Comments

1
We've always been at war with Eastasia
2
Here we go again. Budget busting Republicans gain the White House cut taxes for the top 1%, gut programs that help the middle class and poor, and rocket up military spending (mostly on stuff the military doesn't want or need). Deficit spending and the national debt go through the roof (but you know that's Democrats fault because they aren't fiscally responsible like Republicans are) and the economy crashes. Leaving a big huge mess that the Democrats will spend 8 years trying to clean up while Republicans piss all over everything in sight.

Let us just hope that unlike Reagan and Bush Trump can blow up the deficit, debt and crash the economy in a mere 4 years instead of the usual 8.

3
Charles if that were the case, why would Trump piss all over Boeing, which provides the bulk of maintenance and support services for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, or Lockheed Martin, which produces a lot of those weapons?
4
I'm with 3. There's absolutely no calculated assessment of anything here beyond wanting to sound like a tough guy who's not afraid to invoke the most radical mode of saber rattling weaponry. AND HE'LL USE THEM TOO. BECAUSE HE'S USA'S A TOUGH M/F WHO DON'T TAKE NO LIP, COME AT ME, BRO!!

He's a fucking joke of a human being.
5
@3 deeds not words
6
It's a distraction. Every time he says something sensational, he's distraction the media's attention from something more malevolent. Look for and report on that.
7
*distracting.
8
But why leap towards the third rail of defense spending (nukes!), when you've already got billions in existing projects that you're badmouthing? I'm not a particular fan of the F-35 program, but all that money ends up in the economy, one way or another, the bulk of it as salaries. Nukes don't employ nearly as many people as aerospace does. If you want to stimulate the economy, you do have to spend money, but you need to spend it on stuff that employs people.

And, when we're tired of them, or realize they're useless, it's easy to get rid of old fighter jets. Recycle the engines, trash all those classified electronics and scrap the rest. Nukes are much harder to dispose of, and just making them makes a shitload of permanently radioactive waste that we don't have a place to store for fuckin' ever.

And then, there's that little project, Air Force One. Yeah, it's $4 Billion, but so what? It's our defense against nuclear war, a flying command post. And again, all that money ends up in the domestic economy. Engineers, mechanics, fabricators, technicians, machinists. Do we need it? Yeah, probably -- the old ones are getting old. But, again, even if not, so what? We do need the federal spending WAY more than we need tax cuts, and WAY, WAY more if those cuts would only go to people who are going to stash the money in their accounts and not spend it back into the economy.
9


I've worked on "modernizing" nuclear weapons at several companies, one right here in Redmond.

Our missles are OLD. It's pretty scary actually.
10
8). the question is scale. obamacare is huge. air force one is not. F-35 is also small and old hat. politicians have been kicking that dead donkey for years. trump needs something huge, and it's not going to be a war or infrastructure.
12
@4:
Yes, Trump is just trying too hard to be a REAL MAN, like The Executioner and Jack Bauer and Jack Reacher and Nathaniel Cade, as is common in peri-adolescents even when they're peri-senile.* And Mr Mudede, I strongly doubt that Trump were worried that helping people could lead to democratic socialism, he just knows its damn faggy.

 
*Fair? Compare the level of complexity and cohesiveness in any Trump utterance c.2000 with more recent ones, and if you've ever had an older relative go 'ga-ga' as my old Dad, who never did go ga-ga, used to call it, the difference will be uncomfortably familiar.

Though, admittedly, going without sleep, continually and intentionally marketing using only Grade 4 language, and being limited to 140 chars (if they're not Chinese characters) might push you into imitating senescence.

And questions of senility aside, you need only listen to his usual raps but to the WONDER in Trump's voice on the "Hollywood Access" tape—malign, yes, but full of adolescent joy that there girls' bodies out there, and he is allowed to do what he wants with 'em.
13
I recommend Gary Wills' book Bomb Power, or the lecture he gave posted on The Seattle Channel's podcast page on iTunes (free download).

14
Perhaps this is more for Putin's benefit, i.e. Trump rattles some sabers here so Putin can bump his own nuclear stock and/or increase spending, and justify his own military escapades.

Who knows what the real endgame is for all of these guys, though.
15
Charles, you hit the nail on the head with this one.
Two points to add:
Democrats have been talking about the need to modernize the Nuclear Arsenal for over a year.
And
Trump is interested in (or at least pretends to be) infrastructure spending. It was very prominent in his acceptance speech.
His fellow Republicans aren't very interested in the infrastructure spending, so he may see this as following the path of least resistance.

