I want to get a break from the regular newscycle when going here.

To me as an American even this many years later and as a young person who didn’t see it, ending your presidency while another nation holds your citizens seems extremely embarrassing.

And all I see is extreme praise of the man. I’d honestly like to see some discussion here.

Later, sent to N Korea by president Clinton, he massively exceeded his authority and made a sweetheart deal that guaranteed N Korea would eventually build nukes. President Clinton found out about the deal on CNN with everyone else and never used Carter again.

He also sandbagged president Reagan by taking a trip to the Soviet Union and convincing the leaders there that Reagan was not serious about reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. This set back progress on reducing nuclear weapons for several years. In the end, Reagan was finally able to get them back to the table and eliminated a class of nukes, reducing others.

1. In 1976, Ford carried California, Illinois, Virginia, and every western state except Texas. Carter carried Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio and almost all southern states including Florida.

2. When Carter won the country was still coming to terms with Vietnam, was completely dismayed by the Watergate scandal and subsequent pardon, was witnessing chaos in Iran, was living under the threat of mutually assured destruction, was experiencing rampant inflation, rising oil prices, a stagnant economy, and possessed a large group of rebellious baby-boomers kicking at the stalls but not quite ready-for-primetime.

The USA needed Jimmy Carter's southern sensibilities, humility, and values in order to take a deep breath.

Rest in Peace Mr. President. Well done in retrospect.

I am fully convinced that Carter is a true statesman, not because he was a great president for 4 years, but because he was great for his entire life for everything.

Sadly, we stopped seeing American statesman like Carter (and Reagan, Nixon). Look at what we had in the past two decades, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. You guys almost got Harris!

The trend also seems to be systematic, look at all those morons running the shows in EU, no wonder they couldn't beat Putin on their own.

The last 'left' Christian. A politician that actually followed the bible. To bad Christianity has been co-opted by gun toting crazies full of contradictions like wanting to kill mothers and save un-born babies, then after they are born, not provide health care to the babies, spout nonsense about 'the kids', but then take away school lunches.

Even way back. During the Iran Hostage Crisis. The Republican's were dealing with Iran to hold the hostage's to sway the election. Carter got smeared with that for decades.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/29/us/jimmy-carter

https://archive.is/tbb2v

Democracies are never perfect but I strongly believe that having something to say about a president it’s a great sign of a health democracy and institution (in this case POTUS).

Regardless at least he wasn’t as divisive as 45.

RIP.

With his passing now, he'll just miss one of the fundamentally opposite administrations taking control.

From the piece:

Carter helped restore trust in the presidency through ethics reforms more relevant today than ever before. He established the Senior Executive Service and insulated civil service workers against political pressure. He slowed the revolving door for departing officials and placed independent inspectors general in every department. The Office of Special Counsel originated with his legislation to investigate possible wrongdoing by high-level officials. And he extended ethical standards to the private sector through the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, barring corporations from bribing foreign officials to obtain contracts. With Walter Mondale, he created the modern vice presidency as a fully engaged partnership.

That and his campaign slogan to not lie to people really highlighted his integrity.

A ball sat on the pavement. Before going in, we shot baskets for a while. "The river is just great," the Governor said, laying one in. "And it ought to be kept the way it is. It's almost heartbreaking to feel that the river is in danger of destruction. I guess I'll write a letter to all the landowners and say, 'If you'll use some self-restraint, it'll decrease the amount of legal restraint put on you in the future.' I don't think people want to incur the permanent wrath of the governor or the legislature."

"I've tried to talk to property owners," Carol said. "To get them to register their land with the Natural Areas Council. But they wouldn't even talk to me."

The Governor said, "To be blunt about it, Carol, why would they?"

The Governor had the ball and was dribbling in place, as if contemplating a property owner in front of him, one-on-one. He went to the basket, shot, and missed. Carol got the rebound and fed the ball to Sam. He shot. He missed, too.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1973/04/28/travels-in-geo...

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024

As a non-USian who was young when he was president, he has always seemed to me to be a decent person who tried to do good with what he had, and understood the limits of his own ambition. We need more like him.

Carter sussed out a blueprint for future post-office presidents, but few have heard Jimmy's trumpets. For example, Obama. Obama could be doing great things, but he's too busy riding jet skis and schmoozing celebs, etc.

Carter's time in office might be questionable, but as a human he is legend; with an exceptional legacy.

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterpuri

Conversation, part of the Council on Foreign Relations' History Makers series.

[0] https://youtube.com/shorts/y23V6PLTCMw

> Many in the United States were outraged by what they perceived to be an overly harsh sentence for Calley. Georgia's Governor, Jimmy Carter, future President of the United States, instituted American Fighting Man's Day, and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on.

William Calley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley

My Lai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

NYT piece from 1976 with quotes from Carter https://archive.is/yx1qs

I did not know that, thanks.

(Also I love the norwegian wilderness)

I hope we can make it "normal" again around the world.

