One of President Donald Trump’s lines during the 2016 presidential campaign was his promise that, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”
Indeed, particularly given that ICE agents are going to be deployed to airports. Their penchant for killing civilians and otherwise violating civil rights only to lie about their actions hardly seems like a good fit for airport security duties they haven’t been trained to perform.
The current situation has been giving me so many flashbacks. Here, my GWB-era teens had the terror threat level, and now we're lazily reimagining State Department traveling warnings as a dark slapstick version (be afraid everywhere, American!)
All the people who decided to stay in the Middle East even when the second carrier group was en route, and then thought they were news worth enough to get on camera and comment about there being no commercial flights out of there.
Iran's source is the one who said they did it in the first place :facepalm: and it was confirmed by UK
As soon as they felt like denying it would be better for them they did and took down https://en.mehrnews.com/ where it was published. Unless you say mehr was defaced and the news were planted by Mossad
That's the strategy of Project 2025, make all the nice things we have much worse and broken so there's no choice but to scrap and start over. While they're in charge, of course.
Many liberal people think he is an abberation, they would gladly return back to "normal". The point is, he is a symptom of a larger unaddressed sickness, there is no return to business as usual, it will only return far worse.
To prompt with something more specific: there is a possibility of a Gavin Newsom vs. Tucker Carlson in 2028, it's crucial to understand why Tucker might win and why he would be ten times worse than Trump.
Very few other people have Trump's ability to channel frustration in a nonspecific-but-charismatic way that connects the various extreme factions of the American right.
None of those factions will be gone, but their battles will weaken their cause more than they have since 2016.
Some of this can be seen by how even his own popularity falls any time he actually has power, since there are no effective ideas there, only misplaced blame, and that doesn't sustain support for four years. Without him there at all in an out-of-power period, the "blame the Jews"/"blame the brown people"/"blame the women"/"blame the baby-killers"/"blame the anti-Semites"/"blame the sexual deviants" factions will likely fail to find another person they all rally around.
The extreme factions of the right are a very small portion of the electorate. They generally don't decide elections beyond the primaries and generally turn out in favor of the right regardless.
Dems lean more on moderates/independents. Trump won because he persuaded that group, particularly the young men.
25-33% of the electorate is no small fraction. There's a group of people who have been consistently supportive of this government's policies since 2016. Take any policy survey, and the fraction that supports the right-wing side of action always amounts to a consistent 25-33% of the votes.
While being largely correct, looking at his popularity misses the forest for the tree.
Trump is very much a symptom, not a cause. He is simply the kind of personality most fit for the media environment.
The media environment on the right has essentially eschewed journalistic standards for political and economic velocity.
Fringe theories get introduced during podcasts, which then get brought up by guests on Fox. Members of the government point out that the news media is talking about fringe theory X, which then gets repeated by the news media. Eventually the government opens up an investigation or creates a task force to address the issue.
It is not that people don’t come up with objections or counter narratives on the right, it’s just that they don’t get platformed.
Verification is the expensive part of journalism. If you eschew verification. You can be more efficient. Today the right is simply the more “efficient” political consensus manufacturing machine.
This is foundation upon which the rest of the events occur. This is why there will always be space for another character to appear.
America has neglected working class people for decades. The economy has shifted from supporting earning income to make a decent living, to protecting assets (bail outs etc.) Trump tapped into this and tricked these people into electing him, bringing along right wing or whatever they are.. and they got hold of power. Don't think numbers are there for this culture war crowd to stay in power unless they hitch a ride with someone.
(edited: typo)
Having somebody less incompetent, senile, and corrupt at the helm may not make things "magically go back to normal," but it's a step in the right direction. Necessary but not sufficient.
Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
>Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
It's that a significant number of Americans are mean, selfish, racist, arrogant, and delight in the victimization of those they perceive as belonging to an outgroup.
