Obituaries

[Thad]

okay yeah Reagan was an evil capitalist Satan

Ayatollah Khamenei was right

Khamenei, or Khomeini?

I mean I'm sure Khamenei didn't have anything nice to say about Reagan either, but he wasn't Ayatollah during the Reagan Administration.

[Büge]

Ayatollah you once, Ayatollah you a thousand times!

[Thad]

[nosimpleway]

how cockamamie

[Mongrel]

Lesson time for all of us.

Eastern Europeans out with the corrections on Gorby's career. Rightly so.


It was also pointed out that by the time the Vilnus crackdown took place, he was already almost out the door. It essentially served no purpose.

Not that it's impossible to reconcile the two portraits of the man, but I'm not going to stand around and deny the actual lived experience of former Iron Curtain residents. From their point of view, Gorbachev gave them nothing - their freedom came because they themselves took it.

[Friday]

Lesson learned, but I'll still maintain that Reagan was worse with just as many massacres under his belt, if not more.

The key thing to remember about leaders of world powers is that with the exception of like, Lincoln, they're all complicit or active participants in atrocity. They have to be in order to head a world power. Obama is a great example! Totally cool dude that everyone constantly waxes on and on about and how much they want him back, totally increased drone strikes insanely and was down with torture

[Mongrel]

Yeah, like I said, I don't think it's my any means impossible to reconcile "great moral reformer" and "typical repressive Russian dictator" and "They were all wretchedly evil" is the same path that eventually takes you to Tankie-land. But like, I'm not gonna go around bleating about that at anyone who actually suffered because of it any more than I would try to tell kids in Yemen that "Obama was great, actually."

Which isn't a position I wouldn't take anyway. Obama was, in a way, somewhat analogous to Reagan in that they were both charmers given leeway to do horrible things (or allow horrible things to happen, but you guys know how I feel about bystanders).

[Yoji]

Thinking again about... was it on Some More News? Is that where I'm getting this?

Anyway, thinking again about an idea for potential perks and costs of being the president.
PERKS: You get to be the president
COSTS: You go straight to prison after

All the benefits and rules for removal still stand, but however your term goes it always ends in prison. It really seems like even the good ones do something horrible along the way, so there should just be automatic consequences.

[Büge]

The key thing to remember about leaders of world powers is that with the exception of like, Lincoln, they're all complicit or active participants in atrocity. They have to be in order to head a world power. Obama is a great example! Totally cool dude that everyone constantly waxes on and on about and how much they want him back, totally increased drone strikes insanely and was down with torture

Also he had the capability to make Roe V Wade legal but didn't

[Friday]

well i mean it was settled law and his approval rating would have taken a hit maybe

[Mongrel]

Obama's tenure was basically eight years of missed opportunities. Including six extremely crucial months, which, unfortunately, were front-loaded.

I know it's tempting to say hindsight is [Biden in] 2020, and many times I've heard the explanation of why it wasn't so simple not so simple as all that because bla blah, but I lived through that era too, and I damn well I remember being pissed off about Obama's 'high road' nonsense from the very beginning.

There was a moment in time when the US could have been pushed away from the Bush era, at least to some degree, but Obama ended up mostly redoubling all the same crap. If the dems had had the WILL to do then what they are *just* finding the will to do now, a vast amount of human misery could have been avoided, and sorry, I will not excuse the leadership of the most powerful country in the world for amateur hour "Oh we didn't know it would get this bad" shit. Motherfuckers, it's your fucking JOB to know.

The stakes weren't all that different then if you were paying attention - it's not like the GOP had ever bothered to hide their intentions during the previous half-century. "Voting Republican" has essentially been an analogue for racism, greed, and wanton cruelty longer than I've been alive. The only reason the phrase "Hope" resonated is because it had been ages since anyone had any in the first damn place - not exactly a condition which came out of nowhere.

But no, it had to come to the GOP actually going through with plans to destroy the lives of half the country. Even a fucking coup attempt didn't rouse nearly enough Dems as it should have.

"After every other possible alternative has been tried" makes for a funny quote, but that's no fucking way to run a country, much less the world's sole superpower.

[Thad]

Obama's tenure was basically eight years of missed opportunities. Including six extremely crucial months, which, unfortunately, were front-loaded.

To be fair, a nontrivial amount of that was Ted Kennedy deciding he should run for another term despite having brain cancer.

Though if they'd just fucking nuked the filibuster they wouldn't have needed him or Lieberman or 8 other worthless motherfuckers.

I don't know if Obama could have cut through Senate dysfunction and made that happen. But I'm annoyed he didn't try.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, like... there were a lot of problems at the time that seemed like valid roadblocks.

But apart from Obamacare, Biden is getting a lot more done now, in two years, than Obama did in eight. More importantly, the GOP has been steadily demonstrating for decades that you can get even more done with even less if you're willing to play full elbows-out hardball.

It's not even a case of "You just had to have the will to do what the other guys wouldn't." The Dems have had more seats, more often (well, federally anyway), all they needed was the will to do match what the other guy was already doing, especially considering how bad RWers are at taking the same punches back.

Anyway, as frustrating as that all was, I'm - somehow - eager to see what they do now. There's certainly a feeling that a large number of Dems are belatedly, finally, done with catering to the GOP's horseshit, so maybe I can stop being the politics version of this guy:

[KingRoyal]

I'd be willing to accept the Dems just having self-interest, which is when the GOP fucks up to do things people like because then they'll get votes which will keep them in power. The most frustrating part about the Obama years was watching the Dems lose more and more ground and just kind of declaring, "What can you do?" while everyone in the country begged them to nuke the filibuster

[Thad]

The Dems have had more seats, more often (well, federally anyway)

...man, WTF are you talking about?

The Republicans have had a majority in at least one chamber for 16 of the last 20 years. They've had both houses for 6 of those, compared to the Democrats' 4.

And that's me cutting it off at 20.

[Mongrel]

Oh that's my bad, I meant since 2008 (well the 111th congress onward).

But if you ignore control of the presidency they actually tie during that period, I think (Dem majority in Senate for 8 of 14 years, GOP majority in House for 8 of 14 years).

[atog]

Queen Elizabeth II

[KingRoyal]

[Lottel]

[zaratustra]

it's the UK

it'll obviously be an American Candy