• AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Say it a little louder for all the dipshits trying to argue that a trump presidency would be better for Gaza than Biden is.

    • donuts@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      If Trump wins I’m going to be too preoccupied with the climate disaster and end of American democracy (in that order) to give a single fuck about what happens in Gaza, Ukraine, or anywhere else.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        Reverse order for me, the climate distaste I worry about with a Republican dictatorship is a nuclear winter. But that might be growing up during the Cold War talking.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Maybe nuclear winter blocks out sun for so long we solve global warming and enter a new ice age. So many humans will be dead we won’t be able to carry on with our global warming activities, as the small handful remaining return to an agrarian society. Maybe Putin and the republicans will save us all.

        • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yup. Russia takes Ukraine and funds Iran in the inevitably escalated Israel-Iran direct conflict, while China attacks Taiwan and Trump preaches isolationism. Good start to WWIII.

        • donuts@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          I mean, am I wrong? Should I care more about what happens to Gazans or Ukrainians than the fact that we’re living in a kleptocracy of science-deniers who are openly taking $1 billion bribes from the oil industry? I don’t think so…

            • donuts@kbin.social
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              7 months ago

              If you’re just abstractly posting about shit on the internet, sure. But if a wildfire burns my neighborhood down (a real possibility where I live, even now, and increasingly likely as the climate slips into the irredeemable zone over the next decade or so) I’m not going to be thinking about global politics and wars happening in countries that I will never step foot in. That would be borderline pathological.

              I’m just being honest. You need to live a life of privilege to have the time, freedom, and emotional capacity to worry about what is happening in Gaza. And, should Donald Trump become president again, he will do whatever he feels like doing in Gaza, nobody will hold him accountable (as nobody seems willing to do right now for the things he’s done in the past), and I’m not going to have the willpower to care because, mark my words, WE will have real problems of our own.

              If you want to see what unchecked genocide, mass civil unrest, climate disaster, and American autocracy looks like, by all means, allow Donald Trump to take over our country. 2024 is our last stand, and what happens next is a matter of individual survival.

            • donuts@kbin.social
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              7 months ago

              What do you mean? I don’t follow, so can you elaborate?

              Are you really saying that you care more about what happens to people in countries half way across the world in regions that you’ll probably never step foot in than yourself, your country, or the world at large?

              So we hand America over to a criminal autocrat because Biden hasn’t managed to solve world peace adequately enough for your liking. Doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. Maybe I’m not understanding something here.

              • juicy@lemmy.today
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                7 months ago

                “Hasn’t managed to solve world peace adequately” is quite the euphemism for “is supporting an ongoing genocide with billions of dollars of weapons.”

                • donuts@kbin.social
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                  7 months ago

                  You didn’t elaborate on what you meant when you said “saying the quiet part out loud”. Can you tell me what you mean by that? I don’t follow.

                  “Hasn’t managed to solve world peace adequately” is quite the euphemism for “is supporting an ongoing genocide with billions of dollars of weapons.”

                  Biden is “supporting an ongoing genocide”. He’s doing what every President in modern US history has done by arming Israel because they are (a) our ally and have been since Israel and Palestine were both created, and (b) under attack from multiple groups including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

                  Since October 7th 2023, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have launched well over 11,000 missiles and drones at Iran, the vast majority of which were intercepted and nullified by Israeli defense systems. On top of the 1,500 people that Hamas killed and kidnapped on October 7th, had those missile and drone attacks not been defended against, how many more innocent people do you think could have been killed in this war? Would you have been happy to see thousands of missiles hit Israel as well as what’s going on in Gaza?

                  I personally feel that we need to put stronger restrictions and conditions on the weapons we send to Israel in light of the war, and they have started doing that, which is good. But let’s not pretend that American defense spending in Israel hasn’t saved thousands of lives and prevented further escalation. Hamas are a terrorist organization founded on an explicit call for genocide against Israeli Jews, and they killed more people on October 7th than Israel is killing per day on average over the last 8 months.

                  On top of that Biden has spent more money and sent more aide into Gaza than the UN or anyone else… You think Biden is happy about this war? You think he wanted any of this shit to happen, during an election year of all times? C’mon…

                  Listen, I don’t care what you do, but go ahead and help elect Trump if you want to see what actual, unmitigated genocide in Gaza looks like, because unlike Biden he will not give a single fuck what Netenyahu does to the Palestinians. In fact, just like Trump will do what the oil lobby wants if they give him $1 billion, Trump will be more than happy to help Netenyahu flatten every inch of Gaza if he can get some kind of “deal” (read: bribe) in return.

                • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  He’s continuing with decades of US policy on Israel, pretty par for the course for a do-nothing president.

                  Every bill he signs off on gets cut down without resistance. The moment he doesn’t have to worry about the politics of a veto.

                  Somehow 4 years of that is somehow better than the alternative so he gets my vote.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Considering nuking Gaza could easily lead to everyone nuking everyone else, you might change your priorities a bit.

        • donuts@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          Nobody is starting a global thermonuclear war over Gaza. Iran doesn’t have a capability, NK doesn’t give a fuck, and if Russia was going to elevate the world into a nuclear war they would have already done so over Ukraine.

          Meanwhile climate change is here and American democracy is in peril, and these are things that actually affect people in this country and the entire world.

          If Trump wins, Gaza is his to do as he pleases. If we didn’t hold him accountable for his crimes against the United States, I have serious doubts that we’re going to hold him accountable for crimes in the middle east.

            • donuts@kbin.social
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              7 months ago

              Let’s imagine Trump wins in 2024. He’s leading in a number of polls and Biden’s popularity is down, so there’s a REAL chance…

              Who exactly do you think is going to hold him accountable for anything he does at home or abroad?

              Congress? (Maybe in some kind of weird scenario where Trump wins the presidency but loses the House and Senate. Not very likely…)

              The courts? (Trump has personally appointed 33% of the current SCOTUS, and we have seen that they will tie themselves into knots to do his bidding. Another 33% of SCOTUS are other highly political conservative judges who have proven to be on Trump’s side. And then we have to consider that Trump has also appointed a huge number of judges at every different level of our legal system. They aren’t going to do anything to him, ever.)

              And if Netenyahu was to kill every last man, woman, and child in Gaza, do you think a Trump administration would push back even in the slightest? This is a guy who sides with Putin and Kim Jung Un. He does not give a fuck about humanity or anybody’s life other than his own.

              I once had hope that someone, somewhere would hold Trump accountable for things like January 6th, but I guess hope doesn’t spring eternal after all because I’m just not seeing it. Trump’s right about one thing: he could shoot a guy on 5th avenue in broad daylight and nothing would happen to him. One third of this country would be evil enough to still vote for him, and another third of the country would be to stupid to hold him accountable.

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Why aren’t the “But Biden!” people in this thread? It’s so very strange they seem to be absent (no, it really isn’t).

  • testfactor@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.

    I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.

    I’m not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?

    I’m mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.

    • sbr32@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      Some disclaimers

      I am a 50+ year old American

      Up until 10ish years ago I had at least a better than average understanding/knowledge of WWII

      My ex’s grandmother’s family was from Hiroshima and they had family members killed in the bombing.

      All that said as tragic as they were I still think those bombs were the correct military decision at that time. I would be willing to have a rational conversation about it though.

      The situation in Gaza is completely different and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the GOP are fucking ghouls.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Also, I have always thought that, as horrific and tragic as what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the fact that the world was able to view the aftermath has been what has prevented a larger nuclear exchange. I don’t know if the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone the same way without everyone knowing exactly what an atomic bomb does.

      • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Is your argument for bombing being the right decision the same (that it resulted in less bloodshed overall)? If so, how can you estimate the body count of the alternative (a prolonged conventional war, I assume)?

        • testfactor@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.

          Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got. And that’s just Americans. It doesn’t count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.

          200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it’s worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.

          So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it’s an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it’s apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.

          It’s also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn’t make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the “political” sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k “enemy” civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American’s to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter? I wouldn’t want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.

      • IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        To this day gaman or Japanese stoicism is a big part of Japanese culture. The Japanese had already lost the war, but the ruling class was willing to sacrifice scores of people to fight to the bitter end.

        In an episode of Hardcore History, it detailed that the Allied ships couldn’t dock in Okinawa because of all the corpses in the water. The Japanese had inundated Okinawa with propaganda that the Americans were going to rape them all. Many families killed themselves. And the invasion of the mainland was only going to get bloodier.