2/3 of your electorate either voted for him (meaning they liked what they saw) or were sufficiently unbothered by him to not vote (meaning they were more or less okay with Trump).
These crocodile tears about how "we were bamboozled" are just that. It was plainly obvious to the rest of us looking in from outside, even before his first term but certainly after, that he was exactly the person he is now, and fully two thirds of American voters accepted this.
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
Today is MAGA, yesterday it was the "Tea Party" faction, before that it was something else, and tomorrow there will be another.
Every time there's a cycle of fringe-right blowing up in popularity, pushing an agenda and flaming out, it's still the same people they're appealing to who are voting for them.
The main problem with your thinking is that you fail to realiZe that a lot of conservatives criticism of Trump is that he is too weak on the things he promised to be hard on.
They want MORE ICE, more cuts to government programs, more police.
That's not what made it sound like Yoda. It was sticking "has been" at the end, and I agree there was a better choice stylistically: "Crazy how effective this admin has been at making everything worse."
You know what else would make everything worse? A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
But hey, it's not like they funded and backed a bunch of theocratic fanatics who committed a mass atrocity in Israel and provoked a war that destroyed Gaza or anything, right? Or that they were exporting massive quantities of drones to Putin for him to use to murder Ukrainian civilians, right? They were nice guys, and the 35K protesters they murdered deserved it, right?
We should have just let things keep rolling the way they were. It was all going so well, and at no point would the regime that was actively inciting terrorism all over the world for the last 47 years be a threat if they got nukes on the ICBMs we now know they had been a problem. I mean, heck, those missiles they shot at Diego Garcia were just fireworks, purely for decorative purposes, right?
The HN bubble is truly grand. My college girlfriend was the daughter of parents who fled the Ayatollah in 79. You people on here think everyone shares your values and worldview, and that the mullahs in Iran are rational actors. They are not. They are part of a specific sect of Shiite Islam that truly believes that bringing about an apocalypse is a desirable thing. It's such a foreign concept to you that you dismiss it as fantasy and misinformation. But it's real. And you simply lack the life experience to know it. You've never seen entire masses of people infected with the radical religious mind viruses that those of us with firsthand experience with religious fundamentalists have seen.
Imagine the Branch Davidians in Waco with nukes, and you start to scratch the surface of what this would look like if you let it play out.
The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
There isn't a single "red state" in the US that requires women to cover their heads and bodies in public or executes people for speaking out against the "regime".
But you pretend like that's the case, while acting like Iran was just minding their own business when they have exported terror for decades, along with drones being used to murder Ukrainian civilians. I mean, I guess supporting Ukraine was soooo 2022-23, and now we're on to the new fashion trend of supporting the people helping to murder them because "orange man bad."
I did assume you were being hyperbolic when writing it, but yes. I would think that anyone looking at the state of the US right now may see "A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes" as referring to it.
Totalitarian: hyperbolic, but the state of the executive branch over the last couple of decades is moving things in that direction. And clearly one could say this to make a point.
The kind of whacky religiousness that you find in the US matters because of foreign policy, among other things. (There are also domestic things like right to abortion.) The US ambassador to Israel is a Zionist that talks about the Bible with Tucker Carlson as if should have any policy weight, because he believes so. There are other (Republican) politicians that say something like the US having a Biblical responsibility to support Israel.
> The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
And what is your pose, here? The selfishness of implicitly dismissing the foreign policy implications of American religious n*jobs because you don’t live in the affected countries?
Yeah it's a good thing we dismantled that regime and totally didn't empower the most extreme and radical portion of it while removing the politicians who'd tempered that and turned the population against the US and Israel.
But hey, at least we've lifted sanctions and we are now sending them even more money because the oil market was completely destroyed so that's great right?
Obviously this is the best strategy because we can see how the Taliban was completely dismantled in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation right?
Unless you are proposing genocide of Iran or an eternal occupation, what we've done is kicked a hornets nest.
> A totalitarian theocratic regime with long range ballistic missiles and nukes.
