John Oliver on Donald Trump

That bit in quotes in my post? From Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, defining genocide. The US has ratified that, though naturally with the reservation that our consent is necessary for any of our citizens to be tried before an international court for such.

No. We're talking about killing these people, in a systematic and widespread manner.

Come on now. We both know we are are talking about sentiments boiling down to "just blow up the middle east, why do we care about them" - that's been brought up in this thread. Of course all Syrians don't wish to blow up people with bombs. Many of those murdered as proposed would be some of those Syrians.

Indeed. It is fortunate then that I never opposed their deaths, no?

Oh my. I was under the impression we could have a conversation without a persecution complex becoming involved on your part. My apologies.

I redefined nothing, raised no false equivalent, and argued against no strawman.

This all began because Crossy put up a really strange equivalence that I questioned, and you defended that equivalence. You said that for someone who considers a government's responsibility to it's citizens supreme over any amount of moral high ground, it is acceptable to equate someone who says "kill people who commit war crimes, but don't commit war crimes to kill people who commit war crimes" with the feeling that this is "not calling out the nazis on their bullshit".

I said talking about scale in this context is next to irrelevant - is the Armenian Genocide less heinous than the Holocaust because fewer people died? Is that some sort of meaningful assertion?

Of course not.

What conviction did I not stand beside?

Fortunately, I didn't "conflate terms". I called genocide genocide, which you took offense to for reasons unknown.

 

m'kay

but it's not genocide

per your own quoted definition

so regardless, I'm still correct. Which must burn, I'm sure, but that's neither here nor there.

And Im pointing out that you're using the word genocide incorrectly for the sake of appealing to emotion

Oh no! I called out your attempt at using a reactionary argument!

Man, you must feel terrible. Good thing you can feel that way about your point being demeaned, kind of like how you've been demeaning actual victims who you and your kind have thrown under the bus by appropriating the term literally coined to define the crime that was done to them.

Of course.

I think it's ironic that you accuse me of having a persecution complex when I point out the fact you're nakedly draping yourself in the corpses of people killed as if they were worth less than cattle for the sake of scoring points in an online argument.

Methinks you doth project too much.

*cough cough*

Moving the goal posts, are we?

Tut tut.

*cough cough*

No, it began because I responded to you and pointed out that the role of the government was to defend it's citizens, not the enemies of it's citizens. Then I responded to you about something you said.

At no point did I defend Crossy's words.

You, sir, have earned a Wag of My Finger for that strawman.

Oops!

That's revisionism, made the false equivalent of my replying to you to be equivalent to agreeing with Crossy, and a strawman besides!

I believe that means you've now filled out by Bingo card.

And now you put words in my mouth.

Ones that I already actively denied, in fact.

My, oh my.

I feel like you're just handing me this on a silver platter.

An excellent question.

You don't seem to possess any in the first place.

No, you misused the term by the definition you yourself provided.

Which continues to be hilarious, by the way.

 

>literally more than half of it just personal attacks or spite in the place of argument.

To be expected I suppose.

...but I just couldn't let this go. My folly, I know.

My statement: "Kill people who commit war crimes, but don't commit war crimes to kill people who commit war crimes" feels like not calling out the nazis on their bullshit?
Yours: That depends on whether or not you care about having the moral high ground more than you care about solving the problem. A government's responsibility lies with it's citizens, not their enemies.

...

This is not putting words in your mouth. It is literally repeating your response in context. Unless you want to redefine the word "depend".


Come on now.

 

Hey i tried looking for a rationale argument to reply to, but when you just keep saying "ITS GENOCIDE ITS GENOCIDE" over and over again it's kind of hard not to question whether you're full of shit or not.

I suppose I'm just too used to calling a spade a spade.

Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from your misusing words? I mean, considering just how versatile you made "genocide" become, I'm sure you can think of some other word that can be appropriated for your usage to give that nice "snap" that'll get people excited about you.

You mean:

I don't see the point behind messing with the quotes like that, but whatever.

No, because that implies that I agreed or disagreed.

I simply stated a qualifier when the discussion invoked Godwin's law.

Feel free to go now, if all you have to argue are whether or not it's appropriate for you to get the definitions of words wrong, then I'm afraid that we simply have nothing to discuss.

I would think that whether or not you misuse terminology is a fairly open and shut case, but I have been wrong before.

 

I suppose you'll claim false equivalency if I reduce your posts to IT'S NOT GENOCIDE IT'S NOT GENOCIDE?

