And you just fabricated this whole thing. By the way, if that was an attack by Ukraine on Russia, then you just accepted that Donbass is part of Russia, and has been for some time.
But by the same token - the obstruction of federal agents who are carrying out their lawful mandate was also in that same place.
True, the implementation was messed up. Those unlawful deportation cases should have been the ones to protest. Not demonizing all of ICE or flying Mexican flags.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with flying Mexican flags. Americans fly flags of other countries all the time. There are English flags all over a nearby pub in my area. Heck, there is an entire national holiday for celebrating the Irish—a holiday for which the Defense Department made an exception to its policy of avoiding cultural observances.
The overreach by the current administration is what is driving the volume of protest activity. Specifically the high-volume targeting of lawful residents and Hispanic-looking citizens, and the “show your papers” geographical sweeps—none of which fit typical American notions of what is lawful.
To some extent this overreach is intentional, as an exercise in generating social media content, and to intentionally make people upset as a pretext for deploying greater levels of force.
It also seems politically performative since the current administration is focusing efforts in Chicago, Minnesota, Maine, etc, not Texas or Florida where there are far more undocumented immigrants.
There were protests against the Obama deportation campaign but they were far smaller because the campaign itself stayed within bounds that fit most people’s notions of lawfulness and propriety. They also did not make the huge mistake of deciding in advance to all-out defend every single bad decision by every law enforcement agent. That alone is a huge factor in the pushback that officials are getting, even from GOP and 2A leaders.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with flying a Mexican flag - if you are trying to create a lighting rod to attract all the anti-immigrant vitriol. It's the same kind of dumb as "defund the police" - actively harmful.
And I strongly suspect that if I flew a Russian flag in the very liberal and tolerant Bay Area my house might just accidentally catch fire. Despite my right to do so.
You know the truth full well, but insist on perpetuating the myth of genius Ukrainians and dumb Russian orcs.
The USSR had a policy of distributing economic development over its entire area instead of concentrating it in one place. Once a high-tech facility was built, it would be staffed by specialists recruited from all over the Soviet Union. They would be offered generous relocation assistance.
Now, I am not saying that Ukrainians are dumb or anything like that. What I am saying is that in a centrally planned economy the location of a project is chosen according to different criteria.
Where did I say russians are dumb? The claim I am disputing is a myth that Ukraine was just a place the nukes were stationed in and they had no capability to manage them. While USSR was often making sub-optimal decisions availability of eng. talent was def a consideration when sites were being chosen. There is a very long list of key Nuke and space related R&D and manufacturing in UA. They are concentrated in exactly 3 places (Dnepr, Kyiv, Kharkiv), so you spiel on distributing does not make much sense.
Re-read what you wrote. That's exactly what this was is about: who gets to control a colony. And from that angle, the US went from having 0% of Ukraine as its colony to having 75%, including all mineral rights. At this point continuing the war is too expensive, which is why the US and Russia want to just stop. Europe keeps jamming up the gears though because they got a terrible deal.
Thing is, someone is paying all these bills. Yes really. Trump gutting USAID funding brought a lot of this out in the open: many organizations that claimed to be independent turned out to be mouthpieces of the US government and closed down as soon as the funding dried up.
I don't understand how you're aware of terms like COINTELPRO, yet are dismissive that black box slush funds like USAID weren't facilitating US soft power.
Heard of ZunZuneo, National Endowment for Democracy, Reporters Without Borders? The DOGE campaign put a spotlight on the ulterior motives of these "independent" USAID funded initiatives.
I guess so, it’s certainly no secret that US soft power has been a HUGE part of foreign policy, but I do t really see the connection between cointelpro( which had a lot of moving parts, like infiltration of news rooms in the USA and following around black student on college campuses for example) and this soft power.
American soft power is good. It means we don’t need to use direct action aka bombs and missiles.
I just reject your claims on this. US soft power is, for the United States, good and desirable.
But not everyone lives alone. If you'd like to avoid waking everyone else up - you hit the power button (or indeed any button) while groggy. And if you drift off to sleep despite your best efforts - well, that's why the button snoozes the alarm rather than disabling it.
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