Man, imagine that, how scary. I bet in theocratic regimes there's a bunch of stupid stuff going on, like a ~Secretary~ Minister of ~War~ Defense that justifies an attack on a foreign nation by calling it a holy war and prays every time he gives a speech to the troops.
Those theocrats probably do things like de-funding every science project they can when they get power. Or worse, maybe they think vaccines are against god's will and get a bunch of kids sick by opposing vaccines for preventable diseases. Hell they probably don't even teach their kids about evolution or gay people.
Can you imagine if a nation like that had nuclear weapons and long range missiles? Why, they might start a war for no reason.
I agree THAT ethno nationalist country in the middle east, with long-range ballistic missiles, secret nukes and a secret nuclear doctrine that hasn't signed any Non-Proliferation treaty should make everybody worried. But that country isn't Iran.
It's the only country in the world with nuclear weapons that at this moment gets bombarded by missiles right now, if that doesn't make you worried you aren't paying attention.
Yes, they are flooding the zone with many alternative explanations so that they're both all deniable, and all accessible to anyone who finds just one of them convincing. This is a strategy.
They're referencing Trump's constant insistence that we won or are currently winning. He never, ever admits defeat or concedes any ground, everything is a victory, nothing is a loss. Trump also famously said (paraphrasing) "We're gonna win so much, we'll be tired of winning".
They rebranded to the department of war but its not a war. We definitely don't want war, but we want all soldiers to be warriors. Still not warmongering.
I got jumped in Italy couple of weeks ago. I was wearing a "volleyball dad" hoodie my kid bought for me but did not realize that the "volleyball dad" is etched in the middle of a large American flag covering my entire back. Luckily (for him, not me :) ) three police officers were 10 meters away walking the area dealing with apre ski drunks and restrained him. fun times
didn’t even know I was wearing it (honestly never even noticed anything other that “volleyball dad”) but rest assured I wore it every day for the rest of the trip
yes, this is exactly the kind of story one would be dreaming up to share, I think if one was to make up a non-existent story one would come up with a lot more "interesting" one that this one :)
The U.S. government shutdown has halted pay to the TSA, but not ICE, so ICE is taking over from the TSA in airports[1]. If you fly to the U.S., starting Monday apparently, the first think you're likely to see is masked gunmen giving you the eye.
I feel like "form your own private paramilitary organisation with minimal oversight, then expand their reach by having them take over the operations of other government departments" has been done before somewhere, as part of a larger plan.
This is a historical pattern: Bringing border forces to bear against your own population, because those border forces are trained to deal with people who don't have the rights of the state.
Hey, tone doesn't translate well over text, they did not use anu tone tags, and I'm already terrible at reading tone in the best of times. Lol, can you really blame me for at least asking? Haha.
I dunno, it is the most obvious nazi reference I've ever seen. Personally I feel like tone does translate well over text, although it's proportional to the speakers' familiarity in how to do it whereas for verbal communication it comes through without effort.
Nothing wrong with asking of course. But maybe it's useful data that it was, in fact, obvious.
Yeah, I was aiming for irony but I should probably have added /s at the end there. It's definitely in the mid-late chapters in any "how to install a fascist regime" handbook.
They dont have all the skills to do anything super complex in a sustainable way. Already proved in the first term. What their existence demonstrates is winning election is not super complex if you can find enough groups to precisely target and pander/capture attention. Social media has been a force multiplier for such behavior and the people that have emerged dont have any other skill other than attention capture. But thats short term win like full focus on marketing while product and operations have no hope of catching up. Every "large plan" will fail. Large plans in complex ever changing environments always need massive cooperation of very different skills. Never happens sustainably with just one skill dominating all.
The TSA is responsible for more than just airports. As someone with family who works (worked) on port security in the maritime division, I would argue that Chesterton's Fence [0] applies here just as much as anywhere else.
