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
I mean, we joke, but this is pretty what he’s proposing.
This dude is pushing Putin-level shades of crazy.
at least putin isn’t in control of a hideously powerful military
Yeah, that sounds like the old “Kill them all and let God sort them out” approach.
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
It doesn’t make any sense. In heaven, all the good people will have everything they’ve ever wanted forever.
But when I offer to send everyone to heaven all at the same time, they treat me like I’m a bad guy.
It just doesn’t make any sense
Absolutely batshit rhetoric, this guy better lose hard…………
At the very least, that is certainly the case right now. All the polls of conservatives consistently show Trump smoking Desantis.
Unfortunately he’s only 44 years old. Hoping he slides into oblivion but I worry he’s going to be flirting around for decades.
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).
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.
That’s a whole different kind of problem and I hate it
As a white person from Wisconsin who never crosses the boarder… this is extreme and scary.
As a Canadian who’s an entire country away… this is extreme and scary.
Are drones strikes on our maple syrup cartels next?
Don’t give them ideas, for all that’s sacred, leave the maple out of this!
Picking two examples where the operator is often wrong, and very publicly so
Next time you cross just carry an ir strobe and IFF NATO friendly panel on your hood. Should be good to go.
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.
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.
Some of em don’t care about their kids. They can go fight, themselves.
Some of em don’t care about their kids.
As evidenced by their complete lack of concern regarding climate change.
Nah just ship the congressmen/women off with the infantry. Then they can see exactly what they’re voting for.
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.
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.
Most of their kids are 55+, they can’t enlist lol
No different than having no kids.
No kids/grandkids/niblings we can send to war? No right to vote for war.
Why not?.. Look at the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, they clearly look like 60+.
As if someone like Trump would even give a second thought to sending his kids off to war?
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.
Hey kiddo I really need my war mongering rhetoric to keep my polling up, you’re gonna have to sacrafice for this family.
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
many have already gladly voted yes for both many times. I don’t think that will stop enough of them.
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.
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.
The problem is the us hasn’t had a formal declaration of war since WW2. Basically we’ve just had military engagements. Some haven’t even been authorized by congress.
Basically we’d need to fix that issue before worrying about the other suggestions. Else it’d just be military engagement not a war so don’t need to fallow them.
Is the US even still involved in a war since 2021? At least through direct action.
The Global War on Terror is what it’s called, it’s just a neverending operation of military sorties across the world to support whatever and wherever.
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We did it Lemmy! War is no more!
You can be against war without thinking you’ll end war.
Unfortunately he was a Lieutenant commander in the Navy. Going back probably doesn’t concern him.
This is literal insanity.
Are they going to put Mexican Americans in internment camps next?
The United States already runs multiple concentration camps on the border.
Sorry but they’re called ‘Migration Storage Facilities’ not Concentration camps by the trustworthy newspaper The New York Times. This obviously means they’re not concentration camps.
Yes. That is 100% the end point of this.
Unfortunately, not the end
Probably not this time, a big part of why Japanese-Americans were put into interment camps was because Californians wanted their farms.
I’d never considered this, but of course it came down to economics- weird how often massive crimes against humanity come down to some bourgeois thief wanting to take more for themselves and willing to do anything to do it.
Just did a little reading on it, they stole 400 million (1942) dollars worth of farmland from Japanese-Americans, which is like 7 billion adjusted for inflation, and basically just gave them to agribusiness corporations.
Yeah they don’t tell you in school that white Californians lobbied hard for Japanese Americans to be robbed of all their land and property, and it’s a big part of why their lands weren’t restored to them after the war. Like western expansion never really stopped.
I think they’d be somewhat more likely to use various schemes to enslave Hispanic migrants and citizens, given how vital Hispanic migrants are to American ag.
No, but the risk of deportation is probably going to increase, including for citizens
Probably the plan.
Next? They’ve already done it with ICE detention centers
Not to mention deported American citizens fairly frequently, since they assume any brown person who doesn’t have their license on them at the moment is illegally in the country.
https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/07/30/ice-deport-us-citizens/
German Jews’ citizenship didn’t protect them from the Nazis, who simply revoked their citizenship and then murdered them.
Idk if you meant it as hyperbole… But yes, yes, he is sick enough to try that. And a sliver of even bigger morons would/will vote for him.
They’ve already got concentration camps full of south and central Americans all over the country.
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.
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.
This cunt talks about Iraq like he did something there. He was a fucking lawyer 😂.
Posing as a human rights lawyer and illegally aiding in the torture of POWs at Guantanamo is the best way of forming a valid opinion on Iraq!
didn’t he torture people in gitmo?
He did. He enjoyed giving the order to shove feeding tubes up assholes. I can provide a link from Harpers.
He is shit with legs.
please share any info you have, he needs to be destroyed
He worked there for sure, but we don’t know all the details of what he did there. He probably just advised the actual torturers that what they were doing was legal.
There was a Vice Documentary that got canceled recently, apparrenlty he watched people get tortured and recommended force feeding and other fucked up things https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/desantis-guantanamo-force-feedings-canceled-documentary-1234793826/
Wasn’t he the lawyer in charge of coming up with legalese to justify torturing people?
