The U.S. government shutdown has halted pay to the TSA, but not ICE, so ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports[1]. If you fly to the U.S., starting Monday apparently, the first think you're likely to see is masked gunmen giving you the eye.
The TSA is responsible for more than just airports. As someone with family who works (worked) on port security in the maritime division, I would argue that Chesterton's Fence [0] applies here just as much as anywhere else.
I feel like "form your own private paramilitary organisation with minimal oversight, then expand their reach by having them take over the operations of other government departments" has been done before somewhere, as part of a larger plan.
This is a historical pattern: Bringing border forces to bear against your own population, because those border forces are trained to deal with people who don't have the rights of the state.
They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way. Already proved in the first term. What their existence demonstrates is winning election is not super complex if you can find enough groups to precisely target and pander/capture attention. Social media has been a force multiplier for such behavior and the people that have emerged dont have any other skill other than attention capture. But thats short term win like full focus on marketing while product and operations have no hope of catching up. Every "large plan" will fail. Large plans in complex ever changing environments always need massive cooperation of very different skills. Never happens sustainably with just one skill dominating all.
Hey, tone doesn't translate well over text, they did not use anu tone tags, and I'm already terrible at reading tone in the best of times. Lol, can you really blame me for at least asking? Haha.
Enter the country and you interact with CBP and that hasn't changed. CBP agents are the ones who murdered the legal observers in Minneapolis so there's that.
TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.
Indeed, particularly given that ICE agents are going to be deployed to airports. Their penchant for killing civilians and otherwise violating civil rights only to lie about their actions hardly seems like a good fit for airport security duties they haven’t been trained to perform.
Yes, they are flooding the zone with many alternative explanations so that they're both all deniable, and all accessible to anyone who finds just one of them convincing. This is a strategy.
No, they chant Death To America because the United States is a successful, secular society based on Christian values. That is perceived as a direct threat to an Islamic Republic which funds the spread of Shia Islam.
Khomeini regularly said that the United States was the cause of all Muslims' problems - and his hatred of Israel was due to her being the only regional US ally. You've got the cause and effect backwards.
Would the current state of affairs qualify for cancelling the mid-terms? Is that overly cynical?
Not in the US, not a US citizen or voter. My suspicion is the answer is "no, but it is not a given that a competent supreme court which looks likely to overturn the WH exists, if they say they want to do this"
It's absolutely overly cynical and also evidence that you are completely misinformed.
It's never happened in the entire history of this country, including when we literally had a Civil War.
Your media sources are creating a belief in your head that is utterly deranged from reality.
For example, ICE agents haven't "murdered legal observers" in any other locations than Minneapolis, despite the fact that they are operating all over the country. The reason for this is that the "legal observers" were actually super aggressive protesters in an environment that bordered on a riot due to the fact that local police were not creating a perimeter for these operations. Note that none of this has happened in Texas or Arizona or North Carolina or Florida, despite the fact that vastly more deportations are occurring in those locations. But your media doesn't tell you these details, does it?
seems from outside, that many things happen, that's never happened in the entire history of this country, as your prez says many times a day, that "you've never seen before".
otoh, i saw ice agents to murder a super aggresive protester, who was actually trying to help a super aggressive woman dumped to the earth by ice agents, from many angle. also, and i followed minnesotans aggressively filming everywhere what happens to them. and i saw, how aggressive they were to bovino and co.
All Red states. So if you roll over and let the federal government trample your state's sovereignty, they won't murder people in your state? Somehow I don't think that's what federalism was supposed to mean.
Trump nearly passed out with glee when he was talking to the Ukrainian president and found out elections are canceled, by their law, due to martial law because of the war. I would not so casually assume he won't try it here.
Seriously, it’s totally fair to think that there’s no way they’ll be cancelled. There are some checks and balances left. But if you voted for Trump, you should be DEEPLY concerned about how much he loves toying with the idea. It’s frankly more impeachable than nearly anything I’ve heard of, since it’d be fucking treasonous to cancel elections. Demand better from your representatives and officials, and stop voting MAGA so we can get out of this mess.
All the people who decided to stay in the Middle East even when the second carrier group was en route, and then thought they were news worth enough to get on camera and comment about there being no commercial flights out of there.
