This week, Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, posted a condemnation of the Venezuelan ruler on Twitter. Prince has connections to the inner circle of Donald Trump, so his opinions about such things could reflect Trump’s opinion or may influence Trump’s opinion. He also linked to this New York Times puff piece on Venezuelan “opposition leader” María Corina Machado, which paints her as the Margaret Thatcher of South America.
The quotes around the term “opposition leader” are because there is nothing authentic about María Corina Machado. Like Juan Guaidó, who preceded her as the official opposition leader, Machado is largely a product of the American foreign policy machinery, which produces these figures on demand. The United States intelligence community runs a complex program to select, filter and groom opposition candidates for just about every country on the globe.
That is not to say Machado is not a real Venezuelan, but that like most of these American made opposition leaders, she is more comfortable in an American faculty lounge than on the streets of Caracas. This was the problem with Juan Guaidó, who is now driving an Uber in Miami. The people who select and groom these people select and groom people who are compelling to them, rather than the target audience, which is why they tend not to do so well in their home country.
It speaks to the insularity of the American managerial elite, as well as to the poverty of human intelligence. They never think about why Nicolás Maduro remains popular, despite the conditions in the country. He may not have majority support, it is impossible to know, but he has a strong base of support. The same was true of Hugo Chavez, who preceded Maduro. The American elites just see a thug and assume everyone sees the same thing, so he must be illegitimate.
That is not to say Maduro is a good ruler. By objective measures, he is a terrible ruler, outside of his ability to survive American regime change efforts. Otherwise, his policies have been terrible, and they have helped plunge his country into economic collapse, resulting in a flood of people out of the country. It is a disgrace that the American government has not been able to do anything to address this problem. After all, this is the backyard of the American Empire.
Since President Monroe first articulated it in his State of the Union address, it has been the official policy of the United States to protect and safeguard the countries of the Western hemisphere. At first it was intended to defend them against the colonial powers of the Old World. In the 20th century, it evolved to include protecting the people of the New World from their own rulers. Controlling guys like Maduro used to be a primary mission of American foreign policy.
It is not as if America has not tried to regime change Venezuela. It just so happens that Maduro is better at being gangster than the gangsters in Washington. This gets to another problem with American foreign policy. In the old days, when the people making policy traced their family line to the Mayflower, dollar diplomacy and clever statecraft were used to manage these problems. These days, the people making policy can only think of using force to get their way.
That is where you see other problems turning up in South America. China just opened a massive new port in Peru, which will allow it to service the South American market and buy lots of new friends in the region. Chinese companies have acquired concessions for two of the five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal. China is investing billions into infrastructure projects in and around the canal. Of course, China and Brazil are partners in BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative.
While The Lobby demands the Levant get all the attention of the American empire, the neocons demand Russia get all the attention and the China hawks demand Taiwan get all the attention, the backyard of the American Empire is ignored. This is in spite of the fact that the two major problems facing the United States have their source south of the Rio Grande. The flow of drugs and migrants into the country is entirely due to neglecting American duties in the hemisphere.
Donald Trump’s focus on immigration suggests he will make the Western Hemisphere a priority again, but it remains to be seen if the foreign policy establishment will go along with it or rethink its tactics. Thirty years of thuggery not working should cause some rethinking, but these are people who struggle to learn from failure. The tone of that tweet from Erik Prince is not encouraging. Perhaps it will take another failed regime change effort to change some minds.
What is happening in South America is a microcosm for what has been happening with the American Empire since the Cold War. Everything close to home is ignored in favor of distant ventures on the periphery of the empire. Policy makers in Washington think more about infrastructure in Ukraine than in the United States. The lack of a response to the hurricane in North Carolina is a great example. If that happened in Armenia, the empire would have swung into action immediately.
In the area of foreign policy, the empire has been doing what it has done with regards to domestic policy. The focus is always on what is furthest away and has the least impact on the citizens. Buckets of tears are shed over “refugees” entering illegally while the millions of Americans poisoned by drugs are ignored. Millions are spent on “securing the safety” of imaginary online communities rather than on the actual safety of the food supply or the physical health of the American people.