        A terrible as it is to say, dropping the nukes was the more humane option of the two.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
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      7 months ago

      Back in HS, I think I was told that it was a regrettable ending and we probably went a bit overboard.

        • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I remember watching it. The problem with the video is that they seriously overestimate the willingness of the Japanese to surrender without giving any evidence to back this up. The Japanese were absolutely not willing to surrender. I mean, just look at their reaction after Hiroshima. There was a lot of debate AFTER an entire city had been razed to the ground. Japan was absolutely not going to surrender without a nuke being dropped.

          • reliv3@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            The Japanese were attempting to negotiate surrender with the “neutral” USSR prior to the nuclear bombs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan The US wanted an unconditional surrender which included the destruction of the Japanese emperor, who at the time, was the head of the Japanese religion. To put this into perspective, consider the United States request similar to requesting the destruction of the Pope within the Vatican. Because of this, the Japanese were seeking better terms of surrender which did not involved the removal of their religious leader. What the Japanese did not know at the time was the USSR was not a neutral party, and they were secretly mobilizing their forces on mainland Asia due to an agreement Stalin made with FDR prior to the US entering the war in Europe.

            The reality is, once Japan learned that the USSR was not neutral and they were going to be fighting the US and the USSR in a two front war, this is when the emperor forced Japan to surrender.

            To put things into perspective, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were sadly, just another two cities leveled by the US. The US were performing night carpet bombing on Japanese cities as soon as 1944. Many of these raids leveled several square km of urban areas. https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=217. This is why people argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not the catalyst to Japan’s surrender because the US have been leveling Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, long before the two nuclear bombs were dropped. None of these raids caused Japan to surrender before.

        • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Yikes 2 hours and 20 minutes. I’ll try to watch as much as I can today, but probably can’t get through the whole thing. Any high points I should watch?

          • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Been a while since I watched it, like I said I’d recommend listening to it. Treat it like a podcast, for me the time flew by and I ended up listening to every video he has over the following weeks. 😂

            • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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              7 months ago

              I wasn’t planning on spending my morning watching a 2 and a half hour YouTube video, but here we are and that’s exactly what happened. That was a fascinating watch. I’d say for others that the TLDW is this:

              • The narrative that the atomic bombs were dropped to prevent an invasion of Japan is false and was constructed afterwards as a plausible and easy to understand solution that allowed all parties (both the US and Japan) to come out looking good in the end.

              • The reality of the situation was much more complicated. At the time, there was never a US plan to invade Japan.

              • Japan was already thoroughly defeated militarily and was looking to negotiate a surrender. Japan was hoping that Russia would be useful to negotiate peace with the US.

              • The US had previously asked Russia to enter the war, but then later realized it was not necessary to bring about an end to the war. The US actually realized having Russia involved would complicate the post-war logistics and would bolster Russia as a world super power. When sending terms of surrender to Japan, the US removed Russia as a signer of the terms, leaving Japan a false hope that Russia could still be used help them secure better terms.

              • Russia informed the US that they would be declaring war with Japan on August 15. The US dropped the bombs on Japan a week earlier in hopes of accelerating Japan’s surrender before Russia entered the war.

              • As a result, Russia declared war on Japan in the days between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan issued their surrender shortly afterwards. In all likelihood, dropping the bombs accelerated the surrender timeline by about a week. Though it could be argued that had Russia’s signature been kept on the surrender terms sent to Japan, it would have also ended the war earlier.

              • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Isn’t he fantastic? His videos are so well-researched and well-written that I’d listen to his vaguely monotonous scouse voice talk about pretty much anything.

                • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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                  7 months ago

                  Yeah it really was a good watch. The length and minimal use of graphics at first were intimidating, but he still kept it interesting so it was easy to absorb.

    • cybersin@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      It depends whether you think killing 200,000+ civilians is a defensible act.

      300,000+ if you include the bombing of Tokyo.

      Nobody knows how a conventional war would have played out. To assert civilian deaths would have been higher is pure speculation and a gross attempt to justify the slaughter of noncombatants.

      Though it is likely that even without nukes, the US would have still razed these cities with conventional munitions, given the events in Tokyo.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      There’s also the possibility that because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapons have never since been used. What would cold war been like in that case?

    • juicy@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      The cognitive dissonance is fascinating. The Hammas attack on 10/7 is all but universally condemned in public discourse because civillians were targeted. Even die-hard militant anti-Zionists will not attempt to justify the Hammas attacks because they know it will only turn the public against them. When a brown force attacks civillians, it is terrorism and reviled.

