MSC

Any clues? I was thinking early turkey tail but someone with more experience with turkey tail said it isn't because the underside of early turkey tail is always white

Image number 4 is a different tree with earlier stage growth 

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

don’t think I was saying BISS, or really making an argument (or advocating a position) as much as I was poking holes in what you were presenting.

Then what is your position? I am genuinely interested to know. You did poke a few holes for sure and I appreciated it because it does help me figure out how to improve my position and you absolutely provided a lot of good prompting for research, as has MigL. Sorry I can get caught up in the spirit of debate quite a bit but hey, at least I don't get as heated or assholish as I used to get when I first came onto this forum.

6 hours ago, TheVat said:

Also an advocate for Global Zero here.  The Brookings paper makes some strong arguments for continuing to work on this - the  mountain seems steeper now, alas, with Putin rekindling the Cold War and saber rattling crazily.  I hugely appreciate your passion on this - the world needs to be aware of that Damoclean sword over its head and agitating for its removal.

Well I appreciate you and your passion also. Ehrfucht vom der leben! I've just never been one to ignore the elephant in the room, hence my profile pic!

You should have a read of Schwietzers declaration of conscience too, you'd appreciate it. There is also an article called Blacklisting Schweitzer by Laurence S Wittner that details a lot of what was being done collaboratively in the late 1950s and early 60s to sway public opinion against nuclear testing that I think would interest you, if you've not already read it of course!

Global zero will probably never happen in our lifetimes but the groundwork has been laid and if people don't pick up the torch, then and only then is it an impossible goal. 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

You guys are too old to be that naive; well intentioned, but naive.

I'm 30! I've still got a few good years of naivete left in me I think.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Some people just don't abide by laws, that's why we call them criminals.
Is V Putin abiding by international laws ? 
How about N Korea and Iran ?

Regimes rise and fall, Putin, Kim and Khamenei are all mortal men with an expiration date, opinions and policies change. You are old enough to know that the world does in fact change as you've lived through more of those changes than I have. 

But hey, I'm more than happy to steelman your points. Let's say for the sake of argument, that the dismantling of the global nuclear deterrence apparatus is impossible. I don't think it is but for the sake of argument I'll run with it for a tick.  Without people actively fighting against it, it could be argued that our very presence as global zero advocates tempers humanities worst inclinations and decelerates the approach to midnight, while actively accelerating the technogical advancement of defensive technologies. Big stick meets big shield. 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

At best, you propose a system which ensures continued extortion/blackmail to keep them from developing nuclear weapons ( all the while continuing their development ).

Mass murder of non-combatants by nuclear weapon = Morally acceptable?

Extortion and blackmail of criminals and psychopaths to stave off a nuclear apocalypse = Morally reprehensible? 

How is the latter not the lesser of two evils in your mind?

MigL I respect you as a person I really do but your arguments aren't very strong or convincing to be honest, at least not to me. The reason being that I've read so much on this subject that you're not going to be able to dismantle it all and convince me otherwise with just a few paragraphs. It isn't even my arguments you need to dismantle but the arguments made by people who have been making these arguments decades before I was even born. Like it or not it's the truth. Same goes for @swansont and the arguments he's made, they just aren't very strong or convincing and that isn't on me but on you guys. I'm not the type to listen to what amounts to "because I said so.", I'm sorry but that's just not going to happen. 

23 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

With states like Russia, who would be foolish enough to put their guard down?

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should let their guard down. 

7 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Utopia is the clue here, sure take steps towards zero but who cares, as long as it's not the final countdown

Great so now that songs gonna be stuck in my head for a week. Thanks Dim. 

48 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Travelers dude! Travelers is the show to watch! Time travel is the bomb! 

As a massive Dr Who fan, this I can appreciate! Will watch for sure thank you!

