So very, very much to unpack in such a little one-off…
First, even Chomsky isn’t talking about ‘every president’–he’s focusing on the post-WWII presidents only.
Second, while I like a lot of Chomsky’s stuff, his claims here don’t quite stand up to muster. To declare the actions of the US indictable, he has to take the position that US forces were involved in the actions in question. While that’s clearly true in some of his examples, many of his examples are cases of proxy fights–we provide financial and materiel support to some group that then turns around and commits war crimes. I scanned the Geneva Conventions and… nope. Doesn’t apply to such situations, only to direct actions by signatory States. Short form, unless it involves boots on the ground, there’s very little the GC has to say about it. Sure, you can take a position that there’s no ethical or moral distinction, but Chomsky uses the word ‘indictable’ repeatedly, and that is about the law, not about ethics or morals, and if Raidah doesn’t know THAT difference yet, she should change majors now, to something like, I dunno, fingerpainting.
Third, if we expand it to that ethical/moral framework, then it gets really fun, because there’s literally no nation of note that has not done so in one way or another. By Chomsky’s standards, allying with Stalin to bring down Hitler would qualify as a war crime (as Stalin’s own regime was absolutely committing such atrocities). Please feel free to discuss this with any of the folks who would’ve been in Auschwitz for another few months without coordinated effort.
Of course, Chomsky is wonderfully one-sided in his analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which when viewed honestly simply illustrates my prior point–both sides at this stage have so many Geneva Convention violations that pretty much the entire leadership of both nations should be in the Hague.
Now, if Raidah has a real alternative to trying to change the system other than seeking power within it, I’m all ears. But as is almost always the case in such positions, we’ve gotten nothing of that nature. And while the president alone is unlikely to be able to change things for the better, having someone who agrees that things need to change in that position is VITAL if we’re ever going to achieve anything. Just the Veto and SCOTUS appointments pretty much assure that.
If Raidah gave two flying fucks about anything other than her shitty little status games, she’d be sounding Dorothy out as a potential ally, proposing that with some effort, they might be able to make a two-front attack that would actually get some results. But she’s only caring about taking cheap shots.
JRivest
The “genius” of that comment is that it doesn’t need to be true. 1) this is a liberal arts college, a lot of the students would just assume it’s true; 2) an explanation as to how and why it’s not, like Freemage has given above, would have to be long-winded and nuanced. But if you are explaining yourself, you are playing defense. On a purely rational level, Raidah isn’t making much of an argument: she said something short, quippy and wrong, and didn’t provide any sources or evidence for her claims. But she’s not making a rational argument. On an instinctual, lizard-brain level, she’s on the offensive, and a Dorothy who plays defense would be on the defensive. She’d lose the social encounter.
The only way to win here is not to play. But that also feels like losing. You could quip back, and then it might be a toss up, except we know Raidah has a lot more practice and Dorothy is far too kind to be good at that sort of thing.
Decidedly Orthogonal
“Well aren’t we lovely today. May the rest of your day be so as well.”
The bullshit asimmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
ktbear
Indeedy. Having said that, the amount of interesting stuff Ive learned while doing research to rebuff said BS has made doing so well worth the effort. Helps I dont have a life I guess.
Ah, Chomsky, the darling of leftists who are cool with atrocities as long as they’re committed by anti-Americans.
Taffy
I thought he was a garden gnome you had to carry through a carnival after winning him in a shooting gallery.
Jamie
He can be both.
He’s also the purveyor of an incredibly seductive theory of language that I wish was true because it makes my brain happy, but is also colossal bullshit.
People are complicated and Chomsky is a complicated kind of bad. In this context, the relevant bad is that he’s a war crimes apologist. Both historically, and with respect to current events.
Yeah, there’s a lot of value in tearing down the idealized picture that many Americans have of the country, but many who start down that path wind up blaming America for everything and absolving other countries of any responsibility.
Marillius
You realize this webcomic artist is extremely sociolist right? Like, he believes in helping poor, starving and dying people without putting them into an early grave through debt related stress.
Noam Chomsky is, and I wish I was exaggerating here, a genocide denier. So long as those genocides were carried out by a communist government (see: Khmer Rouge).