The same hollowing out of American culture and the physical homeland has been happening with foreign policy. Trillions are spent trying to change ancient cultures around the globe, while the problems in our backyard are neglected. The Panama Canal matters far more to Americans than Gaza, yet the former is neglected, while the latter is an obsession. As with domestic neglect, there will be a cost to ignoring our backyard in favor of the other side of the world.
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Biden’s quick jaunt to Peru perfectly illustrates the so-called elite’s deliberate malign neglect of “the homeland”. The AdMin, in its infinite wisdom and makeshift jjiggery that now passes for diplomacy, offered Peru a rail transport system to compete with the brand new deep water port China is building there. Not to be outdone in showing good will, the US offered an entire set of USED CalTrans trains that happened to be sitting in the second hand junk yard. Nothing like sending one’s hand-me-downs! But more to the point, you can be sure one of Gavin’s pals pocketed some dough on… Read more »
“ Everything close to home is ignored in favor of distant ventures on the periphery of the empire. Policy makers in Washington think more about infrastructure in Ukraine than in the United States. ” As I’ve stated previously, this is not simply “oversight”. It is a “feature” and desired. The closer to home such actions are designed to take effect, the easier they can be observed and judged as to their proposed success. For example, one can pass a bill to fund rebuilding infrastructure in Ukraine and have it stolen by the oligarchs and rapacious companies in the US far… Read more »
Yes indeed, Compsci.
It is a feature. It’s why they love proposing remedies for the “climate emergency”, as there is no real way to ever determine the success of such remedies.
Success is whatever they say it is.
Lord have mercy.
Exactly correct.
All the, “War on Nebulous Target,” schemes mean infinite funding with no responsibility for results.
Infinite funding means infinite grifting.
I remember noticing this when Obama was trying to pass tax increases “on the rich”, which he got through. Literally nothing changed in any way, at all. There was no more money for dem programz, no more resources to make the country better, it didn’t change the economic structure of the USA at all, it didn’t help with income inequality, it was just more money that may or may not have gone into the maw. Whenever I see a liberal talk about muh 90% tax rates during the Kennedy years, I point out that the feds take in the same… Read more »
I’m supportive of high progressive tax rates for one reason, income inequality in the 50s as compared to now. As far as I can tell, the tax rates are the major difference from then to now. If it helps reverse income inequality, then that’s good enough for me. Besides that, it would hit the people who have financialized the economy the hardest.
It’s my hope that eventually wages will go up enough so that a one-income household becomes the norm again. That would solve a lot of problems that we’re inflicted with now.
The reason for our mass inequality today as compared to the 1950s isn’t the tax rates imo, it is feminism and mass immigration. Feminism effectively doubled the workforce, and allowed companies to keep pay low under the assumption that both the husband and wife will be working to maintain the household. The elites crushed the value of a blue collar career by importing tens of millions of third worlders to compete against everyone without a college degree. Now they are trying to do it to the people with college degrees.
I’m much more concerned about government spending rather than tax rates. Back in the 60’s India reformed itself when government spending hit 20% of GDP. Today the Fed’s account for 20-25% of the GDP with State and local coming in at an additional 10-15%!
This bodes poorly. Not only for efficiency, but for freedom from the “nanny state”.
We’re 🇺🇸 not ignoring Latin America, certainly not Mexico, we’re absorbing Mexico, for example. Imperialism is an ugly business. Taking over the Western Hemisphere is as natural and indeed as inexorable for us 🇺🇸 as Rome absorbing Italy. Venezuela is comic foil villain complete with mustache. However ….and to Mr. Prinz… Given a choice between war with nuclear powers across the ocean and non nuclear powers close to home, given a large foreign policy community and many mercenaries driving Ubers ‘tis it not better to point these respectively rapacious and dangerous people in a safe direction? BTW I have heard… Read more »
Good articles have benefited a lot!
“a product of the American foreign policy machinery, which produces these figures on demand.”
As you say, there’s always someone who went up to Oxford, or Harvard, or Yale, who cleans up well in a suit and tie waiting for the revolution that never comes.