3 hours ago, Eise said:

Except one (or two?) episodes of 'Tales from the Loop' playing with time, it is not the essence of the series, as it is in 'Dark'. The episodes of 'Tales' are relatively independent, but there are a few running threads through the episodes. But maybe this is not the place to discuss that.

Maybe the admins could open a new forum for discussing movies and series?

Ups, I did not say that! 

I'm game! Swansont and MigL need to do a deep dive into Farscape lol

1 minute ago, MigL said:

The genie is out of the bottle, and it's too late for wishful thinking.

If you start to believe the possible to be impossible, you'll never take steps to achieve what may be achievable. 

Quote

With all the caveats and conditions, is a nuclear-disarmament treaty worth the trouble? Yes, because of the danger posed by nuclear weapons, on the one hand, and the positive power of ideas and ideals in international politics on the other. These weapons are so heinously destructive as to be illegitimate; they are fundamentally indiscriminate killers, and on top of that, they have proved to be far harder to safely build and handle than many understand. They have no proper role even as visible deterrents in the normal interactions of states, and we should aspire to a world in which they would no longer have such an active, operational role.

- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-a-world-without-nuclear-weapons-really-possible/

That's me all done with this topic for today. Need sleep. Goodnight MigL.

@J.C.MacSwell I apologise if it felt like that was an outburst directed at you. It genuinely wasn't. I'm just frustrated with RL at the moment and not being taken seriously there. It's also late, my back hurts like hell and I've done nothing but mulch raspberry bushes all day. My frustrations are with humanity in general, not anybody here personally and I make these arguments here because this is the only group I trust to follow and understand.

1 minute ago, MigL said:

You mention Israel dropping a nuke on Iran

I actually didn't. I said drop a nuke on Raffah, which I mispelled, its Rafah and it's the city in southern Gaza the Palestinians are being funneled into.

3 minutes ago, MigL said:

What can I say ?
I'm a complicated person.

You and me both brother, you and me both. 

4 minutes ago, MigL said:

Would you be so confident that the same would hold true if Iran had them ?

I don't have confidence in any country that has them. I don't want Iran, Israel, Russia, China, the USA or any country to have them. 90 seconds to midnight and not because Iran has nuclear weapons is too close for any comfort or confidence tbh.

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Choosing the lesser of two evils doesn't always lend itself to a good night's sleep.

Oh for sure, so choosing the greater evil definitely wouldn't. I'm still convinced the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was definitely the greater evil because it was literal overkill and as many here have mentioned, they were about to surrender anyway and Trumans real motivation for dropping the A-bombs was to intimidate the Russians.

Quote

US government documents admit the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington’s Cold War on the Soviet Union.

- https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/08/07/atomic-bombing-japan-not-necessary/#:~:text=“Although the bombs did force,%2C unnecessary”%2C he wrote.

Quote

July 22, 1948
"Our fellas at Sandia think they ought to have the bomb. They feel they might get them when they need them and they might not work." The President looked at him hard and said, "Have they ever failed to work?" "No, but......" and he left that one. "Mr. President, it is Just like having some goods you manufactured, well, when the salesmen go out on the road with it they learn about the troubles the customer is griping about, and that way you make it better...... I talked to some scientists at Los Alamos, and one fellow, I forgot his name, he said he didn't believe the law permitted the military to have the bomb, and I don't believe he thought we ought to use it anyway."

The President was giving this line of trivial irrelevant talk a very fisheye; at this point he said, poker face "I don't either. don't think we ought to use this thing unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of some thing that (here he looked down at his desk, rather reflectively) that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. (I shall never forget this particular expression). It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that."

Symington went on: that a "Dr. Bradberry, I think that was his name, at Los Alamos, he thought we ought to have the bomb, but not now. Our fellas need to get used to handling it."