That's the strategy of Project 2025, make all the nice things we have much worse and broken so there's no choice but to scrap and start over. While they're in charge, of course.
Very few other people have Trump's ability to channel frustration in a nonspecific-but-charismatic way that connects the various extreme factions of the American right.
None of those factions will be gone, but their battles will weaken their cause more than they have since 2016.
Some of this can be seen by how even his own popularity falls any time he actually has power, since there are no effective ideas there, only misplaced blame, and that doesn't sustain support for four years. Without him there at all in an out-of-power period, the "blame the Jews"/"blame the brown people"/"blame the women"/"blame the baby-killers"/"blame the anti-Semites"/"blame the sexual deviants" factions will likely fail to find another person they all rally around.
The extreme factions of the right are a very small portion of the electorate. They generally don't decide elections beyond the primaries and generally turn out in favor of the right regardless.
Dems lean more on moderates/independents. Trump won because he persuaded that group, particularly the young men.
25-33% of the electorate is no small fraction. There's a group of people who have been consistently supportive of this government's policies since 2016. Take any policy survey, and the fraction that supports the right-wing side of action always amounts to a consistent 25-33% of the votes.
Having somebody less incompetent, senile, and corrupt at the helm may not make things "magically go back to normal," but it's a step in the right direction. Necessary but not sufficient.
Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
>Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
It's that a significant number of Americans are mean, selfish, racist, arrogant, and delight in the victimization of those they perceive as belonging to an outgroup.
2/3 of your electorate either voted for him (meaning they liked what they saw) or were sufficiently unbothered by him to not vote (meaning they were more or less okay with Trump).
These crocodile tears about how "we were bamboozled" are just that. It was plainly obvious to the rest of us looking in from outside, even before his first term but certainly after, that he was exactly the person he is now, and fully two thirds of American voters accepted this.
Many liberal people think he is an abberation, they would gladly return back to "normal". The point is, he is a symptom of a larger unaddressed sickness, there is no return to business as usual, it will only return far worse.
To prompt with something more specific: there is a possibility of a Gavin Newsom vs. Tucker Carlson in 2028, it's crucial to understand why Tucker might win and why he would be ten times worse than Trump.
America has neglected working class people for decades. The economy has shifted from supporting earning income to make a decent living, to protecting assets (bail outs etc.) Trump tapped into this and tricked these people into electing him, bringing along right wing or whatever they are.. and they got hold of power. Don't think numbers are there for this culture war crowd to stay in power unless they hitch a ride with someone.
(edited: typo)
You know what else would make everything worse? A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
But hey, it's not like they funded and backed a bunch of theocratic fanatics who committed a mass atrocity in Israel and provoked a war that destroyed Gaza or anything, right? Or that they were exporting massive quantities of drones to Putin for him to use to murder Ukrainian civilians, right? They were nice guys, and the 35K protesters they murdered deserved it, right?
We should have just let things keep rolling the way they were. It was all going so well, and at no point would the regime that was actively inciting terrorism all over the world for the last 47 years be a threat if they got nukes on the ICBMs we now know they had been a problem. I mean, heck, those missiles they shot at Diego Garcia were just fireworks, purely for decorative purposes, right?
The HN bubble is truly grand. My college girlfriend was the daughter of parents who fled the Ayatollah in 79. You people on here think everyone shares your values and worldview, and that the mullahs in Iran are rational actors. They are not. They are part of a specific sect of Shiite Islam that truly believes that bringing about an apocalypse is a desirable thing. It's such a foreign concept to you that you dismiss it as fantasy and misinformation. But it's real. And you simply lack the life experience to know it. You've never seen entire masses of people infected with the radical religious mind viruses that those of us with firsthand experience with religious fundamentalists have seen.
Imagine the Branch Davidians in Waco with nukes, and you start to scratch the surface of what this would look like if you let it play out.
> A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
Man, imagine that, how scary. I bet in theocratic regimes there's a bunch of stupid stuff going on, like a ~Secretary~ Minister of ~War~ Defense that justifies an attack on a foreign nation by calling it a holy war and prays every time he gives a speech to the troops.
