Considering the former state AG lost the election to the felon facing two open-and-shut federal cases, I think the "law and order" label has to be retired.
On the plus side, nothing here is permanent, this guy is out in just over three years. How much more damage could he possibly do?
I do. Pretty certain he only ran to avoid being convicted in the Jan 6 and classified documents cases. Now he can pardon himself and even if the next DOJ prosecutes he can run out the clock.
Why do you think he will try to stay in office? Cause he said he might?
You think that he's afraid of going to prison only? Oh noo, house arrest in Mar-A-Lago for x amount of years due to "bad health".
I think the man is severely and uncurably addicted. Got his ultimate high and will do anything and throw anyone or anything under the bus to maintain that.
No I am saying this time around there is zero chance he gets convicted of anything before he dies, due primarily to the SCOTUS immunity decision for anything this term and the fact that self-pardons for prior crimes would require another trip to the Supreme Court.
> I think the man is severely and uncurably addicted.
How do you distinguish this from him rubber stamping other people's agendas and falling asleep all the time?
That is a lot of certainty for your vague intuition about his desires three years from now. Money is no longer a concern and he seems to play a lot of golf for someone drunk on power.
> USA is officially a roque state internally and externally
All of the great powers are. So are most of the regional powers. It's basically the EU and Brazil hanging on to the old rules-based international order.
It’s not a coping mechanism, it’s a reality-facing mechanism. What happens here and how the world responds both provides insight and will be a huge input into whether and how Xi Jinping decides to invade Taiwan.
> Never thought that whataboutism was going to be the coping mechanism
Not a coping mechanism and definitely not an excuse. Just a statement of reality. This doesn't make America special. America at least sometimes trying to uphold that system is what used to make it special. Now we're back to spheres-of-influence realpolitik.
Here in middle Europe the rumble is that it is time to BDS the United States. I hear this everywhere, on the streets, at parties, at work.
I guess it’s the only way the American people will get a grip, if the rest of the world starts punishing the US and its allies economically.
It’s going to be bumpy if/when it happens, but does anyone see any other way to reign in the warmongers? What say you, Americans? You are, after all, the only effective mechanism by which your own war mongers can be brought to justice. Everything else is doom.
Maybe its ruling class aren’t into it, but the people are pissed and have definitely had enough of the US’ shit. They’ve also had enough of the EU’s shit too, incidentally.
I would say we are not a Democracy and it doesn't matter who we vote for. I think it will take a full on dollar collapse to end it, and I think Washington would sacrifice every one of us to not lose grip on power.
> Perhaps Venezuela is just a reaction to the action that is already happening, namely a world-wide concerted effort to abandon the petrodollar…
The petrodollar hypothesis is obsolete. It has been since America became an oil exporter.
The way you're presenting it, it's never been the case. Petrodollars let America finance a massive military. The military gives it power. We aren't sanctioning Venezuela into submission. We're bombing it.
Also, oil has been traded in non-dollars for ages. I've personaly done it at a bank trading desk in Connecticut.
What, per your reckoning, is the petrodollar hypothesis?
I see it as the world starting to become very unwilling to trade anything at all with the US, and moving to other currencies and finance systems for trade and economic transfer.
> What, per your reckoning, is the petrodollar hypothesis?
Petrodollar recycling [1] backed by U.S. military might. It was a way, in the 1970s and 80s, for us to secure our oil supplies by e.g. guaranteeing the security of the House of Saud.
The point was securing oil. The dollar benefits were a side effect. The dollar is ascendant because we're massive consumers.
> I see it as the world starting to become very unwilling to trade anything at all with the US
This has nothing to do with the petrodollar!
> moving to other currencies and finance systems for trade and economic transfer
Sure. Folks talk about this. It has nothing to do with Venezuela. (Again, oil is traded in multiple currencies and has been for at least two decades.)
The dollar is ascendant because the rest of the world is forced to use it for trading purposes, under threat of military incursions or other forms of massive civil undoing, courtesy of the American MIC.
And the point is, the American consumer market means less and less to a world that is sick and tired of the suffering the American people bring to it.
>two decades
Yes, that’s the point, the world is moving off the US Dollar as a global currency, and this is why America needs more endless, endless war, and its why we have endless, endless war. The rest of the world sees this all too clearly now.
> I guess it’s the only way the American people will get a grip, if the rest of the world starts punishing the US and its allies economically.
I doubt that. It's far more likely to backfire into increased support for aggressive right-wing populism of the kind Trump peddles. It also seems doubtful that Europe could really afford that economically at the time when it's already in an open confrontation with Russia and not exactly on friendly terms with China.
> does anyone see any other way to reign in the warmongers? What say you, Americans? You are, after all, the only effective mechanism by which your own war mongers can be brought to justice.
We do not have an effective mechanism for that. Even if our democracy were truly functional, people have voted for candidates who promised no more wars for >15 years now, and yet here we are. Meaningful reforms that would _perhaps_ enable this require constitutional amendments, which have such a high bar as to be unattainable in this political climate. I don't think the system can recover, but it still has a lot of capacity to do damage as it breaks down.
There is a groundswell of activity among the European populations to bring these conflicts to an end. It’s there, but you won’t see it in the nightly news, you have to actually get out there and talk to people.
I just completed a tour of Italy, through 9 cities, and everywhere I discussed these issues I found that people are just sick and tired of the US’ (and Israels) bullshit, and they want to start divesting from these nations activities. This may not be visible for a few more months or even years, but I do believe there will be political ramifications on the horizon that might give us a bit of hope.
Note, I live in middle Europe, and this is a sentiment shared here as well…
Israel is easy to sanction economically speaking. US is a lot harder.
And I have no doubt that Europe can pull it off in principle. But can you afford that while also ramping up your defense spending to the levels necessary to stand up to Russia?
Europeans do not have as much invested in the “Russia is the enemy” meme as Americans do. Sure, there are easily-duped segments of European society who will just parrot this line from their American and British cousins, but there is a far greater segment who see peace with Russia as being the only reasonable approach going forward, returning to an era where Russia and Europe were actually economically aligned, able to work together, and thus profiting from the partnership. Not everyone outside the Western bubble believes that Russia is going to roll tanks into Berlin - only those who seek to profit from that fantasy, actually parrot it as a possibility. Many in Germany and other middle European states remember when Russians were actually decent trading partners, not so long ago, before the UK and the USA started to interfere in what was, to be fair, a pretty good deal for Europe - but not so great for the Brexiteers and American MIC profiteers.
If this results in Maduro leaving office with a small number of mostly military deaths, followed by the swift return of Venezuelan democracy, I would concede that the hawks made a good call this time. It is extraordinarily uncommon for US regime change wars to go that way and I don’t think this is going to be the exception.
(E: Honesty compels me to come back and say that it is looking somewhat likely I was wrong and will have to concede to the hawks.)
I bet the one that gets implemented by an invasion force will be great. It's a crisis that has to be handled internally by the populus of the country. Not by a country which leader implied he wants the natural resources of the country they are now "freeing from a dictatorship" or whatever cope you are coming up with in your mind.