And on a less controversial note, he’s also the least useful sort of pundit. All he does is take snipes at imperialism, which we all know is bad. He doesn’t offer any coherent plans for a better world, because it’s easier to gain traction by just repeating various forms of “everything is bad and will continue to be bad until my idealized form of communism arrives to save us. ‘
thejeff
He ignores that imperialism isn’t just a Western capitalist thing, but basically just a variant of what every powerful country has done throughout history.
Aussir
Also, despite Putin literally saying “We are attacking Ukraine because it belongs to us in an imperial sense and it was a mistake for Lenin to even nominally carve it off from the empire in the first place”, Chomsky has been sadly pushing the idea that “Russia *had* to invade Ukraine and murder thousands of people because the USA is big and mean and they’re so scared of it, just let them kill Ukrainians unopposed and seize their territory, that’s what anti-imperialism is”.
thejeff
A lot of socialist/communist types use an old Leninist definition of “Imperialism” where it’s an inherently capitalism thing, rather than a basic part of state’s foreign policy dating back to the Bronze Age.
When Communist nations exercise influence over client states and build spheres of influence and buffer states, that’s something completely different than what capitalist nations do.
C.T. Phipps
There’s a lot of “my side” defense that Leftists engage in as much as Right types. I say this as a Leftist. The idea that as long as its anti-American hegemony then it must be justified because if the communists are as bad (or worse) than Americans during the Cold War then that forces you to realize, GASP, some of the points they may raise could be true and not to completely villify them.
Marillius
I have never met or read a leftist ever claim to support communism seriously. Not only because communism has had it’s name dragged through the mud by dictatorships pretending to be communist, but because leftists are specifically socialists, a different idealogy entirely. If you, sir, believe you know any leftists that support communism as any more then a very general framework for fairness (everyone gets equal blank) then you don’t know leftists. Which makes it strange that you claim to be one. Do you watch ANY leftist media?
Chomskey isn’t left. He’s an old crazy man who sometimes says things EVERYONE quotes. The right quotes him all the time too. Everyone does. He’s a meme machine. That’s it.
thejeff
Just to be clear here: You don’t know any leftists who support communism because you define leftists in way that means they don’t support communism?
Blakey
You define leftists as “specifically socialists”, who you believe are definitionally not communists, and think there’s somehow something meaningful in the fact they’re not communists? When that’s literally just how you define the term?
I don’t know how to even start to unpack this, but please, read something. Vaush or Hasan or whoever are not theorists and don’t even have a particularly firm grasp of their own beliefs, let alone what other strains of left wing thinkers believe. This is a rather breathtaking take, and not in a good way.
Near as I can tell, Raidah’s idea of a ‘loftier goal’ is ‘sit on the sidelines and complain about whoever is in charge.’ There’s a direct path from this sort of deliberate disengagement and the elections of Reagan, Bush and Trump. It amounts to hollow posturing.
“Everything is awful forever. Therefor I have no responsibility to try to improve things or help others, and instead am morally justified in spending my entire life reveling in my own petty selfishness. QED.”
Maybe she just sees a vulnerability in one of Joyce’s friends and strikes at it. Doesn’t necessarily reflect her personal politics at all.
It would be amusing if she was a hard core leftist who really believes that. Goes well with the classism we’ve seen from her before.
Thag Simmons
Pretty sure she’s Muslim. Very easy to imagine her having a completely justified dislike of the united states federal government
Ed Callahan
I don’t think we know how Raidah actually feels about the US government. Here, she’s taking a knife to Dorothy (who she barely knows) as a minor step toward a larger. Or is it Asher’s goal?
Thag Simmons
I think if she didn’t believe something like this she’d have chosen a different line of attack
I posted about Raidah and Roz downthread and I should have done that here instead.
Sajuuk-Khar
ROZ WOULD EAT HER ALIVE. I SAID IT DOWNTHREAD TOO. Roz would snap her little opportunist butt like a TWIG. GET HER, ROZ. GET THE FAKE PROGRESSIVE PETIT-BOURGEOIS ASSHOLE.
foamy
I feel like that description might well apply equally well to Roz herself.
Sajuuk-Khar
Roz believes in her positions. Call her, quite correctly, what you will—spiteful, holier than thou, selfish—but she’s shown an unwavering commitment to women’s rights, and honestly, her plan to derail Robin’s campaign was stupid and self-centered, but it came from a genuine place.