The Coast Guard has long been responsible for port security. TSA does administer TWIC, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program, which is a biometric identification system go access to secure port facilities.
Many of us were alive when the TSA was created. It's not a mystery why it's there. (Mostly so politicians could say they did something to improve air travel security.)
Depends on what defunded means... if it means pay/control shifting from a Federal agency to local, then yes.
Maning, airports / municipalities should be funding this. If airports were in control the the user experience, I bet you would see a lot better outcomes.
It shouldn't be defunded, because as stupid as it and the 2001 politics that spawned it were, anything MAGA will replace it with in 2026 would be way worse.
Enter the country and you interact with CBP and that hasn't changed. CBP agents are the ones who murdered the legal observers in Minneapolis so there's that.
TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.
The obvious and flippant answer to that would be "the parts of the world that do not have incompetent leaders". But that will only lead to the incredulous claiming that all governments are equally incompetent (yet some are more incompetent than others) and that's not a discussion I'm inclined to entertain.
People vote for the current government. I’m not sure why you would expect others’ to pay for americas internal messes, we’re already busy dealing with the external ones.
The federal government hasn't passed a budget because the Democrats are blocking it. They feel it's worth the political gamble to cause Americans pain and that it'll turn on Trump.
I'm American, I didn't vote for Trump, so I don't feel like it's me dealing with adverse effects of my decisions.
I did vote for Eric Adams in NYC, and while Eric Adams didn't advertise blatant corruption as part of his campaign, insofar that I can be blamed for his idiocy and bribes I will accept responsibility. I didn't vote for him the second time around and I feel foolish for voting for him the first time.
Democracy is a collective thing. Americans may strongly believe in individualism, but democracy is a collective responsibility. Its kind of a key design feature.
I guess? I mean I actively did not want this president. I actively voted for someone else. I tried to get people to not vote for him, though I doubt I was successful at that task. I suppose I do still pay my taxes and as such I'm still kind of funding this stupid unnecessary war, but I don't think it's entirely fair to judge me just because I live in a country where demagoguery appears to be in vogue.
Don't get me wrong, I know I'll deal with the consequences of other people's bad decisions here, that's just the price of democracy (or whatever the hell we have in the US), but I have a hard time accepting that it's my fault since I did what little I could to stop it.
This is just more victim fear being pushed so (mostly Christian) conservatives can claim to be the victims, once again, as they colonize another people/land.
That's still ten years of collaboration that could have built greater trust, led to a new agreement, or worst case provided enough evidence to take a more precise military action instead of bombing girls schools.
That’s going to age as well as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did. The reality is that only Israel was threatened by Iran and the US is caught up in it simply because we act as their vassal.
Then how do you explain the rockets taking on Saudi Arabia? Baharain? UAE? Even Diego Garcia - which is further from Iran than Israel is. Just as far as Europe is. So they were only developing weapons that could target Israel?
Should nuclear weapons be kept out of the hands of people who threaten neighbouring and allied countries with military force? Who threaten distant countries with destruction if they don't comply with their demands, which change every day? Who have a support base that makes up 30%+ of the country, and chants absolutely insane shit at their rallies?
By any rational, third-party standard, such a country should not have nuclear weapons.
Hegseth is a white christian nationalist with a crusades tattoo. Whatcha think the intended purpose is here? People said this was going to happen when he was nominated.
There's a christian prophecy involving israel occupying certain lands, a cow, and some other nonsense. A weirdly high number of Americans, mostly christians, believe it. There are a ton of them in the Trump admin.
1. Distracting from domEstic ProblemS. StarTing a rEgIoNal war is an effective way to do that.
2. Kidnapping Maduro made the rest of Venezuela's government roll over and play fetch, they are stupid enough to believe it would have worked again.
3. Israel says jump, GOP asks 'how high'?
4. There are no negative consequences to them killing people, driving the country into ruinous debt, or blowing up the American economy through higher energy prices. The drawbacks simply don't exist.
