Why Journalism (and Society) is in a Downward Spiral . . .

[Rhino80]

I think your stupid but your a good wrestler so I am a fan. Brilliant!!
I disagree with about half the country, just like everyone else. I just dont feel the need to call them misguided or uninformed. Its ok to have different beliefs and opinions, well at least it used to be. Now both sides surround themselves with echo chambers and everyone who doesn't think like them is "stupid". There is good and bad on both ends of the spectrum and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

 

[Dogwelder]

Did you tell Nick how you felt … to his face? I doubt it. So, what you've essentially done is subtweeted him, by bringing his message to an entirely different social media and talking about him behind his back, which is not a good look from a "fan."

Somebody must educate the moderators so they can delete that almost-200-page, over-1-million-view thread. That thread has many instances of people bringing wrestlers’ messages to this entirely different social media! 🧐

 

[smalls103]

I already told you multiple areas where Nick made factually incorrect statements.

But, as you are a glutton for punishment:

Nick said that the Biden administration gave weapons to the Taliban. Either on Twitter or IG.

My assertion, having seem it first hand, is that the US government furnished those weapons to the ANA. The ANA then threw down their weapons and ran.

Please explain to me how Nick is correct and I am wrong.

fine. you do need an itemized list of your stupidity.

let's start with this post

you have to be a special kind of stupid to absolve the military of the taliban now having our weapons simply b/c they got them from the afghan army. who the ef cares?! the have them! billions of our tax dollars went to war machines that the enemy now has. it's totally unacceptable. and before you cite previous instances of that happening - it was wrong then, it's wrong now, and that can't continue to happen.

that's how you're wrong, genius. and that's how you're whitewashing this for an administration that's clearly unfit.

 

[Dogwelder]

Our usually-on-the-ball mods have been out to lunch. The politics stuff should have been deleted on the first day they appeared.

 

[smalls103]

It’s almost like you’re responding to someone else. Aside from addressing the fact that I’ve been to Afghanistan, your points seem unrelated to my posts here.

you don't say!?

no kidding ya blooming idiot. i was talking to several in this thread.

Here are some facts: I didn’t argue against the idea that our personnel should have support until everyone is out.

Then shut up.

I didn’t mention Dan Bongino until this post.

Then don't worry about it

Nick has made multiple posts where he has misstated, either because of ignorance or an intent to misconstrue the facts, how the Taliban and others acquired US weapons, clothing and equipment.

This stupidity was already addressed

Nick has expressed support for using nuclear weapons to take out a very spread out enemy situated among a dense civilian population he also purports to want to save. Again, sorry, that’s stupid. Newsflash: Nuclear weapons don’t discriminate between bad Taliban and good former interpreters.

He did not. he liked a post. how do you know he just simply disagree with the iwo jima part? why is it always the faux 'i'm the smartest guy in the room' guy that assumes they know what people mean?

 

[smalls103]

Perhaps this was just a coincidence, but Baschamania touched on this yesterday. Unless Nick goes into politics, he’ll likely go to work in an environment where his words and actions matter. Sometimes it’s best to not say anything, publicly, at all.

lol. what a stupid take. in politics words don't matter? but in private sector they do? lmfao. what planet are you on?

yeah, i'm sure if nick becomes an insurance salesman his take on the afghan war will result in his financial ruination.

(but then again, canceling people for their thoughts seem to be an agenda item for you kind of people)

 

[smalls103]

Our usually-on-the-ball mods have been out to lunch. The politics stuff should have been deleted on the first day they appeared.

why? you don't like don't come on this thread.

 

[Dogwelder]

you don't say!? … no kidding ya blooming idiot … Then shut up … Then don't worry about it … This stupidity was already addressed … why is it always the faux 'i'm the smartest guy in the room' guy that assumes they know what people mean?

Tell us! Why?

 

[AndEEss]

I think your stupid but your a good wrestler so I am a fan. Brilliant!!
I disagree with about half the country, just like everyone else. I just dont feel the need to call them misguided or uninformed. Its ok to have different beliefs and opinions, well at least it used to be. Now both sides surround themselves with echo chambers and everyone who doesn't think like them is "stupid". There is good and bad on both ends of the spectrum and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

I don’t recall anyone calling Nick stupid. He said something that I described as stupid.

