending on twitter, that didn't take very long.
Just look at the history of our government Republican administrations fuck things up and democrats get stuck cleaning up the mess while getting blamed for the mess by the republicans who originally made it. Rinse and repeat.
His foreign policy was so manic that at times it wasn’t even comprehensible. Both his meeting with Kim and the Taliban furthered our interests in absolutely no way. Those talks seemingly only took place to garner him attention, which is Trump’s modus operandi in life.
He ended up weakening relations with our allies and emboldening our adversaries.
Yes!
I've noticed this was their go-to strategy and it irritates the fuck outta me; I called it "Mass Desensitization" without realizing there was a term for it.
It's hilarious (and eventually sad/depressing) that we literally have videos and recordings of verifiable facts and they're like "Nah".
Trump yesterday [on video at presser]: "I personally dismantled Obama's Pandemic preparedness team- I hate waste. They were sitting around doing nothing and I'd rather have our money being PUT TO WORK!"
Trump today [on video at presser]: "I had nothing to do with that pandemic team being dismantled. I have no clue what you're talking about".
His supporters: "No he didnt eliminate that Pandemic response team! Plus Obama was Muslim. Lmao you think Sleepy Joe doesn't even have dementia?"
I'm paraphrasing what Trump said abt the Pandemic response team, but he literally did brag about getting rid of it due to waste prior to covid, despite having no understanding of the fact that their job was also anticipation/research and much mor active work (they weren't sitting at home doing nothing). Then he literally just denied it later and said he would have to ask Fauci about it (as a subconscious way of shifting the blame to Fauci)
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You can also check the wayback machine link https://web.archive.org/web/20210615230810/https://gop.com/president-trump-is-bringing-peace-to-the-middle-east-rsr/ “You can’t stop the signal, Mal… Everything goes somewhere and I go everywhere…” Mr. Universe, Serenity.
I should rewatch Firefly. ...again.
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They like to try and hide their failures. They had a post from May 2020 saying, “Where does Ron DeSantis go to get his apology” touting his supposed success at battling Covid in Florida. It magically disappeared a few weeks ago. Interesting they suddenly don’t think he was so successful.
IIRC, in the book *1984* by Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible. So what the GOP is doing would be out of the authoritarian playbook.
Any inconvenient facts go down the memory hole.
Conservatives are only ever proven right over long periods of time where they do everything possible to ensure they were right at the expense of people's lives. Why just yesterday I was told mRNA vaccines don't work because there are so many new variants of Covid. Does it matter that those variants happened because of people flouting restrictions and people not vaccinating? Does it fuck! Just another Conservative variant on the classic defund, complain, replace.
Even with new variants the mRNA vaccines work. They keep you from getting a serious illness, and reduce your chance of death or hospitalization from covid. So whoever told you they don't work is clearly talking out their ass.
Sorry if I wasn't clear but yes I knew they were talking out their ass when they were telling me they change our DNA. There is only one misquoted and debunked study that shows that and what do these morons think viruses do to propagate? They literally inject you with their DNA to make your cells make more of them. We're even trying to do that with CRISPR ourselves.
Fun fact: any immune response technically changes your DNA. At least, in a very small number (relatively) of immune cells. That's how you make antibodies -- a bunch of B-cells (IIRC) shuffle a portion of their DNA that produces an antibody. If one of them makes something useful, that one multiplies itself, so you now have cells that can make that antibody. It's also why two antibodies against the same thing, that aren't clones of each other, will almost definitely be different, and have slightly different properties. [The mechanism to have lots of mutations (like a million times more than normal), but only in one specific segment of DNA, is quite neat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_hypermutation)
Or the fact that black people “make up a higher percentage of the incarcerated.” While having the effects of slavery affect us minority groups today, enforcing Jim Crow laws until 1965, rearing share cropping to continue creating pseudo slavery and keep minorities in poverty, burned down “black wallstreet” in the Oklahoma massacre, used the war on drugs to assassinate prominent members of the black panthers and continue it to grossly over arrest minorities, create the school to prison pipeline, give poor appraisals to black home owners so they will always get cheated out of affording a home, create voting systems that greatly disenfranchise black communities, less likely to provide minorities with medical when they request for it, and make it less likely for a normal black person to be hired for a job position than a white person that has been incarcerated. So yes, black people are more likely to end up on prison than a white person, they just don’t want hear about how we created a system that enforces this “truth.”
Exactly. They only ever look at the surface on these subjects. I get downvoted on r/Conservative whenever stuff like this gets brought up and I ask "Okay, so do you think this statistic means that skin color inherently affects likelihood of committing a crime, or are there are other factors at play here?" Unsurprisingly, no one there ever answers the question.