Carter was a good man. But he seemed to have no answers for a people who were desperate for leadership like FDR’s during the Great Depression.

That gives me the impression that the 70's was simply a bad time with a good man in charge, when in those times people more or less want to be told "it's okay I'll fix it" with no plan in sight.

we're living through THAT in real time, so I guess history rhymes.

The Depression was a global affair, larger than one president’s actions, and most of his policies were fairly conventional for his day. He had left office over 6 months before the depression began (and over 2 years before the banking crises that caused most of the misery really kicked in). Since pretty much every leader (including FDR and Hitler) had to figure out how to solve the crises in office using unconventional policies (the then new-fangled Keynesian economic policy), it’s a bit unfair to blame the guy when he wasn’t even in power.

Nixon, though he caused the original shock, originally wanted to keep the Bretton Woods system intact, but that was impossible after what he did.

> We support the full implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act, which should be regarded as a starting point in a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the restoration of international inspections in collaboration with his successor. Republicans recognize that peace and stability in the Persian Gulf is impossible as long as Saddam Hussein rules Iraq.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060421063832/http://www.cnn.co...

While Bush tried to portray himself as more isolationist, his advisors and appointees were not inline with those campaign promises, and indeed the history confirms that impression:

> “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill said in the interview with “60 Minutes.”

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-11-fg-oneil...

Similarly, in March of 2001 they were trying to line up companies interested in taking over Iraq’s oil production.

> Despite oil industry denials to Congress and Cheney’s claims of executive privilege–which led to a lawsuit that ultimately reached the Supreme Court–White House visitor logs revealed that Cheney’s Energy Policy Task Force met with approximately 300 groups and individuals from February to April 2001. The vast majority of these meetings were with representatives of the fossil fuels industry.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/18216-national-security-a...

https://www.judicialwatch.org/oldsite/IraqOilFrgnSuitors.pdf

It's just the same internal power play within the GOP for decades. Explicitly imperialist adventurism, or a sad attempt isolationist foreign policy that never actually happens. See the way they're incoherent on Ukraine, now.

This was during a period where there was hope for the former Soviet Union to become a free and open democracy with tremendous economic potential, not to mention the smaller, former Soviet states. Instead, we're right back where we were, with an imperialist Russia and puppet governments.

(they were also not "solar panels" it was solar water heating and it was sorta useful but mostly symbolic).

"One day they'll come around and realize that my culture's values are right and theirs are wrong" is actually a very racist stance, in my opinion.

The centrist Dems always blame those further left, not themselves. They did it in 2016 and this year too.

A lot of people probably mean "I like having health insurance".

Yeah, we don't have government rationing or decisions based on outcome, we have publicly traded death panels.

I suspect a situation like this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/937/

that's a pretty big "besides"

Reagan was elected with 51% of the popular vote to Carter’s 41% and carried 44 states to Carter’s 6(+DC), tallying 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49. This was not a close election.

As someone who remembers that era, I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. I don't think Carter himself made it high profile as much as the media did. The ABC News show Nightline started then as a nightly report on the latest in the hostage situation. Every night it would start with "Day XYZ: America Held Hostage!" (where XYX had been the number of days. The Right wanted Carter to bomb Iran "back into the stoneage".

As for the rescue attempt, there were significant problems including equipment failure - new helicopters that weren't really battle tested, for example (this led to a lot of soul searching as to whether there were problems with military procurement, for example). Yes, Carter probably shouldn't have agreed to it.

A former neighbor's dad was one of the hostages, and he has a photo from the reception that Reagan hosted at the White House for them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw

[1] Yes, that Sullenberger. The Airbus A320 from the Hudson is on display there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullenberger_Aviation_Museum

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/10/ayatollah-khom...

That aside, when I read about downsides of universal healthcare in America, I still think the tradeoff is worth it. Even if it means wait lines and decades slower drug discovery, if it meant measurably less rage at the system, I would support it. I know this isn't the thread topic, but the public polled reactions to literal assassination being not particularly negative points to how unpopular the current system is, despite other measures showing it as popular.

Anyway, screw the (political) Kennedy family. Seriously.

Edit: anyway, I've seen this discussion a million times. Not interested in engaging further.

Which were not photovoltaic and leaked like a sieve.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/17/archives/environmentalist...

* Aside: EPA and the Clean Air act weren't motivated by Climate Change but by particle pollution concerns.

As some people use the term, it means the dissolution of Israel. As others use it, it means being in favor of a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine for a two state solution.

I think if you ask most Israelis (including me), they'll tell you that it's an unfortunate reality that most Palestinians themselves don't actually want peace - they want Israel gone. Many people who call themselves pro-Palestinian mean that they want whatever Palestinians want, which includes the dissolution of Israel.

Personally, I think being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine should both be the same as being pro-peace, because the only think that will ensure a good future for both peoples will be having peace between them.

