Faits accomplis over a hundred years old are terribly irrelevant for people seeking better future prospects in life than offered by their only too often presently drought-stricken, war-torn and/or crime-ridden (etc. etc.) homelands tho.

Chronic and willful ignorance about any number of things is certainly one of the major problems with the US, but that's what happens when the cultural mindset is actively hostile to investing the resources of the state into the betterment of the populace and society (OH NOES COMMUNISMS) and critical self-reflection (Y U H8 FREEDUM). One result of which is that it's increasingly dependent on importing educated and intellectually developed workforce because so much of the potential of the native population is outright wasted through a chronic unwillingness to invest resources in developing it. Which obviously doesn't bode well in the long run.

to the fact that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not classified a war crime, despite the fact that a 1946 military investigation shows that Japan would've surrendered by November 1945 at the latest with zero aggression required

Uh, yeah, no. Strategic bombing was not a war crime, it was an universally accepted weapon everyone used to the extent their resources (in practice airforce makeups) allowed those days. It was certainly horribly inefficient in achieving its actual stated goals and based on seriously flawed theories and assumptions but that only became apparent in hindsight (which is a major reason pinpoint surgical accuracy became a major airpower developement goal thereafter).

And during the war Allies had basically zero human intelligence on Japan - by '45 the last Soviet spy networks on the ground were long since destroyed. They had to make their projections based on observations of Japanese military behaviour on the ground (ie. a consistent disregard of pretty much even the most basic laws and customs of war and fanatical willingness to fight to the death) and shocking incidents like the mass suicides of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa, which is what informed the extremely grim preliminary estimates for Operation Downfall.
Which was actually exactly what the Japanese high command intended; they were hoping that the apparent greater willingness of their troops and subjects to die would deter a final invasion on the as-such entirely accurate assumption the Democracies were altogether more sensitive to casualties than themselves. (Not that it took much; the mangaka Shigeru Mizuki, who lost an arm to an Allied air raid in Papua New Guinea, opined in an autobiographical work that the military's "contempt for death had perverted into contempt for life".)

In practice the Home Isles were being starved out and destroyed from the air already with entirely conventional weapons and the mood of the populace was such that the (very unpleasant) secret police were getting seriously worried about the possibility of a popular uprising; but the Allies had no way of knowing this at the time and quite understandably had zero desire to play further masochistic death-cult games with the ultranationalist nutters still in charge.
The Bombs, as it happens, did indeed have the desired effect - they completely discredited the deterrence argument of the fight-to-last hardliners (the second one dispelled any straw-grasping delusional hopes of the weapon somehow being an unique one-use affair) and allowed the moderates of the regime to actually sue for peace. Which in turn averted the unknowable but doubtless absolutely horrendous loss of life that would have accompanied Downfall - which, for the record, among other fun stuff envisaged large-scale use of chemical weapons as the Allies knew from signals intelligence the Japanese would be in no position to retaliate in kind (which as everyone had realised after the Great War was the only situation where using those things actually made any sense).

Uh, yeah, no. Strategic bombing was not a war crime, it was an universally accepted weapon everyone used to the extent their resources (in practice airforce makeups) allowed those days. It was certainly horribly inefficient in achieving its actual stated goals and based on seriously flawed theories and assumptions but that only became apparent in hindsight (which is a major reason pinpoint surgical accuracy became a major airpower developement goal thereafter).