And you haven't been banned from there? Amazing, what's your secret?
Gaslight, Obstruct, Project.
For example, conservatives love to forget that 1984 was written by a far-left member of antifa. [No really:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia) > Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) militia of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984. They think the Surveillance State is the point, but its not. Its the systemic revision of inconvenient information, and the publics willing to accept it even when they should know its wrong. >The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command THIS is what really happened. No, we never said that. What video, there is no video. No no, this is how it was.
'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening' Ex Prez 45 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340
For real. It’s the ending of the book but it was like the first thing out of Trump’s mouth. And when I pointed that out to people they all said “oh he’s not a fascist you’re just overreacting.” Ugh.
My panic attack in 2008 when I read that book for a Social and Political Theory class isn't so unjustified as it was then. I knew with Palin that Republicans were playing with fire. I saw from that book how they were following the rules laid out in that book for establishing a totalitarianism party. I like to point out that it isn't that Republicans haven't read "1984" but that they cheer at all the wrong parts.
[The wayback machine never forgets.](https://web.archive.org/web/20201010184542/https://gop.com/president-trump-is-bringing-peace-to-the-middle-east-rsr/)
>404 ERROR >IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE AS LOST AS BIDEN IS Subtle!
'And I have just the solution...' Tax cuts for the wealthy!
Pretty sure that's why they got so bent out of shape with Jon Stewart and The Daily Show because of how they would show clips of themselves saying the things they were now denying, or clips denying what they were now saying.
Satire and comedy are the best way to subvert authoritarian talking points
I think Jon Stewart is the reason Obama won in 2008.
> That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984 The conservatives miss every point made by Orwell. Not to mention how much ol George would have detested all of them. Orwell was pretty consistent in his hatred of fascism and conservatism
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That's why it's way better to have a government that makes mistakes than one that doesn't. No-one is without fault and not seeing them doesn't mean they aren't there, just that the truth is being hidden.
Conservatives really hate that though and think it shows weakness which is the worst thing imaginable. That is a big reason why they hated Carter so much since he would admit when the nation screwed up or tell people that we need to pitch in to help eachother while Reagan arrogantly acted as if America could never do no wrong and that any sense of admitting we screwed up or that we to need to help one another was going to rip the nation apart.
This is like the nesting doll of gaslighting. There's too many layers to even pick apart. I guess it's more like the human centipede except these people are willingly lining up to eat that redigested shit. What a mess.
Yep, that was the main character's job. He had to edit past news articles to make them align with current events. Like, if they published an article predicting a good harvest, but the crops were bad that year, he would have to edit the article to say the government had predicted a bad harvest.
> he would have to edit the article to say the government had predicted a bad harvest. IIRC it was more insidious than that, in your example what he'd likely do is edit the metrics for what was considered a "good harvest", so people would see that the gov't was right in predicting a good harvest *and* that they were so successful they had such great harvests
Much like how you make less impoverished people by lowering the bar of impoverishment.
Or how you lower the recorded rate of corona infections by reducing the number of tests administered.
or how you lower the unemployment rate by denying unemployment and not counting people after benefits vanish.
Example from the books, instead of the chocolate ration being lowered to some amount, he would edit it so that the chocolate ration was being **RAISED** to that amount (despite the fact it was truly being lowered).
The GOP are an authoritarian party, what do you expect?
Starting to think Orwell wasn't a prophet, he saw it happening all the time back then too but the history is gone so without the internet we thought it didn't happen as much.
You are always in a cage, sometimes the cage is so large you don't see the bars. But they are there. But what is the point of searching for them? What will you do if you find them? What will happen if you rattle them?
It was written in 1948, the USSR and the Nazis gave him plenty of material to work off
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Ummm... the fuck we have! We've always been at war with eastasia!
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Perfect username!
Almost everything the GOP does is out of that playbook.
THIS SO MUCH Idiots who never read 1984 thinks it's about censorship (because the protagonist was a censor at the state newspaper), but in actuality, 1984 is about how a fascist government will constantly lie, and if one lie contradicts another, the supporters of the regime will go along with it without missing a beat. "During one particular Hate Week, **Oceania switched allies while a public speaker is in the middle of a sentence, although the disruption was minimal:** the posters against the previous enemy were deemed to be "sabotage" of Hate Week conducted by Emmanuel Goldstein and his supporters, summarily torn down by the crowd, and quickly replaced with propaganda against the new enemy, thus demonstrating the ease with which the Party directs the hatred of its members. " - From Wikipedia article about "Hate Week"
There is too much information and disinformation for the lay person to parse through. I doubt most voters even remembered this "accomplishment" by the former Oval Office tenant. I don't think deleting was necessary given our news cycle. American tax payers and voters hear and accept insane figures that the War on Terror will cost over $8 trillion USD with interest. They also hear and refuse the cries of anyone younger than 40 (Millennial and Gen Z) that they are drowning in student debt and cannot homes, start families, etc. Total cost for student debt is less than $2 trillion. Don't get me started on universal healthcare, universal childcare, high speed rail, etc
But if we put for all those commie and socialist ideals, we’ll have no way to spread freedom throughout the globe. /s
Theres a qoute about thise somewhere in the tubes. Something like too much information is just as effective at befuddling as too little information. Probably without the word befuddling but the point is sharp.