Both because it was ill-informed and because I think quite highly of him. It’s disappointing. He usually comes across as a thoughtful young man.

 

[AndEEss]

Never mind.

 

[Dogwelder]

why? you don't like don't come on this thread.

Well, that is a good question. What is our policy on political discussion? I really don’t know. I may be misremembering that we have a policy against it.

 

[Dogwelder]

Well, that is a good question. What is our policy on political discussion? I really don’t know. I may be misremembering that we have a policy against it.

Can we discuss the good religions vs the bad ones, too?

 

[mjmirv]

Can we all get back to hating on Iowa please!

 

[Ambrowns]

Can we discuss the good religions vs the bad ones, too?

Only if we point to a specific PSU wrestlers who tweets bad things about the good ones and vice versa. Then we can express our disappointment and call each other names.

 

[nerfstate]

This board, and this thread in particular:

 

[js8793]

Name one item that nick said that was wrong.

y'all are being impartial, judgmental douche bags.

and AndEEs, i don't care if you were in Afghanistan for 100 years, you gotta be a special kind of stupid to not know/acknowledge/or reduce the fact that they should have had support there until everyone that needed to be out was out.

"this isn't gonna be another Saigon".... eyeroll.a

offended b/c he retweeted Dan Bangino...smh. what a bunch of unrealistic snowflakes.

So many people refuse to be honest with themselves. they refuse to admit truth or call bs without considering the implications for their party even if it means not being rational.

argue items and points - not if dan bongino is a 'bad look'. and for god's sake don't try to minimize what should have been an elementary pull out decision that turned into the dumbest effing blunder by an american president perhaps ever.

now go head and let 'er rip. talk crap. ban me, whatever. but i'm not gonna sit by and watch you bash nick for speaking truth b/c your fragile, biased assess can't handle it.

I was wondering if his tweets were ever going to make it to the board. I'll preface this with saying I totally understand he has a personal emotional connection to this issue and that's why I don't judge him harshly for what he's tweeted. However, retweeting a tweet calling for Nukes, whether in jest or serious, is reprehensible and totally flies in the face of the reasons Nick (and others) say they care about this withdrawal. You can't say you're heartbroken for the Afghani people and then call for Nukes. A Nuclear strike on Kabul would result in the incineration of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent men, women, and children. When one suggests this, it makes it clear the real issue at play is American Pride, not the welfare of the Afghan people. We should be better than that.

Sometimes, the truth hurts. And the truth is that this was inevitable. Our generals and intelligence agencies have known this for over a decade. The choice was to stay there forever as an occupying military force or leave and place the fate of the country in the hands of those who actually live there. In the end, like all of our nation building efforts, we didn't build them anything they felt was worth fighting for. The people we picked to run the country were corrupt, with connections to heroin trafficking and mass scale pedophilia. Their police force is accused of crimes against humanity. Look no further than their president, who while his aides were closing in on a ceasefire and peaceful transition/power sharing agreement to limit bloodshed, he packed a plane with over $100 million in cash from the Afghan treasury and fled the country without their knowledge to begin a lavish life in exile. This was the "good guy." You can imagine why many Afghans didn't feel like this government was worth fighting for.

The "free" Afghan government has had a massive loss of legitimacy over the past 15 years and the Taliban took advantage by both shifting it's rhetorical tone and governing strategies, allowing them to not only regain prior strength, but also make huge inroads in new areas of the country among new ethnic populations. I think our best hope going forward is to leverage economic influence (China in particular has both the means and will to do so) to moderate the Taliban government. They themselves want to govern. They want legitimacy. Huge economic contracts can be a hell of a motivator. It's actually not all that unreasonable to believe in a possibility where the Taliban-governed Afghanistan becomes more moderate than our friends the Saudis. China will play a big role (Iran possibly as well). Obviously, not ideal, but better than the alternative.

