General and Secretary of State Colin Powell Dead at 84

That’s right, bobrek seems to trust the lying MSM for whatever reason. I live very closely to him, I’ve invited him for some coffee before so we can do some ID verification and I can tell him the truth about how things work in the real world, he turned me down every time.

 

Lol, I’m more trustworthy than the MSM, you must believe me.

 

Bullshit. I have personal experience where you have lied and by continuing to not admit you were wrong continue to implicitly lie. So take your "trustworthiness" and shove it.

 

That's no fun. I'd miss too much idiotic ridiculousness.

 

The war criminals could all use this line: "but anyway, may he rest in peace!"

 

Every single high ranking military man has a complicated legacy.... they have all seen or done things that they were uncomfortable with or should have been uncomfortable with. What I will say is that he appeared to always have what he felt was in the best interest of the USA at heart. He made mistakes, he believed in people he should not have and in part he was treated as a quasi God when he really did not deserve it, as he was just a man with an important job.

I do believe that at one point he believed his press clippings and that allowed him to be duped and his own ego got in the way. He indirectly spoke out against his prior actions later, I do not know if that was out of wanting to save his reputation or if it was that he realized his ego compromised him.

He also was someone that was "safe" for most Americans and used a shield to show that racism isn't "that bad" in the USA. He was black, and he was socially conservative and measured and non controversial.... so he was "safe" for white Americans and could be held up by conservatives as proof that they didn't hate ALL black people, those that toed the line were "okay"........... I suspect Powell was well aware of this later in his life, and that is part of why he spoke out as he did....... and oddly, the same people that praised him as an upstanding negro 20 years ago are not celebrating his death.

@Dairy Ashford

 

You sound angry again, have you had your prune juice yet?

 

Deflect, deflect, deflect.

 

I guess these people don't understand chain of command and who makes the decisions in the executive branch.

Powell's issue was that he went along with it rather than pushing back. He wasn't a decision maker like Bush Jr, Rumsfield and Cheney.

 

Nazi concentration camp gaurds followed orders too. No excuses.

 

I used to think that as well. But to be honest, there are people on this site that are not interested in debate and discussion, but simply to troll reactions. They give the appearance of ignorance, repeating talking points they see that fly in the face of facts. But its pointless engaging them, its like wrestling hogs in a mud pit... they enjoy it, and you end up tired and dirty.

It was only a suggestion and I would never tell someone else what they should do. All I see are the unblocked responses and I scroll through those pretty quickly.

 

Oh, I completely agree with you. Pretty sure I have no one on my ignore list. It helps keep my BP up interacting with idiots.

 

I do cynically feel there was some pre-9/11, post-Cold War and -Private Ryan window where boomers were looking for an Eisenhower, and Powell could have fit the bill electorally while checking some historical boxes and not governing like a rich, born-again recovering addict of a Texan. The only point I would haggle on here is calling him socially conservative, although I think his pro-choice and pro-affirmative action stances were based less on any sense of personal compassion than with a slightly more technocratic and early postwar black perspective on how to optimize large scale economic outcomes. He may have been behaviorally conservative and pro-war enough to garner the kind of trust, respect and enthusiasm (Moseley-Braun) most black politicians back then were not getting from mainstream white voters, but in the '90s there were definitely socially mobile or solidly middle class blacks like my parents, probably doubly so as immigrants, who would have somewhat more earnestly used his trajectory as an example of black potential and payoff as much as some white conservatives might have to hint at their tolerance.

 

Didn't want to start a new thread. I'm watching Dead Presidents, a movie about a black Vietnam vet and his struggles after the war.

I was curious about how many blacks served in Vietnam. The US was 11% black during Vietnam and 16% of the soilders were black

 

11% is the total of blacks, correct? You'd have to pull out the number of eligible blacks and that number should be way lower.

 

When I looked up the numbers it mentioned educational standards being lowered