They was a press release recently saying that almost all of the money is going to the MIC(military industrial complex) to replenish stocks for stuff given to Ukraine.
Even the Canadian money is doing that. Like where Trudeau brokered a deal with South Korea to gift shells from the active stockpile to Ukraine, the money went to their MIC to make new shells for their stockpile.
unfortunately he was just stating US policy there - Obama infamously drone bombed a wedding. one of the things that makes him appealing to his base is that he takes these facts (or presumed facts in other cases) and says them straight up without hiding it behind sophistry.
Yeah, the way the US picks targets to murder is like algorithm moderated vibes. It’s really sick.
Obama also liked double tapping ambulances. IE dropping a missile, waiting for first responders and neighbors to show up, then dropping another missile.
No, it doesn't always happen. Look to 2016 as an example. One of the talking points of Trump's campaign was that Clinton would lead the U.S. to war with Russia.
Anecdotally, after the election, I was talking with a Trump voter who mentioned that Trump prevented us from going to war with Russia. Which fucking surprised me, considering conservatives are so fucking hawkish, and I did not know that idea was tossed around in conservative circles as a talking point.
So no, many elections in the U.S. have been won by candidates that back isolationist policies (primarily WWI and WWII as an example). It's all inherently political and can take a very populist tone.
Before Trump they’d have loved war with Russia. It was them following the typical conservative “we all believe this now” rhetoric that changed that. Now Putin is a great example of an orthodox Christian and he’s doing great things for his country.
Truly don’t think it’s half. It’s just the way our elections and voting works. Every the stupid minority has a loud voice when we weigh votes instead of simply going for popular votes overall.
You need to factor effects from gerrymandering and other forms of vote suppression. I think there’s a lot of wealth trapped in the hands of a few very shitty people, which has allowed them to shape / distort perceptions of just how “popular” their values really are.
Trump is actually destroying DeSantis in the polls at 54.5% (Trump) to 14.8% (DeSantis). I have no idea how any Republican can lose to Trump. They don’t even need a platform. All they have to do is go out there and call Trump out on all his bs. Point out he’s failed businessman, make fun of his corny superhero NFTs, show how he sucks up to Putin, emasculate him conservative-style for wearing make-up, say that he will probably die of old age within the next 5 years…call him a rapist! That’s it. Just do it.
Honestly yeah - I feel like to many of his competitors (especially DeSantis) are trying to emulate Trump, when really they should be going directly against him. They’re scared shitless of pissing off his voters, but clearly trying to appeal to them by being Trump v2 isn’t working either, so I don’t see what they have to lose
Have you ever heard translations of Russian, especially Soviet, propaganda? The lies are absurd. They conflict with reality to the point many viewers have firsthand experiences that conflict with them. But they work, because people are trained to believe them - the unbelievable aspect of them makes them far more effective in a weird quirk of psychology
That’s the real reason why you can’t attack Trump from the right - he’ll lie to your face and call you a hater, and his base will believe him. Doesn’t matter if you have facts, doesn’t matter if you’re just repeating his words from last week - if you support Trump at this point, either it’s convenient for you to support him or you believe him in a faith sort of way. Either way, nothing said on that stage is going to change their minds
The other aspect is that Trump is insanely charismatic. He’s great at debate - without an impartial judge that can shut him down, he gets to play by different rules than everyone else on the stage
The best example of this is to read one of his speeches. You might listen to him and go “wtf is he talking about”, but reading his speeches is viscerally shocking. He rambles like my grandpa did when he was having a bad day with dementia - he drifts topic to topic, rarely goes back to finish a point, and like 90% of it is just filler words.
But despite all that, people absolutely love to hear him speak. There’s plenty to say about the man, but his charisma is off the charts.
Engaging him in debate is a fools errand. He will win, because he can sit up there, not make a single coherent point, come up with gradeschool nicknames, and half the country will walk away with the impression that he won the argument
How about a new rule that if you vote for a war, you are automatically enlisted. And if you’re ineligible to enlist you must either abstain or vote no.
Congress members get as many votes for war as they have draft-age family members. For each vote they cast, they must enlist 1 family member. Starting with their own children.
I see an obvious exploit with this: congress members enlisting family members who would rather vote ‘No’ just so they can get more votes for their own choice.
You might think “nobody would enlist their child to fight a war that they’re against” but I promise you, there are people like that.
Senators are (with few exceptions) extraordinarily wealthy. When climate change is destroying crops and making some areas uninhabitable, these senators’ families will still be living very comfortably.
We basically had that a century ago, before the nobility moved behind the scenes and became the 1%
Unqualified scions were sent to the battlefield to gain military merits, which was generally bad for everyone. I’m pretty sure it only really stopped after WWI, when the death toll from combat started getting ridiculous
Smedley Butler solved this issue back in the 1920’s, change the vote from Congress to eligible draftees to solve us going to war for stupid reasons.