This went over so badly that Forrestal took "As an old weaponeer yourself," he said, countering and taking a cue from my crack about "teaching grandmother how to spin" "you know how important it is to get used to handling a new weapon." Symington made one last entrance: "Yeah, our fellas, they let them take out bombs without the hot stuff; afraid of a real bomb I guess."
Royall, who was sitting there looking glummer and glummer broke in: "We have been spending 98% of all the money for atomic energy for weapons. Now if we aren't going to use them that doesn't make any sense. said some other things, but this was a sample.
If what worried the President, in part, was whether he could trust these terrible forces in the hands of the military establishment the performance these men gave certainly could not have been re-assuring on that score.

- excerpt from David Lilienthals diary entry marked "Meeting with the President July 21, 1948, 4:00 to 4:15 p.m." Link to full entry.

It should be noted that while Truman defended the decision to drop the a-bombs in public, there is evidence to suggest that his decision deeply troubled him and that he seemed to be suffering from signs of stress and trauma, there is even suggestions that he didn't even realise Hiroshima wasn't as large of a military base as he thought and was shocked and appalled by how many civilians were killed in the blast. 

Apologies if I'm coming across as overly polemic, I just take this subject very seriously and want to do it justice. I'm spending hours upon hours of research on almost every reply, except my shorter ones during the work day and honestly I'll not stop debating it until the day I die if I have to. Weapons of mass destruction never bring true peace or security. They never have the effect you want until you use them and at that point you are guilty of mass murder, plain and simple and I think it is a betrayal of humanity to justify for a military something that would land us all in jail for the rest of our lives if we did something like nuke a city.

The saving the lives of soldiers over the lives of civilians is a terrible justification also, soldiers sign up to fight knowing they may die. The atrocities committed by the japanese military were committed only by the japanese military. The people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were blameless. 

Historians agree it wasn't necessary, Truman seemed to privately regret it, Oppenheimer blamed himself completely, the American government admitted it didn't need to happen to end the war, one of the most influential ethicists of the time won a nobel peace prize for condemning it and the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons and he is still regarded as highly influential in the field of environmental ethics to this day. What more will people need to convince them? Nuclear winter for 1000 years?

All of us here and our planet, our home, have been born and raised under the threat of the mushroom cloud with the nuclear gun pointed at all of our heads. 

For all of our claims of being the most intelligent species on the planet, we're the only species dumb enough to threaten our own home and existence in such a brutal and violent way. Achieving fission and fusion and using it for weapons and actually using those weapons doesn't prove we are the most intelligent at all, it proves we are the most violent and indeed the most selfish. Better to snuff out just ourselves than to doom so many other species of plant and animal too.

10 hours ago, swansont said:

The existence of nuclear power means there will be nuclear waste, so getting rid of the weapons doesn’t eliminate the problem

Nuclear medicine too. In the context of this post I'm against nuclear weapons explicitly. Nuclear power, medicine, propulsion etc I'm fine with when due caution and safety measures are used.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

Given the numbers of each, conventional weapons don’t have to be as hazardous from a chemical standpoint to have a greater cumulative effect. 

Good point. 

You however, didn't answer my "what if you were in Truman's shoes." Question. I've also made many more points than you are choosing to address (which I get because you're busy with your moderation duties and real life but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that there isn't enough time in the day to discuss it all.

6 hours ago, MigL said:

There is a vast difference between what I have the stomach to do, and what should be done.

Why wouldn't you have the stomach for it, if it's the right thing to do? Hume would have potentially argued that the sentiment in your statement should perhaps tell you something about your true moral inclinations on the matter. (Don't misconstrue that as an insult, as I'm suggesting you're actually much more ethical than you think you are by making such a statement.) Is it that you wouldn't have the stomach for it or deep down you feel you shouldn't have the stomach for it? Why did Truman have the stomach to do it? Again, we haven't spoken about Truman nearly enough and I feel talking about him is much more on topic than getting into dicussions over which types of weapon are worse than others.

6 hours ago, MigL said:

Which do you think you should be more afraid of ?