Would the current state of affairs qualify for cancelling the mid-terms? Is that overly cynical?
Not in the US, not a US citizen or voter. My suspicion is the answer is "no, but it is not a given that a competent supreme court which looks likely to overturn the WH exists, if they say they want to do this"
Hopefully that is reassuring. Worryingly I would like some sense of confirmation but in any case I expect a declaration it's not a valid real result because that's what happened before, counts not withstanding.
The US does not have a legal avenue for cancelling elections regardless of circumstances without a constitutional amendment. It cannot happen under any conditions or circumstances.
To do so would basically be an open announcement of dictatorship and - more than we have already - the end of rule of law and a likely civil war.
So the presidents personal law enforcement that is tasked with racially profiling people who overwhelmingly do not pose a threat are going to now be conducting security directly from the source where millions of foreign travelers come through…hmmm…ridiculous
On the flip side, I _think_ there's actually less and less about Epstein visible, so I think WH is winning that war. Or at least successfully postponing battles.
ceejayoz | 19 hours ago
fouc | 19 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 19 hours ago
https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2016/user-clip-too-much...
Trump says US is 'winning so much' in longest ever State of the Union - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQUGjRtq-M - February 25th, 2026
Hence the joke, "I am tired of winning." as the situation continues to rapidly degrade through policy choices. So much winning, it's too much.
cdrnsf | 19 hours ago
Arubis | 19 hours ago
1over137 | 19 hours ago
cdrnsf | 19 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 19 hours ago
Which implies they've been trained?
cdrnsf | 18 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 17 hours ago
pier25 | 19 hours ago
cogman10 | 19 hours ago
SlightlyLeftPad | 19 hours ago
refulgentis | 19 hours ago
The current situation has been giving me so many flashbacks. Here, my GWB-era teens had the terror threat level, and now we're lazily reimagining State Department traveling warnings as a dark slapstick version (be afraid everywhere, American!)
morkalork | 19 hours ago
https://theonion.com/no-blood-for-oil-vs-exactly-how-much-oi...
cmdrmac | 19 hours ago
agnishom | 19 hours ago
nandomrumber | 18 hours ago
readitalready | 19 hours ago
cj | 19 hours ago
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-fires-missiles-remot...
readitalready | 18 hours ago
And Iran denies it as well: https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2035477318055985648
Makes you wonder who really did launch those missiles?
throwaway290 | 18 hours ago
As soon as they felt like denying it would be better for them they did and took down https://en.mehrnews.com/ where it was published. Unless you say mehr was defaced and the news were planted by Mossad
mrbombastic | 19 hours ago
arvid-lind | 19 hours ago
MengerSponge | 19 hours ago
fundad | 18 hours ago
xnx | 17 hours ago
stackghost | 19 hours ago
malfist | 19 hours ago
greenavocado | 19 hours ago
stuaxo | 19 hours ago
But it's true he is a symptom.
greenavocado | 16 hours ago
andrewflnr | 19 hours ago
lyu07282 | 18 hours ago
To prompt with something more specific: there is a possibility of a Gavin Newsom vs. Tucker Carlson in 2028, it's crucial to understand why Tucker might win and why he would be ten times worse than Trump.
michaelhoney | 19 hours ago
nozzlegear | 17 hours ago
CamperBob2 | 17 hours ago
majormajor | 19 hours ago
None of those factions will be gone, but their battles will weaken their cause more than they have since 2016.
Some of this can be seen by how even his own popularity falls any time he actually has power, since there are no effective ideas there, only misplaced blame, and that doesn't sustain support for four years. Without him there at all in an out-of-power period, the "blame the Jews"/"blame the brown people"/"blame the women"/"blame the baby-killers"/"blame the anti-Semites"/"blame the sexual deviants" factions will likely fail to find another person they all rally around.
goosejuice | 18 hours ago
Dems lean more on moderates/independents. Trump won because he persuaded that group, particularly the young men.
