American Politics: Fiscal Cliffhanger

[American Legionaries]

Tbh though at this point I'm not even sure that full stop ending the drug war would even have a large impact on things in this part of the world. It would in the US and would go a long way towards letting us start fixing things, definitely, but it's hard to see Mexico or Central America getting better. Groups like CJNG have, in a lot of ways, supplanted the role of the state in several areas and expanded into a lot more industries than just drugs. I'm not sure what the answer is on that front, but it's not gonna be easy no matter what it is.

The solution is simple, finish the Mexican American War the way god intended.

Imperialist Valrifall is best Valrifall.

[Vassenor]

DeSantis has the 13 year old son of the Florida COVID whistleblower arrested on “digital terrorism” charges.
https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1 ... 7900145665

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

[American Legionaries]

DeSantis has the 13 year old son of the Florida COVID whistleblower arrested on “digital terrorism” charges.
https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1 ... 7900145665

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

Sure it is.

[Senkaku]

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

Sure it is.

Okay, leaving all the Florida stuff aside, what is the sort of tyranny that the 2nd Amendment is supposed to protect us from? It seems like at this point, the only right that we need an armed populace to defend from state overreach is the right to bear arms— which begins to feel a bit recursive, but I can’t really see you or anyone else commenting on it around here actually picking up a rifle to protect anything else.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Tbh though at this point I'm not even sure that full stop ending the drug war would even have a large impact on things in this part of the world. It would in the US and would go a long way towards letting us start fixing things, definitely, but it's hard to see Mexico or Central America getting better. Groups like CJNG have, in a lot of ways, supplanted the role of the state in several areas and expanded into a lot more industries than just drugs. I'm not sure what the answer is on that front, but it's not gonna be easy no matter what it is.

The idea that Mexico and Central America are somehow separate aspects of the drug war is part of the problem. Groups like CJNG or Sinaloa haven’t “supplanted” the state, they’re inside the state, insofar as they even can be discerned to exist separately from it, and not just on that side of the Rio Grande. They haven’t just expanded into other industries, they’ve created entire industries (again, on both sides of the border). No regime ends a war whose material spoils help sustain it, whose campaigns give it public legitimacy, and whose casualties are at acceptably low levels, both in the sense of numbers and in the sense of being concentrated among the lower classes. No regime ends a war if peace could open the door to forms of truth and reconciliation that would fatally undermine its ruling establishment.

I would definitely agree with Sinaloa being part of the Mexican state (going down that rabbit hole was wild, I had no idea how much Sinaloa and Mexico City collaborated until a Mexican friend mentioned it to me once and I started reading into it) but I wouldn't put CJNG in that same category tbh. Mencho is too much of a loose cannon and is moving more into just outright insurgency territory at this point, which is worrisome for a whole other slew of reasons. God forbid some POTUS eventually decides to actually add them to the terror list.

But that aside this is a very good post yeah. We screwed ourselves when all this stuff started and I see no easy way out. Apart from Val's excellent and frankly foolproof idea, of course.

[Vassenor]

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

Sure it is.

So where are the armed people stopping the arrest?

[American Legionaries]

Sure it is.

So where are the armed people stopping the arrest?

Where were all the Hurricanes shooting down Lancasters in the second world war? Their job was supposed to be stopping bombers, right?

[United Calanworie]

DeSantis has the 13 year old son of the Florida COVID whistleblower arrested on “digital terrorism” charges.
https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1 ... 7900145665

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

Wild... rules for thee but not for me, what a shocker

[Fartsniffage]

Maybe time to figure out why it happens in your part of the world. Lots of dead kids isn't cool.

End the drug war and invest in fixing our communities? Preposterous.

Someone has to work for that. Fuck knows who will in the US though.

[Senkaku]

I would definitely agree with Sinaloa being part of the Mexican state (going down that rabbit hole was wild, I had no idea how much Sinaloa and Mexico City collaborated until a Mexican friend mentioned it to me once and I started reading into it) but I wouldn't put CJNG in that same category tbh. Mencho is too much of a loose cannon and is moving more into just outright insurgency territory at this point, which is worrisome for a whole other slew of reasons. God forbid some POTUS eventually decides to actually add them to the terror list.

