Is the United States becoming Lebanon?

[Argus]

Interesting thought. Just as Lebanon was a nation utterly divided, so too is the US becoming. It's people are separating into different groups, moving away from each other both physically and emotionally. Half or almost half of younger Republicans and Democrats say they wouldn't even be willing to date someone from the other side.

Lebanonization is a term used to describe a country when politics, tribalism, national divisions, ethnic and sectarian tensions, ideological and cultural wars, and foreign meddling become so  unmanageable they leave a country ungovernable. Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times brilliantly put it this way.”The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs ‘Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites’ or ‘Israelis and Palestinians.’ We call ours ‘Democrats and Republicans,’ but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. Second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics – even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/nasrallah-the-lebanonization-of-america-is-well-underway

[BeaverFever]

9 hours ago, Argus said:

Interesting thought. Just as Lebanon was a nation utterly divided, so too is the US becoming. It's people are separating into different groups, moving away from each other both physically and emotionally. Half or almost half of younger Republicans and Democrats say they wouldn't even be willing to date someone from the other side.

Lebanonization is a term used to describe a country when politics, tribalism, national divisions, ethnic and sectarian tensions, ideological and cultural wars, and foreign meddling become so  unmanageable they leave a country ungovernable. Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times brilliantly put it this way.”The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs ‘Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites’ or ‘Israelis and Palestinians.’ We call ours ‘Democrats and Republicans,’ but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. Second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics – even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/nasrallah-the-lebanonization-of-america-is-well-underway

America is a write-off no matter who wins the next election. Time to circle the wagons and figure out how to save Canada as USA gradually devolves into a failed state filled with massive amounts of military hardware and nuclear weapons. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by BeaverFever

[Michael Hardner]

10 hours ago, Argus said:

Interesting thought. Just as Lebanon was a nation utterly divided, so too is the US becoming. It's people are separating into different groups, moving away from each other both physically and emotionally. Half or almost half of younger Republicans and Democrats say they wouldn't even be willing to date someone from the other side.

The tragedy of the commons, when people cut down the trees in the shire to heat their homes decimating the forest... applies now to a party that wants to burn down the public faith in liberal ideas, in democracy and so on so they can add points to their own voting total.

Politics needs to returned to its proper place as a serious pursuit, or it will evaporate and be replaced by dogmatism.  And the next generation could easily just decide to outlaw conservatism so their strategy is short sighted.

[OftenWrong]

26 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

The tragedy of the commons, when people cut down the trees in the shire to heat their homes decimating the forest... applies now to a party that wants to burn down the public faith in liberal ideas, in democracy and so on so they can add points to their own voting total.

One party wants to burn down "faith in liberal ideas", while another party wants to just burn things down. If that is what you people call progress then yeah, I want to burn down those ideas.

[OftenWrong]

34 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

Politics needs to returned to its proper place as a serious pursuit,

Return?

[bush_cheney2004]

1 hour ago, BeaverFever said:

America is a write-off no matter who wins the next election. Time to circle the wagons and figure out how to save Canada as USA gradually devolves into a failed state filled with massive amounts of military hardware and nuclear weapons. 

 

Too late for that....Canada is already a U.S. vassal state, and Quebec would want its own circle anyway.

[Cannucklehead]

2 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Too late for that....Canada is already a U.S. vassal state, and Quebec would want its own circle anyway.

By vassal I guess you are implying how our border is opened as trump claimed we wanted and how he removed the tarriffs on Canada the instant we put tarriffs on the u.s?  

[OftenWrong]

11 hours ago, Argus said:

Interesting thought. Just as Lebanon was a nation utterly divided, so too is the US becoming. It's people are separating into different groups, moving away from each other both physically and emotionally.

I think the problem is exaggerated by the media. Riots were contained to a few city blocks. Everyone knows that democrat-backed mayors purposely stood in the way of law enforcement in order to exacerbate the situation as much as possible. The left-controlled deep state media then made damn sure that every black person who had a confrontation with police made headlines. Given the high ratio of crime committed by blacks in depressed areas, all they had to do was wait a few days. Easy pickins. But, is it really a nationwide problem? Or does the TV go out of its way to make it look like that.

