Flonne Wrote:Just as a side-note on this conversation, I consider Churchill to be the third worst person in WWII; he was a manipulative piece of pomegranate who did not follow any of the rules of war and escalated far more situations than he solved. The Bolsheviks obviously take the first slot, though, god damn were they appalling monsters, they killed many orders of magnitude more people than Hitler could have even dreamed of.
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Well, Churchill was an imperialist, and he seems to have been elected to lead Britain against Hitler and not for that much else. After the war, he was in very good standing with the Brits, but they put someone else as Prime Minister. Just in general, about World War II, Germany and Japan (and Russia) weren't really following any rules of war, or any rules of humanity, and I think whatever excesses the Brits and Americans committed in that war pale in comparison to what their opponents did.
I don't think Trump should be dignified with a comparison to Churchill, as Churchill had a gift to speechmaking and effective leadership while Trump is basically a demagogue and a bigot. And, sadly, I say that with the knowledge that I probably won't have any choice but to vote for him.
On Bernie, I won't break into further "demonization" of socialism beyond saying that I am not sure how anybody considers him as "honest" or "an outsider" when he is a career politician. You don't get to the US Senate by wearing a priest's collar.
Flonne: Hillary Clinton is not really honest or trustworthy, but most effective politicians are total scumbags. JFK seemed like the leader of Camelot, but really he was cheating on his wife constantly, including with a Russian spy. Nixon did Watergate, Clinton did Lewinsky (literally) and so on. High echelon politicians are always charismatic, but beneath that fake warmth most of them are pretty psycho. Making a decision to send like 10,000 people to their deaths and then sleep like a baby, you kinda have to be. With some it's harder to spot than with others, but politics, in its totality, is not a profession where good honest people get to the top. The only exception I can think of is Mahatma Gandhi. Jimmy Carter was a good person, but precisely because of that the Russians walked all over him. Then, Reagan replaced him -- and Reagan was not a nice person -- and he took out the garbage because he wasn't going to play nice with the Soviets until the USSR was six feet under.
Hillary Clinton is a lying peach, but she is also the only connection either party has to the time before America went insane. I personally am probably not going to vote for her, (though my state will, so it doesn't matter,) but despite my reservations about her, I am barely sure the Republican is any better, and I usually vote straight Republican ticket. We really are at the point where we are deciding to vote for the lesser evil. Bush v. Kerry was less distasteful than what we'll be choosing in November, this time around.