If you haven't read James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels, that's a strong recommend.
My point stands. He criticized Trump's action in Venezuela on the basis of "us vs them" political tribalism when it was simply a manifestation of realpolitik. Trump isn't thinking ideologically: his entire message to Venezuela was: you're in our hemisphere. You're our vassal state, so you're going to cease all hostile actions targeted at us, stop selling your oil to China and give it to us instead, and if you cooperate you'll have food on your store shelves again. And he sent that message in a way that cost the United States almost nothing. I fail to see why any American would be opposed to that move unless it was for ideological reasons.
And calling the drug-trafficking gun-banning communist "one of the only conservative governments in the western hemisphere?"
Some people never lear.
It looks like they were planning for this: I've seen reports from Minneapolis that there were at least four other attempts to get a car near a group of ICE agents, and every time there were a bunch of agitators right on site filming with their phones. They were trying to make this happen, and they had their signs and rent-a-mobs on standby for when it did.
Kalmar Union 2.0 for the win?
I also notice that on any points you lose, you simply ignore.
Confession through projection. I provided evidence to back up everything I've said about the Venezuelan regime. It's not my fault you can't be bothered to even look at any information input that might derail your increasingly hysterical narrative.
And there is still no US military in Venezuela.
Again, I don't see how you ever expected Trump to not assert US dominance in his own hemisphere and ensure that America's enemies were not able to make inroads into its own backyard. The Monroe Doctrine preceeds your neoconservatism bogeyman by 200 years. MAGA was never going to mean isolationism. What Trump promised was no more forever wars, and he has so far delivered.
Tucker asking if Trump wanted Maduro gone because he wouldn't allow gay marriage in Venezuela was not relatively mild: it was head-bashingly stupid.
You ask me how Venezuela is similar to Iraq. I answer you, both neocon regime change wars of aggression, and you reply "WELL, VENEZUELA HAS MORE SYLLABLES". That doesn't negate the similarities that I've pointed out.
I literally didn't say that. I explained to you that a single incursion and exfiltration is not in any way similar to a lengthy military occupation. I refuse to believe you are stupid enough to read that, then draw the conclusion you have drawn in the above statement, and am therefore forced to conclude that accusing me of lying is pure projection.
There are no similarities between Venezuela and Iraq. The more you try to say there are, the more you reveal your own broken psyche. US military involved, therefore Iraq is the same surface-level analysis spewing out of the mouths of every leftist Millennial who never left the year 2003.
From Smartmatic providing the software Dominion used to help rig the 2020 election, and likely numerous US elections before it, to Chavez releasing 250 000 felons from Venezuelan jails and sending them into the US to Maduro using his troops to protect drug trafficking boats headed for American shores, no self-respecting country that has the power to do something about it would ever allow that level of foreign aggression and interference to go unanswered. Trump cut the head off of it without incurring a single American casualty. This is what MAGA has always meant to MAGA voters. This is America First.
Do you think this strengthens your arguments?
Where's the lie, though?
I think that their criticism is that Trump does nothing actually populist, but is doing a lot of neocon things
Yes, literally everything the US does outside its own borders is neocon.
Because they helped Trump get into office
Nick Fuentes helped Trump get into office by repeatedly encouraging his audience not to vote for Trump, calling Tim Walz a real white guy and a sincere politician (02:22:20) and glazing Kamala's "brat" astroturf? Tim Pool helped Trump get into office by endorsing RFK? Candace Owens helped Trump get into office by endorsing Vivek?
and they expect him to honor his campaign pledges, instead of waging neocon wars for oil
It is not neocon for the US to assert its dominance in its own hemisphere. There is no liberal ideological push here to "spread democracy." Trump doesn't seem to care who runs Venezuela so long as they're not a Chinese puppet that traffics drugs into the United States, interferes in US elections and bribes US officials.
Unlike you and the Born Again neocon psychos.
Do you think this strengthens your arguments?
Yeah, doing nothing is better than doing stupid and evil things. This shouldn't be new to you if you're an adult.
Yes. Hey, Trump, there's a Chinese client state in our hemisphere that's one of the world's top cocaine producers responsible for funneling drugs into our country, and tampering with US elections. But it would be stupid and evil for you to take any action that might put a stop to that. Taking action against hostile powers that threaten US security and sovereignty is neocon, dontcha know?
What kind of MAGA did you think they were voting for?
Regime change in Iraq, regime change in Venezuela.
There is no ongoing US occupation of Venezuela. There was never a US occupation of Venezuela. There are no American troops in Venezuela. Let it go, man.
You couldn't be convinced that the sky is blue.
The sky is blue. I have seen pretty convincing evidence of that. I have seen no evidence that the US incursion into Venezuela bears even the remotest resemblance to the Iraq war, and I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. I invite you to try and convince me.
Yes, Maduro is very based. Here he is singing John Lennon's imagine right after daring Trump to go get him.
They might improve when you have access to Venezuelan oil.
Globalist US administrations weaponized the rules against Americans and their interests. I won't apologize for believing that Trump is different, and everything he just did with Venezuela supports that view from my perspective.
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The hand-wringing, pearl-clutching black-pilling talking heads who are whining about this action are the same concern-trolll mob that goes balls-to-the-wall with criticism every time Trump or any other populist does fucking anything. From Tim Pool to Tucker to Owens to Fuentes to Thomas Massie and Rand Paul to the Academic Agent and his black-pilled cabal of terminally-online losers, none of them were ever as vociferous in their criticism of Biden or any other globalist leader as they are of the populist right, and that's when they're not openly advocating voting for leftists. That you assert they believe the same thing they believed five days ago is nowhere near as significant as the fact that what they believe always conveniently leads them into fits of hysterical counter-signalling every time Trump does anything, and that the alternative they propose is always that he should have just done nothing instead.