Most people are pretty normal.

Quote

Half or almost half of younger Republicans and Democrats say they wouldn't even be willing to date someone from the other side.

Not if they're a straight male, I'll wager.

[bush_cheney2004]

15 minutes ago, Cannucklehead said:

By vassal I guess you are implying how our border is opened as trump claimed we wanted and how he removed the tarriffs on Canada the instant we put tarriffs on the u.s?  

 

No, by vassal state I mean military and economic dependency, 50% of corporate and manufacturing base ownership, 80% of internet traffic routing, and media dominance, including social media platforms.

Canada is already divided (e.g Quebec), and turns to America for these common denominators.

[Cannucklehead]

8 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

No, by vassal state I mean military and economic dependency, 50% of corporate and manufacturing base ownership, 80% of internet traffic routing, and media dominance, including social media platforms.

Canada is already divided (e.g Quebec), and turns to America for these common denominators.

Ah yes because the u.s. doesn't get anything from Canada.  How's your aluminum stockpiles doing nowadays?  

[bush_cheney2004]

6 minutes ago, Cannucklehead said:

Ah yes because the u.s. doesn't get anything from Canada.  How's your aluminum stockpiles doing nowadays?  

 

90% of Canada's aluminum exports go to the U.S., as do 75% of all exports.  (Rio Tinto, Novelis, and Alcoa are foreign owners.)  

More importantly, the OP expresses the real concern that America won't be Big Daddy anymore, because Canada needs that Big Daddy.

Do you deny that Quebec exists too ?

Edited October 30, 2020 by bush_cheney2004

[Cannucklehead]

Just now, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

90% of Canada's aluminum exports go to the U.S., as do 75% of all exports.  (Rio Tinto, Novelis, and Alcoa are foreign owners.)  

Do you deny that Quebec exists too ?

Well seeing as how we are next door it makes sense.  Would you rather have more imports come from countries further away and raise the cost of goods?  

[bush_cheney2004]

Just now, Cannucklehead said:

Well seeing as how we are next door it makes sense.  Would you rather have more imports come from countries further away and raise the cost of goods?  

 

They already do....China easily exports more than Canada, but is far less dependent on exports or any single market as is Canada.   This OP telegraphs an underlying concern that a fragmented U.S. won't be the "next door" it used to be, and Canada will have to fend more for itself.   

Do you deny that Quebec exists as a "nation within a nation" ?

[Argus]

I was watching a discussion between Douglas Murray and Dennis Prager. I think Murray made a really relevant point when he talked about the failure of education. Most people, especially younger people, have almost no knowledge of history. They've barely heard of the Holocaust, know little or nothing about Communist abuses and murders, and nothing going beyond that. They have almost no understanding that the West has been living in the world's golden age for the last fifty or sixty years, a time unparalleled in human history.

They have never experienced fear or want or violent societal upheaval and can't imagine doing so. They seem to think this is the normal way the world works, a blank canvas to which you can add other things. Yet the history of humanity is one of brutality, starvation, mass death from epidemics and poverty. If you looked at all of humanity through all the ages of history probably 99.999% lived out their short lives in utter poverty by our present standards. They had no human rights, to speak of, and no real way of improving their (short) lives. People don't seem aware of that, don't seem aware of how fragile the civilization in which they live is and how easily it can be shattered.

They also don't seem to be aware of how lucky they are to be living in the West, how few places on Earth share the freedom they take for granted. And we're not just talking about ignorant young rabble here. The universities are absolutely teeming with left wingers who sneer at and look down on western civilization. They denounce it for its minor flaws and demand massive, poorly thought-out changes based on an absurd affection for socialism, Marxism and some collectivist utopia which is always just beyond the horizon. And they utterly ignore that everyone who ever reached for it sent their society into a downward spiral which led to massive death, poverty and misery.