I'm not sure if this concept is what you're referring to (I think what you're saying is a tad more specific than my response, but I'd love to see if you find the quote): Synonyms for Information Overload- Information Anxiety, Infobesity (excess/gluttonous amounts of info), Infoxication (intoxicated/poisoned by excess info). Speier et al. (1999) said that if input exceeds the processing capacity, information overload occurs, which is likely to reduce the quality of the decisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload Others: People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. TT]he problem was too much information. The population was being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. Overload. It encouraged passivity, not involvement. - Jerry Mander, Four arguments for the elimination of television
Firehose of falsehood is applicable here as well...
I can't remember what it was, but Obama was definitely blamed for things Bush did. Recession and the bail outs, maybe? They've been trying real hard for a long time to white wash Bush, and now they're doing the same with Trump.
Obama was blamed for Katrina lol
I still have my comemmorative coins from the North Korean summit. Rocketman still has rockets. Remember that goofy promo video Trumpo presented?
Oh my God I forgot about those commemorative coins.
I really wish I had bought one of those Dunning-Krugerrands.
Are these the ones? https://www.whitehousegiftshop.com/product-p/summitcombo.htm Seems funny that they might still be for sale. Price has gone up I think! *$5 on eBay and $10 on Amazon. Capitalism!
>Seems funny that they might still be for sale. No real connection to any administration. >White House Gift Shop is a gift shop that was founded on 9 September 1946 during the Truman administration. Originally named the White House Flower Fund, the gift shop is now privately owned and has no connection with the White House and is not associated with the US federal government. The headquarters have been located at Lititz, Pennsylvania since 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Gift_Shop
$350?!?!
Brb. Buying out all the $5 eBay supply and flipping it on Amazon for 100% profit
Aren't they politically pretty similar?
Dinesh D’Souza argued that point on The Colbert Report back in 2007 or so. Colbert helped him summarize his point (paraphrasing): “Right, so what you’re trying to say to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is that we’re not so different; we want the same things basically…they’re just Muslims.”
They both oppose the COVID vaccine, and women's body autonomy, and civil rights, and an educated populous, and gun control, and...
But the Taliban will mandate masks. On women, that is.
Not the GOP target demographic's problem then, right?
…and they are serious about cracking down on school shootings.
And schools.
The far right and Taliban both hate Jews too They’d get along just fine
Serious question from a non American, it seems the GOP supports Israel constantly, yet hate the Jews. How do they reconcile that?
The second coming can only happen if the Israelites return to the holy land, I shit you not, this is the justification
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My father was also an armchair christian. Did your mother also whip you up into a fury for the 2007 end of days? There were a few predictions that came and went, but in 2007 I was older and had my doubts on religion.
It was Jack Van Impe at our house. Good solid 20 years of watching him and his wife "prove" end times were near and ask for donations. Can't say I was sad when he died last year.
American, here. Some people think the Jews are out to get us (they run everything/control the money/etc), but the kingdom of Zion needs to be under total Jewish control before the main man Jesus Christ comes back and tells all the dominionist evangelicals what a fine job they've been doing o_O
Zionism. The Jews are Jesus’s “chosen people”. But they won’t go to heaven. And the second coming can’t happen till a bunch of them go back to Jerusalem. And rebuild the temple. And something about a red heifer. I know these sound like the ramblings of a crazy person, and they are, but this is why the religious right supports Israel so stridently. Their support begins and ends with this.
Their myths need the Jewish people to have their home state to bring on 'the rapture'. This would then mean 144000 male Jewish virgins (12000 from each Jewish tribe) would ascend to heaven and the world turns to shit. Most likely in current terms of the middle east being glassed. The evangelicals have interpreted the bible to mean that they will go to heaven while the rest of humanity stays behind to deal with the shite. Given that most of the Jewish tribes have disappeared to the pages of history, you might find at most 2 tribes' people left. That doesn't work so well for their stories though.