Mencho’s dead afaik and CJNG is only fresh news in the Anglophone world. I don’t know why you use “collaborated” in the past tense or why you imagine CJNG or anyone else was able to rise to power without state contacts. Anyways, a lot of Americans went through the same fearmongering about Mexico devolving into civil war when Los Zetas first came on the scene (literal ex-special forces, good thing that never happens up here!), but it’s all bullshit. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how the global narcotics trade and organized crime operate, a misunderstanding which is advanced by many institutions because it’s much more soothing for mass audiences than serious investigations and discussions about, say, the Fort Bragg murders. (Sure, Rolling Stone or whoever can put out some highbrow innuendo to their tiny audiences, but it’s not going on TV lol)

Apart from Val's excellent and frankly foolproof idea, of course.

I look forward to the era of the Pentagon cartel— as if what we have now isn’t bad enough, let’s give US civilian politicians direct lines of access!

Trump Asks Advisers for ‘Battle Plans’ to ‘Attack Mexico’ if Reelected

This is unhinged. I'm sure Trump is stupid enough to believe there is such a thing as "the cartels" somewhere out in the countryside near the border that he can just bomb away, but I'm worried that people around him or backing him are smart enough to see all the ways that war in Mexico would be a huge political opportunity for them and also potentially extremely lucrative.

Couple points here:

- DHS, especially CBP/Border Patrol, has been a bastion of support for Trump & co. within the federal security apparatus. More violence along the border and more refugees arriving from Mexico = bigger budgets and more power and prestige for them, plus more opportunities to engage in corruption.

- Obviously, the defense industry will be happy to have a new theater sucking up expensive precision munitions and special forces equipment and whatnot, and the military bureaucracy will be happy to get a place to use its toys and flex its muscles. Wartime operations are also a great excuse to shuffle around senior personnel-- for example, if you felt that a bunch of senior military or intelligence leaders were politically unreliable, as the GOP increasingly seems to, events in Mexico could easily be ginned up to help get rid of them.

- Trump's wider voter base would eat this shit up; I'm sure there'd be right-wing podcast freaks actively enthusing about Mexican civilian casualties, given the level of hatred for Latine people his movement has stoked since its inception. American media in general also love breathless coverage of police raids, special forces operations, and long-range airstrikes, and we've had a several-year phase of elevated concern about post-pandemic spikes in crime and drug use, so I think there's a real window for Eric Adams/Paul Vallas-type swing voters to approve of a "decisive" "tough on crime" approach and rally around the flag if such a war kicked off. It feels very eerie to be thinking about the very real latent potential for a new war hysteria, around the 20-year anniversary of the last war of aggression we unleashed on an innocent population.

- Local police forces have been using the post-pandemic crime wave narrative to justify increased spending and repression; you better believe they're going to reap a PR bumper crop if drug violence massively spikes in Mexico and there starts to be spillover in the US.

- Not many Mexican leaders would be fond of the idea of letting American bombers or special forces waltz around Mexico attacking whatever targets they want with impunity, with Mexico City having no veto or input. I doubt the people around Trump are crazy enough to want to actually militarily depose a legitimate Mexican government and install a new occupation regime by force, so expect them to get up to some shenanigans in Mexico's 2024 election to try and install someone pliant enough. I don't rule out that the GOP is sick and crazy enough to actually launch a full-scale war if no Mexican candidate can be found who would accede to these sorts of demands, but the possibility seems so horrible and so relatively remote that I'd rather not contemplate it too long.

- This would have a huge effect on the North American narcotics sector, but so did Calderon's crackdown. How did that one go? Well, tens of thousands of people have been killed, maimed, and disappeared, his public security secretary was on the Sinaloa cartel's payroll, and the drugs have kept flowing to the point that the American right is blustering about a military intervention.