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America weakened itself by wasting an enormous amount of time, resources and blood on a decades-long conflict in Iraq. And despite your efforts to compare the two situations, Trump has done the exact opposite of that here. They're not the same thing, and you can't convince me they are by just saying it over and over again.
My argument is that they already had lost their country. Whether their government is being run by a Chinese cartel or a cartel made up of American billionaires, it's not theirs. They voted Maduro out and he simply nullified the election and announced he was staying, all the while continuing to sell his country's resources to the CCP in exchange for also indebting his country to the CCP.
I'll keep repeating the point until you address it. If you're free to do whatever you want and there's nothing else anybody can do about it, how does that make you weak?
The misconception here is that the US action in Venezuela was simply a manifestation of American expansionism and not a response to expansionism by America's enemies. Venezuela was not just a self-contained hermit kingdom destroying itself with communism and not bothering anyone else. It was a CCP client state in America's backyard, being used as a base from which to coordinate Chinese interference in the US itself. Everything Trump does internationally is about curtailing Chinese interests. Yes, he did then decide that Venezuela's oil is his now, which is kinda shitty, but even that might end up enriching Venezuelans, considering how badly they were managing that resource before.
I'm not in a position to comment on the domestic benefits of Trump's policies, other than that he seems to have succeeded in closing the border and the anecdotal evidence is that millions of illegals have self-deported out of the country. He is waffling back and forth on the H1B thing and that is alarming, but internationally, he is much freer to act without being yanked in a hundred different directions by domestic political interests.
The Liberal ideology of the international rules-based order has, since its inception, been a straitjacket for the United States, designed to constrain America's ability to defend its own interests while everyone else brazenly ignored the rules in order to advance theirs. Whenever a US administration did commit to military action, their perceived obligations were used as a pretext to intentionally bog them down with multiple decades of obligatory forever war, which those administrations were of course fine with because they were on the take. What Trump just did has shown the world that he's not going to be constrained by that artificial framework.
I don't understand how anybody could have believed that America First meant that the United States would give free reign to China and every other global rival to fuck around in America's backyard without lifting a finger to stop them.
Once again, if Trump's actions have weakened America's position as much as you insist they have, then who is going to hold the United States accountable for it? I'm waiting to see Trump brought to justice for his crimes against international law. What are they going to do about it?
I'm not advocating for it. I'm pointing out that that's the world we're living in. Trump was never going to pull the US away from its dominance in the world, because that is what the globalist advocates of managed decline wanted America to do.
You're the one in a cult, Tony. The cult of the Petulant Eurotrash, who all seemed to believe and even hope that America First would continue to allow America's enemies to wage a clandestine war against US interests in their own backyard and not lift a finger to stop it. The same cult that is now exhibiting suspicious levels of impotent fury and desperate cope now that Trump has made it clear he's not going to do that.
As I said in another thread, if these brief military excursions by Trump are weakening the United States as much as leftists and so-called rightwing pundits are insisting they have, then I will wait patiently to see what the international community is going to do about it.
He made it clear throughout his campaign that he was no longer going to allow America's enemies to bribe and bully their way into America's sphere of influence, to flood the United States with illegal immigrants and drugs, to corrupt American officials and the leaders of other states within America's sphere of influence. I have already told you that that is what this was about. This move was targeted at Russia and China, as everyone can see, because they were the ones benefiting from Maduro's corruption and despotism. Venezuela was a major transit route through which the CCP were funding their drug trafficking i to the US and waging their ongoing shadow war against American interests and institutions.
You keep trying to paint this as an act of aggression by the United States, but it wasn't unprovoked. It was a retaliatory offensive in a war that was already ongoing, a war that China started. This is how wars are waged in the 21st century: through corruption, subterfuge and cultural and societal sabotage, and Trump has decided that he's not going to allow America's rivals to pull that shit in America's backyard.
The Dems may shriek about it, as will the RINOcons, because that's where they're getting much of their income from, but Trump's base are pretty universally fine with it.
It is absurd to pretend that Venezuelans are not predominantly happy about this intervention, given that they voted Maduro out of office so overwhelmingly that their votrss overcame his attempt to rig that election in his favour, so he simply nullified it and announced that he was staying in office anyway. Seven million people have fled Venezuela in the past decade to escape that regime, and Trump just cut its head off without a single civilian casualty. In spite of your increasingly desperate efforts to paint this as somehow equivalent to the Iraq and Afghan quagmire, this action has just demonstrated that Trump can and will wage war against a regime without needing to wage war against its people.
And even if the Venezuelans were not happy about this, it wouldn't matter. Not to Trump, and not to his voters. That's what I keep trying to tell you. America First does not and has never meant isolationism, because America could never maintain its power and dominance through those means. America First has always meant exactly what we're seeing: exerting dominance over trade and resources in America's sphere of influence without feeling any obligation to the interests of non-American polities. The strong do what they can, and the rest do what they have to.
Aside from the fedpilled "nothing ever happens" crowd in the stupid corners of the internet, Trump's supporters seem pretty universally happy with this move. Perhaps not quite as happy as the Venezuelans themselves are, but he has 85% support from Republicans right now. Despite the desperate black-pilling efforts from the groypers and other fed psyops, the MAGA base are pretty satisfied with Trump. They haven't been backstabbed: they're getting what they voted for.
I'm glad you could climb off your handler's cock long enough to join us in this thread.
Exactly this. This wasn't some neocon forever war aimed at spreading democracy to the Middle East. Venezuela is in the American hemisphere, and America's rivals don't get to set up puppet states in America's backyard to use as bases from which to flood the US with drugs, drug money and criminals, or to extract natural resources that the US needs for its prosperity. This was about securing the US's security and economic future.