With some added spite, naturally.

...so you actually are going to try quibble about the definition of "depend".

It does imply you agreed, because your post implied you agreed. "That depends" is acceptance of the previous statement, as qualified by what comes after the phrase. Moreover, my initial post was literally a rebuke towards Crossy's invocation of Godwin's law, not my own invocation of it.


I'd have more faith in your ability to identify misused terminology (and syntax) if you didn't demonstrate such utter inability to use it in the first place.

 

...Children, Crossy. Children who are too young to understand what their parents do. Children who are utterly incapable of stopping their parents, their older siblings.

You're not arguing for killing terrorists, Crossy. You're arguing that their children should be targeted. Deliberately hunted down and killed. We are not talking about collateral damage, and we're not talking about potential combatants. We're talking about babies.

You want US soldiers to hunt down and murder babies.

 

We are the products of our environments. The children of radical islamists are merely radical islamists in training. Easier to nip that in the bud, before they can pick up a suicide vest or an AK-47 themselves.

 

I think these passages from Machiavelli ought to add to the discussion.

I think the question that the cynics here want to ask is, how can the science of child-murdering be refined?

If Vanathor's and CrossyCross's position is to be taken, the following factors must be taken into consideration:

• Is the United States, as a country, more capable of inspiring love or fear, if it does not inspire both?
• How can certain war crimes be committed without the perception that war crimes are being committed (how can the United States instruct its military forces to engage in collective punishment without rape and looting, following "as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women" ?)

For the idealists here:

• If the United States is more capable of inspiring fear than love, what pragmatic principle (i.e. not human rights, empathy or compassion) is strong enough to argue against the use of fear in the War on Terror (other than the irony of it)?
• Is the War on Terror actually a war against extremist Islamism (Islam as a political ideology)? If it isn't, should it be made into one? Why or why not?

 

Stop being so dramatic. You're painting a picture of US soldiers kicking in doors and dragging people out when that wouldn't happen. Have the latest advancements in warfare completely passed you by? We'd being using drones and bombers for the most part to target and destroy major populations centers which they have no realistic means to counter. As for the children, like Vanathor said they're part of the problem having grown up and internalized such vitriol during their most impressionable years. Is it good? No, but I would say that the cost is worth it.

 

I think this is difficult question,How we deal with mother who use their children as human shield?.

In their ideology the child will go to heaven so that moral thing to do in their perspective.

Like I said we operate on different mindset and how modern nation&tribal conduct war here.There are no perfect answer for this problem.

 

That violation of human decency can be mechanized nowadays doesn't make it better.

And what will you do about all the people angry about you slaughtering innocents? Kill them, too?

 

No, but it does make it more efficient.

If that's what it takes, yes.

 

On one hand, just going over to where terrorists come from and killing everyone there to make sure you get all the terrorists is terrible. On the other... the current state of "civilization" doesn't really give us many ways to actively deal with non-state actors.

If it was a war with another country, we could just go fight them, but with things how they are... We are stuck trying to uncover plot after plot after plot before they go "boom", with no real way to strike back. Not without doing something considered hideously immoral, like blowing up the middle-east.

On the other hand, we can't keep doing what we're doing now. Clearly the "war on terror" doesn't actually work. You can't even locate their leaders and kill them, because this shit doesn't NEED organization. All they need is someone willing to sneak into your country and start stuffing bombs into things at random.
They don't intend to survive their mission, which means that even if you kill them before they finish their plan, the people you killed were considered totally expendable.

You're fighting against a belief-system, you can't change or erase that with small actions.

 

"Let's kill everyone who gets outraged over us murdering kids and civilians." -Malkavian 2016

I can't make this shit up.

 

If they attack, sure, then use force to pacify them. If they're just going to bitch let them bitch as it makes no difference.

 

Bruh, let me just say this. Da'esh fucking wishes they could create a strawman like you but they're too afraid of being laughed out of the country for being ludicrous.

 

Your nation has a legal system that presumes innocence until guilt is proven. That is a cornerstone of what it is to be American.

That you don't understand this speaks loudly about your nature.

And pushing buttons is so much more noble.

Congratulations. You've justified every terrorist action against the united states.
Does it feel good to know that your moral code considers the 9/11 attack a legitimate action? There's really no difference, you see, between killing civilians for things they've never done and killing civilians for things they've never done.

---

I suppose it's a good thing we have a thread to identify the monsters who use this site.

 

Sure, now do you actually have anything to contribute? Cause I'm not seeing anything beyond base insults at the moment.

