He has a new excuse for his ignorance of foreign policy matters: being stupid is an asset.
It’s because we elect people who can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on the name of a foreign leader or a geographic location, then allows them to put our military in harm’s way.
Jebus. We’ve already forgotten George W. Bush, who hadn’t the vaguest idea of the organization of the region he happily invaded?
I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.
You don’t even want to know how confused he was about Latin America.
So no, Gary Johnson, the fact that you don’t know how to find your own ass with a mirror, a theodolite, and a butt-plug with built-in GPS does not imply that you are incapable of hip-checking someone while you’re floundering about trying to figure out what you’re doing with our military.
Heh? I have a very vivid imagination, you know. Now I wont be able to sleep for chuckles and my being all grogy tomorrow at work will be all your fault.
If ignorance is an asset, shouldn’t we prefer Jill Stein over Gary Johnson?
Well you have to admit Johnson is clear-headed, you can look into one of his ears and see clear through the other.
Cool, Neil Rickert, it’s only comment #2 and you managed to try to distract from a dude’s incompetence by blaming a woman.
Ah yes, the old “I was caught being ignorant, so I declare my ignorance to be strength” routine that’s all too common among conservatives of all stripes. Ignorance is elevated to a virtue, while knowledge is condemned as a vice. A cynical and desperate strategy, and one that in a sane world would be worthy of nothing but derision and laughter. But all too often it is both terribly effective and terribly dangerous.
Watching that video, I got the impression that he wasn’t so much praising ignorance as saying that knowing all the minutia was just pointless trivia. That the real issue is getting involved in the first place. Saying he doesn’t care about keeping the names correct of which leader is attacking which leader. The problem is getting involved, regardless of the names of the leaders and the names of their cities, etc.
The word that springs to mind is “isolationism”.
I agree with him that we should prefer a leader with a policy of not murdering people over one with greater factual knowledge. Too bad that’s not an option.
Neil, I’d say Donald Trump has both Stein and Johnson beat, but we can still talk about Johnson being ignorant. There is not some kind of conservation of ignorance where more ignorant people suck up all the ignorance, leaving everyone else with knowledge.
My ignorance tells me there’s only two people running for President that matter. I wouldn’t want to vote for some other nutjob by accident!
@6
Knowing who the leaders of your fellow nations are and knowing what major events are occurring on the global stage are not “minutia” or “pointless trivia”. They are vitally important to the job for which Johnson is applying. Even if you oppose intervention, you need to know these things in case they spill over into your allies’ territory or your own, something that can and does happen.
re @10:
agreed, Just to clarify, I was reporting @6 what I thought he was saying, while not agreeing him him at all.
Quite a few people seeking the job of U.S President don’t seem to understand what the job is.
It’s not to pick someone else to make decisions but to be the person who has the ultimate responsibility for making executive decisions. That requires candidates know things sufficient to inform their decisions and the ignorant should not apply.
Ah, the Herman Cain approach. Who needs to know the president of Uzbeki-beki-beki-stani-stan? What ever happened to President Cain?
@ 13- What Happened to President Cain? He wasn’t able to do the job. (Thanks, thanks, I’ll be here till Friday).
Wait. How does he know for sure the US is fighting on both sides on Syria if he is blissfully unaware of who the sides are? I doubt he is even aware there are more than two sides.
Neil Rickert @ 2:
Right, because? Oh, a woman, right? Well, at least Stein can list newspapers she reads, and she’s not nearly as empty headed as Johnson or Trump. Oh, she’s the only candidate that bothered to show up at Standing Rock, too. So yeah, seriously, worse than Johnson. FFS.
Looks to me like you got caught with your brain down around your ankles in the ignorance stakes.
I think at this point it would be nice if you guys had someone who didn’t end up becoming a war criminal for president. I know, I know, that’s a high bar to set…
There are things that are nice, and then there are things that are actual. I don’t have a lot of trouble telling the difference between the candidates, personally.
In today’s messy, muddy world, which head of government greenlighting any kind of military action isn’t a war criminal by one or another of the million definitions flying around?
Obama deserved that Nobel Peace Prize, and here’s why.
http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/13/13034.html
And deserves to have it taken away for the wonderful policy of bombing our way through hundreds of innocents to kill one or two militants at a time.
If Johnson would just shut the hell up about his ignorance of foreign policy (or foreign leaders, or where Canada is…) the ignorant masses would probably forget all about it in a matter of days.
Applehead @19, It’s never rich white people whose neighborhood is messy and muddy enough to justify killing them, is it?
Then apparently I deserve one too, along with most or all of the people in this thread, not to mention a few billion elsewhere on the planet. Make sure to tell the Nobel guys about us. Although we’re not wealthy or powerful (a big strike against us I’m sure), we do have the qualification of being peaceful, in case that actually counts for something.
@23
Given that Kissinger and Teddy Roosevelt were awarded peace prizes, being peaceful seems to be a disqualifying factor. Given that Mommy T won won too, it would appear that helping people is too.
Won one*
Is Johnson on the record giving aid and comfort to anti-vaxers?
@24 & 25 Vivec
I’m still trying to parse “Mother Teresa’s Won Won”. Star Wars universe RCC crossover?
The Geneva Conventions are pretty widely accepted, and a great many nations manage to observe them.
Have we really got to the stage where people consider routinely violating the Geneva Conventions as just business as usual, and not really worth getting worked up about? Where massacres of civilians in undeclared wars by the supposed moral beacon of the world are so normalised that to object marks you out as some kind of extremist?
[Looks around]
OK, yes, I guess we have.
Yes.
About vaccines, he said a few years ago he was dead set against mandatory vaccination, recently he’s said he changed his mind but that it’s “a local issue”. It’s not. In other words, he’s both pandering and brain-dead stupid. Stein doesn’t give me the impression that she’s actually stupid, just that she says stupid things. There is a difference (the incurious, stupid person like Johnson is less likely to be able to learn) although when either type is applying for a major managerial job, neither is any good.
#23, consciousness razor,
The hell you don’t. Since you’re not the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, you did fuck all to make the world a less precarious place.
Did all you Bernie Bro scum already forget? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course you did.) Who wanted to supply the Syrian rebels with all the guns they wanted? McCain. And what did those rebels become?
ISIS!
Obama’s decision to limit aid only to medical supplies in the beginning of the conflict saved countless lives. He saved more people than you ever will.
@31
In the words of Stannis Baratheon, a good deed does not wash away a bad one, nor a bad one the good.
That he’s done some great things (I voted for him twice, after all) doesn’t make him not a war criminal for calling in drone strikes that massacre innocent civilians to get one or two insurgents at a time.
Also, when do I stop being a Bernie Bro? Clinton’s had my vote since the day she won the primaries.
Why do I smell an idiotlog? Over the top, and then some….