I doubt that Carter could have intervened in any case.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

It feels that way, but let's remember that Republicans have held the governorship in Massachusetts for most of the past 30+ years. That's an interesting broader phenomenon, though. A number of other states have turned reliably blue in congressional and presidential elections while voting in Republican governors. New Hampshire is like that, and I was recently surprised to learn that Vermont is too.

The provisions for moving beyond paper was one of the biggest, and most relevant to people here. Examples are the use of electronic records, the incentives to actually use them (both for patents and for metrics), etc.

Due to the market power of Medicare, it also changed payments from per procedure to per outcome.

Many of these changes were quite deep. I would not use trivial to describe it.

And it's not a music video. 2013 was a big year but also when the algorithms went into overdrive on what you needed to do to drive engagement. The only thing this video didn't do "wrong" was be less than 5 minutes, which IIRC was the mini umum video length of that time to not be punished by the algorithm.

Here, you seem to be interpreting this somewhat misleading article as Israel (somehow, maybe indirectly) supporting Hamas' military. Really it was Qatari funding for various Gaza infrastructure and humanitarian projects. Do you think Israel should have blocked that aid?

It's difficult to understand now, but natural gas was viewed as something in short supply back then that had to be price controlled. Of course the causation was in the other direction: price controls led to shortage, and once those were removed enormous new sources of gas began to be uncovered, eventually leading to the fracking revolution. Today in the US natural gas is a colossus, having beaten down coal and nuclear.

* I wonder how much investing in solar would have been worth it. The tech was carried over by a huge investment in semiconductors that helped silicone tech on the side. If you go back early you probably end up replicating it and that costs a lot? Or I could be wrong here.

* Wind tech was probably doable. You could have iterated over designs, material science was behind but not that much I think. Nuclear was reasonable too.

* CFLs were developed in the late 70s. One could have done an early version of banning incandescent lighting. Blue LED lightening weren't invented yet and took a breakthrough.

* Probably even more stringent fuel mandates. Electrical vehicles were in the future, you could have brought them forward by a decade or two, but in the 1980s they weren't an alternative, and I don't think in the 90s either?

* Of course, the US could have mandated solar water heaters where the climate allows.

We can imagine an alternate past where green tech was wind + nuclear, and lightening was CFLs.

What single person do you think has greater power?

P.S. These weren't solar panels (i.e. electricity generation), but solar water heaters. A very different tech, a useful tech, but not a global warming solution.

That’s because most Americans believe we were in a recession.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll...

It might have made Egypt more willing to open its border with Gaza, but could it really absorb 1-2 million refugees, as Jordan once did?

At some point the Egypt-Israel relationship could deteriorate and Israel could expand in that direction again.

Overall expansionist/conquest urges are back in with Russia, US under Trump and Israel. We will probably see China also get into the act.

When Reagan became president, he continued his efforts to dismantle the public education system, targeting federal aid to students. "

from: https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-t...

I think it was also retribution against college kids deferring the Vietnam war draft. The student deferment was supposed to be a rich-only loophole..

OTOH, Carter pardoned Vietnam war draft dodgers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_4483#:~:text=Jimm....

(I foresee a similar decision needing to be made in Russia soon..)

Reagan tossed the whole thing and we were snapped back to feet, inches, ounces, pounds, Fahrenheit.

I have photos from road trips in the late 70's where Federal highway signs, like on mountain passes, have the elevation indicated in Meters. When I used Google street view I see we're back to regressive signage.

I know, a minor nit.

I would have sworn there was some post WW2 agreement concerning a desire to keep the Middle East in 'chaos'. But I guess I was just remembering Sykes-Picot.

Do you happen to remember anything 'like' Sykes that occurred after WW2?

Are you blaming the Greeks for Imperialism? Maybe referencing Alexander the Great era when they conquered Persia? Perhaps pushing the blame for Iran even further back?

If anything the Reagan tax reforms and simplification were more important. 90% tax rates are ridiculous, even though nobody paid that in practice due to all the deductions.

I’m not trying to shit on Reagan or anything. He was certainly inspirational, charismatic, and was a huge boost to national morale, but IMO he was overrated and had lucky timing more than he was a great man.

Biden was past his prime and it showed during the campaign, though.

That’s why you get complaints about healthcare wait times in Canada and the UK when people propose adopting fully nationalized systems like those.

Those complaints come from people with decent to good insurance that have never been bitten by a denial, which unfortunately is the majority of the employed population. People are very bad at voting for something that hurts them directly (lack of abundance of immediate healthcare) to solve an issue that hasn’t directly impacted them.

> And it's a little far fetched to call an armies call to take over the unstable situation a coup when the current head of the state is incapable to take any action because of a serious illness.

That's exactly a coup. The people who conduct coups - and other crimes and violations - always have a smooth justification. Russia is protecting Russians in Ukraine! Hitler needed some 'breathing room', etc.

If the head of state is incapable, then the next civilian in line can take over. No advanced democracy has ever needed the military's help for such a situation.