Don't know if you could call dropping the A-Bombs 'strategic', seeing as Japan was already having huge swathes of its population, including senior citizens and children, being brutally murdered by firebombs. And even at the time, the U.S. high command had a very good idea of just how unnecessary the bombings were going to be- you can't exactly drag up the 'plausible deniability during wartime' defense when multiple people involved in the highest rungs of the war effort at the time actively and publicly declared that the bombings were unnecessary and brutal, including Dwight freaking Eisenhower. It isn't a matter of debate or an ambiguous issue, there is a laundry list of criticisms to be made against the supposed 'strategic' value of dropping the bomb- criticisms made not just by Japan, but by intellectuals and governments across the world, including multiple rulings by the International Court of Justice. The U.S. could have very easily just kept up their standard bombing strategy, or just informed Japan about the fact that they had the bomb in order to force a quicker decision. The U.S. knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender, and were looking for ways to do so upto four months before the bombs were dropped. There is no justification for what they did- the only reason it isn't formally judged and condemned as a war crime on the level of Auschwitz is because a) the U.S suppressed all criticism and used its heft to create distorted narratives about 'military necessity', b) international law hadn't remotely predicted how insane weaponry would become during the second world war and thus didn't have enough specific procedure regarding classification, even though the use of a bomb involving significant radiation counts under the prohibition of 'poisonous weapons'- most conventions regarding the use of nuclear weapons were written one month after the bombing, which is the only reason why the U.S. got away on a technicality, and one that many still feel is unjustified. The real reason they dropped the bomb was to strike fear into the rest of the world, assert their nuclear power and to prevent Russia from taking credit for inducing the Japanese surrender, which is why they carried out the bombings two days before Russia formally declared war on Japan and three months before their planned land invasion. On top of all this damning evidence and admissions, there is the fact that the Nagasaki bombings were genuinely an act of brutality- even if you distort facts and realities enough to justify dropping one nuke without warning, how exactly do you justify dropping another? The US has never provided a plausible answer, and the best available one is that they wanted to test out their plutonium bomb, since the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a uranium variant. That's all it was- an experiment, a demonstration, a way to kick off the arms race one length ahead of Russia. The only reason it isn't openly classified as such is because it'd be bad PR for the Good Guys from 'Murica who defeated the Nazis to reveal that they gave just as little of a shit about lives that their enemies did. There's really no debate to be had here- not when the entire reason the bombs were dropped was because Truman a) wanted to pull one over on Russia and b) was uninformed about how terrible the effects would be, but had to stick to his guns afterward..

"The entire reason Iran is such a shit hole, for example, is specifically due to the United States attempting a coup to install a friendly dictator. This resulted in Iran hating us and devolving into an authoritarian state that's a borderline theocracy."

No, that's not the entire reason. The US fucking around is a factor but let's not minimize the culpability of the theocracy for being a theocracy.

"The U.S. knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender,"

On their terms. The US wanted unconditional surrender. You can disagree with that, but it's the context.

"how exactly do you justify dropping another"

Japan hadn't surrendered yet.

"It isn't a matter of debate"

Then you link to Wiki page that says "This remains the subject of both scholarly and popular debate. "

In 2005, in an overview of historiography about the matter, J. Samuel Walker wrote, "the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue".[3] Walker stated, "The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States."[3]

When you make claims of certainty that are contradicted by your own sources, it's not a good look.

"The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States."

And that's really the nail in the coffin for the US. Russia declaring war on Japan wouldn't have been satisfactory to the elites in power because they believed it would make them look weak. It would, however, have been satisfactory to the rest of the world who rightly didn't give a fuck whether the Americans were the ones who saved the day. It was a bad decision to drop the bombs, just like it was a bad decision to not declare war on Germany immediately after it invaded Poland. Nothing can ever change my mind on these issues, and nothing can ever erase the stain of blood caused by the country I live in and tolerate daily.

Why do you care so much about this? It's in the past, gone, done with etc. None of us have time machines or ways to go back in time and change what has already happened. What we can do is try to make tomorrow better and live a happy today.

When you make claims of certainty that are contradicted by your own sources, it's not a good look.

