The thing about Trump’s whole political career that I find most incredible is that just about any one shitty thing he ever did, in isolation, would have been absolutely career ending for anyone else, or in the very least a massive, historically significant scandal. But with him? He just keeps the hits coming, so many disasters in such quick succession that none of them really have time to sink in, there’s no time to really examine them because by the time you’ve really called him out, there’s already some other stupid shit taking up the headlines.
Obama wore a tan suit, the News cycle freaked out. Obama asked for Dijon mustard on his burger, the news says he’s hopelessly out of touch with the common people. These were SCANDALS in the public eye. Trump proposes just bombing Mexico… we have to go out of our way to point out that this is actually a big deal, because next week he’ll have done something else completely insane.
It’s partially that he does it so often and partially that many of the claims are so outlandish that no one takes them seriously. Like saying he’ll bomb Mexico. On the one hand, “he says lots of shit” and on the other "Ok, he won’t REALLY bomb Mexico. He’s just saying that. Someone will stop him from bombing Mexico. "
And partially that education is pretty bad in red states so when Trump says stupid shit there’s a lot of people dumber than him thinking “this guy knows what he’s talking about.” He’s the idiots idea of a genius because he’s the first politician dumb enough for them to understand.
Trump saying something extremely irresponsible and stupid isn’t newsworthy anymore.
It should be. What purpose would this serve? No concern for life or process. It speaks directly to how Trump sees those he considers less than him. If he were president again, how long until he threatens to bomb an American state passing laws he doesn’t like?
It’s all fine and dandy when it’s brown people, but what about working class people protesting for unions and workers rights? What about women standing united for the right to bodily autonomy? When the lgbtq community throws bricks again for getting arrested for existing in public? When women’s suffrage is in question and people start taking hammers to windows and chaining themselves to railings?
Every single thing he says should be considered prelude to the worst impulses of an unhinged and irresponsible mad man with more power than most people on earth could possibly dream of.
Agreed. Trump, the personality, should not be “newsworthy” anymore. Trump, the character in our shit-stirring forecasting, shouldn’t be “newsworthy” anymore.
Trump said a crazy thing that threatens millions of people and everyone needs to know what a threat he is? That’s absolutely is still newsworthy.
Quit speculating on whether Trump is joking, if Trump believes what he says, if he’ll be nicer, or whatever other tea leaves that the media keeps claiming to be able to read. Just report on what the greatest individual immediate threat to this country is saying and doing.
I’d like to think that if he actually ordered the military to bomb Mexico, the upper echelon would realize this would be a war crime and they’d be tried at the next Nuremberg if they followed such an order, which might result in someone who isn’t an angsty 20 year old kid, but maybe someone who actually knows how to use a rifle, decide to be a true patriot who swore to stop threats both foreign and domestic.
That started off sounding like you were saying “someone will refuse orders and not bomb Mexico” and ended up sounding like you were saying “someone should turn their weapons against the man telling them to bomb Mexico”
I remember debating with my buddy (he’s pro-Russia) about the Ruso-Ukrainian war when it broke out, and my saying how Russia invading Ukraine because of Nazi gangs is a pretty flim flam excuse for a land grab. “It would be like the US invading Mexico and seizing territory because of the drug cartels”, I said. Why is my country this way.
Why is my country this way.
Wars are traditionally pitched as “defensive” from their native soil. Vietnam was justified by the Gulf of Tonkin incident. WW2 was justified by Pearl Harbor. Iraq and Afghanistan were justified by 9/11. Or Benghazi was for Libya. Etc, etc. Now Trump is arguing that cartel violence on the border justifies invading Mexico. Only a matter of time before they can point to a Missing White Woman or a drug bust or shoot out that can be used to justify moving troops over the border.
Russia isn’t any less immune to this logic, and the War in the Donbas was as hot an issue to capitalize on as anything Americans experienced with Panama in the 80s or Cuba in the 60s.
Same with China and Taiwan. Or the civil wars in Sudan and Ethiopia. This isn’t in any way a uniquely American problem.
Pretty cringe that you know someone who parrots Russian govt talking points though
Every ML and hexbear
That’s not been my experience with either. Are comments like the above kids on the internet, bots, or something else? Someone please explain the contrast between my perception and the mainstream perception of this community.
