Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

He probably does deserve a court marshal but I keep coming back to those senior officers and others that debriefed him who all say just drop it.
Agreed. I remember the DoD spokesman, a Captain or Rear Admiral, saying something like, "We don't care why you're overboard, we're turning the ship around to pick you up." Really liked that sentiment.

jasonof2000 said:
He did go UA, but there is no proof he intended to desert. Nor did he really aid the enemy in any way (besides being in videos and obviously reading a script). He was stupid, not a traitor.
Yeah, you're definitely getting way too nuanced for LeVeL.
 
Literally every single veteran I know (and I know many) hate Bowe's guts.

Yeah well, I've known some veterans in my life, too, who still thought Adolf was a nice guy at heart and actually did some good for the country and that the Russians and Jews should all be killed after all. Thankfully those veterans are almost gone now. I chose to ignore their bullshit because, you know, not everything an elderly person or a veteran says, is worth listening to.

The golden rule is to never pay attention to anything someone with a bias says or thinks because in 9 out of 10 cases they also have no idea what they're talking about. Believing them and repeating what they said without making up your own mind, is intellectual incest!

Keeping an open mind means coming up with your own conclusions and not simply repeat what others told you. If you do the latter, you're nothing more than a parrot and you wanna be more than that. I know it's sometimes hard to get rid of the ballast people put onto you but at some point you should be mature enough to scrutinize what others say. We would have a lot less trouble in the world, if everybody would just do that.

Keep in mind that a valid opinion is always a result of knowledge, not a result of what your grandpa or your daddy or the neighbor next door or a friend or colleague said.

If you only believe certain stuff that comes from certain sources, you sooner or later end up being a fanatic, not much different from those people who you apparently despise so much.
 
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Berdahl is a fucking deserter. Fuck him. Also, recall that we traded several high-profile terrorists for him, some of whom went right back to terrorism.

I get your sentiment but keep in mind that this is one of the biggest things in the US military. Leave no man behind, the soldiers know that every effort will be made to bring them home, that's a very powerful sentiment. So yes he traded some terrorist for basically a deserter but that's very much in line with how the military operates.
 
Any Germans in here? I admit I didn't follow the earlier stuff for todays elections... but damn :|
 
Yes, damn indeed. Goes to show that "The true enemy is on the left!" is still nonsense.
 
Most certainly...
After what was said just now on ARD (no idea who that was tbh), I feel the "american mindset" (hyperbole, i'm not being serious) of "i am not poor, i am just a temporarily financially embarrassed millionaire" seems to be taking hold among people of below-average income.
 
I'm not alone in thinking the rise of Donald Trump resembles the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Then you, and those with you, are idiots. Trump has no Nazi Party, no Mein Kampf, nor does he have a flawed political system like the Weimar Republic to take advantage of. The US government has check and balances to make it extremely hard for a terrible president to become a dictator. While Trump has said plenty of bigoted things, he hasn't called for genocide. He has no party support, so he would have a difficult time doing anything if elected.

Trump is much more like Andrew Jackson. A terrible guy with popular support who was able to break the US political consensus at the time.
 
The fear I have about Trump is not that he mobilizes the kind of voters who would have elected Hitler, too, or could try to become a dictator (which he won't) but that he would be a complete failure for America and the world. Planet Earth sadly cannot afford having an inapt American president. We already had Dubbya and that's enough bad presidency for a century.

About the three state elections in Germany: On one hand it's bad because the NSDAP... errr... AFD made it into the parliaments. On the other hand one also has to realize that 80 % of all Germans are not raving mad, nationalistic, xenophobic racists.
 
Then you, and those with you, are idiots. Trump has no Nazi Party, no Mein Kampf, nor does he have a flawed political system like the Weimar Republic to take advantage of. The US government has check and balances to make it extremely hard for a terrible president to become a dictator. While Trump has said plenty of bigoted things, he hasn't called for genocide. He has no party support, so he would have a difficult time doing anything if elected.

Trump is much more like Andrew Jackson. A terrible guy with popular support who was able to break the US political consensus at the time.