Those theocrats probably do things like de-funding every science project they can when they get power. Or worse, maybe they think vaccines are against god's will and get a bunch of kids sick by opposing vaccines for preventable diseases. Hell they probably don't even teach their kids about evolution or gay people.
Can you imagine if a nation like that had nuclear weapons and long range missiles? Why, they might start a war for no reason.
Yeah it's a good thing we dismantled that regime and totally didn't empower the most extreme and radical portion of it while removing the politicians who'd tempered that and turned the population against the US and Israel.
But hey, at least we've lifted sanctions and we are now sending them even more money because the oil market was completely destroyed so that's great right?
Obviously this is the best strategy because we can see how the Taliban was completely dismantled in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation right?
Unless you are proposing genocide of Iran or an eternal occupation, what we've done is kicked a hornets nest.
I feel the same. People have been brainwashed into hating people from their own countries (either the US or countries in Europe) so much that they'll rationalize islamism as a defense mechanism: when people chant "death to america" and burn american flags on campuses, they see nothing wrong.
When there are "sharia patrol" cars driven by bearded men in a major US city, they see nothing wrong.
When the mayor of NYC say it's now time for american citizens to "follow the teachings of Muhammad" (oh we could talk about his life), they still see nothing wrong. I think that mayor has been seen inviting a known terrorist recently too (don't have the link but I'm not surprised).
We're talking about people who are rooting for a regime publicly hanging athletes for speaking against islamism and sending islamist guards into hospitals to finish the wounded.
I'm 100% convinced that the islamist republic of Iran would nuke Israel with the atom bomb as soon as they'd have it. These people, just like Hamas, have sworn they'll erase Israel off the map.
I'm not jewish but I know that after Israel, I'm next.
It's sadly impossible to have a discussion with those refusing to see the inherent evil of islamism. And usually westerners people constantly refusing to criticize islamism tend to be the very same who defend feminism and who make, shamelessly, fun of christians (and I'm no christian either btw): go figure.
The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
There isn't a single "red state" in the US that requires women to cover their heads and bodies in public or executes people for speaking out against the "regime".
But you pretend like that's the case, while acting like Iran was just minding their own business when they have exported terror for decades, along with drones being used to murder Ukrainian civilians. I mean, I guess supporting Ukraine was soooo 2022-23, and now we're on to the new fashion trend of supporting the people helping to murder them because "orange man bad."
I agree THAT ethno nationalist country in the middle east, with long-range ballistic missiles, secret nukes and a secret nuclear doctrine that hasn't signed any Non-Proliferation treaty should make everybody worried. But that country isn't Iran.
It's the only country in the world with nuclear weapons that at this moment gets bombarded by missiles right now, if that doesn't make you worried you aren't paying attention.
That's not what made it sound like Yoda. It was sticking "has been" at the end, and I agree there was a better choice stylistically: "Crazy how effective this admin has been at making everything worse."
One of President Donald Trump’s lines during the 2016 presidential campaign was his promise that, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”
I'm American, I didn't vote for Trump, so I don't feel like it's me dealing with adverse effects of my decisions.
I did vote for Eric Adams in NYC, and while Eric Adams didn't advertise blatant corruption as part of his campaign, insofar that I can be blamed for his idiocy and bribes I will accept responsibility. I didn't vote for him the second time around and I feel foolish for voting for him the first time.
People vote for the current government. I’m not sure why you would expect others’ to pay for americas internal messes, we’re already busy dealing with the external ones.
The federal government hasn't passed a budget because the Democrats are blocking it. They feel it's worth the political gamble to cause Americans pain and that it'll turn on Trump.
That’s going to age as well as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did. The reality is that only Israel was threatened by Iran and the US is caught up in it simply because we act as their vassal.
Then how do you explain the rockets taking on Saudi Arabia? Baharain? UAE? Even Diego Garcia - which is further from Iran than Israel is. Just as far as Europe is. So they were only developing weapons that could target Israel?
