Cont: President Trump: Part 3

[phiwum]

I'm sorry to hear that, that's child abuse.



I agree with the premise in the article Bob linked, Trump essentially uses 'blue lies' to further his agenda and solidify his support base. Social scientists and psychologists have used experiments to show that many people are more likely to use 'win the argument' skills than 'critical thinking' skills. As was stated in the article Bob linked, it is believed that it is a form of social conditioning that has evolved in humans. That people in a group often choose to support that group even if it means believing in facts that aren't facts at all.

But it seems to be a dangerous trend in a democracy when it's taken to the extremes that Trump does. That's exactly what George Orwell was writing about in 1984, a book I doubt most of Trump's supporters have ever read.

Most Trump supporters have discussed that book in high school, whether they read it or not. I certainly didn't read every book I was supposed to read.

ETA: I'm guessing that it's part of most high school curricula. I'm not sure of that fact.

 

[3point14]

The military commander interviewed said he might argue strongly against it, but at the end of the day he was a soldier and would be bound to follow the orders of his commander in chief.

Was this interview conducted before trump became his CiC?

Perhaps he's changed his mind.

 

[Belz...]

Doesn't matter. The desired time from the call to missile launch is under nine minutes. If the orders are illegal, that'll have to be decided afterward.

I mean: does the person have the legal ability to decide NOT to obey?

 

[Spindrift]

I mean: does the person have the legal ability to decide NOT to obey?

Only if they consider the order illegal. An order from the commander in chief to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack might mean the end of the world, but I don't think there's any law against it.

 

[Belz...]

Only if they consider the order illegal. An order from the commander in chief to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack might mean the end of the world, but I don't think there's any law against it.

I wonder if they could have a crisis of conscience and be acquitted by a court for failing to obey the order if the reason was good enough, law or not.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Re. the highlighted part: I'm not sure he actually can. Sure, he is AUTHORIZED to do so, but it's not really that there's a button hardwired to nukes.

In practical terms, he has to call someone. This someone sits way up in the chain of command in the Pentagon. In fact, the way I understand the US military works, there are TWO someones that both must agree to continue. They act as a shield, and this is a function that the military and those two people take extremely serious. I'm not even sure that he's easily able to replace them. (Yes, technically he's the commander-and-chief, but he still has to direct his commands through the military high echelons. From what I see, the high military is quite far from blindly following Trump like Nunes.)

That is really hard to say. It has never been tested well.

For example the Military talks about not committing war crimes and obeying the UCMJ but they didn't exactly prevent torture of detainees when they were around it and we never charged anyone ordered to violate those laws.

Look how readily INS was to separate young children from their parents for long periods for no real benefit.

The situation is simply unprecedented but I can see plenty of questionable signs that if say a nuclear strike against Iran was ordered they would flat out refuse it.

 

[Border Reiver]

I wonder if they could have a crisis of conscience and be acquitted by a court for failing to obey the order if the reason was good enough, law or not.

Under the Canadian Code of Service Discipline (similar to the UCMJ) it is only permissible to disobey a patently unlawful order - the order has to be either clearly contrary to law or must be of such a character as to "shock the conscience."

45 calling up the officer out of the blue and ordering a strike on Tehran - might fall into this category.

45 calling the officer up after a period of prolonged tension and constant ratcheting up - likely would not be an illegal order.

 

[Crossbow]

I wonder if they could have a crisis of conscience and be acquitted by a court for failing to obey the order if the reason was good enough, law or not.

Just to chime in here ...

I do not think that in the USA there has ever been even a single case of someone having to defend his actions by refusing to follow an illegal order in a setting as formal as a courts martial.

However, there have been a number of courts martial cases where people have been prosecuted for issuing illegal orders.

 

[alfaniner]

He could. There was a series of 60 Minutes pieces about America's nuclear power structure, including an interview with one of the two men you mention. Brief summary: everything from the bad old days of the cold war is still in place and operational, and the president can still, unilaterally, call in a nuclear strike on a target of his choosing. The military commander interviewed said he might argue strongly against it, but at the end of the day he was a soldier and would be bound to follow the orders of his commander in chief.

On the flip side, I'm not all that worried about Trump nuking anything because the man turned out to be a coward. He doesn't even have the balls to face his own party, much less put lives on the line.

