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I’m arguing in good faith. The Iraq War was the biggest mistake in recent American history. Which is why the realignment of pro-Iraq War republicans to democrat

I’m arguing in good faith. The Iraq War was the biggest mistake in recent American history. Which is why the realignment of pro-Iraq War republicans to democrats—and democrats’ acceptance of them—is so shocking. Liz Cheney should be politically radioactive. Instead Biden gave her a medal. Harris campaigned with her. I think you may have the causation reversed. I voted for Biden in 2020. But the intelligence community has no credibility and are just trying to get us into war with Russia. That letter never should’ve been taken seriously by real democrats.

tptacek 2y ago
You've been a proud Republican since you were a student, and openly so here. That's fine, of course, but it's odd to see you talking about "real" Democrats. Democrats broadly opposed the Republican party; whether or not the Republicans responsible for the Iraq War fled the party post-Trump, they do not characterize the Democratic party today. I really don't give a shit about how credible the US IC is; no part of my identity is invested in how well they do their job. But the attempt to generalize this out to the parties themselves rankles, and is trollish.
- kasey_junk 2y ago
  The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, this year, used Cheney on the campaign trail. When Trump called her ‘war hawk’, rather than trying to defend that very legitimate condemnation, they attacked it as anti-woman. I think where I disagree with rayiner is that I believe she _was_ toxic. Her endorsement is certainly one of my grievances with the party, as a Democratic voter, and we saw the big tent collapse because of, in part, the current hawkishness of that part of the leadership.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Isn't this practically an American election tradition at this point? The designated Republican at the DNC, and Democrat at the RNC?
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      Yes. And they chose a war hawk instead of all the others they could have grabbed.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        It seems to me they chose the highest-profile Republican who would serve the role.
  - camgunz 2y ago
    Here's the full quote: "She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face." Trump has a (literal) record of advocating for and perpetrating violence against women and minorities. I don't know of any elected Dems who called it anti-woman (there's a trend of taking any Dem on X as representative, which isn't a good survey), but if they did that's the nicest thing you could say about it. --- FWIW I agree the Cheney thing was boneheaded, and the defense of "she offered to campaign" is... prrrrrrretty wimpy. Some people argued you needed to shake people in the middle free, but no one in the middle likes Liz Cheney; she's mega conservative.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      > perpetrating violence against women and minorities Trump’s comment is a common way democrats have criticized hawks since the Vietnam war: asking if they’d be singing a different tune if they were the ones in the trenches getting shot at. The fact that you’d invoke the “women and minorities” card to defend Liz effing Cheney is proof that the CIA has learned how to use wokeness as a psyop to eviscerate the antiwar left.
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      No. That’s not the full quote. The full quote was minutes long and rambling. But you removed this for instance that was near that quote “You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy”. Cheney comes from a family of chicken hawks and lots of people have had similar quotes about them.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        I don't think this was as boneheaded as you both do. I think the Cheney political legacy overall is odious, but none of Liz Cheney's recent supporters are there for her foreign policy; it's because she sacrificed her political career to stand up to Donald Trump, which is admirable, and because Trump took the bait and cast her as an enemy of the party, which raised her profile. The idea was that there was some material faction of the GOP that was persuadable by dint of Liz Cheney's mistreatment by GOP nominee. The Cheney thing reminds me of people's attitudes towards John McCain. His history in the GOP: also not great. But in the end, he did have some principles; it's not unreasonable to celebrate them. None of this is really germane to the thread, I just get irritable when directly partisan Democrat vs. Republican politics end up here.