Except that if you properly looked at my sources, the culpability of the U.S. is pretty clear in every sense? The only reason there ever was a 'debate' is because the U.S. suppressed discourse and because the ethics around dropping the atom bomb were still undefined around the time. There's also the fact that this occurred directly before the Cold War, a period marked by jingoism and patriotism wherein the U.S. idealized itself as the heroic, democratic counterpart to the 'evil, dictatorial' Soviets. As Throbelisk pointed out, the debate isn't about whether or not it was 'justified'- you could never hope to justify instantaneously murdering over 100,000 people for the actions of a government that they didn't vote for, because Japan throughout the 1930s and 40s was under military rule and had become a single-party state in 1940. The reason I linked the Wikipedia article wasn't to singularly prove my claim, but to give people a list of perspectives and sources that they could read up on in their own time, because a Wikipedia article alone is bound to be vague and self-contradictory. You'll see that most of the people who supported the bombing were reliant on outdated data and estimates, or from pro-government camps that rely on the whole 'every Japanese citizen would die for the Emperor' myth, with some even saying that 'there were no civilians in Japan'- a pretty convenient excuse to butcher said civilians. Heck, if you read the pro-bombing arguments carefully, you'll see that the article itself undermines them- the segment about Japan's 'refusal', for instance, is undercut by mentions of how unstable and deadlocked the country really was on an interior political level- not exactly a bunch of 'fanatics' that the U.S. had to demoralize. And the article about the necessity of a decisive bomb also mentions that the firebombings on Tokyo had killed just as many people, but still not prompted surrender, suggesting that only the Soviet Union's declaration of war was what truly defeated Japan, because they realized that the one power that might help them negotiate a conditional surrender was completely against them- a fact that could've been handily proven without the bombings if the U.S. merely waited. So yes, there really isn't a debate anymore- the vast majority of modern discourse upon the subject agrees that the bombings were a war crime intended to field test the bombs, strike terror into Russia, and cement U.S military supremacy. Anyone who says otherwise is either a mad devotee of the US government, woefully reliant on outdated information, or simply trying very hard to win an argument.

You are not going to convince people to change their minds based on what you post here. Getting hung up on one part of history while ignoring the rest of it and calling Americans evil isn't going to help.

Also can we please discuss something other than politics?

You are not going to convince people to change their minds based on what you post here.

By that logic, no one would ever discuss anything. Talking things out and exchanging viewpoints is productive- fundamentally, it helps you examine your own arguments and revise your perspective on the world. Without conversations, without communication, we'd be no more alive than a bunch of rocks. On this forum itself, I've discussed things with tons of interesting and diverse people. I've had engaging conversations, been proven wrong more times than one, learned new things, and made an impression. Looking back upon it all, even if I failed to produce a clear result nine times out of ten, I wouldn't say that it was pointless. I understand that these conversations and topics can get exasperating- it would be quite fun to live without needing to think about statistics and ethics and morality, in a world where everyone was happy and carefree and united in their love for fictional lesbians. But even if such a world exists, it isn't what we've got in the present day. Convincing yourself that history is irrelevant is to deny your own existence, and dismissing the value of discourse is to invalidate your own opinion. It's a contradictory, knee-jerk reaction that flies in the face of everything a 'forum' is supposed to represent. So while I understand that you might not want your feed to be clogged up with 'political' news, I don't think it should come at the expense of people who legitimately want to talk about their lives and the state of the world around them. As sad as it may seem, none of us can live in a vacuum.

Why do you care so much about this? It's in the past, gone, done with etc. None of us have time machines or ways to go back in time and change what has already happened. What we can do is try to make tomorrow better and live a happy today.

I care because I hear every single day how my fellow Americans attempt to distort and deny history and have actually gone completely insane because of it. We have millions of cultists in this country hanging on every word of their god-emperor and there's not a goddamn thing those of us who aren't insane can do about it. And these are the people threatening us daily with another civil war which would spell their complete annihilation. So excuse me if I can't just go, "oh well," and get on with my day.

rainbow8 posted:

"The entire reason Iran is such a shit hole, for example, is specifically due to the United States attempting a coup to install a friendly dictator. This resulted in Iran hating us and devolving into an authoritarian state that's a borderline theocracy."