I got jumped in Italy couple of weeks ago. I was wearing a "volleyball dad" hoodie my kid bought for me but did not realize that the "volleyball dad" is etched in the middle of a large American flag covering my entire back. Luckily (for him, not me :) ) three police officers were 10 meters away walking the area dealing with apre ski drunks and restrained him. fun times
The current situation has been giving me so many flashbacks. Here, my GWB-era teens had the terror threat level, and now we're lazily reimagining State Department traveling warnings as a dark slapstick version (be afraid everywhere, American!)
Iran's source is the one who said they did it in the first place :facepalm: and it was confirmed by UK
As soon as they felt like denying it would be better for them they did and took down https://en.mehrnews.com/ where it was published. Unless you say mehr was defaced and the news were planted by Mossad
The U.S. government shutdown has halted pay to the TSA, but not ICE, so ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports[1]. If you fly to the U.S., starting Monday apparently, the first think you're likely to see is masked gunmen giving you the eye.
No thankyou.
[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cede0qyvqz3o
Would anyone argue that the TSA, Theatre Security Agency, shouldn’t be defunded?
Replacing it with nothing in an orderly fashion? Probably a good move.
Replacing them with ICE as a political gesture? Not so much
The TSA is responsible for more than just airports. As someone with family who works (worked) on port security in the maritime division, I would argue that Chesterton's Fence [0] applies here just as much as anywhere else.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
This isn’t that.
There's an argument for that, though I think replacing it with Trump's basically-unregulated private military is pretty concerning.
It will be so much fun to watch the World Cup from outside the US...
I feel like "form your own private paramilitary organisation with minimal oversight, then expand their reach by having them take over the operations of other government departments" has been done before somewhere, as part of a larger plan.
This is a historical pattern: Bringing border forces to bear against your own population, because those border forces are trained to deal with people who don't have the rights of the state.
They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way. Already proved in the first term. What their existence demonstrates is winning election is not super complex if you can find enough groups to precisely target and pander/capture attention. Social media has been a force multiplier for such behavior and the people that have emerged dont have any other skill other than attention capture. But thats short term win like full focus on marketing while product and operations have no hope of catching up. Every "large plan" will fail. Large plans in complex ever changing environments always need massive cooperation of very different skills. Never happens sustainably with just one skill dominating all.
They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way.
And that's stopped them?
We know the answer. Whats stopping ebola or a hurricane from over running everything?
It has. (Unless you're being sarcastic, in which case I'm not surprised it went over my head. Lol.)
of course they were
Hey, tone doesn't translate well over text, they did not use anu tone tags, and I'm already terrible at reading tone in the best of times. Lol, can you really blame me for at least asking? Haha.
Enter the country and you interact with CBP and that hasn't changed. CBP agents are the ones who murdered the legal observers in Minneapolis so there's that.
TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.
It would really be amazing if the end result of all of this is the post-9/11 DHS finally gets reverted back to what we had before.
> So ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports
It's even more disgusting than that:
"Tom Homan: ICE officers will not assist with airport security scanning amid TSA staffing shortage"
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/5795316-homan-ice-...
I can't tell what's supposed to be disgusting about this unless you stopped reading past the inflammatory headline.
Funny, everyone outside of the US should exercise increased caution when dealing with or visiting the US.
Also, everyone within the US already should exercise increased caution.
Or better yet: don't visit the USA at all.
Indeed, particularly given that ICE agents are going to be deployed to airports. Their penchant for killing civilians and otherwise violating civil rights only to lie about their actions hardly seems like a good fit for airport security duties they haven’t been trained to perform.
> duties they haven't been trained to perform
Which implies they've been trained?
Fair, they haven’t. I wonder how long it will take them to use tear gas when the line at a Starbucks kiosk gets a little too long.
I fear the day when that happens.
I travelled to the US some weeks ago and was anxious but everything turned out ok. I'm happy I don't have to go back any time soon.
Has there been any official WH note on the need for this war, yet? Or objectives?
This war is not a war. Not a.war war. Just a "war". No war has been declared.
It's a special operation
We already won. Are you tired of winning yet?
20 or so far, there is a new one each day
Yes, they are flooding the zone with many alternative explanations so that they're both all deniable, and all accessible to anyone who finds just one of them convincing. This is a strategy.
And all of them different from the last and/or contradicting each other at times.
It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Probably spaghetti.