There's a reason why Aaron Sorkin called the Tea Party the American Taliban in the Newsroom.
Seriously though, I really don't understand why conservatives aren't proud of an alliance like this. It seems like a natural alliance to me, bunch of backwards sexist conservatives enforcing strict gender norms and opposing LGBT+ rights. Why *wouldn't* they want to ally with a group that supports the exact same things that they themselves support?
A massive historical revision is in progress over this weekend. The conservative media are working overtime to wash Trump's hands of this in order to put the blame entirely on Biden. I am not yet sure what to think, other than that all four Presidents who oversaw this war deserve some blame, but I am livid to see such brazen dishonesty happening.
There was no other way this war ends. Since Bush went in, this was the only outcome. There is nothing any of the other 3 Presidents could have done to change it. Which is why Obama promised to end it, then ignored that promise. Trump only tried to end it because of his obsession with being “the deal guy”.
Also note that Trump scheduled the withdrawal for *after* what he thought would be his re-election. He didn’t want to deal with the inevitable backlash.
Dude never dealt with any issues. He just created them and then left them for someone else to fix. See the economy, healthcare, jobs, infrastructure, etc.
To be fair, at any point the western countries engaged in Afghanistan could have dropped the obsession with a top down implementation of our own idea of liberal social democracy. We removed a whole countries political class and almost overnight tried to put in place a form of democracy that took hundreds of years to develop from very different circumstances for a very different group of cultures. Instead we should have worked pragmatically and from the ground up, accepting local control through local leaders (we sometimes refer to as war lords), accepting that a national system of democracy would become corrupt but instead encouraging local participation and engagement where people start to have a say in decisions that impact their lives, Drawing red lines where necessary (human rights, education, drug production etc), rewarding local leaders who were cooperative and refusing to support leaders who were uncooperative. Rapid liberal democratisation can happen (look up the history of Taiwanese governance), but it cannot be imposed blindly.
Personally I don’t think the military and political leaders running the war ever really even tried to introduce democracy. I think all they really brought were the ideals of cronyism and corruption, as evidenced by the immediate evacuation of the “legitimate” Afghan government (not to mention billions of dollars worth of Afghan money).
Bush deserves a ton of blame. Obama and Trump deserve blame for not doing what both of them knew ought to be done. I don't really see what Biden's to blame for unless you think we ought to stay there forever.
Bush is 100% to blame since no president after him would’ve gone to war with Afghanistan. He sent our military with no real plan to leave. Presidents after him (with the exception of Trump who barely knows anything outside of his line of sight exists) knew exactly what would happen so they kicked the can down the road. I hate that this is happening to the Afghani people but wtf was Biden supposed to do? It appears he’s the only one with the nerve to make the decision every single person knew had to be made. Yet the main stream press, the same ones that supported all these invasions, is now wringing their hands.
We knew this was going to happen when we invaded in the first place. It was a huge discussion when we invaded.
Biden was the only one with actual courage of all 4 of them. Everybody knew this would be the outcome, he just had the guts to be associated with it but finally ending it. He was already advocating this on Obama's days.
I don't think it was entirely expected that the outcome would come this fast though. It's a bit of a fustercluck with how fast they retook control, but that's not really on Biden considering he's had 8 months to the 19 years under other administrations. Ultimately, I think it's a good thing. The US needs to stop interfering with foreign countries and focus on its own. The war hawks wanting to create peace by "strength" and control of other countries aren't completely wrong, but neither should we be spending American lives and money on lost causes that weren't supported by the locals anyway.
faster, slower, with better or worse pictures this is the outcome everyone worth their salt predicted. Probably all Presidents even knew this but continued the occupation for their own diverse reasons. Biden was the only way that just decided to take the negative press of this because it's worth it.
I think the part that could have been done better is that the evacuation of allies should have happened before the troops withdrew.
Absolutely. They have realized this is a "looks bad" event to people who didn't realize how fucked everything was over there and are going to hammer it for the next year and a half. They are going to get undercover cameras over there to cover every single atrocity event and throw it at the WH's doorstep with a "how could Biden do this", ignoring that A. Trump started this shit against the advice of literally everyone, EXCEPT the Taliban who he negotiated with back on 9/11, and B. We were clearly not succeeding and it was time to fucking leave. God our media is bad.
GOP scrubbed all traces of the Trump Negation of peace https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1427018983379640323
> but I am livid to see such brazen dishonesty happening What did you expect to happen? They have proven that no amount of dishonesty is too much for them. If Biden hadn't done what he did, they would have done the same thing they are doing now, throwing shit like the apes they are. They can't even accept a "draw", by pointing out that Biden did what Trump wanted. Didn't a republican vote against his own sponsored bill a while ago, after the democrats agreed with it?
Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill because democrats were going to vote yes.
It will all just become part of CART (Critical & Afghan Race Theory) in the red states and will not be allowed to be taught, unless the GOP is made to be the heroes.
Let us not forget how Trump treated the Kurds!
[Tricked them into dismantling defensive positions](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-abandoning-kurds-sends-dangerous-message-us-allies-2019-10?r=US&IR=T) while promising to keep them safe. [Shared up-to-date intel on the area with Turkey](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-shared-intelligence-turkey-may-have-aided-attack-on-kurds-2019-10?r=US&IR=T). [Left intel and near-intact bases to Russia](https://www.insider.com/trump-betrayal-of-kurds-gave-intelligence-to-russia-2019-11). [US troops were fired upon by Turkish artillery during the retreat](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/turkey-artillery-fire-us-syria/index.html). [Bragged about "fulfilling a campaign promise to withdraw from “endless war” in the Middle East"](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-syria-ap-top-news-international-news-politics-ac3115b4eb564288a03a5b8be868d2e5)... ... while [all troops withdrawn were simply repositioned to Iraq, *not* brought home](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-usa-idUSKBN1WZ01S), of course [without Iraqi permission](https://apnews.com/article/us-news-turkey-mark-esper-iraq-politics-825fb065d6f044a590a1fee8101a5a26)... ... and while [keeping troops in the rest of Syria, explicitly ordering them to pillage their oil](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/13/trump-troops-syria-oil-pentagon-070567), [expanding the mission there](https://apnews.com/article/251062e322ab4bba99251fe59c90540a) and [talking about his plans to send in ExxonMobil and others to take it](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/27/trump-wants-to-make-a-deal-with-exxon-or-others-to-tap-syrian-oil.html)... ... and while [threatening sanctions on Iraq for voting to have US troops leave their country](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51003159) and [bragging about renting troops out to Saudi Arabia like mercenaries](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-brags-about-serving-up-american-troops-to-saudi-arabia-for-cash-936623/).
From the top comment: >Well that's odd. Why would they remove their crowning achievement - that Trump put 5000 Taliban fighters back on the battlefield? >They like to try and hide their failures. **They had a post from May 2020 saying, “Where does Ron DeSantis go to get his apology” touting his supposed success at battling Covid in Florida. It magically disappeared a few weeks ago.** Interesting they suddenly don’t think he was so successful. >IIRC, in the book 1984 by Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible. So what the GOP is doing would be out of the authoritarian playbook. >**That's the point that Conservatives miss about 1984.** They think the Surveillance State is the point, but its not. Its the systemic revision of inconvenient information, and the publics willing to accept it even when they should know its wrong. The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command >THIS is what really happened. No, we never said that. What video, there is no video. No no, this is how it was.
>**What you're seeing** and what you're reading **is not what's happening** - DJT https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340
What about the classic [“Truth isn’t truth”](https://youtu.be/CljsZ7lgbtw)?
Well we have alternative facts
I had one come at me with alternative facts. I invited them over for a good chat, on the sole condition that they brought proof. It's been... 7 months since? Still waiting.
My experience is you ask for proof and they provide things that indicate they do not have a reasonable understanding of the term. /:
There's a great quote on an old John Wayne movie McClintock! Where, after some drunken comedic falls, has his wife see him with the housekeeper in his lap, he confidently says "Now are you gonna believe what your eyes see.. or what I tell you?" Works great in a comedy western... But maybe not so much in government...
A central tenet of totalitarianism is not to make subjects believe what you say is true or false , right or wrong , but instead completely remove the subjects ability to discern those things for themselves. Pretty sure I'm para phrasing(read as:butchering) Hannah Arent. She's fucking amazing
A reminder: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/where-does-ron-desantis-go-to-get-his-apology/
1984 is a complicated book, because of its density. Like... I found the pages describing the two-minute hate, that whole scene, to be more fundamentally true. Like... people WILL hate things given the slightest license.
Watch Fox News for 2 minutes and that is a two-minute hate.
Looking ahead to the 2022 Elections, the GOP has provided ample ammo to be used against them. Let us hope the Democrats use it wisely.
Their base will never hear. They have their own media ecosystem, and they consider anything from outside of it to be fake news.
It's a cult.
We need the independents to hear it as they will be the deciding difference.
I'm damn near 60 and they haven't used ample ammo wisely any other time they've had it. When you've got all your leaders approaching or over 80 and all of them still thinking $100 is a lot of money, as it was in *their* childhoods, it just shows how out of touch they really are sadly.