No, that's not the entire reason. The US fucking around is a factor but let's not minimize the culpability of the theocracy for being a theocracy.

The theocracy wouldn't have been a problem if the US hadn't installed a dictator. The US helped install Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran in the early 50s. Mosaddegh, the prime minister at the time, was actually popular with the Iranian people. Pahlavi eventually became more and more authoritarian and tried to become an actual autocrat before the 1979 Revolution. Under Mosaddegh the country had become more liberal and progressive. But the UK and US didn't like the fact he had nationalized their oil industry which had been very profitable for the West. The 1979 Revolution was a direct result of the CIA initiating a coup and installing a dictator. If they hadn't done that then Iran would be a more progressive and democratic nation rather than the theocracy it is today.

Throbelisk posted:

I care because I hear every single day how my fellow Americans attempt to distort and deny history and have actually gone completely insane because of it. We have millions of cultists in this country hanging on every word of their god-emperor and there's not a goddamn thing those of us who aren't insane can do about it. And these are the people threatening us daily with another civil war which would spell their complete annihilation. So excuse me if I can't just go, "oh well," and get on with my day.

Those people are really quite frustrating. I recently ended a friendship with someone I've known for almost 20 years because he just refused to see any reason. He started falling for propaganda and misinformation and refused to listen to anything that ran contrary to the things he heard from that. People like Andy Ngo and James O'Keefe of Project Veritas are reliable and trustworthy despite both having a longstanding history of lying and misrepresenting information to try to paint a picture and one of them literally having been convicted over it in the past. Meanwhile experts in a given field with decades of experience are just full of shit. Random Youtube channels with <100 subscribers and unbiased titles such as "WHAT THE LEFTWING MEDIA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE!!" (yes, that was literally the title of a video he linked once to back up his views on BLM) are trustworthy but reputable media sources like Reuters and the Associated Press are not. He genuinely believes that the media is aligned against Trump and the Republicans. If you point out that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different major media groups around the globe that support widely varying and often conflicting ideologies then he just brushes it off as if that doesn't matter. But then you need to look no further than your bog standard Trump supporters the past few months to see the willful delusion. They're so far gone that they're starting to shit on Fox News for being liberal media despite having relied on Fox News as their "unbiased" news source for the last four years. And that's all because Fox News had the audacity to call the election for the candidate who won. The Republican party is starting to eat itself over this and these people are the reason why.

On a slight tangent, if anyone wants to read an interesting article, give this a read. I'm not going to suggest it's correct, in fact a decent chunk of the things given in the article seem to be some really generous interpretations, but it's still disconcerting just how many of the ones that are difficult to interpret differently seem to describe Trump. (And for the record I'm not suggesting Trump is actually the Antichrist or anything. Someone on another site I frequent linked in and I thought it was actually kinda interesting if for no other reason than to highlight the hypocrisy of American Christians supporting Donald Trump.)

The theocracy wouldn't have been a problem if the US hadn't installed a dictator.

I'm not excusing the US, but we're not wholly responsible either. The mullahs are making their own decisions to violate human rights, they're being compelled by the US.

As for antichrist stuff, there's a much shorter version here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/blog/antichrist/

On a slight tangent, if anyone wants to read an interesting article, give this a read.

I read as far as the point where he misquoted Revelation 13:1 before giving up:

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads, which stood for seven hills

The bit about the hills isn't in my Bible. Anyway, political leaders have been identified as the Antichrist ever since the time of Nero. What are the chances they got it right this time?

Every single person with a different take on things, for good or ill, has been held up as the "Antichrist" for as long as the Christian church has had dominion over the minds of the feeble. Every time I read or hear the word, I just roll my eyes and shake my head. That's about all the acknowledgement the subject really deserves.

Here's some interesting Arknights related pictures.