All I know is we are accomplishing them and we'll be done in 3 weeks to 3 years. Also, this isn't a woke war, which I was worried about.
It might have something to do with the nation which chants "Death to America" also developing nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.
Why do they chant that? Is it due to acting against US interests in favor of another state, maybe one in the Levant?
No, they chant Death To America because the United States is a successful, secular society based on Christian values. That is perceived as a direct threat to an Islamic Republic which funds the spread of Shia Islam.
Khomeini regularly said that the United States was the cause of all Muslims' problems - and his hatred of Israel was due to her being the only regional US ally. You've got the cause and effect backwards.
What are you saying? Speak plainly so we don't have to guess.
"Bombings will continue until you stop hating us"
This is so non-specific to be meaningless.
Like actually tell us what you know so we can make useful decisions about our safety.
> Like actually tell us what you know so we can make useful decisions about our safety
"Americans abroad should follow the guidance in security alerts issued by the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate."
Is this an orange, purple, or magenta threat level?
Approaching ultraviolet, invisible to the naked eye but still very much a threat. “there is no war, only excursions.”
Would the current state of affairs qualify for cancelling the mid-terms? Is that overly cynical?
Not in the US, not a US citizen or voter. My suspicion is the answer is "no, but it is not a given that a competent supreme court which looks likely to overturn the WH exists, if they say they want to do this"
AFAIUI, elections in the US are not run by the federal government but by the states.
Trying to cancel elections seems like it'd be a lot harder than in other countries.
It's absolutely overly cynical and also evidence that you are completely misinformed.
It's never happened in the entire history of this country, including when we literally had a Civil War.
Your media sources are creating a belief in your head that is utterly deranged from reality.
For example, ICE agents haven't "murdered legal observers" in any other locations than Minneapolis, despite the fact that they are operating all over the country. The reason for this is that the "legal observers" were actually super aggressive protesters in an environment that bordered on a riot due to the fact that local police were not creating a perimeter for these operations. Note that none of this has happened in Texas or Arizona or North Carolina or Florida, despite the fact that vastly more deportations are occurring in those locations. But your media doesn't tell you these details, does it?
seems from outside, that many things happen, that's never happened in the entire history of this country, as your prez says many times a day, that "you've never seen before".
otoh, i saw ice agents to murder a super aggresive protester, who was actually trying to help a super aggressive woman dumped to the earth by ice agents, from many angle. also, and i followed minnesotans aggressively filming everywhere what happens to them. and i saw, how aggressive they were to bovino and co.
so, i really understand your rant.
> Texas or Arizona or North Carolina or Florida
All Red states. So if you roll over and let the federal government trample your state's sovereignty, they won't murder people in your state? Somehow I don't think that's what federalism was supposed to mean.
Trump nearly passed out with glee when he was talking to the Ukrainian president and found out elections are canceled, by their law, due to martial law because of the war. I would not so casually assume he won't try it here.
Seriously, it’s totally fair to think that there’s no way they’ll be cancelled. There are some checks and balances left. But if you voted for Trump, you should be DEEPLY concerned about how much he loves toying with the idea. It’s frankly more impeachable than nearly anything I’ve heard of, since it’d be fucking treasonous to cancel elections. Demand better from your representatives and officials, and stop voting MAGA so we can get out of this mess.
My first thought: You don't say?
Right? What kind of person does not follow the news but subscribes to the State Department notifications?
All the people who decided to stay in the Middle East even when the second carrier group was en route, and then thought they were news worth enough to get on camera and comment about there being no commercial flights out of there.
Crazy how effective at making everything worse this admin has been.
That's the strategy of Project 2025, make all the nice things we have much worse and broken so there's no choice but to scrap and start over. While they're in charge, of course.
Showing that government doesn't work by making sure government doesn't work.
Project 2025 and the Trump administration is the most success ant-growth movements have ever had.
Horseshoe theory
Trump is but a symptom of an underlying sickness. Things won't magically go back to normal after he dies.
Very few other people have Trump's ability to channel frustration in a nonspecific-but-charismatic way that connects the various extreme factions of the American right.
None of those factions will be gone, but their battles will weaken their cause more than they have since 2016.