 

And what about the kids of those Nazi's bruh. What about those children that didn't do anything wrong except for, oh I dunno, being born in the wrong place and time? What about those innocent lives? What about the farmer living in bumfuck nowhere who doesn't know shit anything about terrorism or terrorists and is just trying to make a living to feed his family?

Will you cheer when those guys get their fucking brains splattered on the ground?

I see I wasn't clear enough. My bad. What I was saying is that people saying shit like this is the exact reason terrorism can get any support what so ever. What happens to the American-Muslims who lose their shit (rightfully so) if what you're advocating happens? In trying to stamp out terrorists, you're going to create an infinitely more dangerous breed right at the heart of your country. Are you suggesting you turn arms on your own citizens next, you fucking madman?

Did I elabourate enough?

 

Do you have anything to contribute beyond advocating murder?

 

One of the best ways to tell good people from bad people is that good people don't do bad things while saying they're good. And killing children? That is very bad.

 

Ahem.

When drawing on what laws you seek to justify by, either whoever you describe are soldiers or they are civilians - even when one seeks just property damage, property is owned.

There isn't a third category where neither applies, for apparently non-obvious reasons.

 

I can't tell what you're trying to say here. Property damage? Implying that even if they aren't acting on goverment orders, being a citizen of said country still makes you property of the goverment?

Also, point-of-order, I'm not trying to justify anything. My entire spiel can be boiled down to "the only action I can think of that might get rid of all the islamic terrorists is impossible to justify."

Either way, I just mimicked a phrase I saw used earlier in the thread, Might have misused it, I just wanted a one-word way of saying "group of people not a part of(or backed by) the government."

Well, actually. Even if they were government backed, the fact that they fight as infiltrators and suicide bombers instead of as a standing army, means there's nobody to send an army against. You'd get to their country and picking out actual enemies from the civilians would be like pulling a needle out of a stack of other needles.

The only real way to actually solve the problem of "People keep coming over here and blowing our shit up" that I can think of is the old fashioned* method of "find where they're coming from and just kill everyone"

In the Bad-Old-Days, if you kept getting assassins, saboteurs and infiltrators of a single nationality, with said nation denying sending them, you'd just match your troops in, put everyone to the sword then burn their city down.

Unfortunately** mass civilian casualties aren't an acceptable battle-tactic anymore. Plus, that'd turn all survivors of that ex-country against you, meaning you'd need to do something about all the immigrants and refugees from Islamic-State Occupied territories that are already in your country who now have a massive grudge against you for blowing up their homeland and shooting their families.

So by this point you're literally putting an entire race of people in camps and massacring civilian because they might be IS supporters. You'd basically be Hitler.

*(Read: Totally barbaric)
** Obviously Sarcasm.

 

I would only vote for Trump out of spite.

 

He doesn't care about your reasons. He'll take any power you give him.

 

It doesn't look like the Republican Party is willing to let him run anyways given how much they've been talking about ways to stop him. He might run as an Independent if they find a loophole with which to remove him from the running as a republican candidate.

Of course that would just result in the Democratic candidate winning as the vote would end up split between Trump and whoever the republicans choose as their candidate.

 

Would not will. I'm not voting for Trump, the only reason I would do so, would be if I were particularly(really, really) spiteful about something related to politics for some reason.

 

There's no level of spite that makes voting for American Hitler acceptable.

 

I don't think the sort of things one does out of spite could be considered acceptable. That was the point of the post, I would have to be non compos mentis to vote Trump

 

I like Kasich, but he's got no chance. Cruz is a fool who distracted people from his voting record by doing the opposite of whatever Trump is doing. Sanders basically ignores the concept that you have to pay your bills and Hillary would tear up the Constitution.

I voted Trump for the nominee and I'll vote for him in the presidential election. I like the idea of building up our borders, I like the idea of pulling back businesses so that our money isn't hemorrhaging to other nations. I like the idea of making an America that works first for Americans. I'm sick of my country being whored out and then punished when it tries to hold some back for itself, I'm sick of criminals being allowed to run free at the expense of law-abiding citizens, I'm sick of watching my money swirl down the endless government drain to prop up people who have no intention of ever getting off welfare.

And a huge chunk of the country feels the same way I do. For years and years, both parties courted minority groups and fringe demographics and then yammered on about the silent majority. Well now the silent majority has someone who speaks to their concerns and everybody else is upset because they're being drowned out. You can't stump the Trump. Make America great again.