Some mini comics
Girl doctor x various female operators Most of the images are either of Surtr and/or Mostima. Many are NSFW
Ifrit and her family

What are the chances they got it right this time?

None, because there is and will be no Antichrist. David Willis, whom I linked to, is an atheist. But it's a striking way of calling out the hypocrisy and blindness of today's Evangelical Christians: they follow someone who should be anathema to them.

last edited at Dec 13, 2020 7:48PM

rainbow8 posted:

The theocracy wouldn't have been a problem if the US hadn't installed a dictator.

I'm not excusing the US, but we're not wholly responsible either. The mullahs are making their own decisions to violate human rights, they're being compelled by the US.

You're right that they are the ones responsible for their own actions. You're missing the point I'm making though. There's a very low chance they would have been in a position to make those awful decisions if not for the US's interference.

Lizbo posted:

On a slight tangent, if anyone wants to read an interesting article, give this a read.

I read as far as the point where he misquoted Revelation 13:1 before giving up:

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads, which stood for seven hills

The bit about the hills isn't in my Bible. Anyway, political leaders have been identified as the Antichrist ever since the time of Nero. What are the chances they got it right this time?

It doesn't appear to be from an "official" translation so it may be from a direct translation of the Hebrew texts, especially since a quick search for the exact phrase used on the website does give results where others are shown using the same quote. Mine (which was my grandfather's and looks to be the King James version) also doesn't use that exact wording. After a bit of searching I found this page which has this bit of text:

Having seven heads - So also the dragon is represented in Revelation 12:3. See the notes on that passage. The representation there is of Satan, as the source of all the power lodged in the two beasts that John subsequently saw. In Revelation 17:9, referring substantially to the same vision, it is said that “the seven heads are seven mountains”; and there can be no difficulty, therefore, in referring this to the seven hills on which the city of Rome was built (compare the notes on Revelation 12:3), and consequently this must be regarded as designed, in some way, to be a representation of Rome.

This suggests it is a matter of translation from the original text. And after a little more searching around, it seems like it could be a matter of another passage further on, Revelations 17:9 that they then backported to 13:1. So it doesn't appear to be so much misquoting as it is a matter of a theologist being more intimately familiar with the entire text than a normal person would.

This is all kinda superfluous to the point I was making anyways though. My point wasn't that Trump is the Antichrist. My point was that he ticks off a lot of the boxes the Bible uses to describe the Antichrist and yet tons of American Christians still support him despite him being so blatantly the antithesis of what a Christian is supposed to be.

Jean and her Amber doll Genshin Impact Amber x Jean
Klee and Qiqi Genshin Impact Klee x Qiqi

last edited at Dec 14, 2020 3:56PM

Oof, I haven’t gotten personal on this thread in years but this topic about Trump’s coup, the Antichrist and this Election really hits home for me. My dad has been watching conspiracy videos nonstop for the past several months and it’s been worrying me. He’s been watching Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bangino and several other channels complaining about the left and the “mainstream media”. Now he's sounds batshit insane. He’s defended every case of police brutality that’s been reported (and then turns around and deems Antifa a terrorist organization when he watches videos of Trump supporters being attacked by them). He’s gone on tangents about how China is trying to take over the world and that the U.S. can only stop it if Trump wins or some shit. He talks about how the covid vaccine is the mark of the beast (despite the fact that it’s impossible for a computer chip to be small enough to fit inside a syringe yet at the same time be able to be tracked by a satellite). He rants about how Christians are apparently being oppressed and claims Trump is “God’s way of punishing atheists who’ve slandered his people”. And the worst part is that he seems adamant to get me on his side too. The last Trump rally he went to he cut off the internet to the house so I’d have nothing to do while he’s gone (thankfully I had my hotspot) and he plays his conspiracy videos out loud and refuses to wear headphones. Plus not only that he keep obsessing over the rapture and keeps calling dates for when it’s supposed to happen (despite being wrong every time).