I'm afraid of both and to not be afraid of both would likely lead to carelessness in the transportation of such. I honestly couldn't tell you what I would be more afraid of without actually performing the task. Would be fearful and worried either way, why quantify it?

A thought occurs to me, say Netanyahu dropped a Nuke on Raffah tomorrow, and used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as justification for why it's okay to wipe a city of mostly non-combatants from the face of the earth. How would people feel about that? Apples and oranges I know but what if?

21 hours ago, MSC said:

For example, Operation Ajax was a 1953 CIA coup that removed the elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, from power. In his place, the US installed a ruthless dictator whose oppressive rule led to the Iranian revolution 26 years later and the current animosity between the US and Iran.

- from the link I posted earlier. 

@MigLyou did mention Iran, so what do you think about the above excerpt? Kind of seems like the current state of affairs in Iran was a problem of America's own making to me.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

My point is why the focus on nuclear waste?

Because you asked what makes depleted uranium (and by extension nuclear and radiological weapons) different from conventional weapons. Yes both have waste products, but I feel like you're comparing apples to oranges a bit. Radioactive materials are far more hazardous than the materials used to make conventional weapons in most cases (I'd agree where biological and chemical weapons are concerned to be fair) and if you are going to claim that they are similarly hazardous, you'll need to provide evidence to back up the claim. 

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

There hasn’t been much nuclear plant construction in the US in the last 30 years, at least in part because of public opinion, so not much to actively protest on that front.

I think the difference is that governments are more likely to listen and address public concerns where nuclear energy is concerned than they are where fossil fuels are concerned. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

but somehow we’re sorta OK with it; the pushback on coal is minuscule when compared to nuclear. 

Is it? I hear about much more concern these days over fossil fuel use than nuclear waste, but again the concern is largely ignored by governments. Will respond better later, working. This is a good conversation though! Thanks for having it with me. 

50 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, the answer is a bigger stick is difficult to define if enough of you continue to wield it...

Not to mention this stick is just as likely to burn the hand that wields it as it is to burn the person being hit with it. 

8 hours ago, iNow said:

Propaganda and active disinformation campaigns. The bigger the lie, the more people believe it. 

I just wish I knew of an effective way to consistently persuade others if what is actually true. Facts and evidence just don't seem to do it. God damn backfire effect.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

would not be surprised to find that other weapons have carcinogenic effects. (it’s contended that it’s the cause of higher cancer rates at the bombing range at Vieques, Puerto Rico). Heavy metals are used and can be toxic. Is depleted uranium a conventional weapon?

Neither would I, although admittedly at a smaller scale. I would be interested in seeing the research on that.

5 minutes ago, swansont said:

But the situation was that there was a war; bombing was already in play.

The OP asked why the use of nuclear weapons was necessary to end the war, the war may have been going on but we've already covered that so too were peace talks, negotiations for surrender and an internal desire to surrender in Japan which knew it was being badly beaten and was about to have a new front opened onto it via the Russians. 

As for your question about depleted uranium; Does making bullets or firebombs produce nuclear waste? Which if not handled or stored properly does its own damage to ecosystems without any requirement for a weapon to be fired or detonated at all. Enriching plutonium and uranium does. Reprocessing nuclear weapons does. Making bullets, grenades, napalm and other conventional weapons does not (unless the manufacturing facilities are powered by nuclear energy of course).

51 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I have wondered if the moral equation, when nukes enter into a seemingly practical cost/benefit analysis, changes in a way that is unique as equations go.  When conventional weapons are used, it doesn't open a special door through which a vision of apocalypse is visible.  To use a nuke is not merely to conduct warfare, but to decide to use a principle of deterrence which, if widely applied, would end us. (there's kind of a Kantian categorical imperative aspect to this)  So, ethically, using a nuke seems to require a kind of myopic view of reality: sure, you showed those [insert adversary name here] bastards not to mess with us anymore, but you also crossed a line where the unthinkable is now an instrument of foreign policy.  Maybe we were able to step back over the line after Hiroshima, but there's little chance that could happen now.