The Karzai family (Hamid, President of Afghanistan) ran a top-notch Afghan restaurant in Cambridge MA. Maybe they still do.
Check this out, Z:
The Most MAGA Place On The Planet: The State Of West Virginia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgC6uC8IUvc
This is why the counter elite supports Trump. Latin America full stop is filled with strategic resources that the US in the new cold war must have domination over: lithium, uranium, oil, copper, iron ore, etc. As well as rare earth metals, and other things like food and cotton. The world is breaking up into trading blocs, and its driven by both counter elite oligarchs and elements of the managerial state who see defense slipping away under social spending going to 100% of the budget in immavasion, and the old boutique military failing spectacularly in Ukraine and Yemen. Prince is… Read more »
That whackadoodle Jaguar commercial can be found here:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/jaguar-cars-butchers-its-iconic-reputation-disgusting-woke/
What kind of warped minds come up with this?
On another note, what happened to the thumbs up-thumbs down ratings?
It’s like a Zoolander parody…lol
There may be sveral things going on at once: 1. Maduro did quite openly steal the 2024 election. He didn’t win it honestly; he had to have his thugs seize the ballots and then ignore the local vote counts. 2. His opponent almost certainly is U.S.-supported. 3. Our regime is not actually a monolith, however much it may seem like one to unimportant dissidents like we posting here. There is a faction in the current U.S. government that’s been appalled by the disastrous consequences of America’s 2020 election fraud, and who tried to intervene in Venezuela 2024 as a warm-up… Read more »
TPTB pulled out of the 2024 fraud about 10 days prior. That’s what the WaPost non endorsement of Harris was about. They couldn’t close the fraud margin gap and shifted to down ballot fraud.
Garland is probably like a lot of Democrats who drank their own bath water on the polling. Garland would never be told about fraud. His job is just to not investigate it when it happens.
I don’t follow that they couldn’t close the fraud margin. Looking at the turnout, they very well could have. Trump didn’t come anywhere close to Biden’s numbers. Yet, anyway. Counting votes evidently takes a really, really long time. Anyhow, to be ‘too big to rig,’ it would have had to be a lot bigger than it has been. GA, WI, MI, NV were all plenty close enough for fraud to have switched them if that was the goal. Maybe PA and NC too. Probably not AZ, making Gallego’s victory all the more questionable. I have this notion that they had… Read more »
But you have to remember that Biden did not get 81M votes and could not have received that many votes without COVID lockdowns. Structurally, they could not do what they did in 2020 without getting caught. There’s no chance they wheel in 100,000 votes at 3am this time around. Attempts at fraud in PA were quickly shut down by judges – like the “election protectors” sending people home who were standing in line and the people in Bucks County trying to count illegal ballots and then bragging about it. Unlike last time, various groups had people inside the ballot tabulation… Read more »
Fedguv doesn’t have jurisdiction over mail in ballots. It’s a state thing. Unless they can find a legal mechanism (a la the CRA) to insert themselves into state election law.
Once the US intel-community writ large is done fixing the problem between Russia and Ukraine – it’s not clear if there’ll even be anything left to fix in this hemisphere. And if there is, if I were living in any of those countries I’d be inclined to say thanks but no thanks to any US intel jug head offer of help to fix a pot hole, let alone anything of real importance.
I don’t remember all the details and I’m too lazy to look it up, but if I remember correctly, the US government recognized the shadow puppet government of Venezuela after the last election. That shadow government authorized ownership of Citgo being stripped from Venezuela to settle a civil judgment in the United States courts. I don’t know all the details, but it seemed wrong to me on so many levels. Here we go again, abrogating property rights, which are the backbone of the US economy. Unlike other banana republics around the world, your assets were supposed to be safe here.… Read more »
Latin America is simply not a top obsession of the tribe (as are Israel and Ukraine) nor does it play an important role in the US being the dominant global player. So the top priorities are Iran, Russia and China.
The only enthusiasm the GAE can seem to muster concerning LA are defeating Madero and Bukele and using unrest in LA to flood the US with invaders. so no downside.