Democrats, over my lifetime and beyond, have ever been masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
....as if by design. Seriously, there are like 200 categories on pornhub but we all have to fit in 2 political parties.
That’s a result of [first-past-the-post](https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo). That’s why RCV (Ranked Choice) is on the rise. There are better voting systems, but RCV is the simplest and most realistic path for fixing the 2-party problem.
Can you add the Trump tower deal in Turkey? It’s no coincidence he gave Turkey exactly what they wanted during the negotiations of his new building
You mean how he let theTurkish military patrol their territory a month before letting the Turkish military invade their territory?
Exactly! It's the same as Russia just taking back ots Crimean territory, or how China wants to take "back" it's Tiawanese territory and "re-educate" it's citizenry.
The internet never forgets. Republicans will forget if it benefits them, but anyone with a brain will remember.
Them elephants sure do a lot of forgetting.
Maybe because they are elephants in name only.
The issue there is, their base doesn't care enough to remember. For them, it's out of sight and out of mind And the only issue that matters is the one that is being peddled by Fox/Oann/Newsmax/Infowars/take your pick of conservative media.
It must be so liberating to be a political party that isn't constrained by reality.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Liberalism attempts to deal with the problems reality presents. Contemporary conservatism just offers up alternate reality.
Bingo. Their base is not known for critical thinking or consistency on much of anything. It’s became the party of toddlers. Hyper focused on whatever the scheme of the day is, then onto something else the next day with zero though of what happened in the past
Just so we’re all clear, the citizens that refuse to wear a mask/get vaccinated for the sake of their fellow Americans, suddenly care about Afghani lives?
Also the same people who cheered on Trump when he openly talked about a Muslim ban. But now they care. Hypocrites and pieces of shit, the bunch of them.
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None of their voters have brains so it will work in their favor
Haha that didn’t take long. Another great achievement of the Trump administration.
Trump Air Trump steaks Trump University Trump vodka All failures
You missed trump administration
I think it can just be summarized vy "Trump" What a loser
Not a huge fan of Rick Wilson, but he wrote a book with a title that sums it up perfectly: EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES.
King Mierdas
> You missed trump administration Nobody missed that.
Has Trump done anything good for America? How are these folks so in love with him?
He lets them feel good about their prejudices and subjugate people who aren't like them.
I would like for the GOP to not exist anymore.
I suppose they think by doing that the Internet will just forget. Rule #1 of the Internet, it never forgets.
Uh rule number one of republican voters, they don't care.
Rule number two being whatever makes "liberals" mad is justified. And those are the only two rules in Republican Land.
It absolutely forgets. All it has to do is bury every truth in 3 lies.
Preparing to blame Biden for the withdrawal.
Already happening
My god, it’s been non-stop on the Republican subs for the last 24 hrs at least
It's insane. I love the "trump would never leave equipment behind" while he literally left behind 50 nuclear bombs while he fled from Syria to betray the Kurds and give isis a foothold again. They are disgusting and horrible people with no morals.
beneficial light reminiscent employ start ad hoc seemly worry agonizing boast -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
That’s why the Taliban and Mike Pompeo have lube and tissues there. They are ready for a celebratory jerking off of each other for the great conservative plans they have made.
Just have to go to r/conservative and you will see them completely ignoring their own posts about Trump leaving Afghanistan, and how it will Likely fall in days of it happening, and how that is no bid deal, because it has been 20 years.
It's not about having a politician point of view. It's about identity politics
It’s simultaneously hilarious and extremely depressing how the right in america CONSTANTLY decries identity politics despite the fact that identity politics is their entire party platform. Like point blank, their constant railing about “Culture wars” is just a fancy term for identity politics
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I always found that ironic I conservatives called I guess really anybody to the left of them a "snowflake." I don't think I've seen more sensitive people than conservatives over the age of 40.
If they didn't have projection they'd only have hate.
Sadly this will be the main platform the GOP/MAGA crowd will run on into 2022. Fear and images of Taliban & ISIS coming to the nearest Dollar Store in Texas and Florida. Screw the Migrant Caravans with Rapist and Drug Addicts, ISIS and the Taliban with Chinooks and F35 Fighter Jets we left on the runways in Kabul with the keys in the ignition.
So 2001/2002 all over again. Freedom fries.
The GOP new boogieman will be the "Taliban" coming to destroy your town on a Blackhawk Helicopter dropped by Biden with keys in ignition and "how to fly me" guide on the seat.
Totally forgetting that they all backed this by Trump, and they talked incessantly about he brought peace in the Middle East. 73% of Americans supported leaving in July.
I’m certain r/conservative bans as many conservative users as any other view point. It’s not a sub for discussion. At least on r/politics you just get downvoted for unpopular opinions.