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/why-republicans-can-win-with-t...
fakedang | 17 hours ago
goosejuice | 16 hours ago
fakedang | 2 hours ago
fakedang | 17 hours ago
If Trump is the most charismatic political personality America has to offer...
intended | 14 hours ago
Trump is very much a symptom, not a cause. He is simply the kind of personality most fit for the media environment.
The media environment on the right has essentially eschewed journalistic standards for political and economic velocity.
Fringe theories get introduced during podcasts, which then get brought up by guests on Fox. Members of the government point out that the news media is talking about fringe theory X, which then gets repeated by the news media. Eventually the government opens up an investigation or creates a task force to address the issue.
It is not that people don’t come up with objections or counter narratives on the right, it’s just that they don’t get platformed.
Verification is the expensive part of journalism. If you eschew verification. You can be more efficient. Today the right is simply the more “efficient” political consensus manufacturing machine.
This is foundation upon which the rest of the events occur. This is why there will always be space for another character to appear.
jb827 | 18 hours ago
JeremyNT | 18 hours ago
Perhaps you'll be explicit though, what is the "sickness" you perceive?
stackghost | 17 hours ago
It's that a significant number of Americans are mean, selfish, racist, arrogant, and delight in the victimization of those they perceive as belonging to an outgroup.
2/3 of your electorate either voted for him (meaning they liked what they saw) or were sufficiently unbothered by him to not vote (meaning they were more or less okay with Trump).
These crocodile tears about how "we were bamboozled" are just that. It was plainly obvious to the rest of us looking in from outside, even before his first term but certainly after, that he was exactly the person he is now, and fully two thirds of American voters accepted this.
LeChuck | 10 hours ago
http://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
morkalork | 6 hours ago
Every time there's a cycle of fringe-right blowing up in popularity, pushing an agenda and flaming out, it's still the same people they're appealing to who are voting for them.
throwawaytea | 16 hours ago
nozzlegear | 17 hours ago
elromulous | 19 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 19 hours ago
---
*EDIT*: Corrected word. Lol.
daemonologist | 19 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 18 hours ago
rdiddly | 18 hours ago
mrbombastic | 18 hours ago
JPKab | 19 hours ago
But hey, it's not like they funded and backed a bunch of theocratic fanatics who committed a mass atrocity in Israel and provoked a war that destroyed Gaza or anything, right? Or that they were exporting massive quantities of drones to Putin for him to use to murder Ukrainian civilians, right? They were nice guys, and the 35K protesters they murdered deserved it, right?
We should have just let things keep rolling the way they were. It was all going so well, and at no point would the regime that was actively inciting terrorism all over the world for the last 47 years be a threat if they got nukes on the ICBMs we now know they had been a problem. I mean, heck, those missiles they shot at Diego Garcia were just fireworks, purely for decorative purposes, right?
The HN bubble is truly grand. My college girlfriend was the daughter of parents who fled the Ayatollah in 79. You people on here think everyone shares your values and worldview, and that the mullahs in Iran are rational actors. They are not. They are part of a specific sect of Shiite Islam that truly believes that bringing about an apocalypse is a desirable thing. It's such a foreign concept to you that you dismiss it as fantasy and misinformation. But it's real. And you simply lack the life experience to know it. You've never seen entire masses of people infected with the radical religious mind viruses that those of us with firsthand experience with religious fundamentalists have seen.
Imagine the Branch Davidians in Waco with nukes, and you start to scratch the surface of what this would look like if you let it play out.
jghn | 18 hours ago
JPKab | 18 hours ago
There isn't a single "red state" in the US that requires women to cover their heads and bodies in public or executes people for speaking out against the "regime".
