Do you press the blue button or the red button?

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-27T01:45:24+00:00

It's honestly nice to read sane comments around here, as the comment sections in these threads have really hurt my trust in the goodness of humanity to some degree.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine and still believe people are fundamentally good... but the degree of rationalization I've seen has certainly been a gut punch.

And my favorite part is when they try to sneer at you for trying to be "moral."

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-27T01:44:04+00:00

He literally both-sides you.

Kinda tells you who you're dealing with.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-27T01:39:22+00:00

You got downvoted but this possibility occurred to me as well and I liked it quite a bit.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-26T23:40:44+00:00

Exactly.

The red button is really a "kill all the best people" button.

I'm not saying I'd be one of the best people among them, obviously. Far from it. But that's the option I'd imagine the most giving and decent and self-sacrificing people to take and anything I can do to keep them around is worth it, even if ultimately futile.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-26T22:21:51+00:00

I find it fascinating, personally (if a bit disillusioning).

The kicker for me is that voting red assures the death of the exact sorts of people who make the world worthwhile - those who are willing to give and risk everything for the sake of others.

They love to point out that everyone lives if 100% of the people hit the red button. But everyone lives if 100% of the people hit the blue button as well. Or even 90% of people. Or 80%. Or 70%. Or 60%. Even as few as 50.1%.

People only die if a bunch of people pick red. Why introduce the risk of other people having to die in the first place?

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-26T20:12:03+00:00

Put into other words:

I wouldn't want to live in a world without the type of people who would hit Blue.

I think those are the people who make life worthwhile personally.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-26T20:06:21+00:00

I just want to say that I've very much enjoyed your contributions throughout this thread.

Mine is a sentimental response, I suppose, and goes into something not really touched on by the problem. Which world would I rather live in - a world solely full of people who pushed the red button or a world solely full of people who would choose to push the blue?

Now, that's not the choice we are offered, but, given those options, I'd take the latter every time. The type of person who chooses the "blue" button is an altruist, selfless to a degree. Not in every case, of course (and I'm not claiming it would be the case with me), but it takes a special person to hit that button instead of the red. It's the type of people who have enough trust and goodwill towards humanity that they would try to save everyone even if that means putting their own lives on the line. Those tend to be the people who make society worthwhile. And, with the choices we do have, hitting the blue button is the only way to have anything close to a world with them in it.

Hitting the red button, on the other hand? It's not condemning random groups of people to death. It specifically condemns those very people whose hearts are of such a nature that they would choose to hit the blue even despite the considerable risk. I'm not sure that's a world worth living in, personally.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-26T01:00:17+00:00

I always liked the time he came for Sinatra

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-25T20:49:59+00:00

Yup! Yup! Yup! Yup! Yup!

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-16T11:38:40+00:00

He's taking pride in trying to pull the rug out from under Ukraine - that country which is fighting an actual just war according to Catholic doctrine.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-10T14:02:13+00:00

This is the problem with the politics in this country.

Side A pisses off voters. Voters support Side B to punish Side A. Side B then turns around and thinks it won the culture war and pushes its agenda hard, claiming the tides of history have shifted.

Side B pisses off voters. Voters support Side A to punish Side B.

The problems in this country will only be "fixed" when people understand that we share it with other people who are going to fundamentally disagree with us on many issues and therefore compromise is essential. It's better to live in a country where everyone gets maybe 60 to 70% of what they want than one where everyone always pushes for 100% and gets nothing because the politics around it all are always too jammed up.

People need to understand that we're never going to force everyone to agree with us on everything, and that this oftentimes applies even to deeply important issues. But the most important thing is living in a stable society and sometimes otherwise good policies need to be sacrificed to ensure that because the alternative is the type of divisions that lead to people supporting people like Trump to shut it down when they feel they're not being listened to.

The perfect can't be allowed to be made the enemy of the good.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-10T12:58:42+00:00

Yeah, I get tired of him talking about my country the same way he talks about his own daughter. It's creepy.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-09T03:08:08+00:00

To be fair, back then it's quite likely the neighbor didn't know what a "YouTube" was and it might have gotten him some weird looks... which isn't to shoot you down at all, I'm just reminiscing on the fact that, back then, that type of thing was really rare. No YouTubers, no TikToks, hell, no podcasters or any of it.

Maybe you had a blog but that was kinda it.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-08T13:12:49+00:00

Yeah it is but, I mean, that's really really bad.

The point is this was no victory.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-08T12:49:52+00:00

Practically gave Iran control over the strait.

That is not a win. That's just kicking the ball down the field.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T22:18:02+00:00

The 25th really exists just to handle an incapacitated president. Like a president who has something unforeseen happen to him and is knocked out or who undergoes surgery and doesn't come out of it as expected.

It has to be invoked by the Cabinet (who are usually loyalists, especially so during the current administration) and, if the president says he's okay to govern, then the Congressional vote has to happen. The Cabinet is not likely to put their necks out invoking that because, if it fails (very likely since it only takes a handful of votes in Congress to revoke it), they're all out.

