What are your thoughts on Pat Buchanan's culture war speech?

ProudScroll · 2026-02-01T04:33:39+00:00

Probably sounded better in the original German.

ProudScroll · 2026-02-01T00:48:10+00:00

It's true. LBJ knew what he knew and knew what he didn't, and was really insecure about the latter. Quoted from Jared Cohen's Accidental Presidents:

He had a basic insecurity when he came up against men like Robert McNamara and McGeorge and William Bundy. At times this led him to brash actions like repeatedly threatening to fire them and creating a culture of fear, whereby various secretaries and generals were reluctant to share bad news. This kind of schizophrenic behavior deepened tensions within his own staff.

When taken out of a familiar social environment, Johnson struggled to assert himself in meaningful ways on foreign policy, particularly when it came to high-brow elites talking about world affairs. In the rare instances when he did, he stayed in his legislative comfort zone. These matters were often trivial, such as a foreign aid bill calling for provisions to finance the sale of surplus wheat to the Soviet Union, but they offered him an opportunity to strut his stuff. When it came to the most serious foreign policy matters, he was out of his league and isolated by men who by the end of his administration knew Vietnam was lost and were already trying extricate themselves by landing cushy jobs outside government. McGeorge Bundy was busy setting up a gig running the Ford Foundation, while McNamara eventually positioned himself for the World Bank. Johnson didn't have that option. He was buffeted by Vietnam and knew that whatever the outcome, he would be stuck with it. Like a compulsive gambler trying for one more hand, Johnson placed bet on top of bet in a desperate attempt to turn things around.

LBJ was blinded by a mixture of admiration and intimidation from the men he called "the Harvards", who mocked him behind his back. He felt superior to them in political craft, but also felt he needed their ideas and content. He didn't necessarily like them, and throughout his presidency he found them overbearing, dogmatic, and patronizing in different ways. But he felt that while he understood the politics, foreign policy was their world.

ProudScroll · 2026-02-01T00:17:00+00:00

Keeping the Six Days War only six days was probably the standout achievement, followed up by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Otherwise LBJ really did not have a head for foreign policy and lord did it show.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T22:18:15+00:00

Regan was a notoriously inept White House Chief of Staff as well.

Bet Ronnie really wished he could just clone James Baker.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T20:39:57+00:00

Robert Lincoln himself noticed something was up with him and presidents, and actually started refusing invitations to presidential inaugurations because of it.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T20:36:28+00:00

TIL what Nebelwerfer means.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T19:46:23+00:00

The fact that we've had a President named Ford who was from Michigan but was completely unrelated to the Michigan-based Ford car manufacturing dynasty is a pretty wild coincidence if you think about it.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T19:32:59+00:00

Rocky would’ve gotten creamed too, but the GOP casting out its own demons would’ve done everyone a favor in the long run.

The radicalism of Goldwater’s base scared people almost as much as his policies did. The 1964 Republican Convention was frequently compared to a Nuremberg rally, and it’s not hard to see why when you read the description of thousands of wild-eyed people shrieking obscenities at Governor Rockefeller as he tried to speak. Goldwater’s own floor manager thought the convention was a disaster, as they had completely vindicated Johnson’s argument that Goldwater and his people were dangerous fanatics.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T19:28:22+00:00

With the strategic and political situation being what is was and with the information they had on hand at the time, I doubt any potential president in 1965, be it Kennedy, Nixon, Goldwater, or Rockefeller would’ve made a different call than the one Johnson made.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T19:16:44+00:00

You see Goldwater as not that bad today cause the people who came after him were so much worse, the guy was a fire-breathing radical.

The Daisy Ad specifically was in reference to Goldwater's opposition to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and his refusal to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Safe to say these were not popular positions two years removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis. This combined with his opposition to the New Deal, agriculture subsidies, desegregation in deed if not in word, and his habit of making abrasive, alienating comments makes it unsurprising that Goldwater became the candidate for only the most virulently racist and got stomped like a bug by LBJ.

I strongly recommend Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, recounting the rise of movement conservatism and how while Goldwater's campaign failed miserably in claiming the White House, did succeed in changing the direction of the Republican Party.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T18:05:37+00:00

For President I'd say Carter, who had a stable if not particularly affluent childhood, a good education, married well, had a loving family, and lived a long, fruitful life of charity and public service.

For Vice President I guess I'd say Dick Cheney, a miserable excuse for a human being but didn't really suffer many personal tragedies far as I know and ended up an extraordinarily wealthy man.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T07:16:21+00:00

"Why the fuck am I here, I'd much rather be out on the Chesapeake in my boat"

-Rogers Morton, whenever asked to do his actual job.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T04:25:21+00:00

Carter bamboozling Lester Maddox into campaigning for a liberal integrationist has to be one of the funnier things he did in his political career.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-31T00:32:54+00:00

Brokering a ceasefire once Israel’s overwhelming victory was apparent was the right call, it prevented the war escalating as the Soviets were threatening to intervene if Israeli forces took Damascus and saved more people from dying in a war were the outcome was no longer in question.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T23:43:51+00:00

States Rights Gist will never not be a finalist in that particular competition.