Well, he did use his position to gain the trust of gunatanamo prisoners and when they told him what was particularly stressful to them, he passed that info on to make conditions worse for them. Like, a prisoner would tell him “we usually pick the vegetarian option because we think the meat here isn’t halal” and a week later, no more vegetarian food option. Things like that. There’s also a pretty harrowing account of how he oversaw hunger-striking prisoners being force-fed. People screaming and throwing up and shitting themselves in agony and he stood next to that and laughed. I honestly believe that if he didn’t join the navy to live out his murderous sadism, he’d be a serial killer with a collection of human body parts in his basement. Guy’s a complete fucking monster.
Bruh you’ve gotta use vague signals and let the think tanks work with journalists to manufacture consent first.
Yeah, DeSantis should be good at this, sadly…
I’m way more worried about this Facist than trump.
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.
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.
Florida is a circus fit for such a clown.
It’s also a good illustration of the failures of Liberal Democracy. I think Florida is like 51% red 49% blue.
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.
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.
😤
It continues to amaze me how dumb half of America is.
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.
you can count all the people who don’t vote in the stupid category, so actually more than half.
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.
With the way American elections are setup, I’m expecting a lot of non voters didn’t have had a choice…
Well there’s also a lot of people that can’t vote because they can’t afford to take time off work, especially if they can’t mail in their votes.
Remember that a lot of people couldn’t vote. Either because of voter registration rolls getting purged or disenfranchisement from a criminal charge.
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.
I like your optimisms.
Psychopathic, how can a politician like this have any popular support
It’s DeSantis, so he basically doesn’t.
Same as any strongman leader. Talking tough reliably gets votes from a certain type of voter, even if what is proposed is utterly insane.
Because some people are also psychopaths or who prefer authoritarian leadership.
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.
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.
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.
This isn’t even an anticapitalist text dump on my part, just basic US history and sociology. If you’re drawing anti capitalist conclusions from it, that’s on you.
lemmy.ml is nominally leftist, so an anticapitalist text dump is in-bounds, I believe
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
brown people long before that.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.
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
Yeah, no, they know, whats why they like him
Do you think its some sort of fluke so many fash adjacent politicians are popping up more and more?
I’m reminded of their support for that random Democrat from Hawaii. Turns out she was anti gay and pro intervention.
the ratchet continues on and on and on
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.
The DeSant!s supporters I know think it’s, quote, based that he wants war with Mexico.
Dunno why you’re getting downvoted, you’re 100% correct.
Most people aren’t on social media talking politics or thinking about any of this outside what they might overhear at church, from family/friends, on TV, shared on Facebook.
Yah the people I know haven’t even read a single thing about the “don’t say gay” bill nor have they even read 1 thing about the Trump documents. They call it a political hit job and I ask them about the specifics of the documents that were IN HIS BATHROOM and they legit hadn’t heard any of it lol. It’s because the media they consume actively avoid its.
I’d argue that MOST of these whackos are so disconnected from reality because all they listen to is pod casts and watch fox news. They don’t read articles written by actual journalists with sources.
Dude is trying so hard to appeal to Trump’s base, but it isn’t working.
Trump is a full blown cult of personality at this point, no one else will do. Maybe that’s a good thing since he doesn’t seem to have much time left.
Was really hoping that link was to the living color video
There’s a good chance his legacy will be even more dangerous.
😔
Should have changed his name like Pfrumps Grandpappy.
Nothing is more American than invading other countries and murdering their people.
*English. Ftfy
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.
Does the “Presidents approval rating increase during wartime” thing occur if you just loudly state “I’m gonna do a war if elected”?
It increases their approval rating with the military industrial complex lobbyists funding their campaigns, I’m sure.
Exactly. Wat is a very profitable business, and I’m sure Northrop and Raytheon would love some more revenue.
a fair chunk of the aid being sent to ukraine is already ending up in the pockets of defense contractors.
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.
Historically you have to campaign as being against the war but then promptly set about the business of creating a war once in office
Remember when Trump said in order to win the war against ISIS you also need to “take out their families”?
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.
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.
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No, it doesn’t always happen. Look to 2016 as an example. One of the talking points of Trump’s campaign was that Clinton would lead the U.S. to war with Russia.
Anecdotally, after the election, I was talking with a Trump voter who mentioned that Trump prevented us from going to war with Russia. Which fucking surprised me, considering conservatives are so fucking hawkish, and I did not know that idea was tossed around in conservative circles as a talking point.
So no, many elections in the U.S. have been won by candidates that back isolationist policies (primarily WWI and WWII as an example). It’s all inherently political and can take a very populist tone.
Before Trump they’d have loved war with Russia. It was them following the typical conservative “we all believe this now” rhetoric that changed that. Now Putin is a great example of an orthodox Christian and he’s doing great things for his country.
He heard they had pudding
Edit: apparently I’m a Russian bot lmfao
that’s probably a lot of sugar
Did someone say
Mmm humgwy!
