• @[email protected]
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    1471 month ago

    Say it a little louder for all the dipshits trying to argue that a trump presidency would be better for Gaza than Biden is.

    • donuts
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      501 month ago

      If Trump wins I’m going to be too preoccupied with the climate disaster and end of American democracy (in that order) to give a single fuck about what happens in Gaza, Ukraine, or anywhere else.

      • @[email protected]
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        241 month ago

        Reverse order for me, the climate distaste I worry about with a Republican dictatorship is a nuclear winter. But that might be growing up during the Cold War talking.

        • @[email protected]
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          91 month ago

          Maybe nuclear winter blocks out sun for so long we solve global warming and enter a new ice age. So many humans will be dead we won’t be able to carry on with our global warming activities, as the small handful remaining return to an agrarian society. Maybe Putin and the republicans will save us all.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 month ago

          Yup. Russia takes Ukraine and funds Iran in the inevitably escalated Israel-Iran direct conflict, while China attacks Taiwan and Trump preaches isolationism. Good start to WWIII.

        • @[email protected]
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          01 month ago

          Well then you can rest easy, modern studies indicate nuclear winter would be extremely unlikely. So nothing to worry about!

        • donuts
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          11 month ago

          I mean, am I wrong? Should I care more about what happens to Gazans or Ukrainians than the fact that we’re living in a kleptocracy of science-deniers who are openly taking $1 billion bribes from the oil industry? I don’t think so…

            • donuts
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              1 month ago

              If you’re just abstractly posting about shit on the internet, sure. But if a wildfire burns my neighborhood down (a real possibility where I live, even now, and increasingly likely as the climate slips into the irredeemable zone over the next decade or so) I’m not going to be thinking about global politics and wars happening in countries that I will never step foot in. That would be borderline pathological.

              I’m just being honest. You need to live a life of privilege to have the time, freedom, and emotional capacity to worry about what is happening in Gaza. And, should Donald Trump become president again, he will do whatever he feels like doing in Gaza, nobody will hold him accountable (as nobody seems willing to do right now for the things he’s done in the past), and I’m not going to have the willpower to care because, mark my words, WE will have real problems of our own.

              If you want to see what unchecked genocide, mass civil unrest, climate disaster, and American autocracy looks like, by all means, allow Donald Trump to take over our country. 2024 is our last stand, and what happens next is a matter of individual survival.

      • Flying Squid
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        31 month ago

        Considering nuking Gaza could easily lead to everyone nuking everyone else, you might change your priorities a bit.

        • donuts
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          Nobody is starting a global thermonuclear war over Gaza. Iran doesn’t have a capability, NK doesn’t give a fuck, and if Russia was going to elevate the world into a nuclear war they would have already done so over Ukraine.

          Meanwhile climate change is here and American democracy is in peril, and these are things that actually affect people in this country and the entire world.

          If Trump wins, Gaza is his to do as he pleases. If we didn’t hold him accountable for his crimes against the United States, I have serious doubts that we’re going to hold him accountable for crimes in the middle east.

            • donuts
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              Let’s imagine Trump wins in 2024. He’s leading in a number of polls and Biden’s popularity is down, so there’s a REAL chance…

              Who exactly do you think is going to hold him accountable for anything he does at home or abroad?

              Congress? (Maybe in some kind of weird scenario where Trump wins the presidency but loses the House and Senate. Not very likely…)

              The courts? (Trump has personally appointed 33% of the current SCOTUS, and we have seen that they will tie themselves into knots to do his bidding. Another 33% of SCOTUS are other highly political conservative judges who have proven to be on Trump’s side. And then we have to consider that Trump has also appointed a huge number of judges at every different level of our legal system. They aren’t going to do anything to him, ever.)

              And if Netenyahu was to kill every last man, woman, and child in Gaza, do you think a Trump administration would push back even in the slightest? This is a guy who sides with Putin and Kim Jung Un. He does not give a fuck about humanity or anybody’s life other than his own.

              I once had hope that someone, somewhere would hold Trump accountable for things like January 6th, but I guess hope doesn’t spring eternal after all because I’m just not seeing it. Trump’s right about one thing: he could shoot a guy on 5th avenue in broad daylight and nothing would happen to him. One third of this country would be evil enough to still vote for him, and another third of the country would be to stupid to hold him accountable.

    • @[email protected]
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      231 month ago

      Why aren’t the “But Biden!” people in this thread? It’s so very strange they seem to be absent (no, it really isn’t).

  • @[email protected]
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    591 month ago

    I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.

    I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.

    I’m not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?

    I’m mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.

    • sbr32
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      601 month ago

      Some disclaimers

      I am a 50+ year old American

      Up until 10ish years ago I had at least a better than average understanding/knowledge of WWII

      My ex’s grandmother’s family was from Hiroshima and they had family members killed in the bombing.