Some of this can be seen by how even his own popularity falls any time he actually has power, since there are no effective ideas there, only misplaced blame, and that doesn't sustain support for four years. Without him there at all in an out-of-power period, the "blame the Jews"/"blame the brown people"/"blame the women"/"blame the baby-killers"/"blame the anti-Semites"/"blame the sexual deviants" factions will likely fail to find another person they all rally around.
The extreme factions of the right are a very small portion of the electorate. They generally don't decide elections beyond the primaries and generally turn out in favor of the right regardless.
Dems lean more on moderates/independents. Trump won because he persuaded that group, particularly the young men.
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/why-republicans-can-win-with-t...
25-33% of the electorate is no small fraction. There's a group of people who have been consistently supportive of this government's policies since 2016. Take any policy survey, and the fraction that supports the right-wing side of action always amounts to a consistent 25-33% of the votes.
> Trump's ability to channel frustration in a nonspecific-but-charismatic way
If Trump is the most charismatic political personality America has to offer...
Having somebody less incompetent, senile, and corrupt at the helm may not make things "magically go back to normal," but it's a step in the right direction. Necessary but not sufficient.
Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
>Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
It's that a significant number of Americans are mean, selfish, racist, arrogant, and delight in the victimization of those they perceive as belonging to an outgroup.
2/3 of your electorate either voted for him (meaning they liked what they saw) or were sufficiently unbothered by him to not vote (meaning they were more or less okay with Trump).
These crocodile tears about how "we were bamboozled" are just that. It was plainly obvious to the rest of us looking in from outside, even before his first term but certainly after, that he was exactly the person he is now, and fully two thirds of American voters accepted this.
Did someone say they would?
Many liberal people think he is an abberation, they would gladly return back to "normal". The point is, he is a symptom of a larger unaddressed sickness, there is no return to business as usual, it will only return far worse.
To prompt with something more specific: there is a possibility of a Gavin Newsom vs. Tucker Carlson in 2028, it's crucial to understand why Tucker might win and why he would be ten times worse than Trump.
Most people think Trump is the lynchpin, when in fact, its his masters that decide what happens next.
Even if he was, a lot of things have been destroyed that will take a lot longer to rebuild. Notably, trust.
It would delay things, he has a "charisma" that his followers look like.
But it's true he is a symptom.
Could you enlighten the class as to what you believe the underlying sickness is?
It will be a lot harder to convince voters when he's gone... if the US still has elections
Why wouldn't it?
Trump has assured us there will be no need for them. I believe him. He lies a lot, but not about his own ambitions.
America has neglected working class people for decades. The economy has shifted from supporting earning income to make a decent living, to protecting assets (bail outs etc.) Trump tapped into this and tricked these people into electing him, bringing along right wing or whatever they are.. and they got hold of power. Don't think numbers are there for this culture war crowd to stay in power unless they hitch a ride with someone. (edited: typo)
You know what else would make everything worse? A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
But hey, it's not like they funded and backed a bunch of theocratic fanatics who committed a mass atrocity in Israel and provoked a war that destroyed Gaza or anything, right? Or that they were exporting massive quantities of drones to Putin for him to use to murder Ukrainian civilians, right? They were nice guys, and the 35K protesters they murdered deserved it, right?
We should have just let things keep rolling the way they were. It was all going so well, and at no point would the regime that was actively inciting terrorism all over the world for the last 47 years be a threat if they got nukes on the ICBMs we now know they had been a problem. I mean, heck, those missiles they shot at Diego Garcia were just fireworks, purely for decorative purposes, right?
The HN bubble is truly grand. My college girlfriend was the daughter of parents who fled the Ayatollah in 79. You people on here think everyone shares your values and worldview, and that the mullahs in Iran are rational actors. They are not. They are part of a specific sect of Shiite Islam that truly believes that bringing about an apocalypse is a desirable thing. It's such a foreign concept to you that you dismiss it as fantasy and misinformation. But it's real. And you simply lack the life experience to know it. You've never seen entire masses of people infected with the radical religious mind viruses that those of us with firsthand experience with religious fundamentalists have seen.
Imagine the Branch Davidians in Waco with nukes, and you start to scratch the surface of what this would look like if you let it play out.