Thank goodness he’s the only person in my family that buys into this crap. My mom tells me that he’s going through a phase and I sincerely hope that’s true.

^ I don't know your family situation, but if your mom is still married to your dad, she has the responsibility to get treatment for him. Enabling him to continue like this is only prolonging the problem.

My mom has tried to refute him repeatedly to no avail. My parents have been arguing about the election for months. The majority of their arguments end with my dad screaming at her about how she's "brainwashed" and refuses to "look at the facts". I personally think that the best way to help my dad would be to set him up to have a discussion with someone who's an expert on these topics and educate him. I think maybe my brother can talk with him.

I would recommend calling a local hospital and asking about the procedural details for involuntary commitment. I don't know what state you're in, but some have better laws about that kind of thing than others. Mine, Tennessee, only allows it if the person poses an "immediate substantial likelihood of serious harm" to themselves or others, which is bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

I think you have to go before a judge or something and get a court order to have someone committed.

Anyway politics can often make people act illogical. I don't like Biden (or Trump for that matter but I voted for him as the lesser of evils in my mind) and often make my mind heard about him. Alas unless something crazy happens with that investigation of Hunter Biden and his father Joe I guess I'll have to begrudgingly accept Joe as President.

I don't like Biden (or Trump for that matter but I voted for him as the lesser of evils in my mind).

I'm sorry, what? You voted for a narcissistic lifelong grifter and failure of a human being because....why?

There are plenty of valid reasons to vote for Trump if you believe in the Republican agenda. He's been the most effective Republican president in three decades, and it's entirely possible that he has revamped the party's electorate so as to allow its continued dominance of vast swaths of the US. Or perhaps for many of Trump's voters, the prospect of a Biden administration would have a negative impact on their livelihoods, or their way of life, culturally. (the degree to which the latter points are true won't be apparent for several years still)

While political discussion is acceptable here, I'd definitely recommend great care in discussing personal voting choices, etc. from this point onward.

My mom has tried to refute him repeatedly to no avail. My parents have been arguing about the election for months. The majority of their arguments end with my dad screaming at her about how she's "brainwashed" and refuses to "look at the facts". I personally think that the best way to help my dad would be to set him up to have a discussion with someone who's an expert on these topics and educate him. I think maybe my brother can talk with him.

I'm so sorry, SF. That sounds like such a terrible situation, I can't even imagine. My best friend's dad turned out like that in the last few years. The legion of misinformation readily available on the internet is just too strong for some minds, especially older ones, to handle. I feel as though it's a significant leap to interject with any suggestions on how to handle this, but I got carried away and wrote some anyway, so you may indulge me if you wish.

There appears to be no "cure" for this kind of conspiratorial nonsense, but I believe the available evidence shows that arguing with people stuck in delusion is generally counterproductive. Your family may be better off avoiding confrontation with him whenever possible, and re-framing your shared experience in such a way that he feels less of a need to go down this path. Solving some "root cause" (loneliness, lost self-esteem, life pressures) may be a better means of addressing the issue. Should someone wish to intervene, you may have more success exposing him to different viewpoints (YT videos? Podcasts?) that he can digest on his own time. Confrontation and self-reflection, by extension, are often easier to manage when they don't involve those closest to us. Should some of his motivation appear to stem from a mistrust of "official sources," there are many less-conspiratorial options that tout their Indie status in the Right/Libertarian or Left/Progressive categories.

Lastly, while it seems bad at the moment, there often is a positive resolution in sight. Your chances of making a difference, or having a difference made, seem better the earlier on he is in these circumstances. There are many - many - tales of this same story resolving itself in a matter of a few months, believe it or not. I really do wish you the best of luck and safety. At the least, hopefully he gets over that ridiculous "cutting the internet" business.

(and no, I'm not a professional or anything, so please take my advice as "I read a lot and am interested in this subject" and not any remotely authoritative opinion.)

last edited at Dec 15, 2020 12:31AM