Eventually China’s rise in LA will panic them but not until Iran is dealt with and they figure an exit from Ukraine
I don’t think that the Tribe is that interested in China either. Neither the neocons nor The Lobby care that much. China is more a white guy obsession. This will be a coming fight. The neocons and The Lobby will want to keep the focus on the Middle East and Russia while the Pentagon will want to focus on China.
I think the happy merchant class is finally realizing that the, “Hello, my fellow Han Chinese!” trick doesn’t exist.
Among my Jewish relatives who were “political” when I was a kid in the ’80s, Latin America was an obsession and source of family arguments. 20th century communism was a Jewish cause, of course. Supporting it everywhere was a racial obligation (or a religious one if that rhetoric would work better). Latin American anti-communism was Jewish too, because “third worldism” is bad for business. The browns take Lenin too seriously. There’s no legalistic parsing of Marx in Managua. So a lot of valuable farm and ranch land was expropriated during leftist revolutions. That land belonged to…landowners. You’ll still find some… Read more »
Printing fiat currency has kept the plates spinning for decades now, but debasement cannot continue forever. And those chickens will come home to roost starting later this year. Real hardship will return and only then can we begin to self-correct. And this repair can be fast or slow. Slow means prolonged misery before redemption. Faster is better, but it means the pathogens must go and than won’t be pretty. It has always been thus.
This is what happens when you let foreigners into the country and government. They pursue their interest, not yours.
Latin America and Brazil are close but very difficult to understand. Brazil is a huge, diverse place, they speak Portuguese and had a totally different colonial experience versus the others. LatAm is comprised of 16+ countries each with their own ethnic mix, industries, elites, political differences, not to mention historical grudges. Nobody in Washington is going to try to understand all this stuff (beyond the obvious interest in raking the cocaine/drug trade). During the Cold War, US banks lent loads of dollars to most of these countries. So we developed a banking class that understood these countries at least a… Read more »
‘Local neglect’ is an understatement. China has a strong foothold in Latin America. In Costa Rica, for example, the Commies ‘gifted’ C.R. a shiny new sports stadium in San Jose, the capital city, and receives numerous concessions therefrom. There are endless Chinese-operated supermarkets and stores throughout the nation. It’s about establishing presence and intel, much more than a foot-in-the-door. The C.R. government is down with this. The ticos? Not so much. Largely, they dislike the ‘chinas’. Washington? They’re too busy spreading wokeness, homosexuality, and feminism throughout the planet. Priorities, doncha know. The Russian military camps out in Nicaragua, and the… Read more »
“The U.S. no longer is a serious country, and everybody knows it except Washington.”
Actually i think they know it also, that is why all they do is loot the country and put the bill on the FEDS balance sheet.
I’ve noticed that the TV commercials have stopped pushing mixed race black+white couples lately. The past few weeks I’ve been bombarded with oriental+white couples.
The coming Jewish hapa overclass is the regime’s *other* fantasy.
It’s not really working out. Out of all the combinatorial possibilities, actual Jewish hapas tend toward “extremely goofy-looking psychological cripple,” not “articulate Keanu Reeves.” The girls come out better, usually, but women are commissars, not rulers.
Another failed experiment.
I wish I could say I’ve noticed the same thing, but I haven’t. Black-white couples remain predominant. The more ridiculous ones are those with fairly normal looking white men married to overweight black women. As if!
Also, the “suave, successful, but non-threatening black man who is quite obviously cooler than the awkward, neurotic white man” genre is still going strong.
I’ve not noticed such, but only see cable with ad’s. What I have seen is the made for TV stuff that has obligatory mixed race sexual interaction scenes. Then the next step down is to cast Black characters in basically White roles, or roles where the race differences necessity cannot be explained—except to simply be blind wrt casting. I’ve always assumed they were of British origin as I hear they have such a movement/agreement among producers. There is however a continued insistence on the majority of mixed race couples being Black man and White woman—8 out of 10 times. I… Read more »
I’ve been noticing it on streaming, so it could be based on my personal preference. They probably hear me yelling at the TV.