Can we keep Russian memes out of politics please? it’s such a load of bullshit, it contributes nothing to the discussion and memes have been pushing propaganda since the first trump election. I really wish we (lemm.ee, but really everyone) would defederate from hexbear, it’s such a cesspool
That’s Ron Desantis’s face imposed the famous painting “Saturn Devouring his Son”. The son has been replaced with pudding to reference the time Ron ate a cup of pudding with his fingers.
Appreciate the description. Whats your take on why only hexbear users are replying to me?
we don’t have downvotes and we have an anti-lurker culture. so if we see a bad take, we reply. in this case you’ve thoroughly confused us with this “Saturn Devours his Son” is Russian take.
Can you not keep your culture inside your instance and stop disrupting people’s conversations elsewhere?
Absolutely not, no.
Wow, so you support authoritarian measures to destroy other cultures. OK tankie.
We can if people stop this “everything i don’t like is a Russian botnet” bs, i mean come the fuck on, do you seriously believe Russia is the only actor out there doing online propaganda? What do you think the CIA is for? Or the psyops branch of the USAF that was posting so hard an Airforce Base got an award for being the town most active on reddit? Or all these reactionary foundations like the Alliance Defending Freedom or the Heritage Foundation? The state-sponsored ones like the National Endowment for Democracy? The PR departments of oil companies spreading climate change denial? And that’s just a small part of who’s engineering public opinion in the US, wait till you see the shit the multitudes of European governments, parties, corporations and churches get up to, or the Gulf states with their vested interest in keeping fossil capitalism going. Yes, the Russian government obviously does that as well, as do private actors in Russia like Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev who both sponsor queerphobic and mysogynist groups all over the EU, but if you think that Russian disinfo campaigns are the only game in town, or even make up a plurality of disinfo funding, or that propaganda extends only to things you personally disapprove of, you need to wake the fuck up and realize that your view of the world is a dumbass James Bond movie from the 1980s.
We cannot
it’s on our front page
Yes, because you’re federated to Lemmy.ml, it doesn’t make this community your instances community.
look at this nerd who doesnt know how federation worksYou have no answers to why Saturn devouring his son as Ron devouring a pudding is somehow perceived as Russian.
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Because we cant tell if your post is satire or not and it confuses us.
Xi Jinping has put a posting hit out on you.
Our posting power is high and we are online a lot
We’re terminally online in ways you people wouldn’t believe.
Before Spez shut us down we were I think the third most active site on Reddit by posting velocity, after an NBA sub with 2.3 million people. We post in a completely different way that most online communities.
I get paid for every reply I post
Russian meme
I know you won’t care, but to anyone else curious what I mean when I specified “Russian”
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-propaganda-senate-report/
I’m aware of the existence of Russian “meme warfare” though I think its effect on politics in America is severely overstated.
But uh, how is this meme that you’re complaining about a “Russian meme”. Or are you just under the delusion that all political memes are Russian or something? How is making fun of Desantis for the pudding thing something Russians would do?
Plus their memes are boring. Our memes are much stronger.
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I dont know for fact, but I treat any political meme like it might. This combined with it not being relevant to the discussion would make me prefer to just not have them at all
I appreciate your comment though, it challenged assumptions without being egregious
I dont know for fact, but I treat any political meme like it might.
I don’t really think this is a rational or particularly healthy stance to take on political memes. I can maybe understand if your stance was just “keep the worldnews posts serious”, though I’d disagree with that too. But saying that you’re trying to avoid Russian influence by avoiding memes is… idk. Doesn’t really make sense to me. Political memes aren’t inherently Russian.
You also have to consider Russia’s like, motives here. I don’t really see a reason for them to want to make pudding jokes about DeSantis.
I appreciate your concern, but can assure you I’m mentally healthy
Vibes-based political analysis
So you refuse to use or enjoy ANY meme that is political? Because supposedly your countrymen are so stupid that they got swayed by foreign memes into voting for trump?
That is a line of reasoning I guess.
The weirder thing is is that I checked their post history and they said they’re conservative, though based on their fear of Russian memes I’m guessing a Never Trumper? Weird.
Yes
I dont know for fact, but I treat any political meme like it might. This combined with it not being relevant to the discussion would make me prefer to just not have them at all
Bro first of all it dont really matter what you want. Second of all it dont think its really healthy to assume any political meme you see is of russian origin lol thats bizarre and incredibly weird
🥰
The 4chaner pretending their meme magic was invoking ancient gods seem like they have a closer conrction to reality than whoever wrote that. Unless im an idiot and its satire in wich case great bit.
I’m really genuinely curious as to what the “Russian meme” you’re referring to is. The pudding finger thing?
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again,
US institutes could get their point across a lot better if they didn’t hide all their propaganda behind paywalls.
All I can read is the first paragraph.
Yo for real tho what are you talkin about? Is this russian meme?
Can we keep Russian memes out of politics please?
What’s wrong with Russian memes lmao
Are you scared of their memes?
this has to be a bit
if it isnt, fresh pasta
Maube russia sjpuldnt br funny then, how about tjat finnyman???
“They aren’t sending their best” used to be mask-off messaging that seemed too far.