Now at the moment, even if you assume US intel & law enforcement agencies don't have corruption issues and diligently follow their charters and are fully transparent with and accountable to the public's representatives, it's obvious that their operations essentially set the market conditions for the drug trade. If you don't necessarily assume those things, you might believe that parts of the US security apparatus or major financial concerns are already more involved in the direction and financing of narcotics flows than they publicly acknowledge. Regardless, Mexican territory being subject to unrestricted US surveillance and military strikes would practically put Washington in direct control of the entire country's narco-economy: we would basically be setting production caps, raising the cost and risks of transit, and changing lab construction "regulations," simply through our counter-narcotics operations, even if no American soldier or official ever so much as took a bribe (although in the course of such a war, thousands of them would be put in prime positions to do so).

We'd basically be nationalizing the North American drug trade and headquartering it in Washington for anyone clever and crooked enough to formally take over-- a national syndicate in the mold of the Guadalajara cartel, inside the fucking Pentagon, just ready to go. We could end up with decisionmakers overseeing the war who realize that they're basically in the driver's seat of the whole system, consciously using the might of the American military to control the Mexican drug trade for personal benefit (to say nothing of the opportunities for human trafficking the displacements from such a conflict would create). It's really horrible to contemplate, especially with how long our AUMFs tend to last these days-- an incredibly bloody forever war that also turns on a totally unaccountable money spigot for the clique running it. What's to stop Chad Wolf or whoever the fuck from doing exactly what Garcia Luna did, or to stop the Trumps from going full Salinas? We'd better hope Trump gets thrown in prison, that 2024 produces a Mexican government that will resist American pressure to allow strikes or deployments on their territory, and that Biden wins re-election.

[Washington Resistance Army]

End the drug war and invest in fixing our communities? Preposterous.

Someone has to work for that. Fuck knows who will in the US though.

I do think there genuinely are quite a few people who want to work for it but, like, where do you even begin?

I would definitely agree with Sinaloa being part of the Mexican state (going down that rabbit hole was wild, I had no idea how much Sinaloa and Mexico City collaborated until a Mexican friend mentioned it to me once and I started reading into it) but I wouldn't put CJNG in that same category tbh. Mencho is too much of a loose cannon and is moving more into just outright insurgency territory at this point, which is worrisome for a whole other slew of reasons. God forbid some POTUS eventually decides to actually add them to the terror list.

Mencho’s dead afaik and CJNG is only fresh news in the Anglophone world. I don’t know why you use “collaborated” in the past tense or why you imagine CJNG or anyone else was able to rise to power without state contacts. Anyways, a lot of Americans went through the same fearmongering about Mexico devolving into civil war when Los Zetas first came on the scene (literal ex-special forces, good thing that never happens up here!), but it’s all bullshit. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how the global narcotics trade and organized crime operate, a misunderstanding which is advanced by many institutions because it’s much more publicly acceptable than discussions about the murky truth.

Mencho has been rumored to be dead a few times but I don't entirely believe it tbh. El Chayo faked his death a couple years before he actually died when the heat got too hot and the fact that CJNG hasn't imploded makes me feel like he's still around and directing things.

As for the past tense, just a simple mistake tbh. Plenty of recent events show they're still in bed with one another and I do not expect that to change, even if the Mexican military has been trying to make a show of fighting them the past year or two.

I look forward to the era of the Pentagon cartel.

This is the future the Reformers wanted.

[Rusozak]

Yes, that's kind of how this latest diversion about gun rights started - somehow this arrest for speaking out against the government isn't the sort of tyranny we keep being told that the second amendment protects the country from.

Wild... rules for thee but not for me, what a shocker

Waiting to see how Republican mental gymnastics justify this one.

For those wondering, this is the image a 13 year old boy was arrested on terrorism charges for.

[Vassenor]

Which brings me to my final thoughts on the matter: what purpose does the 2A Militia actually serve?

Given that for all the lofty claims about it existing to be a check on government tyranny and to act in the defence of democracy, we don’t really see that happening while the GOP states keep backsliding further into authoritarian tendencies. And that the outrage over “shall not be infringed” is incredibly selective - the second it’s a group the 2A militia doesn’t approve of potentially losing that supposedly fundamental right then the response we see is at best crickets and at worst active support with no appreciation for the hypocrisy involved.