Said another way, I think a young Jimmy Carter type candidate would have wiped the floor with either side this election.

1. That's a very misleading talking point. Yes, technically growing from 0.09% of the middle east to 0.1% of the ME would be considering growth, but definitely not the kind of growth that would categorize any country as expansionist to any normal observer.

2. It's not even true! Israel captured and held the Sinai peninsula, which is 4 times the size of Israel IIRC, and then gave it back in exchange for peace. So the "expansionist" country that is so anti-peace, according to some people, and that might have designs on invading Egypt next, actually gave back territory that is 4 times the size of its own territories, for peace, with Egypt.

Did you forget that Reagan negotiated with Terrorist during an election to keep the hostage's hostage? To literally sabotage their freedom to tank Carter?

"kicking every other leader down for basic decisions they had to make for the good of their people"

So, all other leaders, face difficult decisions, but Carter, he has to be held to higher standard? His decisions were not "basic decisions they had to make"? But others were? Like all others were backed into a corner, but not Carter? Did you see my post, he inherited the mess.

if we are talking about traveling 2 hours to get care UK people can hit the airplane and head on over to Serbia/Romania/... and get whatever care they want for 1/20th of the price (plus a little R&R time...)

I have yet to see a system where that’s true. A friend got pneumonia in Canada and had to wait 14 hours in the ER before being diagnosed and given antibiotics.

you are taking one example of one friend. I have both friends as well as family in Canada who basically say all the time that it is absolute BS what American's get fed via media what it is like to have universal healthcare in Canada.

This is similar to how everyone thinks that VA healthcare system is "broken" in the United States - same thing - have both friends and family who served in the Armed Forces that swear by VA and have never had a single issue getting care/medicine/...

The lobby for current health care system is stroooooong and is working hard to make you believe that a different system (where they are cut out completely) will just be very very bad for ya...

Iran was not a dictatorship but a constitutional monarchy. It was also like that before 1953. The only actual coup that really happened in 1953, was a coup by Mossadegh, who falsified the parliamentary elections to gain the power and then threatened Shah when he was not appointed as prime minister.

Now, perhaps he could have succeeded with his coup, but unfortunate for himself, he also made some very stupid moves, that removed the important support he needed.

You have to do that research yourself, that isn't a question answered within HN's character limit. But Bernie's popularity along the youth probably was not just some trend, to help you start.

you know, the existence of which just changed the course of the latest election...

Not sure what you mean by “at large” but it certainly reflects the reality for the majority of people. That’s why it fails to garner political support to disrupt.

You think it was a mistake to allow you in and are a net negative to your country?

A bunch of plumbers and landscapers and other blue collar types move to small town Idaho and it's business as usual, maybe Spanish pops as a subtext on more public facing signage, the local diner expands, etc, etc.

A bunch of doctors and lawyers and techies and MBAs move to Idaho and it's mayhem, local politics get turned upside down, house prices off the charts, etc, etc.

I agree, but we have no data at all in this discussion. People are just making stuff up like they are self-evident truths.

> it was obviously so much so too far left for about 2million+ people

How do you know why they voted that way? For example, there is evidence that many people voted for Trump because they thought he would do more for the economy. Maybe it was crime, or charisma or corruption or a million other things.

Where is evidence to support your claim that it was a rejection of leftism? Why do you even believe it - assume it without question, afaict - if you have no evidence?

(I'm assuming, for the sake of this comment, that this 2+ million cohort exists and voted a certain way.)

Deflation, in the abstract. is about as good or bad as inflation. Slightly better because a serious deflationary crisis is much less damaging than an inflationary one. You go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples and it is a whos-who of countries who then went on to be successful and prosperous and a few TBDs in the 2010s - there might be examples of catastrophic deflation but they haven't made it to Wikipedia yet.

so if we have high inflation say due to global pandemic's effects on global supply and in response we get say 40-100% price increases (say milk was $1.00/gallon and now it is say $1.50/gallon, a modest 50% increase).

so now inflation eases, global supply chain in back to normal etc etc... we should expect now that milk prices will stay forever at $1.50/gallon (or higher) because now that would be deflation if the prices eased…?! :)

I don't think Israel's leader believes in expanding, btw - he only wants one thing, his own political survival. Everything else is secondary.

> It doesn’t matter what size Israel is. It has a super equipped army unlike any other country in the region and its population is growing while many countries around it are failed/fragile states (eg syria and Lebanon and sort of Egypt.).

First, it does matter what size Israel is. If you are claiming that Israel is expansionist, but it makes up literally a tiny blip on the map, then I think that's pretty relevant.

Secondly, I don't think the fact that its population is growing is relevant to this discussion? How does that matter? If you're saying that Israel is more succesfull than most of its neighbors, I agree, but not sure why you think it's relevant, or a mark against Israel?

