Counterargument: squabbling about "blue team vs red team" is legitimate domestic politics about issues important to voters. You're just upset because what you think the "the whole game" is about is a rare area of general agreement[1] and you happen to be on the "other side".
To wit: when you disagree with everyone, it looks like they're conspiring against you to control the masses, yada yada yada. They're not, you're just in a small minority (or an epistemological prison).
[1] Hardly surprising, since international geopolitics is exactly where you'd expect their interests to align.
How my tax dollars are spent is a domestic issue. As is not implicating me in war crimes.
> They're not, you're just in a small minority
The majority do not support this war, nor do they support Israel. Our politicians refusing to listen to the electorate is also a domestic issue. As are the many attempts that Israel has made to strip us of our fundamental rights.
For clarity, I'm not saying the minority position is "wrong". I'm saying that holding a minority position is not a priori evidence that Deep State Illuminati Elite Power Centers are conspiring against you. They're not. You're just weird.
So, no, you're not. Or you're misunderstanding how this works. "Stop the war in Iran" is a majority position in polls. People don't vote on that, because people don't care about the war in Iran. Instead, wars at the ballot box are fought over which ethnicity needs to be the target of state violence, or whether or not it's a good thing for citizens to have health care. And those wars are serious, and hard-fought, and occasionally slip off the edge into non-democratic authoritarianism.
But voters don't care about Iran. So Iran policy is dominated by the interests of non-voting/non-democratic power structures like US business interests and geopolitical long-term desires. And on these issues, those power structures show marked agreement. So that's what we do, modulo tactical considerations (e.g. the Obama administration pursued a policy of containment and treaty engagement out of conservatism, where Trump installed a bunch of trigger happy cowboys who want to watch bombs on TV; but both viewed Iran as an enemy to be opposed, and for the same reasons).
So I repeat: to you, if you happen to view Iran policy as extremely important, it must feel like The System is conspiring against you to manipulate public opinion. But it's not. It's operating as designed, and 100% democratically. You are just in a minority, and this is what being in a minority feels like.
By this logic, everything any politician does would by definition be exactly what their constituents want, regardless of polling on any particular issue, because they still voted for the politician.
To wit: there are I issues and P positions for each issue, yet there are not I*P ballot choices, so people inevitably get something they don't want.
The logic also falls apart when you realize politicians can do whatever they want after getting elected, including flipping their positions on issues that got them elected (like no war), regardless of what the voters want.
> To wit: there are I issues and P positions for each issue, yet there are not I * P ballot choices, so people inevitably get something they don't want.
Sigh. I hate the internet. That was exactly my point. Thank you.
The democratic process inherently produces outcomes where not every action taken by a government has majority support. Always. Inevitably.
And, precisely because this is an inevitable result, arguments of the form that such actions represent the manipulation of the government by a conspiracy of elites suppressing the will of the masses are, in the jargon, batshit.
There is no conspiracy. You're just, to repeat for the fifth time, in a minority. Not on the issue itself, but on your prioritization. Sure, lots of people might "agree" with you, but no one gives enough of a shit to change their vote. So the government chases the votes instead, and the interests of those who can deliver the votes.
> The democratic process inherently produces outcomes where not every action taken by a government has majority support. Always. Inevitably.
Precisely -- you are repeating my point. And precisely because this is an inevitable result, arguments result of the form that such actions are what people want, because they voted for that politician, and that politician did that, therefore the people must have wanted it, therefore anyone who doesn't want it must be in the minority. This was your argument.
For the 6th time: This is not the case. Just because a politician did something does not mean it has majority support. Polling shows this particular position (pro-Iran-war) does not have majority support, but rather majority opposition [0], contrary to your argument. Because of the aforementioned I*P limitation, polls are the way to determine this, and that is what they determined [0]. If you think there is majority support for the Iran war, you are in a bubble. Your own personal "batshit" conspiracy theory about "elites" or whatever has no bearing on this.
You clearly said that opposition to the Iran war was not a majority position [0] (i.e., that the Iran war is something voters want), which is incorrect. Your explanation of this claim was that voters don't care about Iran, which is also incorrect, per polling [1].
Cite 0 isn't what I said, though. I said people who care about Iran (in the sense of it being a primary driver of voting preference) are in the minority.
You're arguing with a strawman, or a mistake. You agree with me.
>> I'm talking about the majority position, not minority (opposition to Iran war)
> So, no, you're not. Or you're misunderstanding how this works.
> people don't care about the war in Iran.
They were talking about the majority position (it is opposition to Iran war), and they weren't "misunderstanding how this works", and people do care about the war in Iran.
>I said people who care about Iran (in the sense of it being a primary driver of voting preference) are in the minority.
Close -- you were talking about people who care about the Iran war, and you omitted everything in parentheses. In contradiction to that thing which you said, however: People who oppose the Iran war are in the majority.
This is the logic that cost Kamala Harris the election. Liberals are absolutely addicted to putting their head in the sand about how much people care about genocide and Israel's influence on our lives. We've hit the breaking point, Zionism is no longer electorally valid.
Even back in 2016 when Trump criticized prior wars he always said he would have done it better and without warning. Not exactly a pacifist position.
> Trump was not a conventional anti-war candidate. His message was a variation of the “peace through strength” ideology of the right, plus Richard Nixon’s “madman theory”: a belief that the more other countries fear the retribution of the United States, the less likely war would be. - The Nation
If anything he's anti-invasion because he doesn't actually care about the countries, he only cares about American interests which is projecting power, scaring off adversaries, and isolationism.
Sorry, no. The republican party of the last three-quarter-century has been consistently and reliably pro-American-exceptionalism. That the republican power structures backed a candidate who claimed not to believe these things is interesting, but it happened because they believed, CORRECTLY, that he was lying about this.[1]
There has been no significant realignment of US geopolitical positioning between the parties, nor should you expect there to have been. That you thought there was is, to be blunt, on you. You followed a charlatan and got burned. You should have known better after you got burned the first time.
[1] Again, hardly surprising. He lies about everything.
Sometimes the divide feels like it's between people who vote based on what people say and people who vote based on the actions and track records of the candidates.
To wit: when you disagree with everyone, it looks like they're conspiring against you to control the masses, yada yada yada. They're not, you're just in a small minority (or an epistemological prison).
[1] Hardly surprising, since international geopolitics is exactly where you'd expect their interests to align.