Then during times of war, lock down every individual’s income and ability to earn money to that of the soldier. Keeping war profiteering from stretching wars on indefinitely.
It’s radical, but would probably keep us from just “being at war” eternally. A reality we have had to live in since at least 9/11.
The problem these “add a meta policy” proposals all have in common is that they assume we have any control over the legislature… which we don’t have; they don’t work for us at all. At this point only organizing and other direct action will have any significant impact on actual policy.
In this particular case, legislators would continue to receive bribe income that they refuse to acknowledge as bribery.
The problem is the us hasn’t had a formal declaration of war since WW2. Basically we’ve just had military engagements. Some haven’t even been authorized by congress.
Basically we’d need to fix that issue before worrying about the other suggestions. Else it’d just be military engagement not a war so don’t need to fallow them.
As an NPA living in floriduh, ill tell you what moment in this timeline meatball ron lost the race. He went after disney…dumb rednecks hate blacks but, fucking with disney?! hell nah…if Ron goes after Chick Fil A? they’ll likely mob lynch him on the spot.
The New People’s Army, a socialist guerilla force in the Phillipines fighting against the Marcos-Duterte regime and for democracy, land reform, indigenous sovereignty, gay rights and worker control of the economy.
this is true, but not because people like these companies. it’s because businesses control politics in this country, and if you go after a major company like Disney and don’t let them do whatever they want, suddenly other businesses and donors start going “hey wait a second… we don’t want to be next, we’ll just support another guy”
It’s both. Disney is a strong brand and going after it feels like an attack to people with strong positive associations. DeSantis lost the Disney adult vote and that’s got to be whole portions of a percent of his base.
idk if it’s a general trend, or just in my family - but all my hyper-conservative relatives are all huge Disney fanatics - I’m talking trips to the parks multiple times a year, Disney Cruises at least once a year, all the merch, movies, etc. Sure they whine about how “woke” the movies have gotten, but they still fucking love that damn mouse
When asked in an interview how drone operators would know if the people being blown to smithereens were actually carrying drugs, he replied: “Same way a police officer would know … Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know. You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them. So those guys have to make judgments.”
Holy F, as a mexican that crosses the border often for vacations… this is extreme and scary
Funnily enough, if you suggest to do the same to people who advocate this approach to let God decide if the approach is good, they’re a lot less enthusiastic
I do wonder if Desantis' insanity will ever meaningfully affect his electoral chances in Florida or if the boomers there are too far gone to care about the state around them (and their ongoing dwindling Social Security and Medicare thanks to Republicans).
He’s using a pretty standard tactic for a right wing politician down in the polls: throw increasing amounts of crazy against the wall until something sticks and the polls improve.
His consultants will call this “calibrating”, to find the right level of insane to match voter expectations and grab media attention for a few cycles along the way.
If your analysis stops at “some people [enough to sway some elections] are just born wrong and are bad people,” it isn’t a very good analysis.
The problem isn’t that people are “psychpaths”, it is that they live in an environment where they are told that Hispanic people are a threat, that caravans are “invading” the US to pillage it, and that an invasion like meatball Ron here is proposing would effectively be a counteroffensive.
It’s worth looking at how that environment is produced too. There’s a need for cheap labor in agriculture, laundry, hospitality and textile industries that dovetails well with the US’s history of anti-mexican racism (grounded in the need to dehumanizing indigenous people to steal their land as well as the US-Mexico war).
By controlling people’s movement through the border regime, we can make them willing to take sub-minimum wage jobs, while also keeping Mexico poor through lopsided trade agreements like NAFTA and low level insurgency achieved by escalating the drug war and flooding the country with weapons.
In this context of US oppression of Mexicans, it becomes necessary to dehumanize them to justify the violence. This is where fox news comes in. Hell, even CNN plays a role by creating categories of migrants some good and some bad, and playing them against each other while justifying border control (think about the rhetoric about dreamers vs drug smugglers).
To change this environment, we either need to undercut this propaganda by organizing white and brown workers together, or either take back control of media from big business or make our own media with similar reach.
Absolutely, I was just trying to be brief because of it being on lemmy.ml, where an anticapitalist text dump might understandably be seen as a derailment. Still, I should have included more of the “why,” so thanks for your contribution.
This isn’t even an anticapitalist text dump on my part, just basic US history and sociology. If you’re drawing anti capitalist conclusions from it, that’s on you.
These people don’t have to be told a damn thing. They suspect the worst of the best, the best of the worst, and when it comes to ‘others’ they have nothing but scorn, even if it’s completely baseless. It seems to be a kind of narcissism.
“Good people can’t be good because I look bad by comparison. Bad people are good because I look good by comparison. Other people don’t look like me at all and so we must assume the absolute worst…”
To be fair though, I don’t know how we can sustain illegal immigration of low income workers.
