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I'm an agnostic, but when I read about what he does, it makes me devoutly wish that hell exists. He has made countless people's lives hell on earth, and he does

by aeortiz 2mo ago

I'm an agnostic, but when I read about what he does, it makes me devoutly wish that hell exists. He has made countless people's lives hell on earth, and he doesn't care at all. No one is holding him accountable in this life: it's inconvenient for those in power.

Loquebantur 2mo ago
It's a systemic issue, not due to one man. What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of inconvenient information is very real. The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps". The assumption, those actions were "justified" somehow is entirely baseless: there is no transparency and no effective oversight. What is supposedly being kept secret there might simply be illegal corruption or embarrassing and inconvenient to those in power.
- TFNA 2mo ago
  Almost every discussion here on HN about those "deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research" has been about how, when you actually dig into the data, they have been very statistically likely.
- andrewflnr 2mo ago
  There are long standing systemic issues, and then there's also one man making things dramatically worse in new, stupider ways.
- mikestorrent 2mo ago
  Calling things "systemic" is unfortunately often just a way of offloading the problem into the pile of Things We Can't Fix. It removes individual accountability, in an era where we are increasingly able to assess the effect an influential individual actually has - because their dialogue is public and recorded, and the consequences of that can be studied. I think there are plenty of individual men who are absolutely responsible for things becoming worse, and we do the world no favours by helping them shrug the burden of their actions.
ajsnigrutin 2mo ago
So have many others before him. The only difference is, is that before him we had "Iraq has weapons for mass destruction! we must attack them, before they attack us, we're in danger!", and now there's "we're going in and we're taking the oil!". So from "we can do whatever we want if we lie" turned into "we can do whatever we want", not really relevant to all the people killed. But hey, some americans would say that "It's worth it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_VnVlFhXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_VnVlFhXU
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  Nobody is holding up those other guys as shining paragons of virtue either. “Other people did it too” is not an excuse for immoral behavior. I think the parent and I basically agree.
  - ajsnigrutin 2mo ago
    But pretty much every US president did something like that, killed people somewhere, usually half the planet away. No US president is in jail for that. OP above me is just blaming this particular one for something that everyone has done before, and many of them even got reelected again by the same people complaining about. Trump attacked quite a few countries in his first term, even killed the Iranian general (Soleimani), and you guys reelected him after all that. You guys clearly weren't bothered by that enough to vote for someone else. If nothing else, Iran has learned that they really need those nukes, because you guys will never leave them at peace otherwise.

by aeortiz 2mo ago

Loquebantur 2mo ago

It's a systemic issue, not due to one man. What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of inconvenient information is very real. The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps". The assumption, those actions were "justified" somehow is entirely baseless: there is no transparency and no effective oversight. What is supposedly being kept secret there might simply be illegal corruption or embarrassing and inconvenient to those in power.

TFNA 2mo ago
Almost every discussion here on HN about those "deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research" has been about how, when you actually dig into the data, they have been very statistically likely.
andrewflnr 2mo ago
There are long standing systemic issues, and then there's also one man making things dramatically worse in new, stupider ways.
mikestorrent 2mo ago
Calling things "systemic" is unfortunately often just a way of offloading the problem into the pile of Things We Can't Fix. It removes individual accountability, in an era where we are increasingly able to assess the effect an influential individual actually has - because their dialogue is public and recorded, and the consequences of that can be studied. I think there are plenty of individual men who are absolutely responsible for things becoming worse, and we do the world no favours by helping them shrug the burden of their actions.

ajsnigrutin 2mo ago

So have many others before him. The only difference is, is that before him we had "Iraq has weapons for mass destruction! we must attack them, before they attack us, we're in danger!", and now there's "we're going in and we're taking the oil!". So from "we can do whatever we want if we lie" turned into "we can do whatever we want", not really relevant to all the people killed. But hey, some americans would say that "It's worth it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_VnVlFhXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_VnVlFhXU

fn-mote 2mo ago
Nobody is holding up those other guys as shining paragons of virtue either. “Other people did it too” is not an excuse for immoral behavior. I think the parent and I basically agree.
- ajsnigrutin 2mo ago
  But pretty much every US president did something like that, killed people somewhere, usually half the planet away. No US president is in jail for that. OP above me is just blaming this particular one for something that everyone has done before, and many of them even got reelected again by the same people complaining about. Trump attacked quite a few countries in his first term, even killed the Iranian general (Soleimani), and you guys reelected him after all that. You guys clearly weren't bothered by that enough to vote for someone else. If nothing else, Iran has learned that they really need those nukes, because you guys will never leave them at peace otherwise.