But you pretend like that's the case, while acting like Iran was just minding their own business when they have exported terror for decades, along with drones being used to murder Ukrainian civilians. I mean, I guess supporting Ukraine was soooo 2022-23, and now we're on to the new fashion trend of supporting the people helping to murder them because "orange man bad."
awnird | 18 hours ago
I don’t think your concern for civilian casualties is genuine.
jghn | 5 hours ago
Totalitarian: hyperbolic, but the state of the executive branch over the last couple of decades is moving things in that direction. And clearly one could say this to make a point.
Theocratic: A slight stretch, but mostly yes.
Long range ballistic missiles: check
Nukes: check
keybored | 3 hours ago
> The narcissism of small differences on full display here.
And what is your pose, here? The selfishness of implicitly dismissing the foreign policy implications of American religious n*jobs because you don’t live in the affected countries?
mrbombastic | 18 hours ago
awnird | 18 hours ago
cogman10 | 18 hours ago
But hey, at least we've lifted sanctions and we are now sending them even more money because the oil market was completely destroyed so that's great right?
Obviously this is the best strategy because we can see how the Taliban was completely dismantled in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation right?
Unless you are proposing genocide of Iran or an eternal occupation, what we've done is kicked a hornets nest.
solid_fuel | 18 hours ago
Man, imagine that, how scary. I bet in theocratic regimes there's a bunch of stupid stuff going on, like a ~Secretary~ Minister of ~War~ Defense that justifies an attack on a foreign nation by calling it a holy war and prays every time he gives a speech to the troops.
Those theocrats probably do things like de-funding every science project they can when they get power. Or worse, maybe they think vaccines are against god's will and get a bunch of kids sick by opposing vaccines for preventable diseases. Hell they probably don't even teach their kids about evolution or gay people.
Can you imagine if a nation like that had nuclear weapons and long range missiles? Why, they might start a war for no reason.
lyu07282 | 18 hours ago
It's the only country in the world with nuclear weapons that at this moment gets bombarded by missiles right now, if that doesn't make you worried you aren't paying attention.
archagon | 18 hours ago
bdangubic | 16 hours ago
jazzpush2 | 19 hours ago
bdangubic | 19 hours ago
giwook | 19 hours ago
It's like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
cogman10 | 19 hours ago
nandomrumber | 18 hours ago
nclin_ | 19 hours ago
mememememememo | 19 hours ago
briantakita | 18 hours ago
briansm | 12 hours ago
Moomoomoo309 | 7 hours ago
refulgentis | 17 hours ago
znpy | 13 hours ago
daheza | 16 hours ago
disqard | 3 hours ago
bdangubic | 19 hours ago
kylehotchkiss | 19 hours ago
stackghost | 19 hours ago
Please don't do this.
nclin_ | 19 hours ago
bdangubic | 14 hours ago
genthree | 3 hours ago
Plus it usually looks better.
Not sure why you need any flag on you.
razodactyl | 19 hours ago
lyu07282 | 18 hours ago
terminalshort | 17 hours ago
bdangubic | 2 hours ago
mlrtime | 9 hours ago
What did the attackers say to you that told their intention was to harm you for having an American flag?
beloch | 19 hours ago
No thankyou.
[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cede0qyvqz3o
taneq | 19 hours ago
nclin_ | 19 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 19 hours ago
ajkjk | 19 hours ago
encrypted_bird | 18 hours ago
ajkjk | 4 hours ago
Nothing wrong with asking of course. But maybe it's useful data that it was, in fact, obvious.
taneq | 16 hours ago
gotwaz | 18 hours ago
mattoxic | 18 hours ago
And that's stopped them?
gotwaz | 17 hours ago
nandomrumber | 19 hours ago
hmmokidk | 18 hours ago
tombert | 18 hours ago
Macha | 18 hours ago
Replacing them with ICE as a political gesture? Not so much
derf_ | 18 hours ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
rendaw | 12 hours ago
5555624 | 12 hours ago
LeChuck | 10 hours ago
stvltvs | 7 hours ago
lazide | 4 hours ago
Previously, some airports were even more of a nightmare, and others were actually pleasant.