 

[WestCanMan]

16 hours ago, BeaverFever said:

America is a write-off no matter who wins the next election. Time to circle the wagons and figure out how to save Canada as USA gradually devolves into a failed state filled with massive amounts of military hardware and nuclear weapons. 

Don't kid yourself. Canada is just as divided as the US. Maybe more. We have a lot of separatists in Quebec and in the prairie provinces as well. 

There are still a lot of people who would vote for Trudeau today, and our MSM is as protective of Trudeau as the US MSM is protective of Biden.

I wouldn't date a liberal voter if I was single, and not just because I hate Trudeau so much, but because I couldn't trust or respect anyone dumb enough to be sucked in to that extent.

[Argus]

16 hours ago, BeaverFever said:

America is a write-off no matter who wins the next election. Time to circle the wagons and figure out how to save Canada as USA gradually devolves into a failed state filled with massive amounts of military hardware and nuclear weapons. 

The same cultural and identity conflicts afflicting the US are afflicting Canada and much of the rest of the Western world. There's a strange, deep sense of weariness, and a shrill insistence that the western world is uniquely guilty of terrible crimes and beliefs and must be drastically altered.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Argus

[WestCanMan]

14 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

I think the problem is exaggerated by the media. Riots were contained to a few city blocks.

"A few blocks...." where there was billions in damages, nearly 20people were killed, etc. Hmmmmm......

Quote

Everyone knows that democrat-backed mayors purposely stood in the way of law enforcement in order to exacerbate the situation as much as possible.

And that's not a huge deal? Like, massive? 

 

[WestCanMan]

 

Quote

Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times brilliantly put it this way.”The United States is becoming like Lebanon and other Middle East countries in two respects. First, our political differences are becoming so deep that our two parties now resemble religious sects in a zero-sum contest for power. They call theirs ‘Shiites and Sunnis and Maronites’ or ‘Israelis and Palestinians.’ We call ours ‘Democrats and Republicans,’ but ours now behave just like rival tribes who believe they must rule or die. Second, as in the Middle East, so increasingly in America: Everything is now politics – even the climate, even energy, even face masks in a pandemic.”

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/nasrallah-the-lebanonization-of-america-is-well-underway

If T Friedman was so brilliant then he'd recognize that the actual problem at the heart of this is complete dishonesty in the mass media. They're nt just dishonest, it's to the point where they are liars and fabricators. 

CNN has been caught lying so many times in the last 6 years that it's utterly pathetic that they're still allowed to have the middle N in their name. 

You can talk about Fox's partisan bias, and I agree that it's there 100% and it shouldn't be, but they aren't outright liars like CNN.

Fox at least covered the Russian collusion fiasco, they showed all of Schiff's comments and weighed the merits of their talking points, CNN and NBC won't even say the name "Bobolinski" and they barely mentioned the names of high-ranking FBI officials who were either fired or criminally charged for their misconduct in the Russian Witch Hunt. That's extreme, communist-style journalism.

[Argus]

6 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

 

If T Friedman was so brilliant then he'd recognize that the actual problem at the heart of this is complete dishonesty in the mass media. They're nt just dishonest, it's to the point where they are liars and fabricators.

Oh please, just give it up. Are most of the mainstream media slanting the news towards a progressive viewpoint? Of course. That's because most of the reporters and editors are progressives. Maybe go beyond that and figure out how they became that way. Where did all these wild-eyed, easily-outraged people who want to tear down society come from?

[BeaverFever]

14 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Too late for that....Canada is already a U.S. vassal state, and Quebec would want its own circle anyway.

That may be true in many respects but these days it’s leas true than it ever has been in the past  as Canadians watch the ever-worsening shitshow that has unfolded in the us since tue financial meltdown of ‘07-‘08   And when your failure is complete and you’ve disintegrated into a myriad of warring factions we won’t be America’s vassal anymore because there won’t be an America.  