 

+1!

Quote

Kant’s first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (G 4:421). O’Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1980, 1989), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure for moral reasoning, and we will follow their basic outline: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your proposed plan of action. Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this new law of nature. If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible.

If your maxim fails the third step, you have a “perfect” duty admitting “of no exception in favor of inclination” to refrain from acting on that maxim (G 4:421). If your maxim fails the fourth step, you have an “imperfect” duty requiring you to pursue a policy that can admit of such exceptions. If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible.

- Stanford encylopedia of philosophy

Put this here so people understand what is meant by categorical imperative.

Putting this here so we can all evaluate the man who made the decision to drop the bombs in the first place. We really need to talk about Truman more. I mean look at this shit; 

Quote

Truman signed the National Security Act in 1947, which created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Over the next 50 years, the CIA would go on to interfere in the internal politics of numerous foreign nations, organizing coups, assassinations, and installing dictatorships and regimes of torture (as long as they were favorable to US interests).

 

For example, Operation Ajax was a 1953 CIA coup that removed the elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, from power. In his place, the US installed a ruthless dictator whose oppressive rule led to the Iranian revolution 26 years later and the current animosity between the US and Iran.

At least 30 countries from 5 different continents were denied their democratic right to choose their own leaders. The CIA systematically destroyed democracy around the world, subjecting populations to oppressive dictatorships that were loyal to the US government.

@swansont and @MigL time for a serious question. It's the summer of 1945. Truman isn't president, you are. Will you drop the A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Let's move on from whether or not dropping the bombs was right or wrong; Was Truman specifically qualified to decide that it was the right thing to do? Is anyone qualified to make that decision?

1 hour ago, swansont said:

This brings us back to the issue of why using the bomb is considered bad, but using conventional weapons is acceptable. It can’t be the number killed, when it was pointed out that ~100k were killed firebombing Tokyo, which is comparable to the numbers killed at Hiroshima and at Nagasaki.

My response would be to first state that my ideal is no war, no nuclear weapons or conventional warfare of any kind, is always preferable. But that my ideal is an impossible goal based on what I know of human nature and the lack of control or say that the majority people have in determining how militaries choose to fight those wars.

It's not that I find conventional weapons acceptable, just less bad. For a simple reason, the firebombing of Tokyo didn't release radioactive material 50 miles up into the atmosphere and had way less long-term effects on the environment nor longterm genetic damage and radiation poisoning that caused cancer, fetal abnormalities etc.

While I understand the residual radiation of those bombs had a relatively short half-life, today we have a number of different types of nuclear and radioactive weapons to be concerned about. Neutron bombs have a much higher radiactive yield, some nuclear weapons have a vastly higher explosive yield, strategically placed dirty bombs in the right (or wrong depending on how you look at it) weather conditions could give radiation poisoning to many more than the intended target and setting off numerous nuclear bombs could bring on a nuclear winter, send radiactive material all over the globe and cause massive amounts of harm to humans, animals and plant life for generations to come.  

If the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima had a similar radioactive yield as the Chernobyl disaster, they'd have likely remained uninhabitable for much much longer than they did. 

Genuinely, if I was forced to choose between being burned alive or being given a lethal dose of radiation, I'd pick being burned alive. It's quicker. I wouldn't wish death by radiation poisoning on my worst enemy and I cried like a baby watching Dr Daniel Jackson dying of radiation poisoning in Stargate and was highly disturbed just listening to him describe what he knew was going to happen to him. I was 7 years old when I watched that for the first of many times, and it's one of my strongest memories.

I'm going to end by sharing Albert Schweitzers Declaration of Conscience.