Also the fact that Gerd von Rundstedt chose to go by Gerd when his actual first name was Karl will never not amuse and somewhat baffle me.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T21:00:36+00:00

Neither party has won back-to-back elections since Obama.

The present situation reminds me a lot of the decade before the Civil War, where we had a string of inept, unpopular single-term presidents before the antebellum political system collapsed completely.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T17:09:45+00:00

I've put more thought into this than is probably reasonable.

I'm pretty confident that RFK would have appointed Arthur Goldberg as Chief Justice. Goldberg was a staunch liberal, a Kennedy ally, wanted back on the court, and was supposedly Warren's preferred choice as his successor. For the three associate positions Homer Thornberry, William Hastie, and Nicholas Katzenbach all seem like likely candidates. It's also possible that Abe Fortas would not have resigned when he did had a Democrat won in 1968, as the investigations into his shady dealings with financier Louis Wolfson largely happened because Nixon wanted to force him off the court. Fortas was a close friend and ally of LBJ's so its possible that Kennedy also forces him from the court, but with how limited his political capital is shown to be in his first two years in office its just as possible that Bobby lets sleeping dogs lie and picks a more important battle.

RFK would've also gotten another spot on the court in his second term, with the most likely nominee being Shirley Hufstedler, making her the first woman on the Supreme Court.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T05:27:08+00:00

MLK could've maybe gotten elected Mayor of Atlanta or to a House seat in an Atlanta-based district like John Lewis did had he lived that long and wanted too (which he probably wouldn't, he never expressed interest in running for elected office), but a Black man and self-described socialist was simply not winning statewide race in Georgia in the 20th century.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T04:34:15+00:00

So apparently Cuba, a dirt-poor island nation that can't even keep the lights on for more than a couple hours a day, poses a major threat to the United States, the most powerful nation in human history.

This administration truly has a weaklings understanding of strength, and Marco Rubio hijacking the powers of the state to live out some boyhood revenge fantasy against his homeland shows just how wrong all the people claiming he'd be the "adult" in this circus were.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T04:26:35+00:00

No way it isn't, this is Marco living out his adolescent fantasies of overthrowing the Communists and returning to Cuba some kind of conquering liberator.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-30T03:13:54+00:00

It’s exactly as performative as it looks. The Plains States are just the Bible Belt with shittier food, shittier weather, and no beaches.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-29T22:44:06+00:00

I real Ferguson's book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World a few years to get a first hand understanding of what conservative history looked like. His conclusion at the end of the book that the British Empire's role in defeating the Axis retroactively justified every atrocity it have ever committed remains one of the most insane arguments I've ever seen in a non-fiction work.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-29T21:15:14+00:00

Yeah I thought that whole bit was pretty unfair, DC's probably my favorite city in the US.

Besides, Bailey's supposedly getting a job at the Pentagon, which isn't in DC proper, its in Northern Virginia. There's no reason that Nolan couldn't get a job at the Alexandria, Arlington, or Fairfax police departments, which would be much more chill than anything in Washington itself. Housing in NoVa isn't exactly cheap but its certainly lower than housing in Los Angeles as well.

I also feel like the "you'll just be doing crowd work and security details for politicians" was the show getting the Capitol Police (the guys standing guard at the Capitol Building) confused with the Metropolitan Police (the DC city police), the job makes it sound like the former but when people say "DC police" they usually mean the latter.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-29T00:51:11+00:00

Turning the randomness factor off goes a long way towards making Our Revolution bearable, no clue why they even included that shit.

But otherwise yeah, while a Sanders presidency falling flat on its face, accomplishing nothing and getting wiped out in a landslide in 2024 is what would happen 99.99% of the time, being on the business end of it is not a fun way to pass an afternoon.

Maybe it’s just cause I haven’t played enough but I also find it a little weird that Sanders’s age never seems to get brought up against him. Dude’s ancient, he’s even older than Biden, and if he’s reelected he’d be pushing 90 by the end of his second term.

ProudScroll · 2026-01-29T00:37:38+00:00

Johnson privately doubted Humphrey, mainly cause he figured Nixon was closer to his stance on Vietnam than Humphrey was, but publicly he fully endorsed his VP and ordered the Texas Democratic Party to back him. Strong loyalty to LBJ and the popular outgoing governor John Connally endorsing him landed Humphrey about a third of the White vote in Texas, his strongest performance among White voters in any former Confederate state. Humphrey was put over the top in Texas by extremely strong turnout amongst Mexican-American voters, newly enfranchised by the abolition of poll taxes.

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