Trump is 'calling for a nuclear strike,' former White House comms director says | Hacker News Reader

Trump is 'calling for a nuclear strike,' former White House comms director says

irishstar.com

22 pointsndsipa_pomu20 comments

This war is a shining example of how just a few small slips in a democracy can slide into collapse in just under 50 years. Everything felt fine up until 2008 and now America cannot fix itself anymore.

Citizens United

Shelby County v. Holder

First-past-the-post

Americans, you elected someone with the mentality of a child to the highest office in your country. You should be ashamed.

Face it, this is not some recent attack of dementia as some of you claim (perhaps trying to defend your extraordinarily poor judgment). The first time I heard that man talk was in 2016 when I saw fragments of his debate with Hillary Clinton. He was as childish and incoherent then as he is now. Later, seeing some clips of his behaviour during your election campaigns it was evident that he has the language and mannerisms of a child. I suspect he stopped his mental advance around the age of early adolescence or even earlier. This is not how an adult talks or behaves.

You gave nuclear codes to a 79 year old child. I can't condemn your recklessness enough.

You make children sound unreasonable. My 4 year old is way more coherent.

Ouch. But same.

I’m not ashamed.

Because this is democracy. I didn’t want this, I didn’t vote for it. But democracy is not just electing the people you want. The last presidential election was by all accounts a free and fair election.

As terrible as the current insanity might be, this is the president the majority voted for.

It may destroy the world economy, he might commit war crimes (attacking water infrastructure might be a war crime) and crimes against humanity (tbd). Those crimes may be prosecuted following due process, but until that happens this is the president the people elected.

Condemn the people who voted for him all you want, propose rules changes to prevent it from happening again, but he was democratically elected and I can’t be ashamed of democracy.

The democracy in the US is faulty in many ways. Democracy isn't a black or white kind of thing, so of course you can be ashamed of the lack of democracy that ended up with this person in charge.

I'm not convinced that the last election was free and fair. There's the strange comment that Trump made about Musk fixing the election machines and all the GOP comments about fixing elections sounds to me like projection

That's all fine and good as long as you keep your trash indoors. Iran is halfway around the world and the title here should make anybody feel ashamed, not just those from the country that proposes this. It's a failure of humanity, not just of democracy that we let things get this far.

> I can’t be ashamed of democracy.

Shame, in a democratic system, is good for exactly the same reason it is good for individuals to be able to feel it.

Every system of government has a failure mode. There are no exceptions: anarchy fails to strong men with big sticks, democracy fails to demagogues, hereditary aristocracy to literal inbreeding, dictatorships to sycophantic courtiers, etc.

A democracy that one cannot be ashamed of is simply one in which the same demagogues can keep trying as many times as it takes.

The US aren’t a democracy. You need a hell lot of money to even be a candidate, you can become president even if the majority didn’t vote for you.

The US are an oligarchy disguised as a democracy.

How much money did Barack Obama have when he started his political career?

How much did he have when he became a presidential candidate?

Balderdash. Russia has elections. There are plenty of places with elected governments that don't rise to the definition of democracy. We can't really claim to be a democracy without citing the caveats that our elections are bought by the Epstein class, and that we have a nearly overt fascist movement, with some tech industry leaders in that movement, among other ways in which democracy is degraded in the US.

Not maintaining and cultivating our democracy reduces our legitimacy, and when our acts affect the whole planet, that legitimacy matters.

What you are seeing in America right now is not democracy. We have transitioned into an oligarchy that is run by a group of billionaires. The only reason we still have elections is because the elites get to select the candidates and we only get to choose between the two options they chose for us.

Brookings did an article on it recently:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-democratic-...

Him talking was broadly incoherant word salad in 2016, but I think there's a strong case to be made that his coherancy has been getting even worse over the past while.

Only having the mental age of a child and sliding into dementia are not mutually exclusive.

More discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674286

That's more about Trump's remarks and less about a nuclear strike

Scaramucci served as the White House communications director for 11 days back in his first term.

Obviously, a nuclear strike is the worst action that could be taken.

What concerns me is that this seems like it could be the reason that experienced military leadership was just recently purged by Hegseth.

The Mooch!

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