Israel is hostile to Palestinians as Palestinians are to Israelis. The killing of many people during the march of return. The starvation plus diets. The treatment of the West Bank after the PA renounced violence as part of Oslo, there are numerous examples Palestinians will cite to show that Israel is hostile to them. You can trot out a long historical argument to justify all these, if you'd like. They can do the same for Oct. 7. Such narratives begin with the Nakba, probably include the fact that Palestinians have no military which can adequately protect them from Israel while Israel has missile deterrence systems, etc. But all these don't matter. At the end of the day, right now, both countries are materially and physically threatened by the other. And those threats materialize into violence often.

> Unfortunately, I disagree.

Your disagreement doesn't change the actual calculus on the ground, so it doesn't matter. Like I said, only deterrence actually can make peace between two actively hostile nations. It is also not true that the Palestinians did not accept any peace. They accepted Oslo, in which they conceded far more than Israel, and were rewarded for that with basically nothing. But again, it doesn't really matter now, that is long gone and dead, and if you see it differently, fine.

> The US has peace with the UK. It has peace with Zimbabwe. It has peace with Vietnam, despite a massive war with it. It has peace with Andorra.

The US and the UK fought many wars (American Independence, the WR of 1812, etc.) they achieved peace through deterrence because the American army could stand up against the British army at that time. That deterrence set up the allyship they have now.

America chooses to have peace with Zimbabwe, but these nations have never been hostile with each other. If America ever perceived Zimbabwe as hostile to it enough to be a serious threat, they would invade and decimate the country as they did Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our situation is not like those. Both countries rightly perceive the other as an active threat. In such a situation, when only one can deter the other, you'll have terrorism until some actual, tough, negotiated peace process occurs. Unlike with the IRA (a similar situation to this one), the closest peace process for both sides was sabotaged and ruined, and now we are in a territory not really historically analogous to any other in the modern era.

> But the Palestinians don't need firepower to change the calculus - that's the opposite of what they need. They need to stop using firepower to fight Israel

You could of course swap Palestine and Israel and have the American left-wing reading of the situation. You would balk at that saying "But the Palestinians are a security threat. Israel cannot be expected to allow that on its border. The US would never allow Mexico... Etc." and that is of course the same logic Palestine uses to justify its attacks on Israel. Palestine, being inferior by air, land, and sea militarily resorts to terrorism in its attacks, just as the IRA did with a similarly overmatched foe.

Even just trying to ship it elsewhere for processing gets blocked by other states and cities.

Then no health insurance would make sense?

Well, as you suggest, the regulations that cap the premiums for old people at 3x those of young people seem to blame?

At some point the consumer makes a decision that the cost of insurance doesn’t justify the benefit.

Well, you are spending approximately twice as much as the Brits in terms of percentage of GDP. (Comparing total healthcare expenditure, ie private plus public.)

But that doesn't mean that NHS-style healthcare is the best.

Singapore spends roughly health as much as Britain, and has no worse health outcomes. And we don't have a single payer system here.

The fact that the problem still exists at all is an indicator it's not actually that easy.

That is a strange statement.

There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know)

We have no way to communicate with people about the dangers for over 100_000 years.

Those are technical problems.

The political impetus is to get future generations to pay for our current consumption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Regulatory_Poli...

This flooded the power markets in the US with new, non-utility sources, while at the same time it helped reduce growth in demand by encouraging efficiency. Together, these squeezed out any prospect for starting new nuclear construction projects.

But the press spun it as hate towards nuclear power. So that put a big black mark on the industry, maybe even more so because both Liberals and Right Wing people came out against it.

Socialism is a red herring. 3 mile island and Chernobyl showed that state owned and private owned can equally be fucked up.

France owning their plants is completely orthogonal to safety.

With very good reason.

Nuclear power leaves a 200,000 year head ache.

Climate change is a mild problem in comparison, it will correct itself in centuries (taking most of civilisation with it, but mēh!)

Ryan McBeth presents his thoughtful analysis and debunking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8HWJ2v0R6k

Wish I saved the quote, but I remember reading something to the tone of "Everybody across all lines wants healthcare. But 8 rich people disagree, so it's complicated".

Edit: since I can’t respond to comment below due to hitting too fast posting limit:

Post ACA and pre ACA plans are completely different products due to out of pocket maximum, age rating factor caps, and inability to screen for pre existing conditions.

Hence comparing pre and post ACA health insurance prices is not meaningful.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMFhxFDCNTc

I posted several headlines and links in mass & scientific media promoting the global cooling belief, which corresponds to my recollection of the dominant media.

I recognize my recollection may be flawed. If you have evidence to that effect, please post a similar collection from the time period promoting global warming belief to support your assertion.

My personal belief is that the media over-hypes scientific findings and under-reports uncertainties. We see this today in global warming coverage, as we saw it (or at least, as I recall it) in the 1970s global cooling coverage.

My list would be: 1. FDR, 2. Carter, 3. Teddy. Carter because he sacrificed his career to fix inflation (Republican attempts to rewrite history notwithstanding), and Teddy because he wasn't merely an excellent man with excellent politics, but also because whenever present-day Republicans try to claim the man without claiming his politics I can turn it into a teachable moment, and putting him on a list with the other two is the perfect bait.