@MigL I would really appreciate it if you especially would read this. You don't have to agree with it but it did win the Nobel peace prize in 1957 and I believe it is an extremely powerful argument against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I'd also like to add that if a nuclear or radiological weapon was used where any of you are and if we lost any of you to that, I'd mourn you deeply and weep for humanity far more than I already do. I mean I'd mourn your deaths by any means but that way would leave me the most choked. I hope you all die old and peacefully with loved ones by your side and a feeling of serenity looking back at a life well lived.

32 minutes ago, MigL said:

Proportional response is highly over-rated.

Deterrence of any particular action depends on the realization that the consequences could far outweigh any benefit.
If I steal $100, and my only punishment is a $100 fine, I'm no worse off than I initially was, so I may as well attempt it.

True, but there is a point I think where there is a deterrent and there is going overboard. Is the nuclear bomb drop equivalent to being fined $1000 for stealing $100 or being fined $1billion for stealing $100? 

I do actually feel a little conflicted, mostly because there is no way for us now to know whether or not Japan would become hostile again in the future after the war, if the bombs hadn't been dropped and their surrender was secured by lesser means. 

One thing we can probably both agree on; is that today, there is the deterrent of mutually assured destruction to deter even using WMDs because more than one country now has them. America didn't have to worry about that when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For example we could never get Russia to do a Japan like 180 and cease hostilities in Ukraine by dropping some nukes on them, because they'll just use theirs too. 

I personally still don't agree with the use of the A-Bombs on Japan, but it happened, can't change that and it has definitely deterred Japan from engaging in the behaviours and atrocities it committed during WWII. No doubt about that. From there I think we can agree to disagree on whether or not it should have been done. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Projection. And the best defense is a good offense.

This is why I prefer talking with folk here. It's easier to respect people who are more intelligent than me. It's probably my fault for getting facebook again but a prospective employer wanted to see a fb account before committing to hiring me. Which I'm now gonna just assume is an employment red flag. 

On 2/26/2024 at 1:58 PM, fiveworlds said:

0.7% for the same work, and years with the company including foreign countries.

White Men can be single fathers too they have the same bills as everyone else. Everyone should get the same regardless of race or gender.

Single "white" father here, to a 3 year old girl who will one day have expenses related to her biological sex that I as a man will never have. Even if I exclude feminine hygiene products, she will pay more for haircuts, clothes, shampoos, she will be expected by society to purchase and wear make-up, she will need a gynecologist and the list goes on. 

So to be clear, guy's don't have the same bills that women do. Fact. If anything, women ought to be paid more than men because the cost of living for them is way higher. Just my 0.007 cents. 

Just got called a racist for supporting Black lives matter and Anti-fascism... In what world or on what planet does this make sense?

What sort of mental gymnastics does a person need to do to think this way while living in a democratic society that allegedly values equality? Really grinds my gears. 

Egg, the egg came first. Every time I hear this problem it never specifies chicken egg, it just says egg. Which leads to a very simple solution; do chickens predate dinosaurs? No. Did dinosaurs come from eggs? Yes. Therefore the egg not only came first but came countless times before the chicken. 

Hopefully my answer eggceeds eggspectations. 

8 hours ago, MigL said:

Most people recognize the difference between an unprovoked action, and a re-action to it.
If you walk up to me and punch me in the face, no one will fault me for breaking your arm in response.
( not implying you would; you seem a nice enough person 🙂 )

It's brutal, but it's reality; if you don't want the consequences, don't do any harm to others.

That's a fair point to make, so long as the response is proportional. 

That said; even in the exact same proportions I feel there are limits. If someone tortured my child, should I torture theirs? If someone murders my child should I also murder their child?

Absolutely there needs to be consequences for morally abhorrent acts, but what seperates the reactor from the instigator is, which consequences/reactions are appropriate and what you want the consequences to achieve. 

I do lay some of the blame for what happened on Japanese military culture at the time definitely and I do see the arguments to be made where you can point to Japans complete 180 into turning into a far more peaceful society than they were before the end of the war. What will it take for the world to do that 180? Does it really have to be losing a whole country or continents worth of people? I know neither of us want that, but it does scare me a touch to think that based on what we have seen from history, that might be the catalyst. I just hope we can learn some other way before that ever happens.