I cannot imagine she would cotton to Raidah’s horse shit for a second.
And she wants to be a lawyer? Speaking as someone currently in law school…if she keeps this attitude in law school, she won’t make it through 1L. Plus, depending on what kind of law she wants to go into (and I’m guessing it isn’t Patent Law), the odds of her having to do something at some point she deeply disagrees with are high. Someone who wants to be a lawyer has no business being on a high horse about someone who wants to be President.
I hate this girl. “David” “Jennifer” She’s out to destroy, I don’t think war crimes are safe from her.
Archieve
Just noticed that, really hoping Walky doesn’t keep going along with that ‘David’ nonsense.
Oz
She’s like, a slightly more coherent Mike.
SeanR
Mike stood up for his friends, and called them out when they were being blind to their own failings.
Raidah is just a jerk. Same power set. Totally different motive behind its use.
thejeff
Mike, in his own words, spent 5 years poking Amber’s bear to turn her into a rage bomb to use against her father.
Radiahs definitely going out of her way to be an ahole here. I can only guess she’s decided Dorothy is too close to Joyce to recruit and not worth feigning politeness to, and she seems to be trying to isolate Walky, getting him to walk away after a friend just got insulted.
GholaHalleck
Pecking order. Dotty’s got the potential to be a leader of lackeys. Radiah is making sure Dotty knows she’s not above her in the pecking order.
And Radiah doesn’t share lackeys.
justin8448
This is, IMHO, an excellent description of what’s going on here. Thank you for providing it!
The distinction is that she knows Dorothy cares about being ethical, while Raidah only seems to care about ethics insofar as the standards required to practice law. So she knew that was an insult that’d land on Dorothy, but if someone tried to counter by mentioning that lawyers are sketchy, Raidah wouldn’t care.
Joy
It’s very strategic. Fortunately you could just be dismissive of her if she says that. “Noted? You’re really mean. Bye.”
There’s certainly some truth there, although I hold to the belief that “anyone who wants the job, doesn’t deserve the job (and certainly shouldn’t have it)”
I don’t buy that at all and I think it’s ridiculous.
Bathymetheus
Socrates figured out 2500 years ago that giving power to people that want it is a bad idea.
thejeff
This leads logically to the conclusion that inherited monarchies are a better form of government than representative democracies, since anyone getting elected in a democracy must be trying to, but there’s at least some chance that the child of a ruler doesn’t actually want the throne.
620 thoughts on “Goals”
Ana Chronistic
I didn’t see that on the list of requirements, is that on a secret menu? ? Would it be a loftier goal to become an anarchist dictator?
?
Ana Chronistic
alt: “said the one who SHOTS FIRED“
someone
Ok, I will.
“said the one who had the first SHOTS FIRED“
Shitbird
Every single president of the United States has been a war criminal: https://youtu.be/5BXtgq0Nhsc
Freemage
So very, very much to unpack in such a little one-off…
First, even Chomsky isn’t talking about ‘every president’–he’s focusing on the post-WWII presidents only.
Second, while I like a lot of Chomsky’s stuff, his claims here don’t quite stand up to muster. To declare the actions of the US indictable, he has to take the position that US forces were involved in the actions in question. While that’s clearly true in some of his examples, many of his examples are cases of proxy fights–we provide financial and materiel support to some group that then turns around and commits war crimes. I scanned the Geneva Conventions and… nope. Doesn’t apply to such situations, only to direct actions by signatory States. Short form, unless it involves boots on the ground, there’s very little the GC has to say about it. Sure, you can take a position that there’s no ethical or moral distinction, but Chomsky uses the word ‘indictable’ repeatedly, and that is about the law, not about ethics or morals, and if Raidah doesn’t know THAT difference yet, she should change majors now, to something like, I dunno, fingerpainting.
Third, if we expand it to that ethical/moral framework, then it gets really fun, because there’s literally no nation of note that has not done so in one way or another. By Chomsky’s standards, allying with Stalin to bring down Hitler would qualify as a war crime (as Stalin’s own regime was absolutely committing such atrocities). Please feel free to discuss this with any of the folks who would’ve been in Auschwitz for another few months without coordinated effort.
