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chainsaw

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Everything posted by chainsaw

  1. Organized religious groups are only a few bad decisions away from being a cult. As with many thing is this world, organized religion is what you make of it. You can use it to wield power and victimize others, or you can use it as a moral compass to guide you in society and in building a strong and loving family. Invariably, assholes will find a way to do the former. But it's beautiful when people use that moral compass to extricate themselves from a predatory group. The ex-mormons in my life are easily among the kindest, most intellectually curious and genuine people I've known. I'm not going to say there's a causal relationship or give credit to the Mormonism, but I do think it's likely that the heavy emphasis on community has a tendency to cultivate a person's inherent selflessness and the repeated exposure to and analysis of its complicated lore has a tendency to cultivate a the expectation that almost everything has should have an explanation if you think hard enough about it (even if the explanation only makes sense in a fictional sense that their faith requires them to believe is real). Which is to say, in theory you could have all the benefits of Mormonism without all the exploitation, but in practice it's probably impossible to achieve.
  2. When they don't say why it's usually accidental overdose or that other thing.
  3. I'll take the nuclear annihilation, please
  4. Yeah. I don't want his clots to be career-ending
  5. They need to hurry up and reach the acceptance phase that they got and will get fleeced on KD.
  6. Yes but he says a lot of stupid shit that he doesn't necessarily follow through on. While I have no respect for anyone in his inner circle or in his cabinet, not all of them are war hawks and I think they're working overtime to convince him not to drag the Americans into another forever war.
  7. I think they still are waiting to see whether saner heads will prevail, so I don't think they want to do anything that drastic yet. They should be focused on defense, without escalation, and take the next chance to resume the peace talks that Bibi's illegal attack derailed.
  8. Also would have accepted Ben Kingsley
  9. It's as if you never read The Art of the Deal
  10. She looks like she's aged 15 years
  11. He's taking a break from treatment to officiate a dick-measuring contest between Hunter and Jack Reacher https://deadline.com/2025/06/joe-biden-reacher-alan-ritchson-1236435604/
  12. His body is well enough for long distance international flights. That's a good sign, clot-wise, isn't it? Please someone assure me he will be fully healthy for his entire career.
  13. https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/17/politics/kristi-noem-hostpital
  14. Mhm. You can't even give a TLDR? I recall many posters in that thread citing Peter Zeihan with approval. Do you consider him also to be a puddle brain?
  15. The chickens always come home to roost. Our intervention in Central America from pre-2000 is still the driving force behind one of the top domestic issues of the 2020s.
  16. Let's hear your galaxy brain take. The Obama deal was bad for Israel?
  17. We have not sent our own troops to Ukraine, but they were invaded so it's not the same thing. Biden's team viewed the Ukraine war as a low cost way to field-test some US weapons, and a way to weaken Russia. I don't know enough about Russia to say if someone better is ready to step up in Putin's place, but I don't think direct American intervention should be the way to accomplish that. I personally do not object to the support we're providing to Ukraine. I don't believe Israel's leadership is good, but that doesn't mean the US should attack Israel.
  18. At this point you're basically just wishcasting that the power vacuum would magically be filled by someone kind and aligned with US interests. History teaches that US intervention is almost never beneficial for the targeted nation. We have never been "greeted as liberators." There is almost no upside for getting involved.
  19. I did not say it was necessarily better for Iraq. I'm saying the world is better off without Saddam. We don't know of anyone in the bullpen for Iran, so how can anyone say that there's someone better waiting to rule it? And if that person had existed why would we have waited so long to intervene? What do you know that Obama, Trump, and Biden didn't know?
  20. Some people interpret facts as criticism and cry "CR" when they feel attacked. You are 100% correct.
  21. International relations are not a black and white thing. Some of our "allies" do unspeakable things, including genocide. Obama made a deal with some bad people, and Trump tore it up. It's possible to strike a good deal with bad people, and Trump was on the verge of doing that so that we could get closer to stability in the region. If we learned anything from Iraq, it's that there are high costs and long lasting consequences for trying to be the hero on every corner of the globe. Yes the world is better off without Saddam, but was the invasion truly necessary to get rid of him? Could that not have been achieved with soft power? With diplomacy? By propping up his internal adversaries? The goal was to prevent Iran from having nukes, and I fail to see how or why American intervention is the only way to achieve that. If you believe that's the same thing as "cheering for the bad man to stay in power forever," then that says more about you than it does about me.
  22. True, but arguably CR.
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