Ray – as they say in CR – pura vida.
Cheers, Stranger.
The presumption of American interventionism is that the empire has something to offer. However, everything our current rulers gets involved with turns to shit. The premise of offering asylum to refugees is that their families will be better off in America. Instead, the wives turn into raging feminists and the children into gang-bangers. The deportees then spread this miasma in traditional Latin American societies which had no mechanisms for coping with them. The violent alien gangs now taking over American neighborhoods learned their methods from our own ghettos.
Probably be more accurate to say that during the 20th century US policy was to protect its installed leaders in Latin America from the wrath of the people (e.g., Nicaragua’s Somoza). What’s good for United Fruit is good for the USA.
For maybe the last two decades China has been encroaching on the turf of USA’s backyard. In the words of Don Corleone, they’re making offers that can’t be refused. The bankrupt and increasingly backward US empire has nothing to offer remotely comparable.
China offers economic benefits with no questions asked, no demands for democracy or gay rights and no military threats The USA makes demands and threats. Who wouldn’t prefer the Chinese deal?
Most Viet Nam and GWOT veterans will tell you with at straight face that their wars would’ve been won if “only the gloves came off!”.
There are limits to military power. Israel can bounce the rubble in every school house, apartment building, hospital, and day care center but at the end of the day there are 10 million Israelis surrounded by a billion Arabs who don’t much care for them.
Eric Prince has a strain of the “give me unlimited martial material and I can murder our way to security” in his eye.
I think there’s some truth to that veteran attitude. Vietnam, in particular. But what exactly would have been “won”? That’s the bigger question than whether or not it could have been. “Taking off the gloves” against Germany and Japan ultimately led to watching this far flung empire being mismanaged by credentialed retards and sycophants, although I guess a lot of the right people got rich along the way. Much less than that likely would have been “won” in Vietnam or Iraq.
This seems correct. We might have forced an effective demilitarized zone, cessation of conflict, and time to organize a capitalistic State as we did in South Korean. However, given that China succumbed to a mixed economic system (Who’d have thought at the time?), Vietnam has as well, and with great results. Hard to think of a “better” outcome for Vietnam. Asians are capitalists at heart. We wasted 50k lives and a trillion dollars in the folly of Americanizing Vietnam.
If the travel bloggers can be believed, the younger Vietnamese have largely forgotten the war and do not hold it against the American people.
I suppose that’s one small blessing in the aftermath of that completely unnecessary, tragic conflict.
There was a video blogger making the rounds of Vietnam after getting kicked out of China. In Hanoi there was an American flag display (created in rocks or flowers, I forget) at the end of one of the main street intersections. Basically announcing to the world Vietnam was open for business—Americans *need* apply. 😉
Since then I’ve heard of companies fleeing China due to better offers from Vietnam. Seems to match the “country of origin” markings I see more and more often on products I buy.
I was in Vietnam (backpacking) in 2002 and already at that point being American was a huge plus from Hanoi to Saigon
“Vietnam, in particular.”
Really? I view that as wasted lives. Hell they sell you the shoes you wear these days, wasted lives and lost jobs to boot.
It took the Northern Alliance at least 100 years to truly “liberate” the South in the USA (Civil War to 1960’s Civil Rights legislation and “integration” by armed troops aiming guns at unarmed school children).
Same language, race, history, culture, government, religions, etc.
Yet Americans still persist in thinking that bombing the every loving crap out of “Enemy X” 6,000 miles away and separated by vast oceans will work in a couple of months.
A few years, tops.
Where they have completely foreign languages, races, history, culture, religions, government, etc.
Insanity.
ProZ, you gotta admit, the GAE’s success at transforming Germany into a nation of pliant pacifist wussies has been extraordinary. And it hardly took a decade. This was what fueled their hubris in thinking they could do it everywhere. And maybe they could have, if they were willing to kill as many everywhere else as they did in Germany. Without that qualification being met, we’ll never really know for sure.