He doesn't have to. All he has to do is make a credible threat and some other country will get the fireball rolling. We know enough not to ever take him seriously, but maybe it won't translate well enough.

 

[Belz...]

Under the Canadian Code of Service Discipline (similar to the UCMJ) it is only permissible to disobey a patently unlawful order - the order has to be either clearly contrary to law or must be of such a character as to "shock the conscience."

So it doesn't have to be illegal. There could indeed be moral considerations that would absolve the person of their disobedience.

 

[Emily's Cat]

And yet, when it is pointed out that it has been exactly such a strategy which has been largely responsible for Republicans getting the power base they have today you just handwave that fact away.

That would be because that hasn't been the strategy, that hasn't been what's happened. You seem to want to interpret it that way, but that isn't the reality.

Why are you so vituperatively caustic about the mostly imagined slights of a few Democrats and totally unaffected by the Republican Party all but making it an official part of their policy?

Show some evidence that it's a part of their policy. Present some evidence that supports your claim.

And why do you think that a practice so demonstrably established to be successful when employed extensively by Republicans is inevitably going to mean utter failure for Democrats.

Show me the evidence that it's been employed extensively by Republicans.

It's almost like you don't want them to try a strategy that has been proven to win elections.

That would be because that's not the strategy that won this election..

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm not going to waste my time trying to get you to review all the events of a two year long election cycle which you have already made boasts about having pointedly ignored.

Your ignorance of the events isn't my fault. And I'm not going to take responsibility for trying to repair that deficiency. It's what you wanted. Rectify it on your own time.

So you can't actually support your claim in any reasonable fashion then?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I don't think you're understanding the responses. Those who vote for Trump vote for easily identifiable lies and an obvious conman/shyster who was never, ever suitable to be president.

To convince those people, who are so lacking in critical thinking skills and so much victims of the DK effect that they voted for Donald Trump, to vote for anyone else would require the same amount of lies and insincere promises that Trump made during the election.

If one were to climb down into Trumps pit and do the 'say anything to get votes' thing, regardless of intent, then:

a - any integrity is lost and one risks losing votes already gained.

b Trump, or whomsoever, just has to lie harder and more and will still get those votes because he's a better liar, the people you're talking about literally cannot comprehend this as demonstrated by the votes they've cast.

c - even if it works you're left now with all the broken promises of Trump with his apparent immunity to any criticism for it.



When the people you're trying to convince are so lacking in logic and rational thinking, when they're deep in the pit of DK and don't even know enough to even start to pull themselves out, when they vote for Donald Trump, then you really do just have to forget about them and hope you can get elected without climbing into the pit.


the alternative is that Trump is actually the preferred choice of America and the US citizens here who can actually see what a disaster he is are actually a fairly tiny minority.



One does not fight lies with lies.

If your premise is true, Democrats are doomed. You can never, ever win. There's no hope of it because the people you need to win to your side are the people you've deemed incapable of being swayed, incapable of reasoning, incapable of being reached. You might as well just throw in the hat.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Here's another one:

You: Hey {liberals} - telling a bunch of people that you think they are horrible awful people, insisting that they're worthless trash, calling them names, ,mocking and deriding them continuously, and so on... that's not a winning strategy. That doesn't win people to your viewpoint. It's counter productive. Stop doing it, and you'll have a much better chance at making headway.

Me: That's nice in theory, but how do you know that this had any impact on the election? Most people had made up their minds about which party to vote for years ahead of time. Decades, even.

If your premise were true, then why were so many people surprised that Trump won?

 

[Belz...]

If your premise were true, then why were so many people surprised that Trump won?

What does one have to do with the other?

 

[3point14]

If your premise is true, Democrats are doomed. You can never, ever win.

Yes. I'm pretty sure that's how democracy works.

There's no hope of it because the people you need to win to your side are the people you've deemed incapable of being swayed, incapable of reasoning, incapable of being reached. You might as well just throw in the hat.

Well, there is hope, because something approaching half the people able to vote didn't. That's a whole lot of voters to go chasing before diving down into the Trump election handbook and doing it his way which is:


Lie
Make promises you're never going to keep
Claim your opponent is a criminal.


Reach out to those who haven't voted. Those who voted for Trump and do not now regret it are lost.

