Back then it was the President keeping the military in check. Now we have to hope the opposite happens
No one show this to Trump
The United States has always been the villain of the story. But they used to at least try to hide it behind a sheen of soft power. The only difference between now and then is that Trump unabashedly takes the mask off and gives no fuck what the rest of the world thinks.
Exactly.
Not much is different here than the presentation.
Not just the US government. All government. Literally all of them. Not a single human government has ever existed in the history of humanity that wasn’t the villain of the story.
I am not an anarchist, governments provide useful services and protections for their citizens. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking that any government is better than another, they are all bad equally, just in different ways.
I agree with you to a point. I would say however that it’s not the fact that government exists that’s the problem. It’s the fact that government is controlled by corporations and billionaires that is the problem.
Take all of that away and have a government is actually by the people and for the people…we’d be golden.
No, the problem is the people. All the people. Even if you take away business and money, which isn’t realistic, you still have to deal with the fact that humans are awful to each other, especially when they have power over each other. Government rulers throughout history have been horrible to their subjects just for the love of the game, sometimes they didn’t even get anything out of it. They just wanted others to suffer.
Look at Reddit, or even here on Lemmy, honestly. Is every moderator and admin some magnanimous and benevolent person? No, of course not. Moderators have a bit of a reputation for being horrendously corrupt power trippers, right? Do they get paid to be that way? Sure, some, but even without that they would likely act the same regardless. And I am a moderator here on Lemmy saying this.
There are not enough “nice” people in the world for a human government to ever work the way you suggest. And even if there were, there is no guarantee that they would always be that way. All it takes is one person criticizing people with authority, one person suggesting something those with authority don’t like, etc. No human government ever started from purely bad intentions. But the bad was baked in from before the start, it is unavoidable.
Can that be realistically achieved though? Any representative government is going to be vulnerable to the selection effects of people who want to be in charge ending up in charge, and those of them most willing to do whatever it takes having a competitive advantage. The formation of an elite class colluding at the expense of the rest of us seems like a natural result.
US is the Andrew Tate of global politics right now. They were a lot more subtle about it before though. But the core values that have always held throughout history are absolute self-interest, entitlement, and hubris.
Apply Gestalt Theory to the US and watch how unrestrained capitalism raised this baby from an idealist freedom seeker and into a narcissistic bully with self-aggrandising sophist reasoning and a pure Machiavellian outlook on life.
Trump only did away with the pretences, by firing the people who took care of the subtle masquerade. He didn’t like the pushback from them on global policy, and because the shoes already fit, decided to just do it live on stage without the makeup.
Unfortunately for US citizens, that means that they get to experience the splashback as he pisses on their international credibility.
A historically meticulously curated and maintained image that’s now irrevocably ruined forevermore. No sane person can trust a promise or a treaty made through US foreign policy ever again.
No sane person can trust a promise or a treaty made through US foreign policy ever again.
And yet the Iranians rallied and did some revolting. Since dropping South Vietnam nobody can have relied on the US blindly. People must be taking a risk and hope that the support lasts long enough.
Trump is in power because he does what the elite needs. I would like to know why there is no need to hide the mechanisms from the masses.
Soft power is woke, deal from strength or get crushed every time.
I think the plans to blame the Cubans for electronic warfare in killing astronauts is wild too.
They would turn an accident into casus belli
In 1962
Does not make it less outrageous, but I thought it’s good to know it’s not a recent proposal
The recent ones haven’t been declassified yet.
There’s a lot of crazy conspiracy theorists who believe Kennedy rejecting the operation in 1962 may have had something to do with his head doing that thing it did in Dallas in 1963.
Obviously not the only factor. He had a lot of strikes against him for pushing back on the plans of men who weren’t elected to run the United States, but felt entitled to do so on account of knowing what was best for democracy.
i hate when heads do that thingy
That’s my favourite conspiracy theory, JFK’s head just did that on its own.
In the modern era, the US president doesn’t need to actually have a justification for starting a war, just the possibility of profit.
It’s not a war, it’s an engagement of political discourse through military action to accommodate business interests.
that linkedin translator from kagi is working pretty well
Agressive negotiations?
Unilateral discourse, of course!
Because they control all the media. So their talking heads just make up some obvious lies, and they are spouted and propagated without being challenged by actual journalism.
Which of course means there have been no recent proposals 🙄
Well 9/11 was 2001? Just throwing that out there.
The invading Cuba part kinda already tells us that.
It really doesn’t, if you’ve heard the orange talk recently.
I do my best not to. Fuck this timeline.
Amen to that.
Considering going after Cuba has been floated as recently as last week, it doesn’t
John’s version is going to be priced in somewhere. They’re too corrupt to resist something like an oil refinery to pump their stocks or the Texas grid to kill Tesla( and make some shorts kings )
The CIA is full of bastards now, but it was also full of bastards back then too.
Honestly I’m kinda shocked that they didn’t do a false flag to justify the Iran invasion. Back during Trump I, there were random drone attacks against freighters in the Strait of Hormuz that I would be shocked if they were actually from Iran. Did the guy in charge of that program get fired or get sent to die in Gaza?
Why bother with a false flag when they aren’t being held accountable for any of the blatantly illegal things they are doing?
Well, if the US imposed a draft for an invasion of Iran right now, it would likely lead to massive civil unrest - the war is very unpopular, especially among young people. At the moment, it’s a very distant thing for Americans, being told that you’re going to go off and die in Iran for the benefit of Israel would probably be the breaking point for people.
I’m not convince it would lead to much civil unrest.
civil unrest is perfect. they can just arrest the protesting civillians and put them to work in the for profit prisons, leaving only compliant civilians. win-win.
Playing catch-up, we’ll get one
Are they incompetent or do they not care?
Yes.
Well, we don’t really know for sure yet because it’s so recent – the US does have a ‘clone’ of Iran’s Shahed drone called the LUCAS, which Iran has claimed the US has used in false-flag attack against civilian targets in the Gulf. We won’t know for sure until the intelligence around the Iranian invasion is declassified, which probably won’t be for several decades.
Honestly, I think if this war continues to escalate, a false flag on US soil becomes more and more likely, to get support for an invasion of Iran.
support for an invasion of Iran.
They don’t actually intend boots on the ground against a mountainous country of 90 million right?? Right after Afghanistan?
Like they could probably set up a green zone in Tehran and then what? Just kinda hide behind the walls forever?
Afghanistan was a huge success. Rich people made billions.
Something about a land war in Asia…
Hegseth sent a couple thousand Marines to the Med, and he apparently thinks a ground invasion is at least ONE plan on the table. I do truly think Hegseth thinks that it’s just like Iraq in a video game, where it’s all flat, featureless desert.
Or, more likely, Hegseth doesn’t care about the lives lost, and thinks that we can just throw bodies and missiles at Iran to cow then into submission. That seems in line with his stupid “warrior ethos” shit.
It worked so well for Vietnam so why not
It would be the stupidest decision that Trump could ever make, for sure. The problem is that Trump doesn’t exactly have a history of making good strategic decisions, and he purged his administration of people who disagreed with him, and is seemingly taking advice from Benjamin Netanyahu. I really, really hope that a ground invasion of Iran doesn’t happen, it would be like Vietnam, except Iran has the 13th most powerful military in the world and has been preparing for this war for 40+ years.
Yeah, it’s not 13th in Iran, for sure, and with well-thought plans for basically everything. Only yesterday I was listening to the foreign minister of Iran spelling “yes” to a journalist question: “do you want a land invasion from the USA?”
First in command is Donald J. Trump. His XO is Pete Hegseth. Do I need to continue?
