First off, let me say I'm sorry for the rambling (and mostly pointless) diary. You should only read this crap if you're really bored...
Well, yesterday, it finally happened. My posting abilities were removed at MyDD. I probably deserved it. That place is a delusional community, and I have been openly antagonistic towards it. I have talked about how MyDD would fold as soon as Hillary loses. Still, I was a little surprised that the diary got me banned was about the insanity of the people controlling the electoral maps on their homepage that show Clinton getting 68 more electoral votes than Obama - carrying NC and MO while Obama does not. This is clearly farcical, and not even in the top 10 list of objectional things I've said there.
Anyway, this, along with the political mood about a wide range of things (Iran, Bush at the Knessett, making ammends with HRC supporters) got me thinking about different ways of dealing with conflict. The first is negotiation. Negotiating is good because it can lead to a settlement of the conflict that everyone is genuinely happy with, and if it fails, you're just back where you started anyway, so generally speaking, there's very little downside. Next is appeasement. Appeasement is bad because it overlooks issues of long-term concern for short-term gain. A settlement through appeasement leaves one or both sides ultimately unhappy with the outcome. This often leads to more conflict in the future. Action is another way to deal with the conflict. By action, I mean concrete steps resolve the situation by force. This method is generally acceptable to one side (perpetrating the force) and unacceptable to the other side (being forced), but if the attempted use of force is unsuccessful, it can lead to increased tension on both sides.
Let's look at some examples. We are currently negotiating with North Korea via 6-party talks. Those talks have lead to North Korea shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for heavy crude oil. These are steps in a positive direction for everybody.
Currently Saudi Arabia is appeasing the United States. They provide us with oil (and yes, we do supply them with cash...), but because of our (historical) respect for human rights, they should be our enemy. We do not impose sanctions on them for having a legal system that implements flogging, amputation, and other forms of torture as legal punishments. In return for this appeasement, their citizens are tortured; their citizens hate us; our citizens are pissed off because now we feel entitled to their oil at a cheap price, and they're having problems producing more of it; some of our citizens are dying because their people are flying planes into our skyscrapers, etc, etc. All in all, nobody wins.
In the run up to WWII, negotiations and appeasement were tried with Germany. Neither were successful. Force was used, resulting in positive outcome for the aggressors and some very pissed off Germans for a while. That was the best that could be hoped for. On the other hand, in Iraq, we used force, got ourselves bogged down, and now nobody is happy.
Now let's apply this to a future scenario - Iran. What would negotiations look like and what would appeasement look like? Well, similar to North Korea, a negotiation would look like an agreement that causes Iran to refrain from building nuclear weapons in exchange for us providing them with something of roughly equal value to lost revenues they would receive from producing nuclear power and selling more excess oil... Or maybe helping them develop the ability to enrich uranium via methods that can't produce weapons grade material. There are options for negotiations that can end up benefitting everyone. On appeasement, I don't even know what this would look like. Iran is not an aggressor. Sure, their figurehead is a little bombastic in his rhetoric, but he's not their leader. Anyway, maybe appeasement would look like our leaders and their leaders spouting aggressive rhetoric to drive up oil prices so that our leaders, their leaders and their people can benefit while our people have pay more. No, that's not appeasement, that's just a scam...
Let's take a clearer future issue - what to do about Hillary supporters. Well, negotiations are generally good, but I have just lost my ability to negotiate in one corner of Hillaryland. It is true that my negotiations had drastically deteriorated and weren't going anywhere. Maybe some of you will have better luck. Still, I would like to warn you not to overlook their transgressions in an attempt to appease them so that they will vote for Obama in the fall. They need to understand that election fraud is wrong - FL and MI shouldn't count at all (on a side note, I don't know why Obama isn't sticking to his guns on not seating them at all - they shouldn't count at all, and he's engaging in a bit of appeasement here). Hillary supporters also need to understand that lying is wrong. We can't overlook their lies about Hillary winning the popular vote, or being under sniper fire, or some sanctioned and fair elections shouldn't count, or some unfair unsanctioned elections should, or sexism is why she's not winning, or black racism is why she's not winning, or whatever she lies about next. We don't need to hide our displeasure with Clinton, we need to explain it. If we don't, they'll get it in their heads that Clinton should be VP, and that would be a nightmare. When she doesn't get the VP slot, we'll have to convince them to vote for Obama all over again. We need to negotiate a lasting settlement in the Democratic Party based on ideals we support (which I think we have in common) not candidates we support (which we certainly do not have in common).
So, if there's anything to salvage from the last few minutes you've wasted reading this diary, it is this: you're taking a gamble if you appease Clinton supporters and play down the bad things that Clinton has done in trying to convince them to support Obama in November. They are likely to defect as soon as Clinton isn't chosen as the VP. Instead, I propose that you continue tough negotiations, because people that can be convinced of Hillary's wrongdoing now aren't going to defect when she's not chosen as VP.