Over the last few years Republicans have been quietly proposing various 'socialist' ideas, like increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Socialism is coming to the USA. The real question is, whay kind of socialism?
Will it bring security to working class Americans, or will it allow corporations to subsidize their labor costs at taxpayers expense?
16
We going to see something worse than Keynesianism. This is Third Way economics, the more fashionable term for what used to be called corporatism.

This system critiques both socialism and capitalism. Capitalism, it argues, fails from too much freedom. If the workers are allowed to be unemployed, they will create a drag on the system. Therefore, unemployment must be made illegal. You are almost guaranteed to get a job, because if you don't take whatever is offered to you, then you are arrested. Granted, your job might be completely meaningless, you'll be totally alienated from the products you create, and have zero self agency when it comes to how it is to be designed, or sold, or used. But you'll definitely have a job.

The corporations themselves are subsumed to the state. Its a planned economy, where things are made and sold according to projections of need and utility. Things deemed degenerate, or uneccesary or harmful to the state are banned.

Everything is wrapped in a thick layer of nationalism. Step out of line in any way, and you are being unpatriotic. Anti-American. People can demand to see your selective service registration, to ensure that your re loyal enough to have signed ups or military duty, should a draft ever be called. Those who have served will receive hollow gestures of gratitude, to inspire those who have not to do so. Everything becomes militarized, the entire state apparatus comes to revolve around war. Pro-government paramilitaries form to terrorize those deemed a threat by the state.

The media becomes a tool of state propaganda. News outlets compete to demonstrate their fervor for patriotism. Anyone opposing the state, even mildly, is publicly castigated.

While most creative types need some chaos in their lives to remain inventive, that wildness is now forbidden. A a result, art must be approved of, and only copies classical art forms, albeit blown up to grotesque degrees. Anything that does not communicate the strengthened power of the state is deemed degenerate. Enterte Kunst.

Big man politics becomes the name of the game.

Now, fi this all seems far fetched, I urge you to look more closely. Doing Woodrow Wilson's administration, paramilitary gangs did roam American streets demanding too see people's draft cards. News media outlets actually did compete to prove who was more nationalist under GW Bush, even broadcasting videos made by the US state Department as if they were objectively reported news. Even certain alternative papers from Seattle insisted there were WMD in Iraq. Take a field trip to Albany, NY sometime, and go visit Rockefeller Plaza, which is done in a neoclassical brutalist style reminiscent of Alert Speer. Art has been banned in the USA of challenging social mores and government policies, whether its photographs of the aftermath of Hiroshima on display at the Smithsonian or films or books.

Big man politics happens the world over. Loom at the DRC, where Kabila refuses to step down after exceeding his constitutionally defined term limits. Of course, he came to power by assassinating hi father, who had the post before him, and his dad got the job after leading a military raid on his predecessor, who in turn assassinated his predecessor.

Corporatism was the economic system used in Italy, Spain and Germany in the 1930's an 1940's, Corporations that made things useful to the government, such as IBM, had to have a majority of their stock owned by host country nationals, and received heavy government subsidies. However, they had to produce what the government demanded. Companies or individuals who produced what the government did not want were crushed.

And this is what you're going to get under Trump. A state of emergency will be declared in response to some catastrophe. Flag pins will sell out rapidly at stores, Everyone, including otherwise reliable Leftys such as Dan will once again declare that the government is right for what its latest military adventure is. And we'll all fall into lockstep, not wanting to know why the chimneys at the hospitals produce so much ash and smoke on Tuesdays.
17
@16,
All of that is certainly possible, yes, but don't underestimate people's ADHD either. Catastrophies worthy of Uber-Patriotism come and go, forgotten except on their 10 year anniversary, in the wake of the latest TV hit show.

Occasionally, politicians and their corporate masters can strike while the nationalist iron is still hot (e.g., the second Iraq war), often though, they're too slow to get the beast rolling, and the public, though still thoroughly ignorant, simply lose interest in supporting them.
18
I think we'll soon get a regular "hot" war, in response to a Reichstag Fire that Trump will cause either actively (i.e. a false flag) or passively (i.e. by ignoring warnings of a threat). Accompanied by draconian restrictions on personal freedom at home to protect the war effort, of course.

After all, the target will inevitably be a high-visibility urban area (if you want to shock a lot of people, you must kill a lot of people, and cities are where the people are) that doesn't support his regime in the first place. Yes, he's that Machiavellian.

Please wait...

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