> A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
Man, imagine that, how scary. I bet in theocratic regimes there's a bunch of stupid stuff going on, like a ~Secretary~ Minister of ~War~ Defense that justifies an attack on a foreign nation by calling it a holy war and prays every time he gives a speech to the troops.
Those theocrats probably do things like de-funding every science project they can when they get power. Or worse, maybe they think vaccines are against god's will and get a bunch of kids sick by opposing vaccines for preventable diseases. Hell they probably don't even teach their kids about evolution or gay people.
Can you imagine if a nation like that had nuclear weapons and long range missiles? Why, they might start a war for no reason.
47 years? What a convenient sounding number. Wonder where you got it from.
You certainly built a large strawman out of one sentence.
Yeah it's a good thing we dismantled that regime and totally didn't empower the most extreme and radical portion of it while removing the politicians who'd tempered that and turned the population against the US and Israel.
But hey, at least we've lifted sanctions and we are now sending them even more money because the oil market was completely destroyed so that's great right?
Obviously this is the best strategy because we can see how the Taliban was completely dismantled in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation right?
Unless you are proposing genocide of Iran or an eternal occupation, what we've done is kicked a hornets nest.
> The HN bubble is truly grand.
I feel the same. People have been brainwashed into hating people from their own countries (either the US or countries in Europe) so much that they'll rationalize islamism as a defense mechanism: when people chant "death to america" and burn american flags on campuses, they see nothing wrong.
When there are "sharia patrol" cars driven by bearded men in a major US city, they see nothing wrong.
When the mayor of NYC say it's now time for american citizens to "follow the teachings of Muhammad" (oh we could talk about his life), they still see nothing wrong. I think that mayor has been seen inviting a known terrorist recently too (don't have the link but I'm not surprised).
We're talking about people who are rooting for a regime publicly hanging athletes for speaking against islamism and sending islamist guards into hospitals to finish the wounded.
I'm 100% convinced that the islamist republic of Iran would nuke Israel with the atom bomb as soon as they'd have it. These people, just like Hamas, have sworn they'll erase Israel off the map.
I'm not jewish but I know that after Israel, I'm next.
It's sadly impossible to have a discussion with those refusing to see the inherent evil of islamism. And usually westerners people constantly refusing to criticize islamism tend to be the very same who defend feminism and who make, shamelessly, fun of christians (and I'm no christian either btw): go figure.
I honestly thought you were talking about the US in your first paragraph.
The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
There isn't a single "red state" in the US that requires women to cover their heads and bodies in public or executes people for speaking out against the "regime".
But you pretend like that's the case, while acting like Iran was just minding their own business when they have exported terror for decades, along with drones being used to murder Ukrainian civilians. I mean, I guess supporting Ukraine was soooo 2022-23, and now we're on to the new fashion trend of supporting the people helping to murder them because "orange man bad."
Israel has killed more civilians than Russia and Iran combined.
I don’t think your concern for civilian casualties is genuine.
Hey, you forgot “they hate us for our freedoms” in your propaganda spiel.
I agree THAT ethno nationalist country in the middle east, with long-range ballistic missiles, secret nukes and a secret nuclear doctrine that hasn't signed any Non-Proliferation treaty should make everybody worried. But that country isn't Iran.
It's the only country in the world with nuclear weapons that at this moment gets bombarded by missiles right now, if that doesn't make you worried you aren't paying attention.
Agreed. But also why are you speaking like Yoda?
They're not; they're speaking colloquially: this is the word "It's" omitted from the beginning.
---
*EDIT*: Corrected word. Lol.
That's not what made it sound like Yoda. It was sticking "has been" at the end, and I agree there was a better choice stylistically: "Crazy how effective this admin has been at making everything worse."
Didn’t even strike me as weird phrasing. Or rather: strike me as weird phrasing it did not.
"It's," perhaps?
Yeah, nope, you're right. Not sure why my brain thought "The". Haha. I blame on the roughlu 2½ hours of sleep I got last night. Yay insomnia!
I am tired of winning.
winning what?
One of President Donald Trump’s lines during the 2016 presidential campaign was his promise that, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”
https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2016/user-clip-too-much...
