>I think he'd do better to stay silent and let me come to this conclusion on my own instead of feeling dirty for having him agree with me.
I'd prefer if he didn't, silence is a cancer. If anything has been blatantly apparent in the last 20 or 30 years it's that the American people as a whole simply cannot form any correct conclusion about anything that actually matters.
Sure, they'll all ring in to vote on American Idol, but it's a tough sell to vote yes on gay marriage.
They'll make sure they hit 'like' on hundreds of Facebook posts in a day, but can't bring themselves to make an educated vote in an election (or even vote at all).
Nationalize healthcare and reform social security to help millions of your own countrymen from dying broke? Busy watching Gangnam Style.
Vote out corrupt congressman and other government officials who take massive payouts from lobbyists? Football's on, get out of the way.
The information age has quickly turned into the distraction age, and it's showing.
Sure, they'll all ring in to vote on American Idol, but it's a tough sell to vote yes on gay marriage
And yet that has a fair degree of legal protection at the federal level and is legal in multiple states now, whereas in Russia it is now a crime to promote the view that homosexuality is normal.
The American people have always been politically conservative and reluctant to abandon their residual Calvinism; if you think this is peculiar to the last 20 or 30 years you're dead wrong.
Take it as an opportunity to separate ideas from persons. You may agree with an idea even if you dislike the person proposing it (and the other way around, of course).
True. It certainly hasn't changed my mind on the Syria situation, though it has perhaps stated a lot of what I was thinking a lot more eloquently than I could.
I'm not sure who this is trying to convince. People who agree with him like me, it probably won't affect much. People who want to invade Syria are the type of people that will see his name and only feel vindicated in their belief. You know Fox News, et al. will spam their viewers with "This is what Putin says, it must be wrong."
I don't know if there is really a lot of people sitting on the fence on this one, other than the apathetic who won't read it anyway.
He's not trying to convince anyone. It's all posturing. He's trying to look as good as possible (look like a reasonable, restrained, trustable major player in international politics), and put the US in a position where we look as bad as possible if we do intervene.
And he's doing a great job. The offer to get Syria to put their chemical weapons under international control was brilliant. Obama was saying, "They crossed a red line, there's no option but military," and then Putin put forth a peaceful solution.
This. If you were looking for a reason to support the war, that it goes against Russia's interests is a pretty good one. Reminding people of that seems unwise. Putin would be smart to distance himself from it, since he must know the American people dislike him and consider Russian interests to be a threat.
That the rational thing to do as a reader is to ignore his identity and examine his arguments is mostly irrelevant, since that's not actually what people do. I suspect it's a miscalculation.
But I doubt he honestly believes in all of this. This rationalization just happens to coincide with his (and Russia's) interests.
I think he'd do better to stay silent and let me come to this conclusion on my own instead of feeling dirty for having him agree with me.