Quote:
Originally Posted by aowen
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Thucydides? You're not decades behind, you're fucking centuries behind. First you need to read the actual relevant classical realists such as Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Locke. Then continue to their contemporary critics such as Hagel, Rousseau, Marx, etc. Then you need to update yourself because that's all just foundational work and actually read shit that matters. Current realists that might have a smidge of salience are Morgenthau, Mearsheimer, Waltz, Brezezinski, Kissinger, Kennan, and more. Then read people that actually know what their fucking talking about like Habermas, Frost, Foucault, and watch them fucking decimate realists.
You argument is stupid, because you just listed a bunch of facts without any kind of point to them, except that maybe US foreign policy is realist, which is true. It is also true that American FP in the middle east is a sad sack of shit. Perhaps if they had contemplated the morality of their actions, different decisions would have been made. Maybe if ol' GW read a book without pictures he would have known that sometimes taking others interests into consideration is important. Biggest problem with realism=defining what's in your rational self-interest, which it purports to always be a questions with an answer. Wrong, that doesn't even fucking mean anything, and it's the worst type of morality, aka selfishness.
That last statement you made there, the weak suffer what they must. I guess slavery would have gone over great with you, which is why you don't give a shit about 5 million malnourished people living in camps because of Israel. You're a dolt. Thucydides, lmao, fucking retard, you know nothing jon snow.
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You seem upset.
I'm going to take a moment here to laugh at the names you just dropped. Thanks for running me through the biggest names in political philosophy. Yeah man, I should totally read Machiavelli, Hagel [sic], Marx, and Morgenthau. Where'd you hear about them!? I'm still working on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, but they're up next! I just heard of this new guy you should totally check out -- Faulkner, I think it was? That guy's a genius! He's going places.
And yeah, unfortunately, my stupid point is true. It's clearly the guiding policy of US foreign policy, and US foreign policy has pretty much shaped the world for the past 65 years. Dang.
And that last statement there, oh paragon of political knowledge, is literally the most famous quote from Thucydides' Melian dialogue. Seeing as how Thucydides is generally regarded as the father of political realism, maybe you should give him a spin.
And for the 6th or 7th time, this isn't a moral opinion. I'm not endorsing the morality of it; I'm commenting on its veracity.