Heck assuming we survive your collapse Canada would likely be one the foreign powers controlling and manipulating warring US factions from behind the scenes, exploiting your civil war for our own purposes. ?

[BeaverFever]

The real reason America is so divided is because of the grinding policies of the corporatist/wealthy elite establishment that has ruled America under both Democrats and Republicans for the past 40 years starting with “Reaganomics”.  For decades, left and labour groups correctly predicted that massive inequality, social instability and deep cultural divisions and would result from the establishment’s incessant attacks on the social safety net, minimum wage, unions, worker protections, consumer protections, pollution laws and countless other forms of pandering to corporations and the uber-wealthy at the expense of the working class.  

America was not unique in terms of these reforms which were also introduced in the UK and are more broadly referred to as “Reagan-Thatcher” economics  or their counterintuitive academic name “neoliberal”  economics   They have since formed the basic economic principle for all advanced western countries including Canada and have done considerable damage to the working and middle classes everywhere.  But the harshest outcomes have always been in the US for a variety of reasons.   

Let’s not forget it was the supposedly liberal media that handes Trump thw election in 2016:

The supposedly liberal media breathlessly covered the “Hillary’s emails” non-scandal  around the clock, including when the supposedly pro-Hillary Director of the FBI (who is actually Republican) announced just days before the election that he was reopening the investigation into Hillary  (and ultimately still found nothing)  

The supposedly biased media also provided extensive coverage of the REAL Democratic scandal, which was the party’s internal maneuvering to isolate Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the Dem party.

As a result many progressives and undecideds chose to stay home on election day rather than vote for Hillary, the Status-Quo Establishment’s Cardboard Candidate Clinton who has the genuine personality of a parking meter.  

As a result Trump one by the smallest of margins in a few key districts of a few key states states and took the electoral college despite being despised by most Americans and his popularity has never improved significantly. 

Biden-Harris are also establishment status-quo candidates who will uphold the Reagan-Thatcher consensus. That’s the only choice Americans get:  far-right (GOP) or Centrist/center-right (Dem). The true left/progressives like AOC or Sanders are just there for appearances.
 

But Trump is so widely despised I suspect many who stayed home last time will hold their nose and vote for a return to the lawful evil of the Reagan-Thatcher status quo establishment under Biden,  rather than continue with the chaotic evil of the utterly amoral, unqualified, incompetent and emotionally unstable Trump. 

[OftenWrong]

2 hours ago, Argus said:

I was watching a discussion between Douglas Murray and Dennis Prager. I think Murray made a really relevant point when he talked about the failure of education. Most people, especially younger people, have almost no knowledge of history. They've barely heard of the Holocaust, know little or nothing about Communist abuses and murders, and nothing going beyond that. They have almost no understanding that the West has been living in the world's golden age for the last fifty or sixty years, a time unparalleled in human history.

They have never experienced fear or want or violent societal upheaval and can't imagine doing so. They seem to think this is the normal way the world works, a blank canvas to which you can add other things. Yet the history of humanity is one of brutality, starvation, mass death from epidemics and poverty. If you looked at all of humanity through all the ages of history probably 99.999% lived out their short lives in utter poverty by our present standards. They had no human rights, to speak of, and no real way of improving their (short) lives. People don't seem aware of that, don't seem aware of how fragile the civilization in which they live is and how easily it can be shattered.

They also don't seem to be aware of how lucky they are to be living in the West, how few places on Earth share the freedom they take for granted. And we're not just talking about ignorant young rabble here. The universities are absolutely teeming with left wingers who sneer at and look down on western civilization. They denounce it for its minor flaws and demand massive, poorly thought-out changes based on an absurd affection for socialism, Marxism and some collectivist utopia which is always just beyond the horizon. And they utterly ignore that everyone who ever reached for it sent their society into a downward spiral which led to massive death, poverty and misery.

100% agreed.

That's why, vote Trump!

