And how do you think that improves his reputation?
Or, maybe more to the point, how does it improve the reputation of the US abroad?
(I don’t hold a bunch of racist elected officials against Obama, but it doesn’t speak well for our country. And yes, i don’t think that was just partisan, or his lack of political skill, i think there was a lot of racism involved.)
I think the blame belongs on Republicans for blocking him.
It sounds like you’re saying executive overreach would have been fine if Obama did it but it’s a problem that Trump’s doing it. But if Obama hadn’t done it, and a bunch of other previous Presidents hadn’t done it, it would be harder for Trump to get away with what he’s doing now.
I’m not here to defend Obama’s foreign policy. I just want to make it clear that he made several efforts to close Guantanamo. And it didn’t happen because of Republicans.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/272294-republicans-move-to-oppose-closing-gitmo/
That’s a fair point. It’s not like I think our shitty reputation is undeserved. And yes, racism was a big factor in how he was treated.
Haha no probs, little bird 
Lol
I’d say the experiment has failed, but you can always start a new one.
All the “manifest destiny” and “greatest country” nonsense ironically allows the US to fail in ways that are surprising for a wealthy country.
The US has been an economic hegemon for a long time. It couldn’t last forever though, and Trump is accelerating the fall from that perch.
America will have to scrap it out with the rest of us, and hopefully part of that will be embracing rationality and tolerance.
There’s a Kahlil Gibran story:
A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have
a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking
for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again—and he said, “A
mouse will do.”
that I think of a lot when I compare my societal hopes when I was an adolescent to what I’ll settle for in my fifties.
Shit, I’d settle for George W Bush right about now.
Nice of you to bury us before we’re dead.
We are a very young country.
The very old civilizations have taken 100s if not 1000s of years and haven’t been nearly as successful and certainly didn’t coddle citizens or make the world outside their borders a better place.
There is still much philanthropy and lots of dollars in the US that other countries covet. Whether they want to admit it or not.
Focus people, we’re trying to flame Der_Trihs, not lament that there’s no fuckin’ way an actual revolutionary gets elected POTUS (c’mon, we couldn’t even nominate Bernie )
Der’s maximalist doom style annoys some of us because often there’s an underlying real point, but it’s not going to seen because of the triggered eyerolling.
Yeah, this is pretty much it. The overall thrust of Der_Trihs posting is in the correct direction. It’s just that by always exaggerating so greatly, he causes people to dismiss his posts out of fatigue and buzz. And like someone else pointed out, he gets a longer leash because of his posting lining up with the direction of the overall political leaning. A poster who made posts like his with the same flavor but of right-wing variety ("the Democrats just want to murder babies because they love baby murder!”) would probably be banned within hours.
The rate of civilizational progress has been accelerating for everyone. When I was young, China was still dirt poor; I remember mentioning to a schoolteacher that their economy was growing at 10% a year and the response was “10% of nothing is nothing”.
There are people still alive that can remember when the UAE was a handful of nomadic cultures only having a few tens of thousands of people, in total.
The world is moving fast, and the US is a very old hegemon by modern standards. Part of why it’s so complacent IMO.
I don’t know that the US is proportionally particularly philanthropic. The US certainly has a lot of money, but a lot of that is a function of being the world’s reserve currency. US debt is the essential lubricant of the world economy. But you may yet see a time where that isn’t true, as I say, Trump is fast making that a reality.
With DT not joining in the fun here, I’ve decided to channel him 
Only the executive overreach that gets the results I want, yes. Intent and outcomes matter more to me than procedure, especially in the face of evil.
When the people doing the blocking are doing it because they’re vile, racist scum, being a stickler for procedure is like being that one poster who would turn over an escaped slave to the authorities because it was the law at the time. No. Hell no.
And when they try to do the same thing in their turn, you stop them. Because of the outcomes and intent, not because of their method. Make that clear, and any criers of “hypocrisy” can be told to shove it.
I agree. If you break procedure in order to stop people from being tortured or killed, the violation of procedure is less important.
In case it needs to be said: if you break procedure in order to hurt people but you lie and say it’s to protect people, that’s not okay.
And, of course, it’s clear that the US MAGA movement has taken over the conservative movement and doesn’t give a wet fart about procedure any more. Those of us in opposition need to be very clear on that and be willing to shake off the norms that bind us, as long as our opponents refuse to be similarly bound. This isn’t a game, and the stakes are too high to let ourselves be unilaterally hobbled.
But sometimes he’s just wrong and way off base. Here’s his take on Stoicism (from the ‘soulless-crushing-modern-society’ thread):
Don’t channel them. I’m sure a black cloud will form over your head and follow you all the days of your life.
And don’t say @Der_Trihs 3 times in a row.
(I think all this is lost on him, almost positive he’s not following this thread)
This. Sometimes he’s just wrong.
What the everyloving fuck are you talking about? There’s a poster in this thread who advocated for literally murdering undocumented immigrants. And is still around.
DT does not get special ban treatment. DT doesn’t get banned because once somebody points out an issue or an error, there’s no flurry of angry defensive posts. Or trollish behavior. No coming back to a thread with a dozen recalcitrant posts. At least not in several years.
Look back on any right wing poster who has actually been banned, and the common thread is they act like unapologetic jerks. I.e. it’s not the political persuasion that’s the issue but the bad behavior.
I’m a fairly upbeat and cheerful individual, and I believe @Der_Trihs has a much more realistic view of the US than your “the whole world wishes it was us even if they won’t admit it” position. He’s just quite a bit more pessimistic than I am.
He tried every year of his administration to close Guantanamo.
And it wasn’t just the Republicans who blocked him. There were a lot of cowardly Democrats who somehow thought that the prisoners there were actual supervillains and that if they got moved to prisons in their states they would somehow burst through the walls and rampage across the countryside, and they would get blamed for it. One of the many reasons I gave up on the Democrats long ago.
There are many things Obama disappointed me about (the drone-bombing of Yemen being a big one) but not closing Guantanamo is not one of them.
There was a way, I think, but IMHO Obama decided that it wasn’t worth the political risk.
Step 1 - Order the military, as commander in chief, to free all prisoners in Guantamo.
Step 2 - Guantanamo still exists (as a military base) but without anybody jailed there it can’t continue to be a prison.
No need for step 3.
Now, this would’ve been politically costly and, if one of the liberated prisoners happened to blow up a plane or something, politically very costly.
It was probably the right thing to do, though.
Agreed. I liked Obama (and voted for him of course) but I was disappointed with his performance overall. Sometimes I just wished would have been a bit more forceful but sometime I just didn’t agree with his decisions. For example, he ordered a “surge” of 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan in December 2009, despite campaigning on ending the war there.