So You've Been Elected President!: A Choose Your Own Adventure Thingy
Who's a big boy?
Well, you are!
You've been elected to the Presidency of the United States of America, a very famous country on a very famous planet--Earth!
You're probably wondering what you've gotten yourself into!
That makes 325 million of us.
(And over six billion more wondering what we've gotten them into too...)
So we thought it would be a good idea to explain some things to you. Like: what is a President? What is the Constitution? What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? What is the nuclear triad? And many other important things that someone really ought to know even before running for...not to mention before being elected to..the Presidency.
But whaddaya gonna do, right?
The first decision you have to make is this one:
Will you:
(a) Go through with this despite your manifest want of every virtue normally taken to be requisite for the office?
(b) Just basically hand the job over to Pence and get to work on project vengeance?
(c) Raid that sweet campaign war chest and abscond to Russia to while away the rest of your days with your good buddy Vlad?
You have chosen (a)!
God help us all, and turn to page 3
Well, you are!
You've been elected to the Presidency of the United States of America, a very famous country on a very famous planet--Earth!
You're probably wondering what you've gotten yourself into!
That makes 325 million of us.
(And over six billion more wondering what we've gotten them into too...)
So we thought it would be a good idea to explain some things to you. Like: what is a President? What is the Constitution? What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? What is the nuclear triad? And many other important things that someone really ought to know even before running for...not to mention before being elected to..the Presidency.
But whaddaya gonna do, right?
The first decision you have to make is this one:
Will you:
(a) Go through with this despite your manifest want of every virtue normally taken to be requisite for the office?
(b) Just basically hand the job over to Pence and get to work on project vengeance?
(c) Raid that sweet campaign war chest and abscond to Russia to while away the rest of your days with your good buddy Vlad?
You have chosen (a)!
God help us all, and turn to page 3
posted by Winston Smith at
10:50 AM
4 Comments:
Is Vladimir Putin all that bad, really? He sort of just wants the eastern bloc countries and Ukraine back. They were part of the USSR at one point anyway..and let's be honest contemporary Russia is *not* the USSR.
The US has crippling sanctions on Russia, and I don't see how they are a threat to us militarily. I mean, I doubt that he's crazy enough to nuke us.
The US likes to talk a big game when condemning Russia's invasion of Crimea, but when the US shows little regard for international laws and treaties (see: the bombing of Yugoslavia and invasion of Iraq), it communicates to Russia that it doesn't have to honor them either.
Wouldn't it be better for the two nations to get along?
I dunno man...
However bad the U.S. might suck, I don't see that it makes Russia suck less.
I'll give you the invasion of Iraq--there's no excuse for that. But Yugoslavia--no. That was a humanitarian mission to stop mass murder / "ethnic cleansing." Russia was just wrong in that case.
There's sanctions against them because Assad is a murderous autocrat, and they're helping him. The sanctions are their own fault, and we're right to levy them.
There is no defense of the invasion of Crimea, and the U.S.'s craptastic invasion of Iraq doesn't change that.
It would be better for the two nations to get along, yes--absolutely. I respect the Russian people very much, and I want us to be allies.
But is Putin that bad, really?
Yes.
Yes he is.
Okay so it seems that the conclusion is: US alliance with Russia, good in some qualified sense. Alliance with a Putin-led Russia, bad.
So what do we say about the fact that the US has such close ties to Saudi Arabia? They don't have the cleanest human rights record. Are they just simply not as tyrannical as Syria? What's the explanation there? I really don't know, but a good portion of anti-atlanticists seem to think that our alliance with the Saudis pokes a hole in any of our claims to humanitarian intervention..I don't know what to say about this..
I'm not saying I've got all the answers, man. I absolutely don't.
I've got nothing good to day about Saudi Arabia other than: the State Department seems to think that they make better allies than enemies.
If we could be buds with Russia and tug them in the right direction--as I think we could do without someone like Putin running the show--I'd be all for it. That doesn't seem like an option with somebody like Putin in charge, does it?
I don't think these choices are purely moral. If Russia and China were powerless, we'd be standing over them with the 7th fleet telling them that they're going to be getting their shit together fast or else. If Saudi Arabia had no oil and wasn't located where we need bases, I doubt we'd be allied with them. And Israel...don't even get me started on those guys...
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