      All that said as tragic as they were I still think those bombs were the correct military decision at that time. I would be willing to have a rational conversation about it though.

      The situation in Gaza is completely different and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the GOP are fucking ghouls.

      • Flying Squid
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        121 month ago

        Also, I have always thought that, as horrific and tragic as what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the fact that the world was able to view the aftermath has been what has prevented a larger nuclear exchange. I don’t know if the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone the same way without everyone knowing exactly what an atomic bomb does.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 month ago

        Is your argument for bombing being the right decision the same (that it resulted in less bloodshed overall)? If so, how can you estimate the body count of the alternative (a prolonged conventional war, I assume)?

        • @[email protected]
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          71 month ago

          I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.

          Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got. And that’s just Americans. It doesn’t count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.

          200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it’s worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.

          So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it’s an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it’s apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.

          It’s also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn’t make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the “political” sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k “enemy” civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American’s to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter? I wouldn’t want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        To this day gaman or Japanese stoicism is a big part of Japanese culture. The Japanese had already lost the war, but the ruling class was willing to sacrifice scores of people to fight to the bitter end.

        In an episode of Hardcore History, it detailed that the Allied ships couldn’t dock in Okinawa because of all the corpses in the water. The Japanese had inundated Okinawa with propaganda that the Americans were going to rape them all. Many families killed themselves. And the invasion of the mainland was only going to get bloodier.

        A terrible as it is to say, dropping the nukes was the more humane option of the two.

    • @[email protected]OPM
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      171 month ago

      Back in HS, I think I was told that it was a regrettable ending and we probably went a bit overboard.

        • @[email protected]
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          181 month ago

          I remember watching it. The problem with the video is that they seriously overestimate the willingness of the Japanese to surrender without giving any evidence to back this up. The Japanese were absolutely not willing to surrender. I mean, just look at their reaction after Hiroshima. There was a lot of debate AFTER an entire city had been razed to the ground. Japan was absolutely not going to surrender without a nuke being dropped.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 month ago

            The Japanese were attempting to negotiate surrender with the “neutral” USSR prior to the nuclear bombs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan The US wanted an unconditional surrender which included the destruction of the Japanese emperor, who at the time, was the head of the Japanese religion. To put this into perspective, consider the United States request similar to requesting the destruction of the Pope within the Vatican. Because of this, the Japanese were seeking better terms of surrender which did not involved the removal of their religious leader. What the Japanese did not know at the time was the USSR was not a neutral party, and they were secretly mobilizing their forces on mainland Asia due to an agreement Stalin made with FDR prior to the US entering the war in Europe.

            The reality is, once Japan learned that the USSR was not neutral and they were going to be fighting the US and the USSR in a two front war, this is when the emperor forced Japan to surrender.

            To put things into perspective, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were sadly, just another two cities leveled by the US. The US were performing night carpet bombing on Japanese cities as soon as 1944. Many of these raids leveled several square km of urban areas. https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=217. This is why people argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not the catalyst to Japan’s surrender because the US have been leveling Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, long before the two nuclear bombs were dropped. None of these raids caused Japan to surrender before.

        • @jballs
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          21 month ago

          Yikes 2 hours and 20 minutes. I’ll try to watch as much as I can today, but probably can’t get through the whole thing. Any high points I should watch?

          • TheRealKuni
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            11 month ago

            Been a while since I watched it, like I said I’d recommend listening to it. Treat it like a podcast, for me the time flew by and I ended up listening to every video he has over the following weeks. 😂

            • @jballs
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              31 month ago

              I wasn’t planning on spending my morning watching a 2 and a half hour YouTube video, but here we are and that’s exactly what happened. That was a fascinating watch. I’d say for others that the TLDW is this:

              • The narrative that the atomic bombs were dropped to prevent an invasion of Japan is false and was constructed afterwards as a plausible and easy to understand solution that allowed all parties (both the US and Japan) to come out looking good in the end.

              • The reality of the situation was much more complicated. At the time, there was never a US plan to invade Japan.

              • Japan was already thoroughly defeated militarily and was looking to negotiate a surrender. Japan was hoping that Russia would be useful to negotiate peace with the US.

              • The US had previously asked Russia to enter the war, but then later realized it was not necessary to bring about an end to the war. The US actually realized having Russia involved would complicate the post-war logistics and would bolster Russia as a world super power. When sending terms of surrender to Japan, the US removed Russia as a signer of the terms, leaving Japan a false hope that Russia could still be used help them secure better terms.

              • Russia informed the US that they would be declaring war with Japan on August 15. The US dropped the bombs on Japan a week earlier in hopes of accelerating Japan’s surrender before Russia entered the war.

              • As a result, Russia declared war on Japan in the days between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan issued their surrender shortly afterwards. In all likelihood, dropping the bombs accelerated the surrender timeline by about a week. Though it could be argued that had Russia’s signature been kept on the surrender terms sent to Japan, it would have also ended the war earlier.