Trump says US is 'winning so much' in longest ever State of the Union - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQUGjRtq-M - February 25th, 2026
Hence the joke, "I am tired of winning." as the situation continues to rapidly degrade through policy choices. So much winning, it's too much.
why are common people paying for the incompetence of a gvt.
to not be political this lies at the heart of principles, morals, meritocracy
values that the current gvt lacks & things that drove america forward.
That's because the common people voted for the incompetent. Not being political either, of course.
In what part of the world does the populace not suffer for the incompetence of their leaders? St. Petersburg? Ramallah? Port Au Prince?
Because it's the government they voted in. Typical American take. Wanting no responsibility for the adverse effects of your decision.
I'm American, I didn't vote for Trump, so I don't feel like it's me dealing with adverse effects of my decisions.
I did vote for Eric Adams in NYC, and while Eric Adams didn't advertise blatant corruption as part of his campaign, insofar that I can be blamed for his idiocy and bribes I will accept responsibility. I didn't vote for him the second time around and I feel foolish for voting for him the first time.
People vote for the current government. I’m not sure why you would expect others’ to pay for americas internal messes, we’re already busy dealing with the external ones.
The federal government hasn't passed a budget because the Democrats are blocking it. They feel it's worth the political gamble to cause Americans pain and that it'll turn on Trump.
There you go - mystery solved.
What the fuck was even the intended purpose of starting this war in Iran? Like in their mind, what was the best case scenario?
Best case scenario was probably keeping nuclear weapons and basaltic missiles out of the hands of those who chant Death to America.
Maybe ripping up the international plan to keep Iran from gaining nuclear weapons during his first term wasn’t the best idea.
That plan would have expired ten years after January 2016. In other words, already excited two months ago.
It was a ten year plan, not a permanent plan.
That’s going to age as well as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did. The reality is that only Israel was threatened by Iran and the US is caught up in it simply because we act as their vassal.
Then how do you explain the rockets taking on Saudi Arabia? Baharain? UAE? Even Diego Garcia - which is further from Iran than Israel is. Just as far as Europe is. So they were only developing weapons that could target Israel?
The fact that Iran has now launched missiles at civilian areas in a dozen or so countries unrelated to the war shows that this is clearly false.
But Trump already obliterated their nuclear capacity last year! Were they lying then or now?
I got jumped in Italy couple of weeks ago. I was wearing a "volleyball dad" hoodie my kid bought for me but did not realize that the "volleyball dad" is etched in the middle of a large American flag covering my entire back. Luckily (for him, not me :) ) three police officers were 10 meters away walking the area dealing with apre ski drunks and restrained him. fun times
Crazy does and crazy do. Be vigilant and try not to set these people off. There's no rhyme or reason, some people are just faulty in the head.
Didn't happen
oof I would not wear an American flag outside the country. We've hurt too many feelings. Like any good American though, a Canadian flag works.
>Like any good American though, a Canadian flag works.
Please don't do this.
people*
r/thathappened
A small price for demonstrating that our El-Douche is always right and a stable genius.
lol.
The current situation has been giving me so many flashbacks. Here, my GWB-era teens had the terror threat level, and now we're lazily reimagining State Department traveling warnings as a dark slapstick version (be afraid everywhere, American!)
https://theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mi...
https://theonion.com/no-blood-for-oil-vs-exactly-how-much-oi...
Trump wrecks everything he touches.
Bankrupting a casino is a literal thing he did and also a pretty decent metaphor for what he's doing now.
When do we expect Iranians to actually attack US military bases outside the middle east? I heard there were already drones flying over bases in the US: https://wjla.com/news/local/unidentified-drones-fly-over-for...
They technically have:
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-fires-missiles-remot...
NATO says they can't confirm this Israeli claim: https://aje.news/ohi6b8?update=4425189
And Iran denies it as well: https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2035477318055985648
Makes you wonder who really did launch those missiles?
Iran's source is the one who said they did it in the first place :facepalm: and it was confirmed by UK
As soon as they felt like denying it would be better for them they did and took down https://en.mehrnews.com/ where it was published. Unless you say mehr was defaced and the news were planted by Mossad