Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "White House open to Trump-Putin meeting amid rising tensions" video.

  1. Trump's re-defining the terms of engagement from the "We're war hawks when we're not busy being absolute pussies" of the past. I think there's a LOT of common ground. We bitch about ISIS, but we're the ones that exploited radical Islam and jihad, to oppose the Soviets in Afghanistan. We showed them the way and we gave them the means (RPGs and SAMs versus Soviet helicopters). EVERY time Westerners have sought economic or strategic gains in the Middle East, all we've accomplished is a lot of misery, death, and unintended consequences. We PUSH a bloody brand of liberation theology in the Middle East and then we bitch about radical Islam. Like Judaism before it, Islam was and is a way to unify the oppressed against the oppressor, which flows uninterrupted into religious oppression when theocracy takes over the government. I suspect that Islam would have evolved very similarly to Christianity in the West if we hadn't reinforced its most dangerous and regressive forms. And MAYbe they'd've found a better balance between acceding to secular reality (and sprucing-up their dogma/doctrine) and societal decay. Formerly Christian - now mostly secular - Western governments have evolved to embrace the new, but haven't entirely figured out how to sustain - literally - a healthy society. Just when we licked getting women voting, educated and in the workplace, we have found that the women doing so aren't creating a next generation to continue that. This is the sort of thing that Jordan Peterson ponders much more intelligently than I.
    2
  2. Russia's trying to maintain a naval presence with ports with quick access to the Mediterranean. Yes, they have the Black Sea, but they undoubtedly worry about access through the Bosporous Strait. I think if you look at it from the Russian perspective, Islam remains a major thorn in their side, with access to (and from) the Black Sea being very dependent on the whims of Turkey, which to the Russians has got to be an unsettling strategic reality. When we speak of Benghazi and the nonsense that went on, there, our meddling put an end to Russian use of the port, there. Or at the least, destabilized any deals he had with Gadhafi, by overthrowing the dictator who made the deal with Russia, who "bought" access to Benghazi in much the same way they "bought" access to Tartus in Syria: by forgiving debts incurred by those countries to the former Soviet Union. I think Russian perfidy and meddling needs to be seen against the backdrop of our own meddling perfidy in the region. What it reminds me of is how European empire builders aced the Kaiser out of the kinds of colonialism England, France, Spain and Portugal had practiced for centuries. This sheds a different light on England and France joining a coalition to mess with the Russians in Syria. It's nothing new. It's just a continuation of acing-out the competition. And while I hate what they did in Crimea and Ukraine, against the backdrop of serious security concerns for the Russian Bear, their hereditary quest for warmwater ports, and the insidious rise of Islam outside and within Russian borders, it starts taking on more of a "We're fighting for our country and our way of life and we're Russians, so cheating is a part of winning." I bet there is a lot we have in common with the Russians, when it comes to fighting the larger culture war against Islam. They could be a nice counterbalance to China, as well. And China's a MUCH more significant threat from economic warfare that we INVITE by running up our national debt the way we have, to keep the entitlement and war-machine gravy trains running on time, here.
    1
  3. But Travis Harris! What about Free Stuff? Don't we ALL get Free Stuff? I want my Free Stuff. Do YOU have any stuff? Can I have your stuff? Let me re-phrase: See that guy from the gov't with the gun? Yeah. Give him your stuff, so HE can give it to me. OK? No? Tough shit. Am I doing this right? I so WANT to be a liberal.
    1
  4. blanca José: Ad hominem attack. Negative 100 points in the Conversation Game. You lose. And the last FOUR administrations left big messes behind.
    1
  5. Jeremy Backup: You realize that Trump's approval ratings are higher than Obama's were at the same point in his administration? Maybe you liked what Obama did. I didn't. Lots of people didn't. Who ran your 12% poll and who was polled? A bunch of Neoliberal/Neoconservative types who abound in foreign policy circles? And those of us who DO support the direction Trump's taking things see the fact-free attacks on him as the biggest source of the polarization taking place. And his support grows, daily, one red-pilled liberal at a time. Trump's not the answer. But he's AN answer to the destructive policies of the recent (and not-so-recent) past. We can't be sure how things will end up, but it's nice to have a president who appears to be on the side of Western Values and the rule of law, as opposed to his predecessors - especially his immediate predecessor - who believed that law comes in a poor second to their personal opinion.
    1
  6. Yes, Jeremy Backup: Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao killed in the name of Jesus Christ. You are so far from reality it must be the pure bliss of pure ignorance for you. Congratulations. My way is more difficult. And maybe you're ignorant of the Caliphate and all the killing that goes and has always gone on in the name of Allah and Holy Jihad. Christianity's history is certainly not perfect. People always want to use religion as a unifying and mobilizing force. But you're so far off on your numbers of actual lives lost in the name of Christianity that it's beyond ridiculous.
    1
  7. Daniel Ellington: If things continue as they have, Trump 2020 is highly likely. But the Chinese could pull the plug at any moment. The Federal Reserve can pull the plug at any moment. There's not much Trump can do to end the fiscal bleeding that he inherited.
    1
  8. I think we just saw the first act in that direction, in spite of appearances.
    1
  9. I'm still waiting for the end foretold by scripture and Nostradamus. It's coming. -2000- no 2012 is Y-Year. No, wait. That was 6 years ago. Never mind.
    1
  10. Oh, I don't think Putin "wins," but there's a lot of common ground to explore that could lead to EVERYbody winning a little bit.