              • TheRealKuni
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                21 month ago

                Isn’t he fantastic? His videos are so well-researched and well-written that I’d listen to his vaguely monotonous scouse voice talk about pretty much anything.

                • @jballs
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                  31 month ago

                  Yeah it really was a good watch. The length and minimal use of graphics at first were intimidating, but he still kept it interesting so it was easy to absorb.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 month ago

      It depends whether you think killing 200,000+ civilians is a defensible act.

      300,000+ if you include the bombing of Tokyo.

      Nobody knows how a conventional war would have played out. To assert civilian deaths would have been higher is pure speculation and a gross attempt to justify the slaughter of noncombatants.

      Though it is likely that even without nukes, the US would have still razed these cities with conventional munitions, given the events in Tokyo.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      My understanding is that even after Hiroshima, the Imperial Army attempted a coup to avoid surrender.

      The Japanese were not stopping. The only alternative at hand was a full invasion, which would have killed many, many more.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      There’s also the possibility that because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapons have never since been used. What would cold war been like in that case?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Modern commentary on the use of nuclear weapons on Japan mostly conclude it was not necessary and that a full scale invasion would not have been necessary to force a full surrender.

      What I find fascinating is how hyper focused everyone became on the nuclear bombs due to the spectacular nature of the technology, whereas things like the firebombing of Tokyo are discussed far less.

      “The raids that were conducted by the U.S. military on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, are the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1] The atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, by comparison, resulted in the immediate death of an estimated 70,000 to 150,000 people.”

    • donuts
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      511 month ago

      That’s the scary part… If you have been following the Republican Party recently, you’ll realize that he is reading the room.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 month ago

        What’s his stance on puppy-murder?

        Being a sociopath is apparently a positive trait for these sick fucks.

        • donuts
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          41 month ago

          He’s staunchly against it.

          Until Trump picks Noem as his VP, then he’ll tell you that it’s no big deal and it’s just simple farm livin’.

    • @Ashyr
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      211 month ago

      Dude is illiterate regardless of the room he’s in.

  • Fire Witch
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    Back in 2017 or so, I had a full on MAGA coworker who was ecstatic about the migrant detention centers at the border. If anything, he felt we weren’t torturing them enough. One day, he dropped a line that was so heinous it still sticks with me to this day: “we used to do the same to the Japanese and no one cared about it then, so why is everyone up in arms about it now?”

    All this to say I’m not at all surprised they’re saying this now. They’ve always felt this way, and they know how despicable it is.

    Fwiw, the dude was a 50-something year old Israeli immigrant. He also joked about wanting to join the military to “practice on live targets”

    I hate this timeline so much

      • Fire Witch
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        I knew better than to engage. The guy was a nutter. He got laid off shortly after that thankfully.

        Bonus story about this fucker. When I adopted a dog, he told me that “in five years you won’t give a shit about the dog and will only care about your boyfriend”. Eight years later, my girlfriend and I co-parent the same dog like she’s our daughter.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      Not to defend the viewpoint, but I assume he was referring to interment camps and not nuclear bombing. That would be more analogous to the border detentions.

    • John Richard
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      21 month ago

      Your coworker has serious mental health issues. I hate the party but I also hate that our mental health system won’t address the negative impact religion plays in forming negative views and that our laws prevent therapists and those in mental health from doing their actual jobs.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Or that a significant number of these “therapists” just push religion like it’s the solution. Disgusting.

  • FuglyDuck
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    381 month ago

    So… he knows that… like… Israel would be in the blast radius and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv probably affected by a shit ton of radiation….

    • @[email protected]
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      171 month ago

      You assume that these guy know much about anything except corruption, graft, and drug fueled sex orgies.

    • @[email protected]
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      121 month ago

      Nevermind all the other obvious reasons this is terrible but I’m sure Egypt would have some objections to being blasted by a nearby nuke.

    • Flying Squid
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      101 month ago

      He knows that he’s not the one who’s going to be pushing the button, but that his rabid out-for-blood base won’t even think about that. He’s just throwing them meat.

    • @[email protected]
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      Israel is rumored to have tactical nukes that are much smaller yield than the large ICBMs we hear about all the time. Super destructive force in only 1 or 2 km blast radius, which would even fit inside a small area like Gaza. Of course, in addtition to devastating Gaza, there would still be fallout and issues over Israel, and using them in this manner is definitely Not OK. However, I can believe that there are some deluded people in government (both in Israel and in the US) who would view that as acceptable.

      • @[email protected]
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        -21 month ago

        Russia would immediately nuke them. It would be the end game for Israel. Hopefully they aren’t that stupid.