mlrtime | 9 hours ago
Maning, airports / municipalities should be funding this. If airports were in control the the user experience, I bet you would see a lot better outcomes.
vkou | 3 hours ago
AceJohnny2 | 19 hours ago
It's even more disgusting than that:
"Tom Homan: ICE officers will not assist with airport security scanning amid TSA staffing shortage"
https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/5795316-homan-ice-...
bananalychee | 18 hours ago
fundad | 18 hours ago
TSA checks bags for commercial airlines which is a service that should never have been nationalized.
jordanb | 18 hours ago
fundad | 7 hours ago
dizhn | 26 minutes ago
diego_moita | 18 hours ago
SSLy | 9 hours ago
diego_moita | 8 hours ago
dzonga | 19 hours ago
to not be political this lies at the heart of principles, morals, meritocracy
values that the current gvt lacks & things that drove america forward.
tremon | 19 hours ago
dotancohen | 18 hours ago
tremon | 6 hours ago
dotancohen | 2 hours ago
hsbauauvhabzb | 19 hours ago
refurb | 18 hours ago
There you go - mystery solved.
terminalshort | 17 hours ago
tombert | 17 hours ago
I did vote for Eric Adams in NYC, and while Eric Adams didn't advertise blatant corruption as part of his campaign, insofar that I can be blamed for his idiocy and bribes I will accept responsibility. I didn't vote for him the second time around and I feel foolish for voting for him the first time.
intended | 14 hours ago
tombert | 4 hours ago
Don't get me wrong, I know I'll deal with the consequences of other people's bad decisions here, that's just the price of democracy (or whatever the hell we have in the US), but I have a hard time accepting that it's my fault since I did what little I could to stop it.
UltraSane | 19 hours ago
bradleyankrom | 19 hours ago
softwaredoug | 19 hours ago
Like actually tell us what you know so we can make useful decisions about our safety.
alephnerd | 19 hours ago
"Americans abroad should follow the guidance in security alerts issued by the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate."
chneu | 13 hours ago
drgo | 19 hours ago
tombert | 18 hours ago
dotancohen | 18 hours ago
macintux | 18 hours ago
dotancohen | 17 hours ago
It was a ten year plan, not a permanent plan.
macintux | 5 hours ago
engcoach | 18 hours ago
terminalshort | 17 hours ago
dotancohen | 17 hours ago
zzrrt | 17 hours ago
vkou | 3 hours ago
By any rational, third-party standard, such a country should not have nuclear weapons.
intended | 14 hours ago
chneu | 13 hours ago
There's a christian prophecy involving israel occupying certain lands, a cow, and some other nonsense. A weirdly high number of Americans, mostly christians, believe it. There are a ton of them in the Trump admin.
vkou | 3 hours ago
2. Kidnapping Maduro made the rest of Venezuela's government roll over and play fetch, they are stupid enough to believe it would have worked again.
3. Israel says jump, GOP asks 'how high'?
4. There are no negative consequences to them killing people, driving the country into ruinous debt, or blowing up the American economy through higher energy prices. The drawbacks simply don't exist.
It's all upshot, zero downshot.
ggm | 18 hours ago
Not in the US, not a US citizen or voter. My suspicion is the answer is "no, but it is not a given that a competent supreme court which looks likely to overturn the WH exists, if they say they want to do this"
atq2119 | 18 hours ago
Trying to cancel elections seems like it'd be a lot harder than in other countries.
ggm | 13 hours ago
Tadpole9181 | 7 hours ago
To do so would basically be an open announcement of dictatorship and - more than we have already - the end of rule of law and a likely civil war.
disqard | 3 hours ago
I truly hope you are proved right by history, but I'm concerned.
Tadpole9181 | an hour ago
marysminefnuf | 16 hours ago
flowerthoughts | 14 hours ago
nisiddharth | 12 hours ago
metalman | 10 hours ago