      Here on lemmy.world condemnation of Israel’s indiscriminant bombing is also prevalent. Maybe 5%-10% of commenters support Israel’s conduct. But of the at least eight people who have expressed an opinion on nuking Japan here in this thread, roughly 75% of them defend it as justifiable and no one has outright said it was wrong.

      There are over 100,000 American WWII veterans alive today. They saved the world from the Nazis. We love that for us. Coming out of WWII, we dove right into the cold war. We were battling the USSR for the hearts and minds of the globe. McCarthyism silenced internal criticism. We had no patience for second-guessing our actions in WWII. It was our patriotic duty to convince the world that ours was the side of freedom, democracy, and justice.

      So for 80 years now our culture has been saturated with propaganda promoting our glorious, righteous role in WWII. You, your parents, and your parents’ parents have been told the same thing in school and have seen the same messages in TV, books, and movies. And I’m not saying it’s all a lie. Sure, the defeat of Hitler was a high point in American history. But our understanding of our role lacks any nuance or self-criticism. For example, the Russian front was arguably more crucial to the fall of Germany than the Western front. Churchill is hailed as a hero, but he was an antisemetic racist. E.g.:

      WINSTON CHURCHILL published a newspaper article. It was February 8, 1920. Churchill had a different enemy now. Now his enemy wasn’t Germany, it was the “sinister confederacy” of international Jewry.

      “This movement among the Jews is not new,” Churchill said. It was a “world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality.” He listed Marx, Trotsky, Béla Kun, Rosa Luxemburg, and Emma Goldman as some of the malefactors. The conspiracy had been, he said, the “mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century.” It had played a recognizable part in the French Revolution. All loyal Jews, he advised, must “vindicate the honour of the Jewish name” by rejecting international bolshevism.

      And:

      “I think you should certainly proceed with the experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which would inflict punishment on recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury on them,” Churchill wrote Trenchard. Churchill was an expert on the effects of mustard gas—he knew that it could blind and kill, especially children and infants. Gas spreads a “lively terror,” he pointed out in an earlier memo; he didn’t understand the prevailing squeamishness about its use: “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” Most of those gassed wouldn’t have “serious permanent effects,” he said.

      Churchill’s War Cabinet ignored the repeated pleas of the British colonial government in India for food aid, allowing between one and four million people to die of hunger in 1943 and 1944.

      Churchill was a horrible person.

      And likewise, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unconscionable acts of evil. It is never acceptable to target civillian populations. It wasn’t acceptable on 9/11/2001 or 10/7/2023 when brown Arabs did it, and it wasn’t acceptable when white Americans did it either.

      This is obvious to anyone who wasn’t raised inside the Western bubble.

    • scorpious@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      My understanding is that even after Hiroshima, the Imperial Army attempted a coup to avoid surrender.

      The Japanese were not stopping. The only alternative at hand was a full invasion, which would have killed many, many more.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      I’m not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?

      The issue is that unconditional support of past American actions is no longer acceptable, and so all America’s past actions are being re-evaluated. This is good! However, this also often results in people simply taking the reverse position than the accepted one. This is bad.

      The atomic bombings were less bloody than a blockade or an invasion would have been, and the people who claim the Soviet Union was going to successfully invade the home islands or that Japan was about to surrender under any terms that would have been considered reasonable, pinky-promise, are just misinformed or deluded.

    • donuts@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      That’s the scary part… If you have been following the Republican Party recently, you’ll realize that he is reading the room.

      • ours@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        What’s his stance on puppy-murder?

        Being a sociopath is apparently a positive trait for these sick fucks.

        • donuts@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          He’s staunchly against it.

          Until Trump picks Noem as his VP, then he’ll tell you that it’s no big deal and it’s just simple farm livin’.

  • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    Back in 2017 or so, I had a full on MAGA coworker who was ecstatic about the migrant detention centers at the border. If anything, he felt we weren’t torturing them enough. One day, he dropped a line that was so heinous it still sticks with me to this day: “we used to do the same to the Japanese and no one cared about it then, so why is everyone up in arms about it now?”

    All this to say I’m not at all surprised they’re saying this now. They’ve always felt this way, and they know how despicable it is.

