this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
90 points (93.3% liked)

politics

18852 readers
4163 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  3. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Yes, of course. Kamala Harris made El Salvador invest in crypto, corrupted Argentina's government to print money, worked with cartels to overtake local governments and police forces in Mexico, and forced Guatemala to replace their economic systems with straight bribes. Damn that Kamala Harris.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anyone capable of doing all that deserves our vote just in the hopes they show us mercy.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mean, certainly the US isn’t uninvolved in fuckin up the economies and safety status of all these places that have gradually been becoming hellholes. You didn’t mention Honduras or Venezuela I noticed… yeah I mean not everything is our fault, but some is.

To the Biden administration’s credit, it was trying to pursue some kind of theory that what Harris was gonna be in charge of was addressing the root causes of this huge surge in immigration from the South. But even if we posit that she’s making a sincere effort in that regard (which, okay fine, I am fine with positing), what’s she gonna do? She’s gonna show up in her little Vice President cape and order the whole of US government and industry “Hey! I need you to stop stealing resources and destabilizing a nearby part of the world that’s not strong enough to prevent it! That is NOT COOL!” and they’re just gonna think it’s funny and keep doing it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Resource curse is a MF. When your government is no longer reliant on its people to fund its political class, all sorts of short/medium term chaos ensues.

This isn’t to say that the US doesn’t have some responsibility in cases, just that the situations are incredibly complex annd it’s easy to scapegoat the bogeyman for all of your woes.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure is strange how that resource curse seems to mainly happen in countries with a history of colonization and having their natural resources exploited by foreign political classes

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Russia was a colonial power, then it found oil.

There are also some justifiable fears that Australia is becoming a vassal state to China. I suppose one could argue that Australia was a colony (but I’d argue that the US was one too).

Just saying, it can happen to any country.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Harris was gonna be in charge of was addressing the root causes of this huge surge in immigration from the South. But even if we posit that she’s making a sincere effort in that regard (which, okay fine, I am fine with positing), what’s she gonna do

In practice, hold closed door meetings with the police enforcers and tell them to be more comprehensive in their enforcement before setting them up with drones and computers and guns needed to do it, and then scoot out of town before she has to witness those enforcers torturing and extorting and working with criminal gangs and etc.

To be fair to Harris and the Biden administration, this has more or less been US policy for a very long time

She’s gonna show up in her little Vice President cape and order the whole of US government and industry

FFS, I so wish more people had more than like a high school level understanding of our government - she's going to tap into funds created by Congress for general purposes and placed under the administration of the executive branch to give grants or directly purchase computers and drones and guns (or maybe cover payroll expenses and things like that). Or, if she gets concerned about reports of human rights abuses or corruption or whatever, she can withhold that money and those materials (but we never do that, whether it's Latin America or Israel or the Memphis Police Department, because nine times out of ten when organizations like those do bad things Americans never hear about them).

The power of the executive branch has only been expanding since Newt broke Congress in the 90s and W got to just keep playing the War on Terror card over and over in the early 00s, but we've got people out here running around acting like it's a totally ceremonial office because nobody in the media or anywhere else wants to do the hard work of explaining how the Byzantine nonsense works and why we always have such an easy time throwing millions of dollars at guns and guards.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In practice, hold closed door meetings with the police enforcers and tell them to be more comprehensive in their enforcement before setting them up with drones and computers and guns needed to do it

he's going to tap into funds created by Congress for general purposes and placed under the administration of the executive branch to give grants or directly purchase computers and drones and guns

Do you have citations about this stuff? If you wanna replace my flip high school understanding of how the VP can (and has been, under Biden) impacting foreign policy with something more factually based, I'm down for that idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Off the top of my head, chapter one of this book covers a ton of this in the northern triangle area of South America specifically - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672038/soldiers-and-kings-by-jason-de-leon/

e; Like I said, it's Byzantine nonsense that nobody with the knowledge to speak to wants to, but a few other sources that start to get at what I'm talking about

U.S. military assistance often goes by different names, depending on the legal authorities an activity falls under and which department or agency is overseeing or implementing it. These terms include security assistance, security sector assistance, security cooperation, and security force assistance, as well as more niche programs and terms such as security sector governance and defense institutional capacity building.

The Department of Defense commonly uses the term security cooperation while the Department of State uses security assistance. In practice, there is a lot of overlap in roles and responsibilities, with most congressionally allocated funding falling under the Department of State’s legal authorities but executed by the Department of Defense.

A large and unwieldy policy and legal bureaucracy—commonly referred to as the security cooperation or security assistance enterprise—has emerged to oversee, regulate, and execute U.S. military assistance. This entangled web of authorities, permissions, and funding streams makes military assistance incredibly difficult to execute effectively, track transparently, and evaluate.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Awesome; I'll check it out. I'm not saying I necessarily agree ahead of time, but you're not wrong that I have no real idea about it beyond some stereotype guessing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Thank you, that's more than reasonable

Also, I added a few more sources

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago

And all in the last four years.