Willie, I know you have a huge interest in this topic (based on your tweets). I'm curious if you've had time to dip into the Washington Post's Afghanistan Papers? I think you'd find a lot of this information interesting. Just a warning, that it will probably make you even madder than you already are.

 

[smalls103]

good post js.

what i'm saying is that before anyone condemns Nick for nuking all of afghanistan take a chill pill and realize all he did was like/retweet a post.

some people on here are acting as if he pushed a button to annihilate innocent children.

you DO understand that his father literally changed the course of his and his families life to fight for those very children, right?

have some effing perspective before being the moral police and for looking for reasons to be offended. bunch of holier than thou snowflakes. phonies.

 

[NittanyChris]

I was not talking to you. it was a response to the post that immediately preceded it.

that being said - instead of saying you don't like Dan Bongino, state the particular point of what you disagree with regarding nick. saying you don't like Bongino provides nothing to this conversation other than to reveal your predilections, which no one cares about.

I explicitly laid out what Bongino was wrong about in my reply. Might want to read it before making a comment like this. Completely up to you, however.

 

[js8793]

good post js.

what i'm saying is that before anyone condemns Nick for nuking all of afghanistan take a chill pill and realize all he did was like/retweet a post.

some people on here are acting as if he pushed a button to annihilate innocent children.

you DO understand that his father literally changed the course of his and his families life to fight for those very children, right?

have some effing perspective before being the moral police and for looking for reasons to be offended. bunch of holier than thou snowflakes. phonies.

Right. People say all sorts of things they don't really mean when they're upset. I 100% believe if you were to ask Nick face to face if he really wants to nuke Kabul and he takes a second to think about it, the answer is going to be no.

I do think he would be best served to take down that retweet if he hasn't already. Most of what he's tweeted is strongly felt opinion. That is legitimately something that could get him in trouble down the road. Just the world we live in unfortunately.

 

[Ambrowns]

I explicitly laid out what Bongino was wrong about in my reply. Might want to read it before making a comment like this. Completely up to you, however.

 

[McScoreley]

Right. People say all sorts of things they don't really mean when they're upset. I 100% believe if you were to ask Nick face to face if he really wants to nuke Kabul and he takes a second to think about it, the answer is going to be no.

I do think he would be best served to take down that retweet if he hasn't already. Most of what he's tweeted is strongly felt opinion. That is legitimately something that could get him in trouble down the road. Just the world we live in unfortunately.

What's the tweet everyone is referring to?

 

[js8793]

fine. you do need an itemized list of your stupidity.

let's start with this post

you have to be a special kind of stupid to absolve the military of the taliban now having our weapons simply b/c they got them from the afghan army. who the ef cares?! the have them! billions of our tax dollars went to war machines that the enemy now has. it's totally unacceptable. and before you cite previous instances of that happening - it was wrong then, it's wrong now, and that can't continue to happen.

that's how you're wrong, genius. and that's how you're whitewashing this for an administration that's clearly unfit.

In the spirit of good faith debate, would you have preferred the US taken back all of their weapons when we left? If the idea was for the Afghan gov to maintain power, why would we take all of their weapons back?

Obviously, we all probably agree that it was a mistake to give them (the Mujahideen) weapons in the first place back in the 80s. That is unfortunately a mistake we've repeated over and over again since.

The only plus side is that it made for a hilarious in retrospect closing to Rambo 3

 

[5q]

Since when are all you God and have a right to tell someone how to act / what tweets are right. Pfffft. He is an adult. We should have opinions.

 

[Dogwelder]

… Obviously, we all probably agree that it was a mistake to give them (the Mujahideen) weapons in the first place back in the 80s. That is unfortunately a mistake we've repeated over and over again since …

History talk is more fun than politics talk!

Religion and nationalism, once stoked, cannot be well predicted nor controlled. But arming the mujahadeen arguably greatly hastened the end of the Cold War.

So, it seems far from obvious even in hindsight that helping end the hot threat of nuclear WW3 was not worth boosting the elevation of militant Muslims. Especially if we remember that the Americans who armed the Mujahideen would not have done the exact thing (War on Islam) that Osama bin Laden wanted to lure America into.