Of course, Chomsky is wonderfully one-sided in his analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which when viewed honestly simply illustrates my prior point–both sides at this stage have so many Geneva Convention violations that pretty much the entire leadership of both nations should be in the Hague.
Now, if Raidah has a real alternative to trying to change the system other than seeking power within it, I’m all ears. But as is almost always the case in such positions, we’ve gotten nothing of that nature. And while the president alone is unlikely to be able to change things for the better, having someone who agrees that things need to change in that position is VITAL if we’re ever going to achieve anything. Just the Veto and SCOTUS appointments pretty much assure that.
If Raidah gave two flying fucks about anything other than her shitty little status games, she’d be sounding Dorothy out as a potential ally, proposing that with some effort, they might be able to make a two-front attack that would actually get some results. But she’s only caring about taking cheap shots.
JRivest
The “genius” of that comment is that it doesn’t need to be true. 1) this is a liberal arts college, a lot of the students would just assume it’s true; 2) an explanation as to how and why it’s not, like Freemage has given above, would have to be long-winded and nuanced. But if you are explaining yourself, you are playing defense. On a purely rational level, Raidah isn’t making much of an argument: she said something short, quippy and wrong, and didn’t provide any sources or evidence for her claims. But she’s not making a rational argument. On an instinctual, lizard-brain level, she’s on the offensive, and a Dorothy who plays defense would be on the defensive. She’d lose the social encounter.
The only way to win here is not to play. But that also feels like losing. You could quip back, and then it might be a toss up, except we know Raidah has a lot more practice and Dorothy is far too kind to be good at that sort of thing.
Decidedly Orthogonal
“Well aren’t we lovely today. May the rest of your day be so as well.”
But yeah, not Dorothy’s skill set.
Ana Chronistic
The bullshit asimmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
ktbear
Indeedy. Having said that, the amount of interesting stuff Ive learned while doing research to rebuff said BS has made doing so well worth the effort. Helps I dont have a life I guess.
Jamie
Ah, Chomsky, the darling of leftists who are cool with atrocities as long as they’re committed by anti-Americans.
Taffy
I thought he was a garden gnome you had to carry through a carnival after winning him in a shooting gallery.
Jamie
He can be both.
He’s also the purveyor of an incredibly seductive theory of language that I wish was true because it makes my brain happy, but is also colossal bullshit.
People are complicated and Chomsky is a complicated kind of bad. In this context, the relevant bad is that he’s a war crimes apologist. Both historically, and with respect to current events.
Aussir
That’s Nome Chogmsky.
Ana Chronistic
you mean GNOME Chomsky
thejeff
Yeah, there’s a lot of value in tearing down the idealized picture that many Americans have of the country, but many who start down that path wind up blaming America for everything and absolving other countries of any responsibility.
Marillius
You realize this webcomic artist is extremely sociolist right? Like, he believes in helping poor, starving and dying people without putting them into an early grave through debt related stress.
Moon
Noam Chomsky is, and I wish I was exaggerating here, a genocide denier. So long as those genocides were carried out by a communist government (see: Khmer Rouge).
And on a less controversial note, he’s also the least useful sort of pundit. All he does is take snipes at imperialism, which we all know is bad. He doesn’t offer any coherent plans for a better world, because it’s easier to gain traction by just repeating various forms of “everything is bad and will continue to be bad until my idealized form of communism arrives to save us. ‘
thejeff
He ignores that imperialism isn’t just a Western capitalist thing, but basically just a variant of what every powerful country has done throughout history.
Aussir
Also, despite Putin literally saying “We are attacking Ukraine because it belongs to us in an imperial sense and it was a mistake for Lenin to even nominally carve it off from the empire in the first place”, Chomsky has been sadly pushing the idea that “Russia *had* to invade Ukraine and murder thousands of people because the USA is big and mean and they’re so scared of it, just let them kill Ukrainians unopposed and seize their territory, that’s what anti-imperialism is”.
thejeff
A lot of socialist/communist types use an old Leninist definition of “Imperialism” where it’s an inherently capitalism thing, rather than a basic part of state’s foreign policy dating back to the Bronze Age.