He hardly ended the depression, economic conditions were poor until WW2 (eg look at the 1937 downturn, well into his tenure).

We can check on these prediction in a year or so. Because we cannot prove anything about the future now.

I think we understand fully where we are each coming from.

> Yes, very briefly, until Netanyahu’s faction murdered Yitzhak Rabin, and not since.

I think we've talked about this before?

This is just wrong. Firstly, I wouldn't call them Netanyahu's faction.

More importantly, Israel then elected Ehud Barak, who pursued peace, then Sharon was incredibly popular for doing the Gaza disengagement (not in pursuit of peace, of course, but in effect leaving Gaza completely and giving it over to the Palestinians). Then Israel elected Olmert, who vowed to continue with peace and disengagement. And finally, giving a majority to Livni who also wanted to continue down this line, but unfortunately wasn't able to build a coalition, so Netanyahu (who had, IIRC, one seat less than her) became PM.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure where you stand here - does the PA represent the Palestinians? Doesn't it? Should we believe that Hamas is more representative, which is true by polls in the WB (though polls in Gaza have them at 5%! nowadays).

If Hamas truly represents the Palestinians, do you think there's any chance for peace? Given that Hamas's goals are basically the dismantling of Israel?

Thank you, I appreciate your coming at this in good faith. I don't believe I'm acting otherwise, so I'm sad to hear that's what you think. I believe we have real disagreements, though we probably agree far more than we disagree.

The reasons I engage in these debates are 1) to learn, 2) to give an Israeli, albeit leftist-Israeli, perspective, something I think is very lacking in discussions about Israel, which is sad - both because it makes things uninformed, but also because IMO, the best chance we have of arriving at peace is via Israeli leftists and peace-activists. I do sometimes argue a more standard-Israeli POV than my personal opinions, because I believe it's valuable to understand it.

I'll try to tackle your specific points. I'll attempt to be as inclusive of all points of view as I can, but please also keep in mind that we might actually disagree about things - don't just assume I'm talking in bad faith. Sorry, this comment will be a bit long.

First, let me lay outright my main point of disagreement with you, IMO - I think you're coming at this from an outsider, "both sides" perspective, where you believe "Israelis" have a POV, "Palestinians" have a POV, both have reasonable points and are roughly equally valid, the truth is somewhere in the middle, and the way to arrive at peace is by somehow squaring the circle and giving both sides what they want.

I believe that is, roughly speaking, wrong.

I'm an Israeli Jew, so obviously I'm biased. That said, I've always been far more sympathetic to the Palestinians than most Israelis. I've spent the time since the war trying to learn a lot more about the history of Israel and Palestine, the history of the conflict, etc. I'm still far more sympathetic to the Palestinian side than most, even more so that I was before. In fact, I think Israel has behaved morally badly for the last 15 years by stopping all work towards peace (both not trying to seek peace, and actively blocking paths towards peace).

That all said, I still believe that, while the "pro-Israeli" narrative is obviously not completely accurate and paints Israelis more nicely than it should, it's still more accurate than the "pro-Palestinian" narrative. Both the history - the common "Jews came in and stole the land, the Palestinians should get all of it back" has some truth to it, but is far more wrong than it is right, for a lot of reasons.

More importantly, I believe it really is true that the main reason there was no peace is that the Palestinians refuse to live side-by-side with Israel, and continue to refuse it. There could've been peace many times (as Israel has done with other countries) if Palestinians had acted differently. That is a failure of the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian leadership - which is continuing to push the completely false idea that if they just tried a bit harder, they'd convince the Israelis to pack up and leave Israel.

OK, I'll try to address specific points:

> Things like

> > I agree that there's a list of supposed reasons, but I think they're being considerably blown out of proportion

> Are not in good faith, imo. People whose loved ones die, who see killing in the name of hatred, on both sides, are not blowing their issues out of proportion. The expansion of settlements isn't a "blown out of proportion" reason to doubt Israeli commitment to peace any more than terrorism is a reason to doubt Palestinian commitment to peace. Both lead to horrific and disturbing killings and massacres with state (or quasi-state) backing.

Look, I'm not saying that someone who lost a loved one is "blowing it out of proportion" as a reason to be angry at Israel. And I can't imagine the feeling of most Gazans over the horror they've had to suffer over the last year.

I was specifically saying that these things are blown out of proportion as reasons to think that Israel is actively hostile to Palestinians. And indeed, I think your list is inaccurate. You talk about "killing in the name of hatred", and you talk about "horrific massacred with quasi-state backing", which is simply a mistaken interpretation of Israeli actions. Despite the absolutely horrible, terroristic actions of many in the settler movement, there are almost no "massacres" of Palestinians by settlers. Before the war, the vast majority of Palestinians killed weren't "killed in the name of hatred", they were killed in clashes with IDF for security reasons.