One interesting factoid from those Charlie-Wilson days was that the US leaders did fear proliferation of weapons among enthusiastic Muslims, and so they gave them Stingers yes but not drones.

 

[Dogwelder]

Since when are all you God and have a right to tell someone how to act / what tweets are right. Pfffft. He is an adult. We should have opinions.

How dare people force Nick at gunpoint to remove the tweet! The nerve!

 

[McScoreley]

Obviously if Nick retweeted what some are alleging, I don't condone that but it's his right. As @smalls103 said, let's not act clicking a Like or Retweet is the same as tweeting it out himself.

That being said, it seems a lot of people want Nick to "shut up and wrestle". By all counts (anecdotal and interviews), Nick is one of the most humble, kind and well spoken young man on the team. He is a fantastic teammate who I want all the young wrestlers looking up to and he has represented Penn State the right way on and off the mat his entire time here.

This is something very near and dear to his heart, he spent a good bit of his childhood probably up at night wondering if his dad was even still alive. He has interacted with refugees from Afghanistan directly. Nick basically never tweets anything and decided to use his platform to speak out on something he cares about. Ironically, I noticed his follower base has GROWN so it's not like what he's tweeting out is super controversial, it's something many seem to agree with even.

 

[Dogwelder]

… Religion and nationalism, once stoked, cannot be well predicted nor controlled.

By the way, tribalism is the same as nationalism in this context, and people are unleashing and stoking tribalism within the US. We must say no to name-calling, us-versus-you political discourse in this country, or we are in deep doo doo.

Willie, I am not using hyperbole when I say that if you love the US, you should not model the name-calling style of discourse. Put simply, if and when our country falls, the cause will be tribalism, and the mechanism will be name-calling.

 

[82bordeaux]

What's the tweet everyone is referring to?

This is the tweet I believe the center of the discussion whether we should perform a strategic nuclear strike against the Taliban in Afghanistan. I personally think that reading this tweet as "it is time to use nuclear weapons against the Taliban", a bridge to far. "Nuking", "going nuclear", or most other derivatives of the word nuclear are rarely used in the literal sense.
The nuclear option is rarely the use of nuclear weapons. It usually refers to "extreme measures". Unless you are reading a fiction thriller.

But most important of all, Nick Lee is an intelligent and thoughtful kid. Quite frankly I bet he cares less what anyone on this forum, Twitter, or anywhere else thinks about his thoughts and/or social media posts. Regardless, he shouldn't be criticized for those beliefs/posts/tweets. They're his honest thoughts and feelings. We all don't need to agree with them. But we should damn well respect them. After all, that is what the good old US of A is supposed to stand for. We need a little more tolerance for other's beliefs and views in this world. It is the one thing we are really lacking in today's age. We should be able to rebut a position on something without the use of the word "stupid". The only stupid views are the ones that contain the word stupid.

 

[js8793]

History talk is more fun than politics talk!

Religion and nationalism, once stoked, cannot be well predicted nor controlled. But arming the mujahadeen arguably greatly hastened the end of the Cold War.

So, it seems far from obvious even in hindsight that helping end the hot threat of nuclear WW3 was not worth boosting the elevation of militant Muslims. Especially if we remember that the Americans who armed the Mujahideen would not have done the exact thing (War on Islam) that Osama bin Laden wanted to lure America into.

One interesting factoid from those Charlie-Wilson days was that the US leaders did fear proliferation of weapons among enthusiastic Muslims, and so they gave them Stingers yes but not drones.

This is a really interesting debate actually! There are some that would argue that Afghanistan wasn't as important to the Soviet collapse as many think and that the USSR was already far beyond the point of no return of internal collapse by this point.

I've also seen it argued that the collapse of the USSR took US intelligence by such surprise (when it should have been seen coming miles away) because many within the intelligence community simply couldn't comprehend a coming collapse because combatting the soviets had been their entire raison d'etre for 50 years and that the obvious signs of weakness were actually evidence that the soviets were plotting something even more nefarious behind the scenes. There was definitely a mythologizing force around the Soviets when they were really in decline from the 70's on, if not earlier.