“Can’t win a war if you don’t try!” 🤔 – the MIC My mom to this day refuses to buy Exxon gas. She and my dad (Navy) had a lot of friends fighting in Vietnam. They often told stories about how the shooting would stop so fuel trucks – Exxon – could drive north. I think it was her first of many red pills hearing that from combat veterans she and my dad respected. I think a lot of people on our side assume that Trump will just knee jerk support Israel’s military actions. But his record is the Abraham… Read more »
I posted a link to that Weiss Thiel interview a couple of days ago. Pertinent to today, Thiel spent several minutes making the case for why Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. Ironically, because Israel has the weapon plus those of the US, it is the exact reason why in Tehran’s view they must get it – as a deterrant. In any case, Iran is going to be a major focus of the GAE. It almost feels like even though the neocons have been renounced formally by Trump and Thiel and others, it isn’t a change of policy, strategy… Read more »
Pressuring Iran so they will not get the bomb will only result in them getting the bomb. The religious leaders do not want a bomb for religious reasons, but they have said that if Iran or the regime is threatened, then they will allow it. The Obama people understood this, which is why they made the deal with Iran, but then Trump junked it. One of the enduring aspects of our foreign policy is the steadfast refusal to learn anything about the rest of the world.
If Israel’s actions since Oct. 7 and Trump’s cabinet don’t convince Iran to get the bomb, I’m not sure what will.
Agreed. Thiel’s case was that the bomb would allow Iran to use its networks across the Middle East to intervene in foreign countries.
It is all projection. Israel and its North American vassal having the bomb allow them to meddle across the Middle East in exactly the fashion disapproves of.
The bomb would give Iran a deterrent and hopefully lessen shenanigans by both sides.
The GAE is a belligerent force. Per your article today you make the great point. It is belligerent toward its own people, and hated by its own people as much as by people abroad.
“ One of the enduring aspects of our foreign policy is the steadfast refusal to learn anything about the rest of the world.” Certainly that is true, but is such a complete answer? Could it not be that we view the rest of the non-Western world (with perhaps the exception of sub Sahara Africa) through a filter? A lens that views people and cultures in terms of American ideals and culture? In other words, scratch the surface and you’ll find an American waiting to come out? Seems that we assume some sort of pathological equalitarianism—not only at home, but abroad.… Read more »
I don’t believe the sincerity of the fatwa against nuclear weapons. It did not ever stop Pakistan from getting nukes nor several other Muslim countries from trying. And it seems very inconsistent that a religion as war-like as islam would forego the most potent weapon of the age. They were perfectly happy to supplement scimitars with cannons and other firearms back in the day. Deceit is also allowed under Islamic law. They’re not exactly Amish when it comes to weapons technology
“It did not ever stop Pakistan from getting nukes nor several other Muslim countries from trying.”
But aren’t they Sunnis? Iran is Shiite.
“ Now it all adds up. You import helots. You pay them. Germany, sodden in debt, gets bus drivers…” I must comment on the irony of this observation. I can remember being in the Netherlands in1968 and even at that early date, the Dutch were talking about the “Turks” who were imported to fill labor shortages and now that the country had stabilized and was in less need of foreign manual type labor, the Turks could not be repatriated—albeit they were never citizens nor promised citizenship. They were simply guest workers, who at the termination of their work contracts, simply… Read more »
I want to add something here. The GAE offers a very powerful and seductive fruit – unprecedented personal affluence. Nobody is immune to it. The American people fell for it first and are now awakening to its nightmare. Affluence is not bad but it isn’t a cure-all and it has its darkness. That fruit is going to be bitten by the world who all want a bite. We must stop with blaming and whining and complaining about Jews. We must look at them and see why they are best suited for an order like what exists and will perpetuate for… Read more »
Great comment. I miss the up vote button
Yes what happened to the up/downvote button?
inquiring minds want to know
I was about to say the same thing. RR’s comment is what the upvote button was made for!
The holy grail of business models is getting the bulk, or even all, of your revenue from fedguv. Because it prints the unlimited free loldollars, the customer never runs out of money. Demand never wanes. In bygone days of yore this was more limited to defense contractors and construction companies building infrastructure, but now everybody is getting in on that act while the getting is good, and every day coming up with new and ingenious ways to play this angle. The average person has little concept of what is happening, such as wal mart paying to import wogs, get them… Read more »
The one downside of taking fedbux is that, when the rubber hits the road, they own you lock, stock, and barrel.
