Approximately the same things were said about Dubya Jr's war with invisible WMDs. If you've forgotten - listen to some songs that came out at the time. It's not about a particular president, it's that the US seems to have a systemic dependency on starting these wars.

Your point seems to be that the US has not changed. Regardless, the world thinks it has.

The “coalition of the willing” is not behind the US this time.

And so this Easter day a new oxymoron is born: the coalition of the unwilling.

Do with that, in terms of foreign policy, what you will.

The unwilling don’t particularly coalise.

Why is that oxymoron? You can, in fact, have a coalition focused on not doing something.

Yeah, its called home owners associations, NIMBY etc.

Back then we had approval from our coalition. We also shared the spoils, which the Russians noted.

Also, none of the Bush’s ran on an “America First” isolationist political campaign. Even own base is fracturing because of this.

Information, both good and bad, is a lot more accessible this time around. It has been a dramatic accelerator to worldly views of America in the wake of their recent actions.

There are political similarities between the two aforementioned wars, but the social and technological backdrops are quite different, and they're working against US public perception. Furthermore, decorum is entirely gone this time around, which isn't helping.

Whole world would weep with joy if somebody like Bush jr would come into power now. Even when talking about that cocaine nepo kid of his cia chief father. I recall those times and emotions well from european perspective, not everybody here is 20-something.

These 2 are incomparable on any level. If you want to say it can always get worse that I can agree with.

and we're still experiencing damage from that war, and it's getting worse because of some things that it changed (patriot act, creation of homeland security, etc)

we've faced two major recessions since then and may very well be entering our third

at this point it seems we're just trying to find out where the breaking point is

The only "stability" gold has is an emergent property of an interconnected system of hairless apes somehow making each other believe they need it. Same with fiat, bitcoin, or whatever we come up with tomorrow. None of these things have any real utility outside of an expectation that the peer ape also finds them valuable.

Low quality: when someone insinuates that the part of the establishment who play "good cop" are not saints.

Nah, this problem is systemic, and much older than the current administration. Or has everyone forgotten the "anthrax" in a test tube? The invisible WMDs? The fake news about soldiers tossing babies out of incubators? Setting up a web of lies and attacking is a foundational value of the United States.

It's not about steamrolling, never was. The whole point of the exercise was to install a puppet government. In Ukraine, the TV actor installed by the Biden administration is currently the acting president. The moment funding runs out - so will he.

Some folks had to be in line for gas 50 years ago, and the revenge for that is killing children? I guess "dumb" doesn't describe this. "Insane" is a better fit.

The people of the USA will just have to voice their complaints through the free media. The entirety of which is owned by 2-3 rich guys.

It's not quite that bad yet. Public media still love, for now.

Proxy war. And that's an awful lot of years and billions spent on flattening nothing, don't you think?

Donating fuel to terrorists on the other side of the planet isn't cheap

AI is very good at writing C and asm. It even writes good Verilog. Unfortunately.

My experience is that it gets the syntax right but constantly hallucinates APIs and functions that don't exist but sound like they should. It also seems to be tricked by variable names that don't line up with their usage.

How is paper money any less of a social construct? How is a gold coin that you can't actually use in any other way than trading it to another hairless monkey?

The value of paper money was the social construct

The existence of money is now a social construct