They didn’t win in Vietnam.

I despise this fucking guy.

Yeah, you really shouldn’t need a park ranger lecturing you to understand that throwing garbage wherever in a national park is bad. That said, apparently you do so maybe give those rangers their jobs back.

Not a fan of this guy’s domestic policy but at least he’s pragmatic enough to see the writing on the wall.

What do you mean. Who doesn’t love pirates?

For anyone wondering what this commenter is referring to:

Spavor blames fellow prisoner Kovrig for Chinese detention, alleges he was used for intelligence gathering

Michael Spavor reaches settlement with federal government over detention in China

Do you recall on 9/11 when Trump bragged that he now had the tallest building in New York?

I have this sneaking suspicion that what makes this all so “psychologically important” to him is that he wants to make the US the largest country by area on Earth. Stupid, I know, but that’s par for the course for this fucking guy.

Then you just don’t want your guy being questioned. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t agree.

Would you give this same grace to Pierre Poilievre were he Prime Minister?

Also France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and others.

Yeah, obviously. When you hit me with this obsequious bullshit, though?

He’s literally playing a game of Diplomacy, against a mad man backed by demons. Give him some space to cook.

I’m going to tell you to stuff it.

No. This is a democracy and I reserve the right to criticize leadership, thanks.

Don’t look at the sun is advice that applies more broadly than just the celestial object.

It sure feels like our military leadership is not equipped to meet the moment.

The network effect seems to be the strong nuclear force of online interaction.

That person was definitely being sarcastic.

I agree with all of that. I think our’s and Europe’s leaders are making the exact wrong move. This is a moment where we should be locking arms with they as well as Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, etc and projecting strength right back at the US. Not falling for their bravado.

I recently watched an interview with Marco Rubio and am actually significantly less worried about American aggression since. Not because he allayed my concerns, but because he reminded me that this administration is incompetent.

Let’s put what the US is saying aside for a moment and look at the actual situation in Venezuela. Maduro’s government is still in control. His VP has assumed duties and doesn’t seem to be playing along. There are no American boots on the ground. There doesn’t appear to be any plans to put boots on the ground. In the interview with Rubio, he laid out what the plan was. They are going to use their fleet to embargo Venezuela and pressure the already existing government until they do what the US wants.

What? How is that different from what they were doing before Maduro was abducted? What did abducting Maduro change here? In the past when doing regime change the US would have some local element ready to take advantage of the chaos to seize control of the government. My suspicion is that something similar was planned here, but for whatever reason the local part of the coup never fired. What we are looking at is a failed coup. And what we’ve seen from the US since, the lies about the Venezuelan VP being in Russia, the lies that she was playing along, the threats against various other countries in the western hemisphere, it’s all marketing. Chest beating from the US to project an illusion of strength in the face of this failure. The one thing Trump is pretty good at is controlling the narrative, and that’s what they are attempting to do here, but it’s coming from a place of weakness, not strength.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part and I would still advise preparing for the worst. But I think the US is trying to cow all it’s neighbours with threats that it won’t be able to back up. If they aren’t willing to put boots on the ground in Venezuela for oil, they sure as hell aren’t going to invade Denmark for “national security”.

The current push for Alberta separation is an American assisted op to destabilize Canada. The separatists lost their right to make such a claim the moment they started courting foreign support. They crossed the line from separation to sedition, in my opinion.

I’m not the one who complained about whataboutism. I pointed out that it’s hypocritical to whine about me doing it if you’re not also going to whine about the original commenter doing it. Which is fine, it’s legal to be a hypocrite. One should own it, though.