Wild Geese, I think it’s a valid question who owns whom, and has been for some years
JZ-
Oh, for sure.
Near the end of my time in the MIC it was astounding to see how much of our information technology infrastructure was being moved to the Microsoft cloud.
It eventually got to the point where it was impossible to tell where our firm ended and Microsoft/the government began.
“It almost feels like even though the neocons have been renounced formally by Trump and Thiel and others, it isn’t a change of policy, strategy and tactics but rather just a change of who is running the show.” ?? Neocons want the Iran war more than anyone else. Their policies and the Israeli policies align.
The priorities of the US foreign policy establishment are obscene and absurd. I guess there is no money to be laundered through wars in South America.
Steve Sailer has been pointing out the absurdity of the US neglect of Mexico and South America since W invaded Iraq. What happens south or the Rio Grande matters more to the US than what happens in the Mideast.
Indeed. Mexico is the key, then drift down to middle Americas. South America may be lost. Hell, half of MX is already living here.
There is a saying something to the effect of do-gooders can’t see the children begging in their own streets but they worry endlessly about children at the other end of the Earth. This just shows that it’s about holier than thou moral narcissism
Goes back a ways. Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby caricatured the type.
Just one more example, as if more are needed, as to how corrupt, incompetent and evil the US government is – and has been, for a long time. Nothing that would actually benefit the American people as a whole is given the least bit of consideration, because DC doesn’t give a s***. They’re going to do what they want to do and nothing else matters. They don’t even try to sell these clusterf**** to the populace anymore – the hoi poloi be damned. They need a huge roundhouse to the metaphorical kisser – in whatever form that takes…
Yeah, Z’s comment about the empire being unable to imagine an appealing leader in Venezuela reminded of the same government trying to get a prostitute elected as president of their own government.
“The people who select and groom these people select and groom people who are compelling to them, rather than the target audience.” Sounds like the Democrat Party nominating process. Which speaks to regime attitudes in general. You see similar qualities in the handpicked “leaders” of Canada, UK, Germany, list goes on. Giving up any degree of control is unthinkable, thus we get the handpicked candidates and “leaders,” who will always protect regime interests, rather than candidates the people might want who could be less reliable for the actual regime. Somehow Trump broke through that, in part because the Republicans are… Read more »
Talk about a crisis of competency, I would think our policy makers realize that it’s not helping to regime change Venezuela by providing a relief valve that lets thousands of disgruntled and miscreant Venezuelans flood into the U.S. But here we are, checkbook diplomacy instead, as usual. They want to have their cake and eat it too, upend a foreign country while disrupting their own simultaneously. Even though it may have cost them the election. What a strategy!
Protected by two oceans, the U.S. has not had to worry overmuch about Eurasian powers stepping to it. That left the local governments of the Americas as potential enemies. Yet, since Mexico invaded Texas, there has not been one single nation in the Western Hemisphere willing and able to stand up to America. The United States, spoiled for choice and with a plethora of good options, cannot seem to make real friends in the region. Only Canada seems to like America, and Canada is a mirror-clone of American society. Of course you like yourself, ensconced in a dreamworld of Hollywood… Read more »
Having spent a few years in the DC bubble as a youth (though admittedly as a low-level outsider), it’s hard to describe how little those people cared about Americans and even less about Mexico and South America. Sure, there was the Jewish contingent, but the goys were just as bad. If they thought about normal Americans at all, it was disdain, but, generally, they didn’t think about them at all, except for how to trick them into voting for so and so. They’re domestic world was the DC, Philly (lots of Jews from Philly), NYC, Boston (sort of) and LA.… Read more »
@ZMan – Neglect?
At some point, I think you will find it simpler and easier to explain these many Many overseas policies that each contribute to damage the cohesion, prosperity, peace and survival of the USA (e.g. Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, South America… you name it) as Not a matter of “neglect”, nor of incompetence (because “errors” are, somehow, Always in an adverse-to-the-USA direction) – but instead a matter of deliberate, strategic malice.