There's also the perspective that despite their actions indicating otherwise, that these intelligence officials did in fact read the obvious signs correctly, but somewhat feigned an ignorance of them because a strong Soviet was good for business (both government intelligence funding and private arms). Probably a mix of all of these. Some knew, some knew and pretended otherwise, and some really were oblivious.

Don't get me wrong though, Afghanistan certainly didn't help matters for them lol.

 

[smalls103]

By the way, tribalism is the same as nationalism in this context, and people are unleashing and stoking tribalism within the US. We must say no to name-calling, us-versus-you political discourse in this country, or we are in deep doo doo.

Willie, I am not using hyperbole when I say that if you love the US, you should not model the name-calling style of discourse. Put simply, if and when our country falls, the cause will be tribalism, and the mechanism will be name-calling.

1940: Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.
2020: Cancel everyone b/c words. And the fall of the world's greatest nation will be due to name calling. I will be complicit b/c i called someone a moron a message board.

i just can't

 

[PSUer1989]

So many people who love wrestling, but can’t stop arguing over something that won’t be resolved. Move on and agree to disagree already!

 

[smalls103]

what's wrong with arguing? we're all adults.

i learn a little, you learn a little (probably a lot (from me )

and we're all better for it. if there's anywhere that we're going to argue stuff, might as well be here where we have a common interest.

 

[PSUer1989]

what's wrong with arguing? we're all adults.

i learn a little, you learn a little (probably a lot (from me )

and we're all better for it. if there's anywhere that we're going to argue stuff, might as well be here where we have a common interest.

Argue away, just do it in the right board…https://bwi.forums.rivals.com/forums/test-politics-board.10/

This is one of the few places that we used to be able to go to escape politics.

 

[smalls103]

so don't click on this thread. you know what it is. no one's forcing you to read it. and it's 1 thread; it isn't a plague.

 

[Dogwelder]

1940: Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me …

i just can't

You are calling people stupid and yet you argue using proof by platitudes. Every platitude has an opposite platitude. Ever heard of

“The pen is mightier than the sword”?

Did you ever believe that culture is important?

1930s: a man name calls over loudspeakers and drives a whole continent to genocide and war.

1990s: hatemongers namecall over hate radio and drives a whole country to genocide.

Namecalling should not be tolerated and should not be normalized. From accumulated small actions an entire country’s culture forms.

As Patton said, if I can’t trust you to have administrative discipline, how can I trust you to have combat discipline? If you are a name caller in a simple little discussion, how can anyone trust you to think uncloudedly in anything else?

 

[Dogwelder]

so don't click on this thread. you know what it is. no one's forcing you to read it. and it's 1 thread; it isn't a plague.

So start another thread, you politics debate starters, and don’t hijack this one.

 

[PSUer1989]

so don't click on this thread. you know what it is. no one's forcing you to read it. and it's 1 thread; it isn't a plague.

I know what the thread was for over four years and it was a good thread. I click daily in the hope it has gone back to its previous form.

 

[SRATH]

good post js.

what i'm saying is that before anyone condemns Nick for nuking all of afghanistan take a chill pill and realize all he did was like/retweet a post.

some people on here are acting as if he pushed a button to annihilate innocent children.

you DO understand that his father literally changed the course of his and his families life to fight for those very children, right?

have some effing perspective before being the moral police and for looking for reasons to be offended. bunch of holier than thou snowflakes. phonies.

it appears folks here don't understand a figure of speech. this is test board material.

the Wrestling board is now the Cessling board, filled with cesspool conversations

 

[smalls103]

lol. please note, this thread was started to call me an unprofessional, pot-stirring dumbass. lmao.

dogwelder, gimme a break. i get called every name in the book on a weekly basis.

the world still turns. grow thicker skin.

 

[smalls103]

it appears folks here don't understand a figure of speech. this is test board material.

the Wrestling board is now the Cessling board, filled with cesspool conversations

yes. if filled = 1 thread talking about afghanistan.