Oh it’s more complicated than that, but getting in to the psychology of fascism involves a lot of typing and there are more articulate authors who have already explained it at length.
it is that they live in an environment where they are told that Hispanic people are a threat, that caravans are “invading” the US to pillage it
Tulsi Gabbard is actually a member of a fringe cult that schismed of off the Hare Krishnas, she and her weird cultist dad have switched parties a few times to try to maneuver themselves into positions of political power to advance the cults material interests and ideology. They’re super anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim.
She’s also an intelligence officer in the US military.
Most people aren’t on social media talking politics or thinking about any of this outside what they might overhear at church, from family/friends, on TV, shared on Facebook.
Yah the people I know haven’t even read a single thing about the “don’t say gay” bill nor have they even read 1 thing about the Trump documents. They call it a political hit job and I ask them about the specifics of the documents that were IN HIS BATHROOM and they legit hadn’t heard any of it lol. It’s because the media they consume actively avoid its.
I’d argue that MOST of these whackos are so disconnected from reality because all they listen to is pod casts and watch fox news. They don’t read articles written by actual journalists with sources.
Ron DeSantis recently suggested that he would be open to ordering drone strikes on Mexican drug cartels and migrants, whom he accused of carrying drugs over the border. “We’re authorizing deadly force. They try to break into our country? They will end up stone-cold dead,” he said, and he’s not alone. Trump, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and Mike Walsh (R-FL), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security Ken Cuccinelli have all proposed various military actions in Mexico, up to and including sending in ground troops.
Are you really pretending there's no difference between assisting a country in defending itself from an aggressor, and starting your own war as the aggressor?
Sound comment, but unfortunate ambiguous meaning got punished by people who gave you no leeway. In reddit I got a 3-day ban for something like this. Lemmy for the win.
Russia and their ilk are the only ones that are pro war in Ukraine. Libs are pro Ukraine, which involves defending them from the Russian invasion. If at anytime, Russia agreed to (and actually did it) pull all troops including the land they stole, almost all libs would be happy.
On the flip side, DeSantis wants to start a war and be the aggressor. Support of that is fucked up and deranged, which is why a large number of conservatives support it.
I’m pointing out republican hypocrisy in calling the left pro war and also wanting to invade Mexico, which was the implication with “in the same breath.”
Are you honestly that confused? Do you really think this is some kind of gotcha?
Russia invaded their smaller neighbor for a made up reason.
DeSantis is suggesting invading our smaller neighbor for an equally made up reason.
We don’t like either scenario. I would be just as supportive of Mexico getting military aide from other nations as I am about Ukraine getting military aide from other nations.
Why would anyone ever want the commanding officer of a torture prison to run their country?! What do they think he’s going to do?? It drives me crazy that anyone would want this, let alone even be okay with it.
And they think Mexico will just be ok with us drone striking homes that these idiots think are cartel hideouts? These racists fucks would glass all of Mexico claiming anyone brown is cartel
And to think somebody can be such a fucking idiot that they make Trump look almost normal. Is this some sort of trick like in France, where Zemmour’s antics were used to make LePen more palatable? Looks like it.
DeSantis is trying to run to the right of trump. Recall that trump began his 2016 campaign by saying
”When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”
I suppose advocating for war crimes is one way to campaign to the right of trump on border security.
Granted trump also campaigned by calling for war crimes back in 2016, so this isn’t entirely novel for a GOP presidential candidate:
In summary, when it comes to their policy on war crimes among the top republican candidates for president, Trump talks a big game but DeSantis has the actual experience to back up his “promises”.
The fact that I could quickly write up this analysis with sources is a damning indictment of these candidates, their supporters, and their enabling political party. What a fuckin’ shitshow.
The Mexican government has also responded to these proposals with scalding outrage. As Zach Beauchamp points out at Vox, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a press conference that “We won’t allow it. And not only are we not going to allow it, we’re denouncing it.” Even a single drone attack would seem highly likely to end up in a direct confrontation with the Mexican military.
That’s the important part of the article. It may be worth discussing whether to use the US military against drug cartels, but doing it without the full consent of the Mexican government would be batshit crazy.
I’d still call bullshit. Done attacks will be useless. People desire drugs. They’ll find a way.
The problem is supply and demand. If people want to use drugs, they’re going to either way. We need to make the drugs ourselves and create harm reduction centers. Attack the problem at home.
For real, if I was buying FDA regulated MDMA at Walgreens, there would be a virtually 0 percent chance of me accidentally getting addicted to fentanyl.
AMLO merges the Sinaloa cartel into the Mexican military, insists less than 9% are still drug lords, praises El Chapo for being a Mexican revolutionary who was wrongfully imprisoned by the U.S.
The Ku Klux Klan contractors marched towards Washington DC following a proposal by President DeSantis to force them to sign contracts with the Department of Defense. The president reassured black Americans that they don’t need to fear the Klan because they’re just American patriots, and no longer hateful
Well, what AMLO did sounds borderline fascist. Maybe the Klan is a necessary evil? We’d better flood Mexico with weapons and then refuse to negotiate a surrender and hope that improves the situation.
Add comment