    Fwiw, the dude was a 50-something year old Israeli immigrant. He also joked about wanting to join the military to “practice on live targets”

    I hate this timeline so much

      • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        I knew better than to engage. The guy was a nutter. He got laid off shortly after that thankfully.

        Bonus story about this fucker. When I adopted a dog, he told me that “in five years you won’t give a shit about the dog and will only care about your boyfriend”. Eight years later, my girlfriend and I co-parent the same dog like she’s our daughter.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Not to defend the viewpoint, but I assume he was referring to interment camps and not nuclear bombing. That would be more analogous to the border detentions.

    • John Richard@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Your coworker has serious mental health issues. I hate the party but I also hate that our mental health system won’t address the negative impact religion plays in forming negative views and that our laws prevent therapists and those in mental health from doing their actual jobs.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    So… he knows that… like… Israel would be in the blast radius and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv probably affected by a shit ton of radiation….

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You assume that these guy know much about anything except corruption, graft, and drug fueled sex orgies.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      He knows that he’s not the one who’s going to be pushing the button, but that his rabid out-for-blood base won’t even think about that. He’s just throwing them meat.

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Nevermind all the other obvious reasons this is terrible but I’m sure Egypt would have some objections to being blasted by a nearby nuke.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Israel is rumored to have tactical nukes that are much smaller yield than the large ICBMs we hear about all the time. Super destructive force in only 1 or 2 km blast radius, which would even fit inside a small area like Gaza. Of course, in addtition to devastating Gaza, there would still be fallout and issues over Israel, and using them in this manner is definitely Not OK. However, I can believe that there are some deluded people in government (both in Israel and in the US) who would view that as acceptable.

      • pyrate37@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Russia would immediately nuke them. It would be the end game for Israel. Hopefully they aren’t that stupid.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Russia wouldn’t get involved. Many of the Jewish Mafia reside in Israel and are essential to maintaining Putin’s power in the country. Russia in many ways would be more inclined to encourage Israel to use nukes to cause destabilization in US politics.

  • Plume (She/Her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    I gotta give these people credit. It must take a massive amount of effort to try and be this consistently on the wrong side of history. Like, at some point, it has to be deliberate…

    • soba@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      They think they’re on the right side of history. It’s 100% deliberate. They never admit they are wrong about anything because the thought is completely foreign to them. Right wing boomers absolutely believe they are 100% in the right on every single issue. They can’t even imagine they aren’t.

          • ripcord@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Looks like 35% republican vs 33% democrat (versus 32% “independent” who might all vote republican for all I know).

            But there’s a lot of republicans under 60 too so not getting the point of the random ageism.

            • jaybone@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Lemmy is big on ageism and throwing around the word boomer (incorrectly.)

              Which is funny since there are a lot of older people on Lemmy, who most likely do not agree with the Republican agenda.

    • GloriousGouda@lemmy.myserv.one
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      7 months ago

      I can’t hardly take them or anyone that tosses the xtian mythology around. Why should we? History hasn’t shown us a “god”. Only shifty humans arguing over imaginary friends.

      Can we stop letting them in positions of power already? They obviously aren’t fit for leadership or power.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s because he’s a performative Christian, or “Christian.” He doesn’t believe in anything unless it help him get ahead in life - just like most politicians and other moderate-to-high functioning psychopaths and sociopaths.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      I mean, he’s not wrong, he’s just an asshole. By most historians accounts, Fat Man and Little Boy caused less death than an actual war with Japan would have.

      They were also retaliatory strikes after a direct attack on an American base, at the tail end of a global conflict, and we just got a new toy. The bomb was basically telling Japan to fuck off with their bullshit, and it did a pretty good job of it.

      That doesn’t make it the right answer, per se. Glassing the strip probably would net less death and destruction than continuing the genocide or especially allowing it to escalate more. I still have a hard time calling that “the good choice”

      And what happens after the glass hardens? We all gonna be honky dory or is somebody else gonna star lobbing nukes?

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The senator continued to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the right decision” by the U.S. That decision ended the war with Japan, but killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians between the initial blasts and the deadly radiation that followed.

    “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham insisted.

    He didn’t directly suggest nuking Gaza, but he made multiple parallels between ending the war in Japan by using nukes and then basically says we should give bombs to Israel to finish the job without specifying what he means.