His rhetorhic is very similar, Hitler didn't call for a genocide from the get go either. I doubt that he realistically could do anything he says he will but so many people supporting him is disheartening
 
His rhetorhic is very similar, Hitler didn't call for a genocide from the get go either. I doubt that he realistically could do anything he says he will but so many people supporting him is disheartening

Calling Trump Hitler is as bad as the conservatives calling Obama Hitler. I'm not a fan of Trump, but for fucks sake he isn't Hitler.

I might add, xenophobia isn't exactly a new thing and it has been around since well before Hitler.
 
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Calling Trump Hitler is as bad as the conservatives calling Obama Hitler. I'm not a fan of Trump, but for fucks sake he isn't Hitler.

I might add, xenophobia isn't exactly a new thing and it has been around since well before Hitler.

Right, but Obama didn't surf the wave of populism based on his xenophobic views and was also not seen as an outsider with 0 chance. Drumpf on the other hand is following very closely the path that got Hitler elected. Also I've not seen/heard anyone say he is literally Hitler but just that his rhetoric and rise through the GOP is very similar.
 
I know a couple Trump supporters, but they're both business owners and they think Trump being president would ultimately be good for their livelihoods? I don't know, but don't believe those that say only racists support Trump because of racism. It's simply not true.

Personally, this is shaping up to be an all time low, if it ends up being Hillary vs. Trump. I'm honestly not sure which direction I'd want it to go. Hillary would be less of an embarrassment, but she probably has a much better chance of doing real damage, where as Trump would get stonewalled left and right.
 
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Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Calling Trump Hitler is as bad as the conservatives calling Obama Hitler. I'm not a fan of Trump, but for fucks sake he isn't Hitler.

I might add, xenophobia isn't exactly a new thing and it has been around since well before Hitler.

It's true that Trump isn't Hitler. For instance he isn't fantasizing about a genocide or about conquering new living space.

But he is using the same mixture of lies, fear-mongering and false promises and the methods he chose for his campaign so far could have been taken directly from the Goebbels textbook for propaganda. I think it's save to say that those who vote for Trump, would also have voted for Hitler in 1933.

Twenty years ago people would have been shocked about the fact that it had come this far, nowadays it's apparently accepted with a shrug.

And the talk about an armed militia to "protect" Trump's fans sounds suspiciously like creating an SA. All he needs to do now, is designing a uniform for his followers and you'll have a carbon copy of the NSDAP campaigns.

Maybe I am exaggerating but the damage Trump does, isn't connected to him becoming president or not -- the political and social damage for the American society is already done and it will take many years for the USA to recover from it.
 
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Yes. Trump is not like Hitler

He's more like Berlusconi.
 
Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Comparing Trump to Hitler is little more than fear mongering.

I am German. I'm entitled to do that :dunno:

In fact, it's my and my fellow countrymen's job to warn about such things whenever they show their ugly faces.
 
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I am German. I'm entitled to do that :dunno:

In fact, it's my and my fellow countrymen's job to warn about such things whenever they show their ugly faces.
Hitler killed far more of my countrymen than yours :| Also, I think you'd be better off if people didn't talk about Hitler as much. Precisely because you're German.
 
It does seem that a lot of parallels can be made between Trump and Berlusconi though. It doesn't seem like he did a lot of good things for Italy...

He was a plague for Italy.

The thing I say to the US is: we've already done that; it's not a good choice. Don't be stubborn and learn from errors other people have already made.
 
Hitler killed far more of my countrymen than yours :|

I generally wouldn't go adding and comparing numbers when it comes to WW2 and I in no way want to make it sound like germany was anything less than the aggressor in this context - as it is often forgotten that the very first victims of the Nazis, were germans - let?s do it anyway.
While over 400000 american soldiers were killed in WW2 on all fronts in order to rid the world of the evil that was Nazis Germany and related parties, Hitler and Nazi-Germany killed more german (political, cultural, religious) opposition, german jews, german Romani and german People with disabilities than that.

[...] Also, I think you'd be better off if people didn't talk about Hitler as much. Precisely because you're German.

It?s exactly the other way around. Because we?re german we?re the ones who need to tell people about this man the gruesome things he did and that were done in his name. We?re "better off" reminding the rest of the world every now and then of what Demagogues in Democracies are capable of.
 
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