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I would clarify that there’s a disconnect between what the party leadership thinks (Schumer with his “we’ll pick up two moderate republicans for every working class white we lose”) and the base. My dad is a straight ticket Dem voter and he stayed home this year, and Cheney and Blinken were part of the reason. But I also think the base is a little in denial about how many Romney 2012 folks are now in their coalition. Obama-Trump voters were 13% of Trump’s coalition in 2016. They were obviously replaced by a bunch of Romney-Clinton voters because the race was close overall.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I understand democrats have kicked all the social conservatives out of the party but I didn’t think it was retroactive! I was a registered Democrat until 2017. I went to Wingdings in Iowa in 2019 as a Tulsi Gabbard supporter. Hawks are by no means the majority of democrats, but Romney 2012 types are the margin democrat voter. And while the majority of democrats aren’t hawks, the party’s dominant principle as of late seems to be trusting credentialed experts, which makes them suckers for the intelligence community.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Romney 2012 types are obviously not the marginal Democratic voter.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      The Harris 2024 coalition is a lot closer to the Romney 2012 coalition than democrats want to admit: https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568 https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568. There’s been a huge swing of college educated whites, who Romney won decisively, to Democrats. Also, Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney suggests that her campaign thought that Romney 2012 voters were their marginal vote.
  - yndoendo 2y ago
    A truly intelligent person is independent and not attached to a political part. By doing so, this latches to the "Yes men" mentally where those in power are always right even when wrong and probable through the most simplistic means. [0] Polarization leads to stupidity and ignorance to real world statistics and out comes, even in medical treatment. Self identifying with a political party erodes critical thinking skills. Unless you can criticize the stupidity of all, including those you vote for, you are limited by your own stupidity. Self identity ignorance is prominent in religious cultures where the church must be protected. The congregation will protect a priest or pastor that is sexual predator and pretend their actions didn't take place to protect their community. They loose their identity when their church is harmed, same with latching to political parties. [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120
camgunz 2y ago
I wanna try and weight my reply right. I like a lot of your posts and learn from you not infrequently. I also respect the way you think. Sometimes though, you toss out a very Fox News talking point, which confuses me! Before Trump's reelection I was fine letting this kind of thing stand, I mean who has the energy. But it's clearly gone too far. Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia." I mean, what a fuckin bonkers claim with no evidence. What are you doing?
- rayiner 2y ago
  > Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia." I mean this respectfully: how old are you? Because that isn’t a “Fox News” comment at all! Until five minutes ago, Democrats were the ones who criticized Bush-era republicans for their fixation on Russia and efforts to keep fighting the Cold War: https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=Pz2Yd_vY4ZARbcvs https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=Pz2Yd_vY4ZARbcvs And yes, the intelligence community has been trying to get us into a war with Russia or its proxies since the 1950s. The whole idea that Americans have “allies” or “interests” in Eastern Europe is a Reagan-era CIA psyop.
  - camgunz 2y ago
    Haha well, I think we're in the same cohort? I was a senior in HS when 9/11 happened. I've worked in Democratic politics in some capacity for over a decade, although I recently took a break to have kids. I know Russia's our enemy because I was working on the Hillary Clinton campaign when Trump asked them to hack into Hillary's emails and watched them actively trying to hack us; and they've since compromised a bunch of (dumb, like crunchyroll) accounts of mine. I don't want to parse through everything here, and you definitely won't find me defending the intelligence establishment. All I'm saying is what tptacek said up there: stretching the Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories into "Democrats" stretches too far, and if that's the evidence you're bringing against the Iraq War and Valerie Plame you're coming up short. You have a big platform here; I think if you were a little more judicious about the claims you make you could do a lot of good, and I think we need that right now.

