Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics with John Mearsheimer" video.

  1.  @rd264  America IS exceptional in that the rights of the individual supersede the whims of the state. We've drifted away from those principles, which makes us a lot less exceptional than we were and than we can be. We have a lot of pretentious assholes in our government who think they're playing the Great Game like colonial empires of the past, and that is not at all exceptional, but a reversion to the Old Way of doing things, instead of the Exceptional Way laid out for us in our founding. No entangling alliances. Take care of OUR business and stop propping up old colonial empires and trying to build our OWN colonial empire. American Exceptionalism SHOULD mean that we are ANTI-imperialist. But our so-called leaders use it as an excuse to behave very UNexceptionally.
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  2.  @ajaypasricha9855  In hindsight, he hired Bolton and a bunch of neocons, which was a mistake, but he parted ways with most of them. Bolton ended up hating Trump for not keeping bad-faith and destabilizing promises made by clowns like Bolton to the Kurds.
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  3. Lying to the public about strategic matters has been going on since the end of WW II. Our intelligence heads solemnly inflated the level of threat from USSR and CCP by a factor of 10 in security hearings in Congress. Sometimes more than a factor of 10. Neocons will argue that those were necessary lies to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. I would say that our provocations kept the Soviet lie going decades longer than it would have otherwise, without such a clear and present threat by a warlike and imperialist USA. I would rather than the USA export its brand of democratic republic by living the right way within our borders, first, trading fairly with other nations, refusing trade with nations who abuse the rights of their people, and defending to the death any and all states in our union. If a country wants us to defend them, they can put in for statehood, and we have a process for that. On the flip side, I think a state should be able to secede if it wants. Just run our country in a truly liberal - i.e., limited-government - way, and states won't want to do that. Let that model of government prosper or fail according to how it handles itself, rather than by force.
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  4. It's OK to lie in ANY situation, at least for the "ends justify the means" fascist/elitist crowd.
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