When Communist nations exercise influence over client states and build spheres of influence and buffer states, that’s something completely different than what capitalist nations do.
C.T. Phipps
There’s a lot of “my side” defense that Leftists engage in as much as Right types. I say this as a Leftist. The idea that as long as its anti-American hegemony then it must be justified because if the communists are as bad (or worse) than Americans during the Cold War then that forces you to realize, GASP, some of the points they may raise could be true and not to completely villify them.
Marillius
I have never met or read a leftist ever claim to support communism seriously. Not only because communism has had it’s name dragged through the mud by dictatorships pretending to be communist, but because leftists are specifically socialists, a different idealogy entirely. If you, sir, believe you know any leftists that support communism as any more then a very general framework for fairness (everyone gets equal blank) then you don’t know leftists. Which makes it strange that you claim to be one. Do you watch ANY leftist media?
Chomskey isn’t left. He’s an old crazy man who sometimes says things EVERYONE quotes. The right quotes him all the time too. Everyone does. He’s a meme machine. That’s it.
thejeff
Just to be clear here: You don’t know any leftists who support communism because you define leftists in way that means they don’t support communism?
Blakey
You define leftists as “specifically socialists”, who you believe are definitionally not communists, and think there’s somehow something meaningful in the fact they’re not communists? When that’s literally just how you define the term?
I don’t know how to even start to unpack this, but please, read something. Vaush or Hasan or whoever are not theorists and don’t even have a particularly firm grasp of their own beliefs, let alone what other strains of left wing thinkers believe. This is a rather breathtaking take, and not in a good way.
Dragonfire
He should’ve stuck to linguistics.
(He’s shit at that, too.)
Concolor44
Raidah is plain-spoken. Also she is a monumental ASS.
Freemage
Near as I can tell, Raidah’s idea of a ‘loftier goal’ is ‘sit on the sidelines and complain about whoever is in charge.’ There’s a direct path from this sort of deliberate disengagement and the elections of Reagan, Bush and Trump. It amounts to hollow posturing.
justin8448
“Everything is awful forever. Therefor I have no responsibility to try to improve things or help others, and instead am morally justified in spending my entire life reveling in my own petty selfishness. QED.”
Allandrel
Oh, so you have seen Rick & Morty.
thejeff
Maybe she just sees a vulnerability in one of Joyce’s friends and strikes at it. Doesn’t necessarily reflect her personal politics at all.
It would be amusing if she was a hard core leftist who really believes that. Goes well with the classism we’ve seen from her before.
Thag Simmons
Pretty sure she’s Muslim. Very easy to imagine her having a completely justified dislike of the united states federal government
Ed Callahan
I don’t think we know how Raidah actually feels about the US government. Here, she’s taking a knife to Dorothy (who she barely knows) as a minor step toward a larger. Or is it Asher’s goal?
Thag Simmons
I think if she didn’t believe something like this she’d have chosen a different line of attack
ValdVin
I posted about Raidah and Roz downthread and I should have done that here instead.
Sajuuk-Khar
ROZ WOULD EAT HER ALIVE. I SAID IT DOWNTHREAD TOO. Roz would snap her little opportunist butt like a TWIG. GET HER, ROZ. GET THE FAKE PROGRESSIVE PETIT-BOURGEOIS ASSHOLE.
foamy
I feel like that description might well apply equally well to Roz herself.
Sajuuk-Khar
Roz believes in her positions. Call her, quite correctly, what you will—spiteful, holier than thou, selfish—but she’s shown an unwavering commitment to women’s rights, and honestly, her plan to derail Robin’s campaign was stupid and self-centered, but it came from a genuine place.
I cannot imagine she would cotton to Raidah’s horse shit for a second.
danimagoo
And she wants to be a lawyer? Speaking as someone currently in law school…if she keeps this attitude in law school, she won’t make it through 1L. Plus, depending on what kind of law she wants to go into (and I’m guessing it isn’t Patent Law), the odds of her having to do something at some point she deeply disagrees with are high. Someone who wants to be a lawyer has no business being on a high horse about someone who wants to be President.
Kyrros
Yeah… sure… as a pre-law student, call every modern US President a war criminal… why not?.