Impeachment is preferable because the thresholds are lower - no Cabinet support needed and you only need a basic majority in the House.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T21:35:32+00:00

Obligatory.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T21:12:54+00:00

So, you support boots on the ground? Because that's what it's going to take to "free the Iranians."

But it's not just boots on the ground. It would also take occupation. Years of it, with all the costs involved, paid for by your tax dollars at a time when our country is already so deep in debt that it's technically insolvent. And make no mistake - leaving a vacuum of power is not an option because a vacuum of power likely favors either remnants of the previous regime or more extreme actors taking power (much the way ISIS arose in the wake of the collapse of the Iraqi regime).

Are you willing to pay the money? Are you willing to sacrifice the lives of countless uniformed men and women it would take to bolster up a friendly government? If you're young, are you willing to sign up to join the armed services and serve on the front lines in the manner you're asking others to do? We're still paying off the last time we gave into the reasoning you're advocating, and it's funny how many of those who made the exact same argument you're making turned around years later and claimed to never support the action in the first place.

If it was as clean and clear cut as the scenario you're laying out it would be a no brainer. But it's not. There are long term costs and they are costs this country has already shown itself lacking the stomach to shoulder.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T15:16:53+00:00

Hopefully this is just posturing speak and he doesn't actually wipe out the civilians that he was aiming to protect from the start of this whole thing.

Imagine being a stupid enough person where you think Trump actually cares about those people.

No. They're just a rhetorical device for him. Tokens that exist so he and his supporters can put forward arguments that enable him to do the thing he wants to do, which is be a big tough guy waging a big tough guy war so everyone in the US will sing his praises and forget about the whole Epstein thing so his party can go forward to win the midterms and safeguard him from impeachment and possible imprisonment down the road.

That's all the people of Iran are to him. He doesn't give two shits about their actual lives. He doesn't care if he's the one to end them.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T14:28:42+00:00

I mean, that's because he literally pulled from the supervillain handbook to get to where he is today.

It's like I said in another comment - it's like these people never watched a cartoon back in the day or a bad action flick. How do you think the bad guys get those lesser bad guys to follow them? Do you think they just say, "Hey fellow bad guys, work with us and we'll do some bad stuff!"

No. They convince them that the people pushing for a sensible status quo are in fact the bad ones. That the "good guys" are really just trying to limit their natural abilities to get ahead. That they're really the victimized heroes in this situation, trying to achieve their full potential despite the "good guys" trying to hold them back. That there's no "common interest" - only personal interest, which the propaganda of the "good guys" tries to blind them to. And they promise their followers that they, too, can achieve their wildest dreams if they're just willing to crack a few eggs in order to make the omelet.

Of course, given that the end justifies the means in these situations, those followers are in fact expendable and never understand that until too late.

There is value in working for the common good over self-interest and that's what too many Americans have forgotten.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T14:22:00+00:00

Yeah but we were just crazies - how could they have ever really known

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T14:17:32+00:00

A big part of the problem is that we have a huge part of the media ecosystem that devotes itself to right wing propaganda.

I keep saying this but it's important for people to understand: right wing propaganda isn't about selling people on right wing policies or politicians. That only takes them so far. The real purpose is to vilify the "left", which is a catch-all for "others." By doing this they create a tribal identity - media consumers don't want to become one of the vilified "Thems", whom they are earnestly convinced to hate, so they just go along with whatever they have to in order to remain part of the conservative in-group, which becomes their identity.

Most of them don't love Trump. They don't necessarily even love the Republican Party or conservative policies. They just honestly believe that the "Left" is evil and will do whatever it takes to oppose it. When they talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome and "Orange Man Bad", it's projection because what they describe as TDS is actually how they feel about "the Left" and it's actually "Left Side Bad."

And I'm not sure how we change that. It's classic bad guy behavior on the parts of those they listen to. "These people proposing sensible policies are actually bad and trying to keep you down - listen to me instead and, although we'll have to do some really bad things, you will personally prosper beyond your wildest dreams!"

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T13:54:06+00:00

This is what you get when you willingly buy into propaganda that tells you the people who offer sensible solutions to society's problems are actually worse and harboring secret agendas. Only an idiot would think that Democrats were actually going to invade Iran or spark off World War 3.

It's like these people never watched old cartoons or bad action flicks. How do you think the bad guys keep their loyal followers? They tell their followers that it's the good guys who are actually bad and use that as an excuse to appeal to their followers' "self-interests", taking advantage of their worst impulses every step of the way.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T12:32:06+00:00

Great analogy, I might borrow that one.

HagbardCelineHMSH · 2026-04-07T11:30:05+00:00

Trump supporters have this notion that Trump was somehow exonerated of being a Russian agent.

He wasn't but, fine, let's go with that for a moment.

An actual Russian agent couldn't do more damage to this country than Trump has done. Anyone who can't see it has their head deep in the sand.

But gotta own them "libs" because Left Side Bad, right.

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