• Mawks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

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        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

        • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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          It doesn’t make any sense. In heaven, all the good people will have everything they’ve ever wanted forever.

          But when I offer to send everyone to heaven all at the same time, they treat me like I’m a bad guy.

          It just doesn’t make any sense

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        At the very least, that is certainly the case right now. All the polls of conservatives consistently show Trump smoking Desantis.

        • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          Unfortunately he’s only 44 years old. Hoping he slides into oblivion but I worry he’s going to be flirting around for decades.

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            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).

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              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.

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      As a white person from Wisconsin who never crosses the boarder… this is extreme and scary.

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      Next time you cross just carry an ir strobe and IFF NATO friendly panel on your hood. Should be good to go.

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    1 year ago

    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.

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      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.

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          Some of em don’t care about their kids.

          As evidenced by their complete lack of concern regarding climate change.

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        Nah just ship the congressmen/women off with the infantry. Then they can see exactly what they’re voting for.

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        Given the low regard for their children and grandchildren they show when it comes to climate change, I doubt that would be an adequate deterrent.

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          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.

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        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.

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        many have already gladly voted yes for both many times. I don’t think that will stop enough of them.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        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

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      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.

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        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.

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        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.

      • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
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        Is the US even still involved in a war since 2021? At least through direct action.

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          The Global War on Terror is what it’s called, it’s just a neverending operation of military sorties across the world to support whatever and wherever.

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      Unfortunately he was a Lieutenant commander in the Navy. Going back probably doesn’t concern him.

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    Slightly misleading, he says that they should shoot at mexican cartels (which are now federally recognised as terrorist organisations) who are using planes and boats to smuggle drugs.

    He’s still a price of shit who wants to eliminate rights though, but it’s always important to get the facts right.

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    The US has been waging unprovoked war on Latin America since before WW1.

    The only thing new about this is that this irredeemable piece of garbage is stating the quiet part out loud.

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    This cunt talks about Iraq like he did something there. He was a fucking lawyer 😂.

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      Posing as a human rights lawyer and illegally aiding in the torture of POWs at Guantanamo is the best way of forming a valid opinion on Iraq!

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        Well, he did use his position to gain the trust of gunatanamo prisoners and when they told him what was particularly stressful to them, he passed that info on to make conditions worse for them. Like, a prisoner would tell him “we usually pick the vegetarian option because we think the meat here isn’t halal” and a week later, no more vegetarian food option. Things like that. There’s also a pretty harrowing account of how he oversaw hunger-striking prisoners being force-fed. People screaming and throwing up and shitting themselves in agony and he stood next to that and laughed. I honestly believe that if he didn’t join the navy to live out his murderous sadism, he’d be a serial killer with a collection of human body parts in his basement. Guy’s a complete fucking monster.

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      Yeah, DeSantis should be good at this, sadly…

      I’m way more worried about this Facist than trump.

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        Trump talks bigly but is not very effective.

        DeSantis is not charismatic at all but I think he would be effective at what he attempted to do.

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          I used to be very certain about the “Desantis is the effective fascist we warned you about” thing but more and more his buffoonery comes out, and I don’t think he’ll be president. That said, he’s being pretty effective in Florida despite his buffoonery.

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            A major problem with DeSantis is that he’d have more support from the military and the intelligence community than Trump, which is a massive problem if the GOP ever tries a more serious coup than Jan 6. I also think he’s an actual true believer when it comes to racism and transphobia. Trump uses these strategically, DeSantis seems to have a real, burning wish to exterminate people.

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        Desantis is lagging Trump by 40 points. That could obviously change between now and '24, but he doesn’t seem to have the juice for this.

    • ConditionOverload@lemmy.world
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      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.

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        you can count all the people who don’t vote in the stupid category, so actually more than half.

        • some_designer_dude@lemmy.world
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          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.

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          With the way American elections are setup, I’m expecting a lot of non voters didn’t have had a choice…

        • ConditionOverload@lemmy.world
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          Well there’s also a lot of people that can’t vote because they can’t afford to take time off work, especially if they can’t mail in their votes.

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          Remember that a lot of people couldn’t vote. Either because of voter registration rolls getting purged or disenfranchisement from a criminal charge.

      • jorge@sopuli.xyz
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        The second best result ever in terms of popular vote was Trump 2020, only behind Biden 2020. So it is close enough to half of America.

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      Same as any strongman leader. Talking tough reliably gets votes from a certain type of voter, even if what is proposed is utterly insane.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        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.

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          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.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            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.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          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

          They already hated us-foreign-policy brown people long before that.

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          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.

    • bdiddy@lemmy.one
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      The people who support him don’t know he said this… They literally don’t know shit about these people and only watch Fox news which wont air this

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          I’m reminded of their support for that random Democrat from Hawaii. Turns out she was anti gay and pro intervention.

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            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.

            An incredibly untrustworthy person.

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        Dunno why you’re getting downvoted, you’re 100% correct.

        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.

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          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.

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    Dude is trying so hard to appeal to Trump’s base, but it isn’t working.

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    Nothing is more American than invading other countries and murdering their people.

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    Certain groups in the US have been building up to this for a while. They genuinely do want a war with Mexico. They’ve been trying to use drugs as an excuse to do it.

    Here is an excellent video going into this when it all started to get quite serious and AMLO (mexican president) started to aggressively fight back against it: https://youtu.be/3dw1pcDoewY

    He’s also called the american media sphere trying to build up to this fascistic “hitlerismo”, comparing american media to goebbels.

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    Does the “Presidents approval rating increase during wartime” thing occur if you just loudly state “I’m gonna do a war if elected”?

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      It increases their approval rating with the military industrial complex lobbyists funding their campaigns, I’m sure.

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        Exactly. Wat is a very profitable business, and I’m sure Northrop and Raytheon would love some more revenue.

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          a fair chunk of the aid being sent to ukraine is already ending up in the pockets of defense contractors.

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            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.

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      Historically you have to campaign as being against the war but then promptly set about the business of creating a war once in office

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          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.

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            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.

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      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.

      • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        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.