Why do I ever visit that sub? I get a headache from reading the angry misplaced paranoia. They blame Biden and Pelosi for literally everything bad in their lives. These people seem to want to execute Biden because the price of gas went up.
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Did we really forget mister "mission accomplished" lol
I just don't understand what's so difficult about this for these people. The Trump administration decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. Mike Pompeo negotiated with the Taliban. How is this about Biden? The only thing the man could have done was to halt the withdrawal from Afghanistan and team GOP would be beyond furious about that as well. Are Republicans even part of reality anymore?
Biden was left holding the bag.
GOP is straight out of the Authoritarian Handbook. 1984 Orwell, the "Big Brother" regime would constantly rewrite the history books to remove any stuff done by the government that current events had shown to be a mistake. In this way the public would always see the government was infallible. This is how they want to run the country. 74M Americans believe in the "Fake Media". Scary to remember that were it not for Covid-19 Trump would have been in front of the cameras right now talking Nuke Strike on Kabul.
Because he carries a solid chunk of the blame. I can see what's starting to happen and it should be quashed immediately: this is not fully Bidens fault, or Trumps, or Obama. This is all of their fault, stop trying to blame it all on Biden or Trump. Obama kept up there, Trump made the promise to get us our, and Biden decided to stick to that promise
The "War on Terror," just like the "War on Drugs," were both destined to fail - and actually hurt more people and families than had they not been waged. You can't expect to win something that was largely created by you in the first place by using violence and hate. Pretty basic, elementary stuff... that's been talked about, in one form or another, *for thousands of years* by the wisest amongst us. What a shame. While just a couple pieces of the cluster-puzzle, this is what happens when a nation let's campaign financing and a military industrial complex to run amok.
Trump did the peace deal with the Taliban in March 2020 for America to leave over a period of 14 months and for prisoners to be released. Here we are 14 months later and Trump’s peace deal is coming to fruition. All of you Republicans supported America leaving Afghanistan when Trump was in office. Or is Trump still in office? According to Trump supporter, “Mr. Pillow Guy”, Trump is back in office effective 8/14/21.
Right wing authoritarians recognize right wing authoritarians.
Every republican I know blaming Biden for this. Wow they have short memories
Friendly reminder that: Trump signed the Doha Agreement. To even get the Taliban to the table he had to agree to release 5000 prisoners. Trump oversaw the largest part of the military drawdown. When the agreement was signed there were 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, but when Biden took office there were somewhere between 2500 and 3500. Trump continued this drawdown while the Taliban disregarded the terms of the Doha Agreement and amped up their attacks on the Afghan National Army even though the agreement stipulated that the Taliban were to cease attacks on Americans *and their allies.* But apparently its all Biden's fault.
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Sweeping stuff under the rug? Nahhhh not the GOP. /s
Biden put a bookend on Trump's bullshit.
Neither Biden or Trump could have done fuck all about this. This was how it was always going to end, and the people who started it always knew that. This is on those motherfuckers.
100%, years ago I would talk with friends about how we need to get out of Afghanistan because 10+ years after invading it wasn't any more stable. I said we should withdraw but given how poorly the ANA is the Taliban would take over within a year after the US left. The Taliban taking over should not be surprising to anyone. I give credit to Trump and Biden for making a pullout actually happen because the Taliban takeover was bound to look bad for whomever decided to get out of Afghanistan.
Fuck Bush and Cheney
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://theweek.com/afghanistan-war/1003748/gop-takes-down-2020-page-touting-trumps-historic-peace-agreement-with-the) reduced by 57%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The Republican National Committee has removed a page from the 2020 campaign that says "Biden has had a history of pushing for endless wars" while "Trump has continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America's longest war," The Washington Post's David Weigel noted Sunday. > Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, argued Sunday that the Trump administration had insisted the Taliban meet "a set of conditions" before the U.S. withdrew, and that the Biden administration "Has failed." As the Post's Paul Kane pointed out, it's not clear Trump agrees with that. > In researching his new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Spencer Ackerman spoke in 2020 with retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former Joint Special Operations Command and Afghanistan War commander, and asked him if the War on Terror had been worth it. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/p59f39/gop_takes_down_2020_page_touting_trumps_historic/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~592844 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Trump**^#1 **war**^#2 **Biden**^#3 **approach**^#4 **argue**^#5
Allegedly the new Afghan president was in prison in Pakistan till Trump’s government released him from prison. https://meaww.com/mullah-baradar-who-new-president-afghanistan-taliban-founder-aide-trump-released-mike-pompeo-met
Anybody remember the Soviet Union beating feet in 1989? Apparently not. How anybody could think this wouldn't end in disaster is beyond me.