    1
  11. Well let's see how this all pans out. It appears that the Russians got a heads-up and got their guys out of the way. It also appears that the missile strikes may've been more symbolic than strategic. I don't think the way to disentangle ourselves from the region can be achieved thru weakness. But making a big show may be A way. Just declare victory and quietly disengage. And if Trump DOES get it (more) right than his predecessors, I KNOW the criticism will continue, and even ramp up, assuming that's possible. The clowns running our foreign policy for DECADES do NOT want us to clean up our act. They (and their cronies in industry) LOVE chaos. Everything they've supposedly done FOR stability has DEstabilized the world. I don't think the Russians would need much excuse to HELP us against ISIS and back off what they're doing in Iran and Syria. I think the Russians want to keep that port at Tartus up and running. And I don't know that it's any of our business, one way or the other. We need to realize how these countries perceive big bullies like the U.S. A lot of what we hate about those guys is just stuff they were pushed into doing to fight back, to survive. Or because we meddle, we help assholes rise to power in the first place.
    1
  12. Hobbit Stomper: Try again. You should watch FOX as an opposing viewpoint to the other big media outlets. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC are all pretty close to lock-step. If that's where you get your news and you never watch FOX, you're missing a lot. But if you only listen to FOX and the other outlets, you're still missing a lot. They're ALL pretty biased and pretty ignorant, AFAIC. But you've gotta hold your nose and check facts for yourself. "Proxy Wars" is a handy phrase that describes a lot of what goes on. But it's not some Golden Compass explaining everything.
    1
  13. Good link, george cushing. Shit's been goin' on a long time. Eggheads in think tanks probably started mapping this shit out during the '70s. And that's not even touching on the shit we did drawing lines on maps in the Middle East after WW I and WW II.
    1
  14. Russia's in it for their own strategic gain. Period. I think there are ways for them to get the stability THEY want that don't include this shit with Iran. There's a cold war (demographics) that very much threatens Russia from within. We hate what they're doing, but most or all of it can be explained by the siege Islam has placed on Russian territories in the region.
    1
  15. Putin very much IS playing games. But that doesn't make him the Great Satan we should fear. We just have to understand what the real stakes are. I think we could find a lot of common ground and engage with the Russians in ways that greatly reduced the worst of what we hate about what he's done and is doing.
    1
  16. The last thing Putin wants is all-out war. His interests are far more parochial than the "Putin is Satan" crowd can admit. And his capabilities are 3rd-rate, once we get past our hysteria and look at the economic and military facts. We had similar hysteria in the '70s and '80s. The Soviets were up to no good. Given. But they weren't then and aren't now 1/10 as dangerous to us as the hysterical neocons and neolibs are building them up to be. The biggest danger from them is in the collectivist thinking they sneaked into our ethos that is doing more to turn us into a fascist/socialist state, from within, than any kind of serious military threat. And that's all shit from decades ago when they were still Soviets, and probably not even driven by Soviets, but by demagogues in power in our own government. "Free Stuff!" "Get your Free Stuff here!" and "Russians are Satan! Let's make enough missiles to destroy the planet 3 times over, because SATAN!" I was part of the hysteria in the Reagan era. But FACTS I learned, since, showed how our shitty intelligence inflated the threat to drive the war machine and put money in the pockets of their cronies in industry. And there's been a revolving door between those industries and the intelligence and political elites for decades.
    1
  17. If you're a (poor) student of history as I am, then you (foolishly) believe as I do, that often the Good is served for all the wrong reasons. You need to take a step back from the posturing and parse the larger tide of human progress and living conditions of regular folks. For instance, underneath the hysteria, it sounds like civilians in Damascus are no longer being shelled by Islamic rebels. Peace is setting in in the North. The wars of aggression (overt and covert) have been going on for decades, spearheaded by a bunch of so-called foreign-policy and intelligence experts that serve elites and NOT the people. I'm giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, because for the first time in a LONG time, we're breaking away from a CRAZY globalist ideology that is ill-intentioned and incompetent, at the same time. If we're getting it RIGHT, for once, we'll see things settle down pretty quickly. Neocons and Neolibs are going to kick and scream if we stop our meddling. I suspect that the way Trump's going about things is pushing us in the right direction, while simultaneously counteracting the propaganda from Deep-State-type "experts" who've been fucking everything up for DECADES. It'll get louder before it gets quieter, but it looks like Trump is sorting out a lot of phony bullshit foreign policy that ultimately has served NObody, except maybe some political cronies in the war industry. I think what's been happening isn't quite conspiracy, but a lot of "fellow travelers" in the service of a global gov't that can only thrive by destroying all vestiges of nationalism in the West. It's all wrong-headed. It's all authoritarian/totalitarian in its thrust. I'd like to see a little less nationalism, but it's a long-term goal, achieved by MORE autonomy on the people side, which is the opposite of what these one-worlders seem to want. It appears they want CHAOS, so they can step in and run things from on high. This is exactly the opposite of a positive one-world vision. National boundaries should dissolve over time NOT because somebody's running the whole show, but because folks generally enjoy similar freedoms and prosperity on BOTH sides of the border, which then makes the border an artificial barrier to free trade between free people. It's not something you can do away with from on high, which is where elites and elitists always get it wrong, thinking THEY will be able to call all the shots. As long as gov'ts treat their people like shit, there's no chance of a just, worldwide coming-together. Just like in love: If you love her, let her go. If she loves you she will come back. I think the long-term answer is to campaign for freedom, liberty, human rights and the prosperity that inevitably follows. The more of THAT we see and the more we LIMIT the central powers of gov't, the closer we will come to the ideal that contemporary Globalists THINK they want, but can only see authoritarian means to that end. One world can only take place by LIMITING central authority. Instead, we can't wait to find something NEW that gov't should stick its nose in. We're so stupid.
    1