[WestCanMan]

40 minutes ago, Argus said:

Oh please, just give it up. Are most of the mainstream media slanting the news towards a progressive viewpoint? Of course. That's because most of the reporters and editors are progressives. Maybe go beyond that and figure out how they became that way. Where did all these wild-eyed, easily-outraged people who want to tear down society come from?

No, not at all.

Calling the 2020 protests "mostly peaceful" isn't slanting. It's a lie. Almost 20 people were killed. Most protests were peaceful til 10 pm, but then most of them were violent riots. Where the riots weren't violent is where there was a sufficient police presence to deter it - IE in Republican controlled cities. There was also a lot of violence related to BLM outside of the protest areas. Protests were actually "widespread with an atrocious level of violence, destruction and theft".

The policy of letting rioters out of jail to contribute to the rioting the next night was also a complete disaster which the MSM intentionally ignored. That's not a slant, that's the MSM contributing to the destruction of lives and property and it's lying by ommission.

Allowing people to say things like "police are committing genocide against blacks" isn't slanted. It's a destructive and dangerous lie.

The hyperbole around Russian collusion wasn't just slanted, it was a lie. All tolled probably 10,000 lies. No one has ever been convicted of a crime that has anything to do with "colluding with Russians to affect the outcome of the election" but the claim is often made that they were. Millions of people are still quite confused, that's because of thoroughly dishonest reporting. An example of that is people saying that Manafort is in jail for collusion. He is actually in jail solely because off tax fraud from the mid '90s. There's literally a 0.00% chance that his conviction for tax fraud has anything to do with Russian collusion in 2016.

Calling Michael Brown a "Gentle Giant" for 6 months during rioting wasn't a slant. It was a lie. He was violent towards two different people who didn't physically provoke him, in the last few minutes before he was killed. 

The MSM has told several atrocious lies about Trump over the last 4 years such as: "Trump referred to immigrants as animals". That's not slanted. It's a lie. Saying "Trump put kids in cages" and showing pictures of kids that Obama put in cages wasn't a slant, it was a lie. To this day we still haven't even seen if kids still get put in those types of cages. 

There are liars, damned liars, and CNN. If you watch that station you will miss a lot of relevant news and see mostly lies. 

[OftenWrong]

3 hours ago, Argus said:

I was watching a discussion between Douglas Murray and Dennis Prager. I think Murray made a really relevant point when he talked about the failure of education. Most people, especially younger people, have almost no knowledge of history. They've barely heard of the Holocaust, know little or nothing about Communist abuses and murders, and nothing going beyond that.

Timely article that echoes the same sentiment.

Link

Quote

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are becoming increasingly comfortable with socialism, according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), which conducts an annual poll assessing Americans' attitudes toward socialism.

VOC Executive Director Marion Smith attributes this trend shown in VOC's poll, as well as in other national polls, to a failure of American educational institutions, definitional misunderstandings and a double standard in media and on social media.

"We are seeing the high watermark, politically, of socialism [and] Marxism in the United States," Smith told Fox News. "Never before in history has the United States seen positive opinions of these ideologies to the extent that we’re seeing today. That's just a fact."

Bolding is mine.

It should be noted that the Trump administration has taken direct action against this kind of education being forced on people. Only Trump has seen this problem clearly, and done something aboot it. No one else.

And you can bet your last buck that Joe Biden is gonna undo that, if he wins the POTUS fella. then you got yourself a well-behaved nice talking guy as president.

Gonna screw ya...

Edited October 30, 2020 by OftenWrong
forgot the linky-dink

[Argus]

Interesting story from a guy in Pennsylvania about the depths of the utter belief in what's going on between Trump and Biden supporters. It's not even that they have different ideological views. It's that they really and truly believe different things are happening, and often are completely wrong. This is probably due to lousy news services slanting the news in opposite directions, and the degree of crazy groups out there on the fringes (not to mention Russia) pumping out fake news about both sides.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-in-pennsylvania-trump-and-biden-voters-live-in-separate-realities/