Maduro may not be a good ruler, but he was bright enough to seize the opportunity to empty his prisons and send his worst to the US.
Maduro also emptied his asylums, like Castro…So the US also got the criminally insane as well as the gangbangers…Biden’s insane policies have definitely made a better Venezuela!
And Venezuela won’t willingly accept a return of these criminals and nutcases….
Accepting your “scum” back. There’s where I’d use the military and hit them hard. Imagine a flotilla and a “D-day Invasion” sort of landing where the thousands setting foot on shore are IA’s being repatriated. One can dream…..
The US Navy may be obsolete in certain respects, but it could do a fine job of blockading the ports and interdicting the airspace of nations sending us drugs and migrants. Same with the Peruvian/Chinese port. No ground troops required, except maybe an occasionally punitive Marine unit, for educational purposes.
Make Banana Wars Great Again!
That might work, but it is likely to be counter-productive. It will only increase the incentive to leave and come here.
What we need is akin to a “fly paper” strategy – help them over there so we don’t have to support them over here. But that means doing actually helpful things like infrastructure and fair deals (like the Chinese).
The USA spends collectively something like $1.2-$1.5 trillion a year on law enforcement and the military at all levels. It could do a lot more than it does, it just chooses not to. Just the other day I saw an article about how the FBI is circulating memos about the Venezuelan gangs setting up shop across the USA. The idea that this entire apparatus can do little more than watch and send emails to itself is ridiculous. The only conclusion one can possibly come to is that they want these drug gangs, traffickers, and other criminal enterprises here, making life… Read more »
The group that runs the empire doesn’t see America as “home”.
It is only an increasingly antique and irrelevant segment of this thing who continue to entertain fantasies of co-existence with them.
It’s not just the Jews. The Goys don’t see all of America as their home either – and haven’t for decades. To them, the bulk of America is just some unsophisticated hinterland filled with rednecks and Dollar Generals.
I forget who it was, I think one of those Frankfurt School Jews, who wrote about traveling cross country by train. Seeing all of those small towns in flyover country horrified him. He saw them as a threat.
I’ll make a plug for a relatively recent book, Robert Plomin’s “blueprint”, which basically is a well written survey of the state of evidence for the notion that aggregate human behavior is downstream of genome. The ‘science’ is settled. Blank slatists have lost their war against reality. The “Frankfurt School Jews” and all their fellow travelers are never going to change. THEY CANNOT CHANGE. They are who they are, and because of this there can never be peaceful coexistence within the same polity. Either we separate or one of us is going to go extinct. MAGA MAMA -> Make Aliya… Read more »
I think Marco Rubio’s nomination as sec. of state is a result of Trump’s desire to refocus and repair relations among our southern neighbors. It would also get him out of the senate (DiSantis will appoint his successor), and it would place him in a position to use whatever “strengths” he possesses. The heavy lifting in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast will belong to Trump personally, as these are some of the most vexing issues of our time.
Up until his alleged conversion to the Trump side, Rubio’s plan was to engage in neocon foreign policy escapades in Central and South America. He was desperate to invade Venezuela when he ran for President in 2016. I don’t know how sincere is his adjustment has been to the Trump worldview, but hopefully with the focus shift comes a shift in tactics as well.
I gather that Tegucigalpa is not as prestigious or pleasant a posting as Tel Aviv, Paris or Beijing and speaking Spanish is declasse.
Yeah, I’ve been there. It is a very dangerous place. It was a long time ago, but from what I’ve heard, it has gotten worse, not better.
Yet very close by across the border, El Salvador has gotten suddenly and dramatically safer.
Our future AG Gaetz mentioned Bukele in an approving statement. He knows, which is STAGGERING progress. However, the culling of the genetic and memetic defectives that is necessary MUST be done one’s own people for it to be sustainable and supported. There is no way in hell any foolish civnat MAGA types are going to be able to pull it off against our internal fake-American riff-raff here in AINO.