Oh, right… because lawyers are known throughout the world and even history itself as being ‘upstanding citizens’ themselves? *rolls eyes*
Very much a glass house situation she’s in, comparing respective future career goals.
Thag Simmons
I mean, assuming she wants to be a prosecutor, this would be pretty hypocritical. If she wants to be a defense attorney, that’s a different story
shellshockbp
The only way she gets a pass on hypocrisy is if she becomes a public defender, and you don’t get to climb a social ladder doing that.
powderweapon
prosecutors do so many fucked up and illegal things, defense attorneys can be shitty but prosecutors are no better.
Thag Simmons
I didn’t say her criticism of Dorothy’s ambitions would be hypocritical if she wanted to be a prosecutor because I think it’s an ethical job.
Chokfi
How percicly would you have an Anarchist dictator. They’re contrasting terms…
Deviant
I think the term of Anarcho-dictators is “Chieftain”.
Ana Chronistic
THOSE Anarchists are 100% hypocrites
Scolopendra
Okay I love Dorothy but I gotta hand it to Raidah here, sometimes she spits truth
Caro
Dorothy’s also probably on edge because of what Becky said the other day. The world just seems set on wearing down her resolve lately
Amós Batista
She must be next her birthday. Or retrograde mercury.
Lumino
There’s a key distinction between being an honest jerk and just being a complete bongo.
Vanessa
I hate this girl. “David” “Jennifer” She’s out to destroy, I don’t think war crimes are safe from her.
Archieve
Just noticed that, really hoping Walky doesn’t keep going along with that ‘David’ nonsense.
Oz
She’s like, a slightly more coherent Mike.
SeanR
Mike stood up for his friends, and called them out when they were being blind to their own failings.
Raidah is just a jerk. Same power set. Totally different motive behind its use.
thejeff
Mike, in his own words, spent 5 years poking Amber’s bear to turn her into a rage bomb to use against her father.
Joy
Emotional abuse 😮
Concolor44
Indeed. Raidah crossed the line.
Debs
I mean yeah she’s right but its still a shitty thing to say to someone as soon as you see them.
Plus, being a lawyer isn’t exactly a saintly profession either
Archieve
Radiahs definitely going out of her way to be an ahole here. I can only guess she’s decided Dorothy is too close to Joyce to recruit and not worth feigning politeness to, and she seems to be trying to isolate Walky, getting him to walk away after a friend just got insulted.
GholaHalleck
Pecking order. Dotty’s got the potential to be a leader of lackeys. Radiah is making sure Dotty knows she’s not above her in the pecking order.
And Radiah doesn’t share lackeys.
justin8448
This is, IMHO, an excellent description of what’s going on here. Thank you for providing it!
ValdVin
Oh, I wish it was out of her way. This seems to be her default path. As is said, it’s her lane,and she likes being in it.
Wondering how often she was lie this with Jacob. Can I be charitable and figure she has other good qualities yet unseen on panel?
SeanR
She’s…physically attractive? When she’s not making a face or opening her mouth to state an opinion?
shellshockbp
When you’re a sociopath, you get very good at putting on masks.
ValdVin
Florence King once described a man who was trying to get a date/her phone number with:
“If I could only put a paper bag over his personalityn”
Tawdry Quirks
The distinction is that she knows Dorothy cares about being ethical, while Raidah only seems to care about ethics insofar as the standards required to practice law. So she knew that was an insult that’d land on Dorothy, but if someone tried to counter by mentioning that lawyers are sketchy, Raidah wouldn’t care.
Joy
It’s very strategic. Fortunately you could just be dismissive of her if she says that. “Noted? You’re really mean. Bye.”
Cholma
There’s certainly some truth there, although I hold to the belief that “anyone who wants the job, doesn’t deserve the job (and certainly shouldn’t have it)”
Joy
I don’t buy that at all and I think it’s ridiculous.
Bathymetheus
Socrates figured out 2500 years ago that giving power to people that want it is a bad idea.
thejeff
This leads logically to the conclusion that inherited monarchies are a better form of government than representative democracies, since anyone getting elected in a democracy must be trying to, but there’s at least some chance that the child of a ruler doesn’t actually want the throne.
Sirksome
So it’s okay to say anything to anyone as long it has a kernel of truth? She could’ve just said “That’s nice.”
DailyBrad