Also you are correct, I'd never just randomly punch you and I respect you a lot more than you know. Any differences we've had or will have would always be resolved with words.

Wikipedia is being cited far too much in this thread.

26 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Seems to describe the situation, though I would add that some of our fellow Americans, due to prior prejudices they had mostly suppressed, were consciously and enthusiastically willing to spread their legs for him.  TFG somehow gave them a safe space and In Group where they could resurrect their xenophobic (and other phobics) biases and most regressive feelings.  Sorry to hear about your papa.  It is painful and frustrating to watch, especially when you feel they should know better.  

In fairness to him, he had a minor stroke around 2013 or 2014. Nothing that affects his ability to function but we did notice some personality changes. 

I think for me the frustration comes from knowing that his views now are completely different to the values he instilled in me and my siblings growing up. 

For example, now he frequently makes quite xenophobic comments, but when I was 3 or 4 years old, my older cousins taught me a very racist song and me not knowing any better, I went and sang the song to my dad and he slapped me pretty hard across the face. To this day I feel like that was the best thing he could have done as it cemented very early for me that racism is not acceptable. So his views today are a bit of a slap across the face too.

42 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

BTW I don't think his followers are imbecilic, he's appealing to confused people because of very specious argument's, much like the screens we're all constantly glued to, so both literal and metaphor.

Fair enough, some of them definitely are but then imbeciles tend to defy demographics and you find them under every rock trying to squeeze water from it. I'm a pragmatic centrist who sees each issue of political policy as having it's own requirements for dealing with it effectively. If an issue requires a conservative approach it requires that, if it requires a liberal or a more middle ground approach, I'll support that. It really for me depends on what the scientific consensus is; however since I'm not the type to throw the baby out with the bathwater and the fact that I consider myself to be a true agnostic, I'm not ashamed to say that my views on politics are influenced a lot by one particular story from the abrahamic religions, of which i prefer the islamic version, which is the story of the prophet Joseph. Egypt conserved during a time of plenty and then supported it's peoples through a time of famine. 

4 hours ago, CharonY said:

So, both, the traditionalist camp (i.e. the bomb resulted in capitulation) as well as the revisionist camp had prominent US scholars. For example the American historian Aleperovitz wrote (to my knowledge) one of the first publications arguing that the use of the bomb was ultimately a strategy toward the Soviet Union.

Funnily as student I was more familiar with the revisionist school of thought, as the lectures I attended were led by a very prominent (I was not aware of it at that time) scholar who was a proponent it. Which kind of shows how a perspective is heavily influenced where you go to school. 

I wonder then what influences a person if they didn't attend higher education at all? Topic for another day I guess.

On 3/19/2024 at 3:42 AM, Eise said:

That is true, more or less. But Japan simply did not capitulate. So the war could have taken much longer, taking many lives of American soldiers.

Japan was actually in the process of brokering a conditional surrender mediated by the Russians, the Russian entry into the war in the Pacific was a much more crucial factor in the japanese decision to surrender than the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The A-Bombs just provided a less shameful reason to surrender by pointing to an enemy super weapon capable of levelling any of their cities, than being afraid of another front of conventional warfare with Russia. 

On 3/19/2024 at 3:42 AM, Eise said:

If this fact had an influence on the decision of Hirohito is not known, fact is that he chose to capitulate

Except it is known that it didn't, because he was already trying to convince his ministers to end the war as early as June of 1945. The bombs weren't dropped until August. He was going to capitulate, bomb or no bomb.

