you have to be deeply sick to be proud of that nation

painted clouds on the side of a mountain?

so that’s supposed to help you win?

haven’t we seen how israel wages it’s campaigns against women and children and they still couldn’t set foot into lebanon

If you hear people talking like this irl, I would usually say 'you’d better fucking hope this is late-stage

Lots of good stuff here

But I’ll add: in an environment where (particularly electronic) surveillance is just a given, and accepted, a government can simply insert false evidence of whatever is illegal in your case. They found it on your phone, you see!

And there’s very little you could do to disprove it

This is true.

I just wanted to address what I thought was ceding the authoritarian bit to the pro-interventionists in OP’s paragraphs above.

I’m sorry but “authoritarian - technically true”? Besides the fact that there is nothing more “authoritarian” than the American executive using military force unilaterally to kidnap a sovereign country’s president and wife, in what way is Venezuela’s government authoritarian? Are we really accepting/taking for granted that Venezuela is a military dictatorship when those accusations come directly from the US State Department, and its funded opposition groups in the country? These same opposition groups that have been backed by the US for decades, and are responsible for trying to violently overthrow the government several times?!

We’re just taking their word on that one now?

IDK but the last I read was that their electoral system was had some of the best verifiability and integrity in the world according to even US-aligned watchdogs… so, if we’re ceding the authoritarian bit, why aren’t we asking the State department to bomb Mexico and remove Lula from power for reforming their judiciary and enforcing legal judgements against their former presidents, respectively? We’ve heard both spectrum of US power accuse both of these as examples of authoritarianism too.

As an aside, too, I’m seeing a lot of people online drawing comparisons with Venezuela and Iraq, Maduro and Saddam. In some ways, yes, US behavior in these cases can be compared as it’s all around based on lies and completely unjustifiable, in others: we would do well to remind people that Maduro and Saddam cannot be compared. Saddam being an actual murderous and genocidal gangster, etc. Oh, and the fact that Saddam was the US’s guy for DECADES while he committed those crimes, with weapons WE gave him.

I’ve seen some people saying that "well in the end, we toppled Saddam and now Iraq is finally getting their free elections so, maybe in 30 years and a million-and-a-half dead later, Venezuelans will have the same? I hope this is not the narrative that prevails in the west, but it fits our useless, uneducated political moment for sure.

We have to remind people also that Trump literally said it’s about seizing their resources- and the drug trafficking accusations is just entirely fabricated.

again I must ask

“would be a catastrophe for the Left”

proper noun Left - What left? Who? This is bad for people in the United States, yes, because of whatever retribution the Right will extract from the most vulnerable people in the country. But the Right is real, an actual movement, the Left does not exist. What exactly does this author think they are referring to? There is no left-wing movement in the US with any legitimacy or cohesion. Why are they constantly lying to us and themselves

foghorn leghorn for sure

Well tbf it is saying a lot. Its screaming “I’m a racist I’m a racist” a million times over and over

oh otherwise we aren’t in “big trouble” lol

Yeah, so I guess the DoJ’s perspective is “we have to make an example out of him” as a response to the “extraordinarily alarming” rhetoric on social media? How is that the defendant’s fault? In what way does that justify the death penalty?

How many school shooters, who have massacred children, received the death penalty?

For that matter, I could go online and find “extraordinarily alarming” rhetoric around our contemporary lynchings (that being of pro-lynching rhetoric ambient in online discourse) and yet we haven’t sentence Zimmerman to death have we? That wasn’t even on the table?

I’m thinking about this too much

My partner told me about this story that happened at her work. She was in the bathroom stall and heard the bathroom door open, she hears a woman rush into the stall next to her slamming and locking the door, and dropping pants within the same second. She sits and my partner hears Trump’s voice, “BING-BONG”, (must be a phone notification?) and then the “loudest fart I’ve ever heard”.

Americans have such a short memory. Sleepy Joe already tried to do this and failed.

The IDF already tried to annihilate all of them and failed.

How long will we continue to pretend that the solution to this doesn’t require a political settlement with the resistance?

that would be great!

Exactly. Folks, it’s not just the racism and rampant militarism that makes fascism bad- it turns out its also a terrible and inefficient way to run a society!

I had read somewhere of the Nazi military opperatus faking statistics on casualties they took and inflicted in order to essentially please the fuhrer and get promoted. In the long run that lead to their war machine rotting from the inside and lead to poor decision making. For some reason this reminds me of that.

Pathetic. Go down with the ship you fuckin racists

If there was honor among the US political class this person would Do The Right Thing after such a shameful bungle

I used to believe this would cause a backlash that would launch democrats into power, but after the last election I don’t think that’s true anymore.

Even so, that did happen, democrats would have to run on it (which they seem incapable of doing) and then they might even have to do something about it once they have power- which they’ve proven over and over again that they won’t.

I guess everyone’s going to have to get better at back alley abortions now? Fights to Canada ?