tptacek 2y ago

You've been a proud Republican since you were a student, and openly so here. That's fine, of course, but it's odd to see you talking about "real" Democrats. Democrats broadly opposed the Republican party; whether or not the Republicans responsible for the Iraq War fled the party post-Trump, they do not characterize the Democratic party today. I really don't give a shit about how credible the US IC is; no part of my identity is invested in how well they do their job. But the attempt to generalize this out to the parties themselves rankles, and is trollish.

kasey_junk 2y ago
The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, this year, used Cheney on the campaign trail. When Trump called her ‘war hawk’, rather than trying to defend that very legitimate condemnation, they attacked it as anti-woman. I think where I disagree with rayiner is that I believe she _was_ toxic. Her endorsement is certainly one of my grievances with the party, as a Democratic voter, and we saw the big tent collapse because of, in part, the current hawkishness of that part of the leadership.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Isn't this practically an American election tradition at this point? The designated Republican at the DNC, and Democrat at the RNC?
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    Yes. And they chose a war hawk instead of all the others they could have grabbed.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      It seems to me they chose the highest-profile Republican who would serve the role.
- camgunz 2y ago
  Here's the full quote: "She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face." Trump has a (literal) record of advocating for and perpetrating violence against women and minorities. I don't know of any elected Dems who called it anti-woman (there's a trend of taking any Dem on X as representative, which isn't a good survey), but if they did that's the nicest thing you could say about it. --- FWIW I agree the Cheney thing was boneheaded, and the defense of "she offered to campaign" is... prrrrrrretty wimpy. Some people argued you needed to shake people in the middle free, but no one in the middle likes Liz Cheney; she's mega conservative.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    > perpetrating violence against women and minorities Trump’s comment is a common way democrats have criticized hawks since the Vietnam war: asking if they’d be singing a different tune if they were the ones in the trenches getting shot at. The fact that you’d invoke the “women and minorities” card to defend Liz effing Cheney is proof that the CIA has learned how to use wokeness as a psyop to eviscerate the antiwar left.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    No. That’s not the full quote. The full quote was minutes long and rambling. But you removed this for instance that was near that quote “You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy”. Cheney comes from a family of chicken hawks and lots of people have had similar quotes about them.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I don't think this was as boneheaded as you both do. I think the Cheney political legacy overall is odious, but none of Liz Cheney's recent supporters are there for her foreign policy; it's because she sacrificed her political career to stand up to Donald Trump, which is admirable, and because Trump took the bait and cast her as an enemy of the party, which raised her profile. The idea was that there was some material faction of the GOP that was persuadable by dint of Liz Cheney's mistreatment by GOP nominee. The Cheney thing reminds me of people's attitudes towards John McCain. His history in the GOP: also not great. But in the end, he did have some principles; it's not unreasonable to celebrate them. None of this is really germane to the thread, I just get irritable when directly partisan Democrat vs. Republican politics end up here.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I would clarify that there’s a disconnect between what the party leadership thinks (Schumer with his “we’ll pick up two moderate republicans for every working class white we lose”) and the base. My dad is a straight ticket Dem voter and he stayed home this year, and Cheney and Blinken were part of the reason. But I also think the base is a little in denial about how many Romney 2012 folks are now in their coalition. Obama-Trump voters were 13% of Trump’s coalition in 2016. They were obviously replaced by a bunch of Romney-Clinton voters because the race was close overall.
rayiner 2y ago
I understand democrats have kicked all the social conservatives out of the party but I didn’t think it was retroactive! I was a registered Democrat until 2017. I went to Wingdings in Iowa in 2019 as a Tulsi Gabbard supporter. Hawks are by no means the majority of democrats, but Romney 2012 types are the margin democrat voter. And while the majority of democrats aren’t hawks, the party’s dominant principle as of late seems to be trusting credentialed experts, which makes them suckers for the intelligence community.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Romney 2012 types are obviously not the marginal Democratic voter.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    The Harris 2024 coalition is a lot closer to the Romney 2012 coalition than democrats want to admit: https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568 https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568. There’s been a huge swing of college educated whites, who Romney won decisively, to Democrats. Also, Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney suggests that her campaign thought that Romney 2012 voters were their marginal vote.
- yndoendo 2y ago
  A truly intelligent person is independent and not attached to a political part. By doing so, this latches to the "Yes men" mentally where those in power are always right even when wrong and probable through the most simplistic means. [0] Polarization leads to stupidity and ignorance to real world statistics and out comes, even in medical treatment. Self identifying with a political party erodes critical thinking skills. Unless you can criticize the stupidity of all, including those you vote for, you are limited by your own stupidity. Self identity ignorance is prominent in religious cultures where the church must be protected. The congregation will protect a priest or pastor that is sexual predator and pretend their actions didn't take place to protect their community. They loose their identity when their church is harmed, same with latching to political parties. [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120

camgunz 2y ago

I wanna try and weight my reply right. I like a lot of your posts and learn from you not infrequently. I also respect the way you think. Sometimes though, you toss out a very Fox News talking point, which confuses me! Before Trump's reelection I was fine letting this kind of thing stand, I mean who has the energy. But it's clearly gone too far. Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia." I mean, what a fuckin bonkers claim with no evidence. What are you doing?

rayiner 2y ago
> Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia." I mean this respectfully: how old are you? Because that isn’t a “Fox News” comment at all! Until five minutes ago, Democrats were the ones who criticized Bush-era republicans for their fixation on Russia and efforts to keep fighting the Cold War: https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=Pz2Yd_vY4ZARbcvs https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=Pz2Yd_vY4ZARbcvs And yes, the intelligence community has been trying to get us into a war with Russia or its proxies since the 1950s. The whole idea that Americans have “allies” or “interests” in Eastern Europe is a Reagan-era CIA psyop.
- camgunz 2y ago
  Haha well, I think we're in the same cohort? I was a senior in HS when 9/11 happened. I've worked in Democratic politics in some capacity for over a decade, although I recently took a break to have kids. I know Russia's our enemy because I was working on the Hillary Clinton campaign when Trump asked them to hack into Hillary's emails and watched them actively trying to hack us; and they've since compromised a bunch of (dumb, like crunchyroll) accounts of mine. I don't want to parse through everything here, and you definitely won't find me defending the intelligence establishment. All I'm saying is what tptacek said up there: stretching the Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories into "Democrats" stretches too far, and if that's the evidence you're bringing against the Iraq War and Valerie Plame you're coming up short. You have a big platform here; I think if you were a little more judicious about the claims you make you could do a lot of good, and I think we need that right now.