A lot of people think that Japan Rejected the Potsdam Declaration, they did not. What they did was a little more nuanced. They publicly addressed their answer (to their own people) with Mokusatsu, which the press mistranslated into English as rejected, when it actually meant, in that context, to kill with silent contempt. Basically they ignored the demand for an unconditional surrender from the Allies because the preservation of the Emperors position wasn't immediately on the table, even though it was something the allies were discussing behind closed doors. There was also a disconnect between the Japanese Ambassador Sato, who was the ambassador to the Soviet union, and leadership back in Japan. Japans military leadership had it in their heads that if they caused more massive allied casualties during the expected allied land invasion of Japan, they'd be able to keep some of the land they conquered in a peace agreement, wanting something closer to a stalemate than a surrender. Sato believed his superiors had honestly lost their grip on reality there, as some of the land they wanted to keep, had already been liberated by allied forces. 

On 3/20/2024 at 10:36 AM, toucana said:

The Japanese government had absolutely no intention of surrendering to the US under any circumstances, Their premier Suzuki had rejected an ultimatum issued to Japan by the allies following the Potsdam conference on 2nd August using the Japanese phrase mokusatsu 黙殺  which means “with silent contempt”. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed on August 6 and August 9 respectively, high ranking Japanese military officers staged a bloody coup in a failed attempt to prevent the recording of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech from being broadcast on Japanese radio the next day.

As I said above, Mokusatsu means to kill with silent contempt. As in kill the ultimatum by ignoring it, meaning no formal answer, Suzukis announcement was directed at the people of Japan and the Americans heard about it due to mistranslation in the press. It doesn't mean rejected. Kyozetsu or Kyohi suru means rejection or refuse. If it helps, imagine you asked to borrow a hammer, if I directly say no to you, that is Kyozetsu. If I sneer, turn around and walk away, that is Mokusatsu. What Suzuki was effectively saying, was that the Potsdam conference and what they were demanding of Japan, wasn't even worth the dignity of a direct response. 

If the bombs had not been dropped, I seriously doubt the war would have lasted much more than a few months. Especially once the decision fell to the Emperor. 

On 4/2/2024 at 10:07 AM, MigL said:

I'm surprised she found America's actions 'offensive'.

The Pacific theater in WW2 saw the death of an estimated 25 Million people, of which about 6 Million were combatants and about 110 Thousand Americans. 
Yet she finds the death of a couple of hundred thousand, to stop a brutal expansionist war that Japan started, offensive ?
Or maybe she found the movie offensive, as it detailed the life experience of a man who helped orchestrate a turning point in history ?

I just never realized morality has a PoV.

Why are you surprised when she was Japanese and resident of Hiroshima? Might as well ask British people why they found the blitz offensive.

Morality in my opinion is all about point of view because we all have a different perspective on the context of our existence. Yes the japanese were absolutely brutal to those they conquered, civilian or combatant. A lot of it was absolutely evil and morally repugnant. Especially civilian casualties. However, there is an argument to be made in not sinking to someone elses level. 19 billion civilians, or a couple of hundred civilians, I don't think it's the numbers that are the morally significant factors but the fact that they were civilians. The majority of those civilians had little to no control over what their militaries and governments decided to do, especially in Japan which was not by any stretch of the imagination a functional democracy at the time. It was more like Tsarist imperialism if anything. 

As far as I'm concerned, most extreme military actions that are taken, are symptomatic of diplomatic failures, not the only options remaining. This was definitely true of the A-Bombs. Yes we can't change the past but that doesn't mean we have to like it either. Honestly I'm surprised that you're surprised. Really for all we know her great grandparents or some other recent ancestor was killed in those blasts. 

On 3/28/2024 at 10:31 AM, CharonY said:

A

I believe the timing is off a bit. The Japanese emperor sent a private message to Stalin before the Potsdam conference (in July)  asking him to act as intermediary. I.e. these attempts pre-dated the bomb, which is one of the arguments of historians who argue against the traditional narrative regarding the bomb.

Oh good, someone that actually is aware of this. +1

Have you also noticed that most of the historical sources that credit the bombings ending the war come from the USA?