• Mawks@lemmy.world
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    11 months 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

      • alnilam@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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

      • Silverseren@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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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          11 months ago

          Unfortunately he’s only 44 years old. Hoping he slides into oblivion but I worry he’s going to be flitting around for decades.

          • Silverseren@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            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).

            • DrWeevilJammer@lemmy.ml
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              11 months ago

              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.

    • BReel@lemmy.one
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      11 months ago

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

    • atticus88th@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

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

  • flossdaily@lemmy.world
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    11 months 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.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          Some of em don’t care about their kids.

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

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        11 months ago

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

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        11 months ago

        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.

        • flossdaily@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

      • Jim@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        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.

      • bauhaus@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        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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        11 months ago

        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

    • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • explodicle@local106.com
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        11 months ago

        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.

  • afa@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • ConditionOverload@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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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          11 months ago

          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.

        • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
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          11 months ago

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

        • Bucket_of_Truth@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          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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        11 months ago

        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.

    • pingveno@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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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        11 months ago

        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.

        • Nagarjuna [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          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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            11 months ago

            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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          11 months ago

          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.

        • zer0nix@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          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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      11 months ago

      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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          11 months ago

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

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            11 months ago

            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.

    • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

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

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

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

        • ares35@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

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

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            11 months ago

            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.

    • jabrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

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

        • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          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.

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

            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.

    • AlexisFR@jlai.lu
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, DeSantis should be good at this, sadly…

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

      • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • autismdragon [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          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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            11 months ago

            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.

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

        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.

  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    The two biggest things we could do to curb the cartels in Mexico there is absolutely no political appetite for.

    First we need a real federal gun registry database to start drying up the influx of weapons. Almost every gun in Mexico came from the US, almost half of the trace requests come up blank because these forms are all filed on paper in a warehouse that they aren’t even allowed to index properly. The most nauseating thing is the gun Industry is in on it… don’t believe me? Look up (38 Super El Presidente model).

    Second we need to legalize drugs. You can make it so it needs to be bought through a doctor and or psychiatrist, but make all that shit pennies on the dollar. Weed revenue might have dried up, but a significant portion of the rest of their revenue comes from harder drugs.

  • style99@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Before anyone calls this hyperbole:

    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.

      • I'm back on my BS 🤪@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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.

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          11 months ago

          One of the biggest states in the country has already elected him right up to his term limits too… We’re absolutely fucked as a country

    • Gsus4@feddit.nl
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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.

      • fear@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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?

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        11 months ago

        You’re right we should let Putin take everything he wants and stand down.

        Fucking retard.

      • lingh0e@lemmy.film
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        11 months ago

        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.

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    11 months ago

    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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    11 months ago

    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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    11 months ago

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