You paint a picture of Israel (the state) or of Israeli settlers routinely going around killing Palestinians, and (before the war) this just wasn't true, at all.

About the expansion of settlements - yes, I agree, that's a genuinely valid reason for the Palestinians to doubt Israeli commitment to peace. I think all settlements were and are a horrible idea, and I'd dismantle them all if I could. However, I don't think it's correct to say "well the settlements continued while we're still negotiating so that means the Israelis don't really want peace". Many of these "settlements" are a dozen people going in and "claiming" some land no one is on. Again, I get where this is coming from, and it's a totally valid criticism of Israel - but isn't real proof that Israel is "not serious".

> When you say

> > it's not even close to being true that they got nothing from it. Those accords literally created the Palestinian Authority, which is the official governing body of the Palestinians

> You're not reading what I'm writing with good faith, you're preparing a counter. I didn't say nothing. I said "basically nothing" because a government can be formed without Israeli agreement. They did not see an end to settlements. They did not see Israel commit to stopping its authority over Palestine, instead they rather cemented it against a "state" they knew had no equivalent defense against such. This is all after they made very big concessions and continued to do so even after the talks failed.

Again, I honestly disagree, and think you are misreading history here.

It's not true that "they could just setup a government", because Israel was militarily ruling the West Bank and Gaza at the time, and acted as the government.

After the accords, not only did the PA get official recognition, they got governmental control of most of the Palestinians. They don't have Israeli army presence within their cities, mostly, and the day-to-day lives of a majority of Palestinians doesn't involve any interaction with Israel.

It's just not accurate to say that Israel didn't commit to stopping its authority over Palestine, because the authority that Israel had over the lives of most Palestinians changed drastically, and is far lower.

Palestinians in the West Bank are mostly living without any interaction with Israel or Israelis, if they don't want it. They can travel the world at will via Jordan. Israel still exerts some authority, and it's not a truly independent state, but you're making it seem like the accords changed literally nothing.

Btw, I'll take a moment to criticize the Israeli POV here too - many Israeli pretend that Israel also gained nothing from these accords. Despite the fact that the Palestinians officially recognized Israel, and officially relinquished 80% of their claims on land (by agreeing to a future state only existing on roughly the '67 borders). Most Israelis don't think they had any valid claim to the rest of the land, but nevertheless, they do think they had a claim to it, and relinquished it. And the PA, for all its very massive faults, has worked in security coordination with Israel ever since.

This is why this subject is so touchy for me - I believe that both Israelis and Palestinians think the accords and peace talks didn't go anywhere or yield anything, making both sides dig in and say "there's no point in talking to the other side". And I think they're both wrong, because actually, the Oslo accords, despite eventually leading to failure of future peace talks, actually achieved some things that were real, important, and have held to this day.

I think it's really important to recognize the successes and build on them, and understand the failures and what led to them, because that's how we'll arrive at peace.

[Continued in next reply]

In particular, "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Having said that, age-appropriate sex ed in elementary school (e.g. talking about bodily autonomy and consent) is actually a good idea, since children at that age are often victims of sexual abuse and don't understand exactly what is happening to them.

And if you genuinely get bent out of shape about tampons in mens bathrooms, I'm really happy for you. Your life must be genuinely amazing that something so meaningless even warrants being mentioned as a point of contention. Personally, as somebody who sometimes purchases tampons for his wife, it seems at best marginally useful, and at worst completely irrelevant to me.

The economy topic is hardly a left-wing issue. People on the right cheered for Luigi just as much as people on the left, because they're suffering just as much, or more. What is happening here is not the left moving to the left, it's poor people being disenfranchised and reacting to it. This is also a major reason why Trump got elected: people have so little trust in the current system that they'd rather vote for somebody who promises to break it, than for somebody who promises to improve it.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "communists/socialists", since those two words have been stripped of all meaning in the US.

"It wasn't a policy shift, it's attempting to save face"

You're just using different words, but you're saying the same thing I did: it's a shift to the right. It's also dumb and counterproductive, because immigration is not the source of people's problems, and curtailing immigration in the way it is currently being done will only make things worse, but that is besides the point.

> There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know)

This can be said of anything, which is IMO a defeatist attitude. Nothing we do is guaranteed to not cause harm. Likewise, our inaction could also cause harm.

For the specific question of stable geology, past performance can help predict future performance. We can make educated guesses. If it has been stable for the last million years, it's a good be it will be stable for the next 10,000.

> We have no way to communicate with people about the dangers for over 100_000 years.

The need to communicate the dangers over vast timeframes presupposes that society has fallen into ruin, and our record keeping has been destroyed. I will argue that if that has happened, it means countless billions will have perished, and people+or lizardmen) living primitive lifestyles will have far bigger worries than and increased cancer risk.

