Is it true that Putin has outsmarted Obama and Clinton as Trump claims?
Willingness to blow things up is not “outsmarting”Putin has been very aggressive. But outsmarted? I don’t think so. What he’s done is bully countries far smaller than him.And bullies tend to do badly when they get out of high school. We’re playing the long game. He’s not.He’s moved into Syria, which looks clever but in the long run will probably become a quagmire the way Afghanistan did. There are far too many groups to consolidate any power behind a single party.The only reason he’s making progress is because we haven’t chosen to directly confront him with military force. We’d win: Russian anti-aircraft and electronic warfare capabilities are intimidating, but we have the better professional army, a 10:1 advantage in aircraft carriers and a superior air force. But it would be idiotic.Putin’s brute-force approach is familiar: The USSR used it during the Cold War. But again, we need to play the long game.The Soviets lost the Cold War because they bankrupted themselves trying to occupy swaths of territory. They can build up their military, but don’t have the economic engine to support it. They can create more dangerous nukes, but the truth is we all have so many warheads that “more effective” warheads are like bigger hair on a dog’s back. It’s irrelevant, because everything’s already covered.Again: The long game.Putin hasn’t attempted action against NATO countries. He’s pursuing an all-or-nothing strategy in his own country where, if he fails to purge every opposition group, he’s eventually going to lose all power. If he doesn’t do that, then he’ll have to find a way to sustain what he’s built after he’s dead. How will he do that? Does he have a protege?What’s he doing to address the Russian economy? We dwarf their GDP by at least 5x.Yup: The long game.FinallyPutin supports Trump because he knows he can’t work with Clinton or Obama. If he really thought he could outsmart Clinton, why not support her?And, before we point fingers at the current administration: What we’re really dealing with, and will for decades, is the aftermath of the Iraq war. We destabilized the entire Middle East, which led to the rise of additional terrorist organizations, which led to civil war in multiple countries and complete fragmentation of political interests. We accelerated the fall of nation states, which left room for smaller groups who practice asymmetric warfare. Huge headache.But Putin? Outsmart Clinton and Obama? No.
Why are some liberals so condescending toward Trump supporters? Do they really feel they are superior?
They can’t believe anyone voted for someone who has spouted so much hate speech, who has so few coherent ideas, and whose tendencies seem too patently autocratic.It’s not about liberals feeling “superior”: it’s about us being morally aghast that you guys got behind a demi-man who called Mexicans “rapists” in his campaign announcement, has degraded women, attacked anyone who dares criticize him, waged a systematic war on the very free press whose constant attention to him probably factored in his victory, attacked a Gold Star family and compared his “sacrifices” as real-estate billionaire to those of the young and dead Muslim-American soldier Humayun Khan, who besmirched John McCain’s status as a war hero — when was Trump ever in Vietnam?, who wants to create a registry for Muslims (much as Hitler did for Jews — bad precedent), who has the zealous support of the KKK, who cozied up to Putin (whose government interfered in the election — in the country whose security the president is supposed to ensure), who has been nominating plutocrats and alt-right loons to very lofty and powerful positions, who promises to deport millions and break up families, to “build a Wall and make Mexico pay for it” (good luck), who will lead us into trade wars and likely encourage fiscal policy that will lead to another huge financial meltdown, calls climate change a hoax propagated by China (and therefore embraces destructive industries and deregulation, and has no agenda to help mitigate the first anthropogenic extinction in our planet’s history), etc., etc., etc.We are disappointed to think we live in a country in which our fellow citizens think that these things are presidential, that they befit the leader of the free world. We are horrified to think that America elected its own image, and that image is this. The man’s affronts to common decency and infantile vulnerability to any provocation should have disqualified him in the minds of all decent and sane people.So what the fuck happened? I am no great fan of Hillary’s. I don’t think Washington is functioning properly. But electing this wholly selfish, power-hungry golem to our highest office was not a wise alternative.It’s not so much about superiority. The feeling is “This is America in the twenty-first century! How could you?”
Why won't people just let President Trump do his job?
Dear Perry (I Have Two Quora Accounts) Moore:Let me be clear. The only person who is “stopping” Donald Trump from doing his job as the duly elected President of the United States is….Donald Trump.His rise to power, aided in part by individuals who hate foreigners, Muslims, and liberals, as well as assistance by Russian hackers who used various techniques to spread false rumors, bought political ads on Facebook, and attempted to steal voter information from various states’ data banks, has placed Trump in the White House.He is only the second Republican President in the past 100 years to reach the White House with no previous experience as a politician. The last man to achieve this was General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, the victorious commander who led the Allied forces in North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and Southern Italy, and the successful campaign in Northwest Europe during World War II.Unlike Trump, Ike was a respected (and respect-worthy) leader who led the nation through some of the toughest years of the Cold War. He wisely kept us out of the Suez Crisis in 1956, kept the tensions with the Soviet Union from getting hot for eight years, and actually focused on infrastructure improvements.The St. Lawrence Seaway? That was done under the Eisenhower Administration.The Interstate Highway system? Ditto.And Ike, unlike Trump, actually worked well with members of Congress from both parties.Plus, Ike was likable!“Your” President may have signed a few bills (Kate’s Law being one), but other than sabotaging the Affordable Care Act and making a mockery out of our democratic processes, Trump has accomplished nothing of great merit.Now, you seek, in this extremely loaded and insincere question, to pin the blame on liberals, protesters, and the “mainstream media” for “your” President’s ineffectiveness during his first nine months on the job.You seem to be saying, “If you naive liberals would just stop criticizing the President, he could do his job.”This would work extremely well if we lived in Cuba, North Korea, or the Galactic Empire. If that were so, dissent would be squelched, and we’d live in a dictatorship.