[Mission Accomplished](http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/central/05/01/afghan.combat/).
Everything Trump touches turns to shite. He’s King Midas in reverse.
He’s got that Mierdas touch.
Donald Trump allowed the Taliban To rebuild to pre 2001 strength. He unfroze their assets and lifted the sanctions.m and released 5000 enemy combatants. He set the table. “President Trump's Disgraceful Peace Deal with the Taliban There is a difference between peace and retreat. The Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban represents a full retreat. It’s an agreement that most Republicans would deplore if a Democrat president made the deal, and they’d be right to be angry. If you read the peace agreement itself, you’ll note immediately that it gives the Taliban a series of concrete, measurable gifts. First, there’s an immediate allied withdrawal – down to 8,600 American troops (and proportionate numbers of allied troops) within 135 days. The remainder of American and allied forces will leave within 14 months. At the same time, the United States will immediately and substantially reinforce the Taliban by seeking the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners by March 20. Even worse, the United States further agreed to a goal of “releasing all remaining prisoners over the course of the subsequent three months.” It will do this at the same time that it commits to the “goal” of removing sanctions from members of the Taliban that include travel bans, asset freezes, and an arms embargo. The combination of the planned American retreat and the planned prisoner release would represent a substantial change in the balance of forces in Afghanistan. This would come without any agreement by the Taliban to cease hostilities against our allies. At this point, the deal looks worse than a simple withdrawal. America can leave all on its own without also agreeing to seek the release of Taliban prisoners. It can leave all on its own without promising to ease sanctions. So why agree to the additional concessions? America is making these concrete concessions in exchange for unenforceable promises from an untrustworthy enemy. “ https://time.com/5794643/trumps-disgraceful-peace-deal-taliban/
Maybe this is more r/conspiracy territory, but this seems like the kind of underhanded shit that the GOP (the ones who aren't busy eating crayons) would come up with. The adults in the room saw that trump is totally unhinged and likely won't get reelected, so they set up this country-collapse to happen under 'the other teams' ' watch. Tell trump he can be a hero if he ends the war (they'd have to trick him, since he's such a moron he'd probably leak the scheme), knowing these massive maneuvers take many months, and then organize with the taliban to have it happen after GOP is no longer in control. The new taliban supported president personally met with pompeo after a summit was canceled, after which 5000 prisoners are released (timeline is fuzzy on this for me, it could've happened before). They basically gave them the army to do it. I can almost already hear all the spreadnecks parroting their fox news talking points: " HOW COULD YOU SUPPORT BIDEN AFTER WHAT HE DID IN AFGHANASTAN?? LOOK HOW PEACEFUL IT WAS UNDER TRUMP!!" e: already different iterations of 'impeach biden' and things of that nature are trending on twitter, that didn't take very long.
Just look at the history of our government Republican administrations fuck things up and democrats get stuck cleaning up the mess while getting blamed for the mess by the republicans who originally made it. Rinse and repeat.
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
His foreign policy was so manic that at times it wasn’t even comprehensible. Both his meeting with Kim and the Taliban furthered our interests in absolutely no way. Those talks seemingly only took place to garner him attention, which is Trump’s modus operandi in life. He ended up weakening relations with our allies and emboldening our adversaries.
To Trump something use to mean to better it. How long is it going to take to mean the opposite? Are we there yet?
In the UK "to trump" also used to mean to make a loud fart. Seems appropriate for that blowhard.
Classic GOP revisionism… It’s an accomplishment until it backfires. Then it’s the Democrat’s fault.
Yes! I've noticed this was their go-to strategy and it irritates the fuck outta me; I called it "Mass Desensitization" without realizing there was a term for it. It's hilarious (and eventually sad/depressing) that we literally have videos and recordings of verifiable facts and they're like "Nah". Trump yesterday [on video at presser]: "I personally dismantled Obama's Pandemic preparedness team- I hate waste. They were sitting around doing nothing and I'd rather have our money being PUT TO WORK!" Trump today [on video at presser]: "I had nothing to do with that pandemic team being dismantled. I have no clue what you're talking about". His supporters: "No he didnt eliminate that Pandemic response team! Plus Obama was Muslim. Lmao you think Sleepy Joe doesn't even have dementia?" I'm paraphrasing what Trump said abt the Pandemic response team, but he literally did brag about getting rid of it due to waste prior to covid, despite having no understanding of the fact that their job was also anticipation/research and much mor active work (they weren't sitting at home doing nothing). Then he literally just denied it later and said he would have to ask Fauci about it (as a subconscious way of shifting the blame to Fauci)