[American Legionaries]

Wild... rules for thee but not for me, what a shocker

Waiting to see how Republican mental gymnastics justify this one.

For those wondering, this is the image a 13 year old boy was arrested on terrorism charges for.

I don't think there's any mental gymnastics involved, just propaganda.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Wild... rules for thee but not for me, what a shocker

Waiting to see how Republican mental gymnastics justify this one.

For those wondering, this is the image a 13 year old boy was arrested on terrorism charges for.

"Terroristic threats" has always been comically vague and just a way to punish people for anything you want tbh. If you squint hard enough you can probably make anything fit it.

[The Jamesian Republic]

But only half as much as your devotion to not knowing jack shit about the subject and refusing to listen to those who do.

I do not care what you say I don't know. I am sick and tied of hearing about children being shredded in schools. This happens nowhere else in the world on a regular basis. Just ban assault weapons and if the gun lobby and 2A people don't like it I don't care. The number of shootings went up after the ban expired but that's a fact you chose to ignore.

Gun control simply doesn’t work.

[Tarsonis]

But only half as much as your devotion to not knowing jack shit about the subject and refusing to listen to those who do.

I do not care what you say I don't know. I am sick and tied of hearing about children being shredded in schools.

And because you refuse to learn, you'll never accomplish anything more than whinging hysterically. You don't care about the kids San, you care about the guns you've been told are scary, and not having your breakfast interrupted by bad news. If you actually cared about the kids you'd want to know as much about the subject as possible.

This happens nowhere else in the world on a regular basis.

There's a lot about the US that's different from the rest of the world, not just the prevalence of guns

Just ban assault weapons and if the gun lobby and 2A people don't like it I don't care.

Sure Jan.

The number of shootings went up after the ban expired but that's a fact you chose to ignore.

I don't ignore that fact, because theres no need. Correlation=/= causation. The situation is far more complex than that, and the expiration of the AWB is not a cause for the rise in school shootings.

[Shrillland]

First Tennessee legislator(Justin Jones of Nashville) expelled 72-25

[Vassenor]

I do not care what you say I don't know. I am sick and tied of hearing about children being shredded in schools. This happens nowhere else in the world on a regular basis. Just ban assault weapons and if the gun lobby and 2A people don't like it I don't care. The number of shootings went up after the ban expired but that's a fact you chose to ignore.

Gun control simply doesn’t work.

Which is why the last school shooting in the UK was over twenty years ago.

[Ifreann]

Craven Biden administration proposes compromise federal regulations on transgender student athletes. The proposal will prohibit blanket bans on all trans athletes but will otherwise permit schools to ban trans athletes where there is an "important educational objective".

Trans people want to be left alone to live their lives in peace. Republicans want trans people eradicated. Democrats want to find a middle ground.

[Shrillland]

Gun control simply doesn’t work.

Which is why the last school shooting in the UK was over twenty years ago.

Aye, but you guys have had mass stabbings in the meantime. Not saying it doesn't stop mass shootings, but it doesn't do enough to keep people from becoming what we'd call active assailants, which is arguably equally or even more important.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Gun control simply doesn’t work.

Which is why the last school shooting in the UK was over twenty years ago.

A quick glance online actually seems to indicate mass shootings are more common in the UK nowadays than they were many decades back. It appears the UK only had two mass shootings in the latter half of the 1900s but has already had 3 mass shootings in the past 13 years.

[San Lumen]

First Tennessee legislator(Justin Jones of Nashville) expelled 72-25

Shame on them. This is what dictatorships do.

[American Legionaries]

First Tennessee legislator(Justin Jones of Nashville) expelled 72-25

Shame on them. This is what dictatorships do.

>holding a vote of elected representatives and abiding by the results of that vote
>"What dictatorships do"

You have to pick one...

[Ifreann]

Shame on them. This is what dictatorships do.

>holding a vote of elected representatives and abiding by the results of that vote
>"What dictatorships do"

You have to pick one...

No he doesn't.