1) I have seen repeatedly the idea that somehow pulling out on 9/11 would be good optics. How? Why? We're slinking off with our tail between our legs, soon or late, so why does doing it on the 20th anniversary of the day Bin Laden cucked us so fucking hard matter?
Because Biden, Harris, and most of the politicians that have positions in office are careerists. Their job is not to find solutions to problems, but to pretend to find solutions to problems. They stack problems on top of one another and say "the problem is solved!"
The 9/11 date was there to make things more poetic. As you said, it would be "good optics". It wouldn't help the US or Afghan citizens in actuality, it would just be "good optics".
As Thomas Sowell once said:
2) Why are any of my fellow Burgerfats who aren't Biden drones/TDS-suffering RINO lickspittles trying to defend the Pantshitter-in-Chief from rightly earned foreign mockery and condemnation? This is the greatest skedaddle of our military since goddamn 1st Bull Run (the original, and still greatest, Great Skedaddle) to my recollection. (I know, I know, Fall of Saigon, but I wasn't alive for that and as one of those American messes started by Democrats it gets no coverage in American history courses: they focus on the war crimes and the protests and little else.)
You can thank the press for that. Those "Burgerfats" you mentioned are probably still suffering from TDS.
If you lurked earlier in the forums, you could see clips of MSNBC host Brian Williams saying that Biden stood with dignity and owned up to what happened when he first spoe about Afghanistan, and his guest calling him out for gaslighting his audience. Another MSNBC host mentioned Trump's name three times in the first 20 seconds of her interview with neocon Dan Crenshaw.
CNN's Jim Acosta just did a segment yesterday saying that Republicans and Trump were hypocrites for criticizing Biden for merely pulling troops out of Afghanistan, which was never what the criticism was.
But, all you have to do is treat "Trump" like a four-letter word and it does wonders, apparantly. Condition people into putting Trump and Republicans bad rent-free in their heads. Newsome's only attack on Elder for the California recall is "he's to the right of Trump", which is not only not true looking at their policies, but shows that that's all they have in their playbook.
At first I thought the overnight sidebar ITT was going to be boring but it ended up quite informational. The Nugget admitted that he doesn't look too deeply down certain rabbit holes because it gives him anxiety. Totally understandable. It also showed that our failed education system, the media propaganda machine, and the fear porn of the last couple of years have done their job on millions of people. For some it's impossible to believe that the very people and government who have promised for decades that they care about you, want you to be happy and successful, have empathy and respect, and are willing to spend billions (trillions!) on programs to make everything better...is just a sham.
Biden's first address after he became president was about Covid. He said "put your faith in the government". It's more emotional gaslighting, and it works. People put their faith in government and expect the government to follow through. Realizing that they've been lied to and taken advantage of doesn't compute for some because the reality is more terrifying than the narrative. That's why people are willing to defend the nonsensical, because they're fighting for emotional equanimity that is eroding by the hour thanks to massive governmental incompetence (by both parties).
TL;DR- it's not that people can't be open minded. It's that they're scared to be.
That's how it works. Instill fear in people's minds and they'll latch onto you for support and you can manipulate them that way. When 9/11 happened, people got scared so shitless that all they wanted was for the chaos to stop. Then Dick Cheney came along and said "i'll stop the chaos" and they latched onto him. In retrospect, that was a mistake.
This is why I'm worried about this rise of reliance on "emotional intelligence" and "EQ". You have to have a level of intelligence to be "emotionally intelligent", but that just gives way for you to manipulate people better. Hitler had a very high level of emotional intelligence. There was a
study led by the University of Toronto psychologist Stéphane Côté that found that people with the highest emotional intelligence also
had the most harmful behaviors.
We've lived in over 100 years of opulence, and now we just throw responsibilities that should be handled between two regular people, instead to an authority figure (human resources, the court system, the police, the government, etc.). We can't solve problems on our own anymore.
Came across this, I never read the book so I can't vet the excerpt, but it sure does rhyme:
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As much as there is to criticize abut Ford, he was willing to sacrifice his own career by pardoning Nixon and dealing with this conundrum in order to try to get things done.