• Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    That’s pretty much how they’ve tried to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they get to that in school, isn’t it?

        • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          19 days ago

          Japan wanted a conditional surrender with really their only condition being don’t kill the emperor. The US nuked them, imposed an unconditional surrender, then didn’t kill the emperor anyway.

          Japan also had basically no ships, no planes, and no fuel to run ships or planes anyway at that point.

            • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              19 days ago

              It was never about Japan really, it was about keeping the Soviets from being part of the liberation of Japan and keeping them from getting anything

              Also about sending an extremely thinly veiled threat

              Plus a bit of human experimentation for how the bomb itself affected the human body

              Truly up there with all the other unforgivable crimes of this cursed country even if it isn’t in competition for the top spot

              • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                19 days ago

                This. It was an island that could not survive in isolation under a total blockade. The end was inevitable. But the Soviets had just crushed the (previously) largest land army in human history and were on pace to redraw the map in East Asia so the USA deployed its big stick to ensure it would be at the High Table of World Events for the foreseeable future.

                That nuking Japan would encourage Japan to surrender directly to the USA and cede control of the home islands to the USA was a nice bonus on top of the “remind/terrify the rest of the world that we’re in charge” reason they did it.

                Japan was, for these ghouls, really the ideal target for the purpose.

            • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              19 days ago

              Yeah, did you know that Truman didn’t even know we had the bomb until after FDR died because FDR didn’t trust him?

              Really, the only explanations that make any sense as to why the US dropped the bomb are:

              1. Truman was a bloodthirsty dipshit who had no comprehension of what he was doing

              And/or

              1. The Soviets and CPC were liberating Japanese holdings on the mainland quickly and the US wanted to skip a negotiated surrender, especially one where communists had a seat at the negotiating table, and hurry up the end of the war on purely amerikkkan terms
              • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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                19 days ago

                Edit: I’m a dingus, please disregard.

                Hey, in your last sentence there, do you mean to say “one where no communists had a seat at the negotiating table”? I’m usually not one to point out typos, but this one seems like it changes your point quite a lot and could cause confusion!

          • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            19 days ago

            Even the whole “America wanted an unconditional surrender” thing is BS, there’s no such thing as an unconditional surrender, it’s a nonsense idea.

            • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              19 days ago

              Also amerikkka left Japanese troops armed in China to fight the Communists in the hopes that the Nationalist losers could accomplish something after forcing Japan’s surrender.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      19 days ago

      I recently watched few hours of some history channel or something like that. Literally hour upon hour nonstop everything was either “ze zuperior german zteel” or justifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.

  • rhubarb [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    I’m convinced that like 70 % of Americans would support Trump invading Canada if it happened. All he would need to do is talk about saving the lives of some Troops and they would be cheering the carpet-bombing of Toronto.

    • CrawlMarks [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      19 days ago

      I mean, I am kinda into it for the bit. America fighting the land that invented war crimes is a better use of my tax money than America fighting children’s hospitals.

        • CrawlMarks [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          19 days ago

          And yet, western infighting is better for the world in total than any other thing the government is likely to so. It is not a beautiful thing true. It is however much better ethically than normal.

          qin-shi-huangdi-fireball

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      19 days ago

      I genuinely doubt that. Manufacturing consent for war has always been necessary for Americans, and while that’s easy when the target is some non-white country far away and especially when it’s a country there’s been decades of propaganda leveled against, trying to flip a switch against a country that white supremacist Americans see as human and which right up until that moment have been allies seems a lot harder to sell.

      Preemptively attacking their own allies for literally no reason except they felt like it would fracture the American public in ways that terror bombing an uncooperative periphery state couldn’t. The US would become a pariah state and quite possibly even start seeing internal guerilla warfare from Canadians and Canadian sympathizers. Might even start getting troop rebellions as soldiers find their conscience when told to murder other racist white people who speak English instead of scary brown people who do not.

      Which is why they should do it. Just completely obliterate the empire in the most unforced error of all time.

    • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      19 days ago

      Absolutely, I have no doubt that if push comes to shove all these “I didn’t vote for him” amerikkkans will be lining up to salute the flag and demand that Winnipeg be glassed to save a single hypothetical American troop

      • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        19 days ago

        that works. i was thinking of the pithy quote about white supremacy being like a black hole: not directly observable but you know it’s there by the effects or something along those lines.

      • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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        19 days ago

        Damn, that’s some serious shade RD throws at anarchists in the postscript.

        Since we’re discussing two-dimensional models, it would be churlish not to address one popular two-dimensional model and its implications: the two-axis “political compass.”

        This diagram, popular among the extremely online, organizes ideologies along a “Left-Right” axis and an “Authoritarian-Libertarian” axis. Anarchism, along with micro-variants like “anarcho-communism” and “libertarian socialism,” then lays claim to the “Left-Libertarian” quadrant, and thus positions itself as one of the Big Four.

        To briefly cite some notable anarchist theorists:

        The Communism of Marx seeks enormous centralization in the state, and where such exists, there must inevitably be a central state bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, which speculates on the work of the people, will always find a way to prevail. [Bakunin]

        The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. [Goldman]

        Nietzsche was not a social theorist but a poet, a rebel and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was of the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats. [Goldman]

        I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism of the type that you have advanced. […] Let me make it very plain that if socialism, which is what I call the authoritarian version of collectivism, were to emerge, I would join your [anarcho-capitalist] community. I would migrate to your community and do everything I could to prevent the collectivists from abridging my right to function as I like. [Bookchin]

        Anarchism is an uninteresting ideological byproduct of capitalism characterized above all by its adherents’ transvaluation of their own irrelevance into a religious virtue. I consider it a minor sibling of liberalism and fascism, sharing all of their Euro-individualist delusions of genius and grandeur.

        This is all I will say about it in this context.

      • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        19 days ago

        ooooh, i’ve had his book on stalin sitting in a tab in my browser for like a year now but i will add this to my list of things to peruse once i get my adhd sorted out lol

        thanks for the recommendation catgirl-heart

        • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          19 days ago

          that Losurdo book is a main basis of the redsails link I initially gave. the deeply racist roots of the “sorting out who’s good and who’s bad via the infallible market” of market fundamentalism/liberalism

  • QuillcrestFalconer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    That’s like the opposite of me. I would aprove of killing 20k American soldiers to prevent an invasion of Iran killing 2M people. That’s called utilitarianism baby

  • Beaver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    I think the framing of this question undersells the attitude. For a lot of Americans, it’s not merely that the lives of foreigners are less valuable than American lives. It is rather, that the lives of foreigners have no value at all.

  • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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    19 days ago

    I think Sagan is too optimistic, at least half of Americans would approve killing any number of bad country civilians to get back to brunch.

  • CrawlMarks [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    For what it’s worth the human mind doesn’t seem to be able to really comprehend numbers that big. Maybe if you practice or whatever. However if you poll any random person on the street they would likely say any number of over a thousand is about as bad as any other. 2 million? That sucks? 2 trillion? That’s sucks too.

    So essentially the question was interpreted as “would you kill a bunch of people that you don’t like to save a bunch that you do” which you can just put in whatever numbers you want at that point and for most people that answer won’t change.