> The political impetus is to get future generations to pay for our current consumption

We are paying for our current consumption of fossil fuels right now. How many deaths from climate change over the next 200 years are appropriate to ensure the safety of an unknown number of people thousands of years from now?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrification

"In an interview for the documentary, In Israel: Ministers of Chaos, produced by European public service channel, Arte, [Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich claimed that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia."

https://javafilms.fr/film/israel-ministers-of-chaos/

This is a minister who is very powerful in the current Israeli government. To dismiss this is pretty weird. He doesn't hide his ambitions.

I am actually agreeing with him that this is likely to try to happen least for the foreseeable future. The trends point in this direction.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/israeli-views-...

A. you are voting FOR one of the options.

B. you are voting AGAINST the other option - hence by default you must choose the other

there is a significant number of people that are in the B. bucket (in my personal circle 9 out of 20 people fall in B. bucket, 8 of which NEVER voted for a Republican in any election prior to this one) and democratic party needs to think looooong and hard about that before midterms and especially next Presidential election

Like with any risk, there should be appropriate and proportional risk mitigation strategies put in place. Current strategies are outsized compared to the risk.

The anti-nuclear environmental movement will go down in history as one of the biggest own goals. If nuclear power had have had continued investment into engineering improvements, the world would be in a much better place WRT climate change.

That rarely works out. When a country collapses the ensuing is chaos going to be a very rough time. Recent examples include the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 90s were really bad for people there. A lot of them moved here to the US to escape that and try to find a better life. I worked with some of them. And now what do they have in Russia? A dictatorship that's not any better than what they had in Soviet times - certainly worse than what they had under Gorbachev.

People who assume that something better will rise out of the ashes of collapse, but that rarely happens. Better to try to work to make the system you have better even if in small ways.

This is the part that confuses me. I have met a few “burn it down” types but never heard one articulate why that would work out well in the long run. I’m only assuming they even thought that far ahead.

The only people who can tell me why they voted for Trump are people who want his specific brand of incremental change.

So Stalin may have played a part in ending WW2, but don't forget his part in starting it.

...even backed by crucial US supplies

And I said "making future generations pay for our current consumption"

Surely that is shameful?

When one is close to a hostage deal Netanyahu does something to torpedo it, like this recent statement of his:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-alarming...

So there probably won't be a hostage deal.

But more importantly, I'm not sure how actually relevant it is today. Israel was founded and for sure did some things that weren't great, just as the surrounding Arab countries did things that weren't great. Just as like 50% of the countries today have been through stuff that isn't great.

If no one can live in peace and a joint future because of things that happened in 1940, how is there any peace with Germany? With Japan? WW2 didn't just ethnically cleanse a lot of people - 50 million people died in that war. Yet there is peace, because people chose to stop fighting and figure out a way to coexist.

> It doesn’t make sense to “share the land” with people who ethically cleansed your family from said land.

For the sake of argument, let's assume your idea of what happened in the Nakba is spot on. What exactly is the alternative? What do you imagine should happen to the millions of Israelis that have been born and raised in Israel? If the land isn't "shared", what should happen?

This idea of trying to roll back the existence of countries is antithetical to the entire relatively-peaceful world order since 1945.

> You say that you represent “leftist Zionism” but such a thing doesn’t exist as evidenced by your argument against basic human rights.

Where did I argue against basic human rights?

”this doesn't matter as much as you claim it does”

This is false. Female inmates are raped by female inmates, and male inmates are raped by male inmates. This is a "rape in prison" problem, not a trans women problem. In fact, rape of biological women by trans women in prison is extremely rare.

And, again, your stated hypothesis is self-contradictory, because it implies that the problem of inmates getting raped is solved by putting trans women in male prisons, which is plainly false. It will likely increase the number of rapes.

"the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news"

I remember tiredly accidentally using a women's bathroom after a long flight. I'm not looking forward to being punished for it because of the latest moral panic. I'm sure all of the women who are falsely accused of being men because they don't conform to societal stereotypes of what women look like also feel much safer.

Meanwhile, there are, as far as I can ascertain, currently no cases of trans women assaulting biological women in women's bathrooms. I'm sure cases exist, but they must be exceedingly rare.

There are, however, plenty of cases of trans women being assaulted (and, in some cases, murdered) in men's bathrooms.

The truth is that most of the people currently stirring up a moral panic around gender are barely even aware of the existence of trans men and simply haven’t thought this through properly. Which isn’t surprising, as they don’t care about the issue itself, but only its potential as a political wedge.

How is it not accurate? They are male (by definition), so when they decide to impose themselves upon a female space this means they are doing so with a disregard for women's boundaries.

Based on your comment, you seem to believe that "woman" is just an identity, that any male can choose to adopt if he desires so. If that is the case, why do you believe this?

Any examples of this hypothetical situation actually happening?

If these spaces were regulated by law, and there was a realistic prospect of penalties for males who choose to impose themselves on female spaces, then this would have a significant deterrent effect. The males who say they're women (including males with a transwomen identity and your hypothetical set of males who claim to be transmen) would refrain from intruding.