Hobbesian choice

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We have exactly the same problem in the UK.

The whole system is flawed.
The new PM has to select his cabinet from candidates who have won there local seat. He (or she) obviously need a minister for health, have you ever seen a qualified doctor canvassing for a seat.
In fact, have you ever seen anyone who is capable of running anything canvassing for a seat.

 

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Horseshit.
Only one political party tried to overthrow the government in a failed coup d'etat 6 Jan 2021.
Only one political party has championed Reaganomics, which over 40 years hasn't "trickled down" but vacuumed up $50 trillion from 99% of Americans to the top 1%.
Only one political party has made racism a central theme of their platform, ever since Barry Goldwater's "Southern Strategy" of 1964.
Only one political party thinks tax cuts for the rich are their sole raison d'être. Trump's tax cut added $7.8 trillion to the national debt; the equivalent of $23,500 in new debt for every man, woman, and child in the country.
Only one political party overturned Roe v. Wade, turning back women's rights 45 years, with open discussion of a Federal ban on abortion, and most forms of birth control, too.
Only one political party wants to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and Lawrence v. Texas, eradicating LGBTQ rights.
Only one party wants to round up 11 million people and put them in concentration camps.
Only one party wants to eliminate overtime, the minimum wage, most labor law, and the right to unionize.
Only one party actively courts the support of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and militias.
Only one party has a 'Project 2025'; a blueprint for supplanting representative democracy with Fascism.
Only one party is led by a rapist and traitor with 6 bankruptcies and 34 felony convictions for fraud; who was impeached twice and fined over $2 million for looting charities for veterans and sick kids with cancer. Someone whose incompetence and willful malfeasance is estimated to have caused more than 400,000 preventable American deaths from COVID, giving the U.S. the highest death rate in the industrialized world. Someone who was documented as telling 30,573 lies in four years in office, and during the first presidential debate, told 162 lies in 90 minutes; more than two lies a minute; someone who attempted a failed coup d'etat when he lost the last election, and threatens a "bloodbath" if he loses this one.

"Hobbesian choice"? Hardly. The Republican and Democratic Parties are not even remotely similar, and the choice couldn't be more stark!



What's Project 2025? Unpacking the Pro-Trump Plan to Overhaul US Government
The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025
The People’s Guide to Project 2025
How a second Trump presidency could impact the LGBTQ+ community
Election 2024: Exposing Project 2025 | GLAAD

 

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Besides, everything that has a beginning also has an ending.

I'm pretty sure the Mughals, the Mongols, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Soviets, and on and on, never believed it could happen to them.

 

Under Democrats like Clinton debt went down big time, which spooked Republicans big-time! Especially as he was closing down one military base after another.

 

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Package-deal fallacy - Wikipedia Its annoying as hell I can't seem to be allowed to support any one idea without being accused of supporting the whole package !

 

Just a reminder that it was Trump who negotiated the Doha Accords, on February 29th 2020, a year before Biden took office, which freed 5,000 Taliban prisoners and agreed to stop providing air support to the ANSF, drew down U.S. troops from 13,000 to 8,600 by July 2020, and to completely withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1st 2001. Then he invited the Taliban to Camp David to celebrate what was for all intents and purposes a complete capitulation by the United States. Most importantly, this was done unilaterally without the input or participation of the Afghan Government in Kabul.
When President Biden was inaugurated January 20, 2021, there were only 2,500 U.S. troops left in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban controlled half of the country. The government, neutered by the Doha Accords, was no longer paying the ANSF, but hoarding whatever they could to fund their midnight escapes from Kabul. The ANSF, at best a paper tiger with paper battalions; imaginary battalions of fictitious troops whose very real pay went into their battalion commander's pockets, was so riddled with Taliban that "green on blue" attacks constituted 20% of coalition casualties, and American forces wouldn't patrol with them unless a separate security detail provided overwatch. Afraid of re-enacting The Alamo, isolated ANSF troops were deserting in increasing numbers, often turning over their weapons and vehicles to the Taliban in hopes of negotiating a pardon and safe passage instead of summary execution. To ice the cake, the Trump administration did not have a transition team; incredibly, in an act of wilful sabotage, they intentionally refused to brief their counterparts in the incoming administration on the situation in Afghanistan, and repeatedly forbade the intelligence community and military from doing so as well. That's the shitshow Biden inherited from Trump; he could either accept the fait accompli and withdraw, or mount a full-scale re-invasion with no achievable strategic objective.and continue America's longest war; 2 decades that cost $2.3 trillion, and led to the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 3,917 U.S. contractors 1,144 allied troops, and at least 70,000 Afghans. Despite the political consequences, Biden correctly concluded that he would not send any more of America's sons and daughters to fight in a conflict with no chance of materially affecting the outcome. That took courage.
Trump never intended to evacuate Afghan allies. Ever the islamophobic and xenophobic racist, he was just going to walk away and leave them to their fate, precisely as he did to our Kurdish allies in Syria in 2019. Within weeks, Biden's administration organized the largest non-combatant evacuation operation in U.S. history, Operation Allies Refuge, an international effort which over 17 days safely evacuated 124,334 people aboard nearly 800 civilian and military aircraft from more than 30 nations, spanned nine countries, eight time zones, and cost 13 American and 3 British lives. They evacuated approximately twice as many people as experts thought possible, while under enemy fire.
Heading for the exits was always going to suck, but I think Biden did a pretty damned good job playing the hand he was dealt.