If the only way to woo these idiots is to make false promises and lie, then they're not worth it. If there's enough Stupid Vote to keep Trump in office then that's the will of the people - it sucks, but that's democracy for you.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You are asking liberals to remain silent in the face of worthless trash opinions in the name of trying to advance their agenda. That normalizes and insulated those worthless trash opinions. That sounds extremely unethical.

Do you ever interact with coworkers that you don't like? Or with people in the general public? Or hey, how about with children?

Let's talk through a scenario. Let's say you've got a coworker that is a self-centered jerk. That's how you assess them, and let's say you're 100% on the mark. How much forward progress do you make, if every time you're in a meeting with them you pipe up and say "Hey Steve, you're a self-centered jerk!"? Do you think maybe it's possible to deal with Steve, deal with him being a jerk, address his work performance and his responsibilities, and his ideas... and do all of that without calling him names?

Let's take an even more concrete example. You're not allowed to call other posters names and personally insult them on ISF. Why is that? Because if you're allowed to just call people names and insult them, no discussion is had. There's no progress, it's impossible to find any common ground. Everything devolves into an infantile flame war that is not productive. If you were allowed to call your fellow posters names and insult them, would that help win them to your point of view in any fashion at all? It might be cathartic for you in the short term, but it doesn't accomplish anything. Being forced to address the message rather than the messenger doesn't guarantee that you can reach any kind of accord... but addressing the messenger guarantees that you will NOT.

Why would you think that real life works differently? Why on earth would you think that calling people names, mocking and deriding and insulting them, would be in any fashion effective?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Re. the highlighted part: I'm not sure he actually can. Sure, he is AUTHORIZED to do so, but it's not really that there's a button hardwired to nukes.

In practical terms, he has to call someone. This someone sits way up in the chain of command in the Pentagon. In fact, the way I understand the US military works, there are TWO someones that both must agree to continue. They act as a shield, and this is a function that the military and those two people take extremely serious. I'm not even sure that he's easily able to replace them. (Yes, technically he's the commander-and-chief, but he still has to direct his commands through the military high echelons. From what I see, the high military is quite far from blindly following Trump like Nunes.)

He could. There was a series of 60 Minutes pieces about America's nuclear power structure, including an interview with one of the two men you mention. Brief summary: everything from the bad old days of the cold war is still in place and operational, and the president can still, unilaterally, call in a nuclear strike on a target of his choosing. The military commander interviewed said he might argue strongly against it, but at the end of the day he was a soldier and would be bound to follow the orders of his commander in chief.

On the flip side, I'm not all that worried about Trump nuking anything because the man turned out to be a coward. He doesn't even have the balls to face his own party, much less put lives on the line.

Yeah no. Your TV show is wrong. It doesn't work that way, the president cannot unilaterally make that decision. The military personnel in charge of those assets are sworn first to uphold the constitution and to follow the UCMJ. They are bound to respect the office of the president, not any actual person. If a president is acting in a fashion that is either unconstitutional or illegal, they are duty-bound to disregard that order.

And regardless of what some might think of the military, most of them take that oath pretty seriously. Those with sufficient rank and position to be in charge of our nuclear arsenal even more so than the rank and file.

All this manufactured and sensationalist worry about Trump blowing up the world in a fit of rage is exactly that: manufactured and sensationalist.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Is he under any obligation to follow illegal orders?

He is PROHIBITED from following orders that he knows to be illegal.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What does one have to do with the other?

If most people had made up their minds well ahead of time ("decades even"), then it should have been clear that Trump was going to win. We would already know how the majority of people stand, because their decision was a foregone conclusion. There'd be little uncertainty involved, and the actions of either candidate would have virtually no effect in any election. Trump's win would have been easily foreseeable and expected.

But that's not what happens in reality. McCain was ahead in the polling until Palin got thrown in the mix. A lot of people changed their mind because of her being chosen as his running mate. Actions taken by the candidates during the course of a campaign can, and do, have an effect on the outcome of the election.

That argues that your assumption is incorrect, or at minimum inadequate. Simply saying "most people already made up their mind in advance" is a non-answer. It's an argument for apathy maybe, but it does nothing at all to explain the outcome of this past election cycle, nor does it lend any insight into strategies for future elections.