    So while someone might argue black and white letter of what he said isn’t “nuke Gaza”, he’s still implying something along those lines - the quick finish and a method that can do it.

  • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Lindsey is part of the swamp. He’s a Christian Zionist, a doomsday Christian. These types of Christians want to hasten the Day of Judgement. Pretty much they’re psychopaths thanks to the Scofield Reference Bible.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      I cannot for the life of me figure out why, if you believe in Christian Mythology, even to the point of wanting Judgement Day to come during your lifetime, why you would personally take efforts that you know are going to end in mass civilian deaths.

      Assuming you are right and Judgement Day is on the horizon, are you not damning yourself to the deepest pits of Hell by spending your time leading up to the Rapture ordering the slaughter of innocent people, rather than say glorifying and spreading the word of God?

      I don’t believe in any of it, but if I did, I sure wouldn’t be advocating for mass-murder right before God shows up to judge me for the way I lived my life on Earth.

      • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        Number one rule of Christian Narcissism: That rule was written for the others. It doesn’t apply to me. I’m not doing anything wrong.

      • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I agree with you 100%. In my belief, it is God who wills when Judgement Day comes. It is not the will of a human. Christians and Zionists together think they can some how bypass the will of God.

        • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I’m getting a little tired of people using “Zionist” when they actually mean “Jew”. Jews don’t even have a “judgement day” or even the concept of Hell for that matter, so I quite frankly have no fucking clue what you think you are saying here…

          If you have criticism of religion, go for it. If you have criticism of a nation, go for it. But one by one I keep watching people like you knock down the “criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitic” house of cards by making it clear you don’t see a difference between an Israel apologist and a Jew, and are just using the term “Zionists” as a placeholder for “Jews” so you can make weird blanket statements about Jews…

          • StaySquared@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I wasn’t criticizing Jews exclusively. If I want to criticize a Jew or a group of Jews, I will. Idgaf quite frankly.

            Judaism =/= Zionism. I’m criticizing the secular political ideology in which cherry picks from Judaism and incorporates it into it’s political ideology. Some of the things they cherry pick when it comes to human relations… is pretty fkin Nazi-like, who am I kidding… worst than Nazi’s treatment of their opposition. Reference the Talmud regarding gentiles.

            Neturei Karta is the only Torah practicing Jews that I recognize as my brethren. Because they actually practice the teachings of the Torah. If you’re a “practicing Jew” in Israel… you’re doing it wrong. Not because I say so, because your Torah says so.

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        7 months ago

        You are giving them way too much credit. Any combination of “god wants me to” with “God works in mysterious ways” and “the will of God is 100% infallibly and unerringly good” can justify pretty much any heinous act you can think of.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I can’t reinforce the idea enough that they believe god is eal and that they can trick a prophecy to being fulfilled by naming a british colony “Israel”.

      The biblical Israel is long gone and the current Israel is obviously a different state; you can “fulfill the prophecies” the same way by naming your dog “the kingdom of Israel”

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    7 months ago

    This should disqualify him from ever holding office again. I know it won’t, but it should.

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          7 months ago

          I wasn’t aware vaporizing thousands of years of human history would be “nothing of value” being lost.

          Which is also to say nothing of value being lost when the people who still live in those historic cities are also vaporized.

          Lemmy really goes full “cut off your nose to spite your face” if they find out that face might be even slightly associated with religion

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    7 months ago

    There’s really no reason to ever report on or pay attention to things Lindsay Graham says. He has no real values or stands of his own. He is a spineless jellyfish that goes with the tide wherever it allows him to keep the most power.

    I have never seen any evidence of him ever voicing and sticking to an actual personal belief.

    • Maddier1993@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      On the other hand, we should keep outing these Nazis whenever we can so that the decent part of society doesn’t collectively forget who punched down and who punched up.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Also, social consequences are IMPORTANT for fighting fascism. Making them feel unwelcome at every table, every party, every workplace, EVERYWHERE is a time-tested and actually fairly effective way to fight the spread of fascist thought. It won’t get rid of the most entrenched, the true believers - but it can help the knock-on effect of “hey maybe that guy has a real point”.

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    7 months ago

    It’s not clear how low these people will truly go. The bottom fell out long ago and we are going to see these guys get a lot worse. There are no boundaries to guide them. They will continue to reach no lows time and time again. It’s infinite.