        • John Richard
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          21 month ago

          Russia wouldn’t get involved. Many of the Jewish Mafia reside in Israel and are essential to maintaining Putin’s power in the country. Russia in many ways would be more inclined to encourage Israel to use nukes to cause destabilization in US politics.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 month ago

      Ghouls like him love Israel, it’s just all those… you know, those people who live there

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      These are End Times cultists we are dealing with, the more death and destruction the better so daddy Jesus can come back and punish their enemies. Pathetic sick weak minds.

  • Plume (She/Her)
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    371 month ago

    I gotta give these people credit. It must take a massive amount of effort to try and be this consistently on the wrong side of history. Like, at some point, it has to be deliberate…

    • @[email protected]
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      191 month ago

      They think they’re on the right side of history. It’s 100% deliberate. They never admit they are wrong about anything because the thought is completely foreign to them. Right wing boomers absolutely believe they are 100% in the right on every single issue. They can’t even imagine they aren’t.

          • @[email protected]
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            Looks like 35% republican vs 33% democrat (versus 32% “independent” who might all vote republican for all I know).

            But there’s a lot of republicans under 60 too so not getting the point of the random ageism.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 month ago

              Lemmy is big on ageism and throwing around the word boomer (incorrectly.)

              Which is funny since there are a lot of older people on Lemmy, who most likely do not agree with the Republican agenda.

        • @[email protected]
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          01 month ago

          Here’s one reason:

          The average age of senators in the 118th Congress was 64 years old

          The average age of the 118th Congress was 58 years old

          The geriatric kleptocracy is a serious problem in the US.

    • GloriousGouda
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      61 month ago

      I can’t hardly take them or anyone that tosses the xtian mythology around. Why should we? History hasn’t shown us a “god”. Only shifty humans arguing over imaginary friends.

      Can we stop letting them in positions of power already? They obviously aren’t fit for leadership or power.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 month ago

      That’s because he’s a performative Christian, or “Christian.” He doesn’t believe in anything unless it help him get ahead in life - just like most politicians and other moderate-to-high functioning psychopaths and sociopaths.

    • @[email protected]
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      I mean, he’s not wrong, he’s just an asshole. By most historians accounts, Fat Man and Little Boy caused less death than an actual war with Japan would have.

      They were also retaliatory strikes after a direct attack on an American base, at the tail end of a global conflict, and we just got a new toy. The bomb was basically telling Japan to fuck off with their bullshit, and it did a pretty good job of it.

      That doesn’t make it the right answer, per se. Glassing the strip probably would net less death and destruction than continuing the genocide or especially allowing it to escalate more. I still have a hard time calling that “the good choice”

      And what happens after the glass hardens? We all gonna be honky dory or is somebody else gonna star lobbing nukes?

  • @[email protected]
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    281 month ago

    The senator continued to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the right decision” by the U.S. That decision ended the war with Japan, but killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians between the initial blasts and the deadly radiation that followed.

    “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham insisted.

    He didn’t directly suggest nuking Gaza, but he made multiple parallels between ending the war in Japan by using nukes and then basically says we should give bombs to Israel to finish the job without specifying what he means.

    So while someone might argue black and white letter of what he said isn’t “nuke Gaza”, he’s still implying something along those lines - the quick finish and a method that can do it.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 month ago

          I wasn’t aware vaporizing thousands of years of human history would be “nothing of value” being lost.

          Which is also to say nothing of value being lost when the people who still live in those historic cities are also vaporized.

          Lemmy really goes full “cut off your nose to spite your face” if they find out that face might be even slightly associated with religion

  • @[email protected]
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    There’s really no reason to ever report on or pay attention to things Lindsay Graham says. He has no real values or stands of his own. He is a spineless jellyfish that goes with the tide wherever it allows him to keep the most power.

    I have never seen any evidence of him ever voicing and sticking to an actual personal belief.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 month ago

      On the other hand, we should keep outing these Nazis whenever we can so that the decent part of society doesn’t collectively forget who punched down and who punched up.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Also, social consequences are IMPORTANT for fighting fascism. Making them feel unwelcome at every table, every party, every workplace, EVERYWHERE is a time-tested and actually fairly effective way to fight the spread of fascist thought. It won’t get rid of the most entrenched, the true believers - but it can help the knock-on effect of “hey maybe that guy has a real point”.

  • @[email protected]
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    161 month ago

    In case you’re wondering, these religious freaks believe that they can force Jesus to return by instigating WW3. So long as Israel is involved, they consider that to be fulfilling prophecy; and the nuclear, the better. I’m sure some of them even consider Trump to be the actual Antichrist, while as usual, most of them think it’s whoever the Democrats have in office.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 month ago

      its also stupid because old country of Israel is gone and making a new colony and calling Israel also isn’t fulfilling a prophecy - its cosplaying. Might as well call your dog “Israel” and say it fulfills the prophecy