An ML would believe Russia is wrong to invade because it’s an imperialistic land grab. They reject NATO because it’s also a tool of imperialism.
While I don’t spend a lot of time on hexbear, I’ve enough presence to know that advocating an imperialistic land grab (be it by Russia or NATO) or for any authoritarian form of governance (be it “tankie” communism or christo-fascism) will get a user banned quickly.
I guess. He’s an Anarchocapitalist on every other day of the week. I just enjoy arguing amicably with people, and he does too, so our friendship works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews
A reason why some German Jews supported Hitler was that they thought that his anti-Semitism was only for “stirring up the masses”.
I just want to leave a couple excerpts from they thought they were free by Milton Mayer
It’s a short read, and I highly recommend it if you’ve never had the chance to read it.
…”Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”…
…”Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”…
…””But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”…
This is how fascism works. It’s an unrelenting deluge of controversies, changes, and bullshit. This deluge is what empowers the fascist. One step leads to the next, but people say it’s all just talk. The people are kept busy with things meant to look like they’re important, while the real important changes are carried out away from prying eyes. And most importantly, it’s a steady march to hell. No one thinks the dictator is actually going to do those things, until he does one. But then it was only the one thing after all.
If trump says he’s going to invade Mexico, I fully expect him to attempt it. But it’s not going to be on day one. No, it’s going to be after a year or 2 of mass deportations and ICE raids. And most people won’t say a damn thing about those. And then if news keeps saying that we tried deporting and it’s not working, well then we have to invade, I’d bet a decent amount of people will support it, probably a vocal group of Latino republicans who “did it right”.
We’re so very close to a dictatorship, all of the groundwork is already laid out, the plan is out for anyone read. I just hope people will actually resist when the changes start coming.
One of the biggest complaints about Democrat presidents is that they don’t follow through on their promises. It says a lot when your biggest defense of Trump is that he won’t either.
They both “happened” in so far as you can point to events that justify what came next.
Trump can easily point to border violence that he can use to justify an invasion in the same way Putin used the civil war in the Donbas to justify invading Ukraine.
These aren’t True/False statements, they’re events used as justification for invasion. Claiming there’s no violence on the border of Texas and Mexico is maybe a step shy of claiming 9/11 or Pearl Harbor were inside jobs. What’s at issue isn’t “Did this happen?” but “Is launching a twenty year long bloodbath a prudent response?”
How sad is it that I learned about Trump’s plan to bomb Mexico not from American news media, but from alarmed Mexican friends.
Mexico is our second largest trading partner. Both Canada and Mexico are our closest allies. They provided aid to the US after 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey.
I’m not worried that this would start a war. I’m worried it would cause permanent tension between two friends.
Both Canada and Mexico are our closest allies. They provided aid to the US after 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey.
And yet, Trump routinely shits on both countries and his cultists just blindly fall in line.
I’m worried it would cause permanent tension between two friends.
Don’t worry, my American friend, we have already developed quite a bit of distrust in your country since 2016, and it’s not likely to be repaired signifigantly until we see if y’all are willing to collectively and loudly reject trumpism and its related bullshit.
I’m worried it would cause permanent tension between two friends.
Significant tension with our Mexican neighbors is exactly what Trump, Desantis and other weirdo’s rhetoric is causing. They’re just trying gin up more hatred from their bizarre, poorly educated, toxic supporters and they don’t get a fuck about anyone else.
Each time some GOP idiot talks about invading or bombing Mexico the news spreads like wildfire in Mexico while American news media ignores it almost completely. I repeatedly hear about bullshit the GOP freaks are spouting from my Mexican friends instead of reading about it in our own mainstream media.
So that’s the plan, Mexico is going to be Trump’s Poland.
Trumps Lebanon.
What do you mean? Would it be the most subsidized country in the american region?
Clearly history is not your strong suit, but you might look into something that happened in Poland back in 1939.
I learned history when I was at school (in Poland)… lol. You need to mention, when it’s about history, because Poland is fine currently.
And 1939 wasn’t the only time that Poland had bad luck. Look at its partitions.