My personal low point is the ‘Take The Oil With Us’ exchange, because it exposes a depth of both ignorance and depravity that you don’t expect to find outside of Crazy Uncle Earl at Thanksgiving.

First, the oil fields are scattered all over the Eastern 1/2 of Iraq. His idea to ‘leave a certain group behind’ would require that ‘certain group’ to hold 1/2 of the country - the part that actually has people in it. We could let them have all the West, where nobody lives.

So, before we even get into the question of insurgency, we’re talking about a shit-ton of boots on the ground. FOREVER. But hey, let’s talk about insurgency. We had to deal with a bloody insurgency from the Sunnis because we’d put the Shiites in power. We occupy the country and take the oil, suddenly the Shiites and the Sunnis have a common enemy. And each side has a wealthy ally - Iran for the Shiites, and Saudi Arabia for the Sunnis. Pretty soon we’re losing people at a couple hundred a month, FOREVER.

Now let’s think what this does to our position in the world. Right now, by virtue of our military strength, we are the most dangerous country on the planet. But most countries don’t feel threatened because we DON’T take over countries and drain them of their natural resources after destroying their infrastructure, killing hundreds of thousands, and impoverishing millions. We start doing that, and pretty soon all the other countries stop allying with us, and start allying with each other AGAINST us.

Trump wants them to spend more on defense? You can just dambetcha they’ll start spending again!

All of this is pretty damned obvious, I think. I’m flabbergasted that 1/3 of the country listens to this shit and says, “FUCK YEAH!”