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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 7 months

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heckyeahponyscans · 2 months

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This is an excerpt from a Politico article. (Politico is a journal focused on US politics, especially Washington DC politics.) Keep making yourself heard! We can force a change!

Text of the excerpt under the cut for screen readers:

One House Democrat told me of a dinner last month with about eight other colleagues, a cross-section of the caucus ideologically and generationally. "It was unanimous that this Israel-Gaza war needs to end now and that Biden needs to stand up to Bibi," this lawmaker told me, before offering his own view.

"This is a disaster politically," said this House Democrat, who rarely criticizes Israel. "The base is really pissed--and it's not just the leftists. I have never seen such a depth of anguish as I've seen over this Gaza issue. Bibi is toxic among many Democratic voters and Biden must distance himself from him--yesterday."

#politics #united states #us politics #politico #Gaza #free palestine #one of the difficulties in America is that it's not like there's a pro-zionist party and an anti-zionist party #BOTH parties are pro-zionist #if you watch past presidential debates there's usually a question about how the candidates feel about Israel #and then the candidates all gush over how Israel is their favorite #honestly embarrassing #but anyway #even though this presents a challenge for stopping the US's support of a genocide #it is not an insurmountable challenge #politicians are beginning to see this issue is not going away #so keep the pressure on #do NOT give up #for the sake of the Gazan people we CANNOT give up #so many are dead but so many are still alive

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bithermal · 6 months

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Hehe I love when CCs apply specific knowledge they have to aid them in roleplay

#yes this is about Bad using his computer knowledge to train the Cucuruchito AI #and Quackity using his law degree in the presidential debates #I just think it’s neat when they get to use their specific skillsets #qsmp

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reactionimagesdaily · 10 months

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#oh I got this image during the 2020 US presidential debates!! yeah ...#reaction image #reaction meme #daily reaction images #image mood: frick the frack off

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klanced · 1 year

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mx katie klanced are we voting voltron straight through in the worst fandom poll or genshin. your troops await

i am so sad i missed this poll. i am now going to hold you all hostage and force you to read my outrage. i know this ship sailed literally two weeks ago but LISTEN TO ME!!!!!

anyway i cannot BELIEVE that voltron lost to south park. the category was "most annoying fandom." this is distinctly different than "most annoying show" or "worst show," and it is NOT synonymous with "most unhinged fans." okay? for this poll, what matters is the group character and cultural staying power of the fandom that organized around the show.

an annoying fandom must be:

incredibly vocal and prominent, to the point that even the most reluctant and detached layperson still has some vague idea of the fandom's biggest discourse/fights, usually entirely against their will; and

annoying, in the sense that the fandom's presence (or even a mere reference to their presence) is enough to actively disrupt or impede one's ability to enjoy online internet spaces; and

the fandom is annoying BECAUSE of the source material in question.

point 1 is fairly subjective, as it's all based on one's own experience or perception of a show's cultural diffusion across the broader public consciousness. so i weigh it less heavily when ranking how annoying a show is.

for point 2 i would argue that south park is annoying, and south park fans are annoying, but the south park fandom itself is NOT as annoying (i.e., the fandom is the least annoying aspect of south park). this is because i firmly believe you can differentiate between south park fans versus the south park fandom.

[[actually if i can be frank -- does south park actually have an organized fandom? obviously they have fans, i have seen them in the twitter wilds (usually in the context of out-of-context incredibly well-developed yaoi art/content of? 10 year olds ?????????). but is there actually a cohesive fandom that routinely interacts and develops concepts together? is there a collective identity ??????? my gut reaction is no, but this is very much an online space i don't enter, so what do i know? i also have no idea what that fandom can even talk about, other than the yaoi (although you could easily say this to the voltron fandom as well). whatever, for this argument i will presuppose that there IS a organized south park fandom with a fairly coherent and cohesive identity.]]

anyway, what i wanted to highlight is that there are certainly incredibly annoying individual south park fans who are outrageous, vulgar, and vile. so you would think that, if you put all these annoying individuals into a single collective, that single group would have skyrocketing amounts of annoyingness. but that doesn't seem to happen. i cannot recall any specific complaints about the south park fandom; personal stories involving individual south park fans, sure, but what does the fandom actually do on a broad scale?? if there is any sort of discourse or mobilization, it seems to be fairly contained and localized.

so how can a collective fandom somehow be less annoying than its individual parts? this brings me to point three: an annoying fandom MUST be annoying BECAUSE of its source material. and this does not apply in the south park fandom's case.

to qualify as an annoying fandom, it is not enough to be a group of annoying fans loosely connected by a shared interest; rather, the source material ITSELF must be the inciting incident that galvanizes the group to organize and THEN become annoying.

is the south park fandom annoying? to some extent yes, of course. but i would argue that the south park fandom is annoying, not specifically because of the show in question, but rather because the fandom is comprised of persons who were already predisposed to being annoying, regardless of whether or not they had ever watched south park. this is a subtle but incredibly important distinction.

south park's vulgar and vile humor certainly enables its most annoying fans, but the continued annoying activities of said fans are NOT dependent on the show's existence. a shithead south park fan was always going to be a shithead, now they just have cartman to idolize.

i have spent a lot of time talking about south park. let us now move on to voltron and the voltron fandom.

in contrast to south park, the voltron fandom qualifies as an annoying fandom because its annoying activities were entirely dependent on the existence of voltron the show. would individual voltron fans still have been annoying even if they had never stumbled upon voltron? of course. but the voltron fandom was an organized collective of people that specifically came together to BE ANNOYING ABOUT VOLTRON. and then they made it everyone else's problem.

the voltron fandom was like an ouroboros devouring its own tail; a symbol of infinity, referencing the literally never-ending fighting; and it survived entirely by maiming and cannibalizing itself. the voltron fandom actively ruined every online space it entered. i saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by voltron.

honestly, i would argue that the voltron fandom's impact has completely altered the way online fandom functions to this day. the voltron fandom capitalized on the momentum started by the steven universe fandom and other early 2010s online fandoms, and spawned an entire new flavor of fandom discourse that was obsessed with morality and virtue. truthfully, it feels disingenuous to frame what happened as something innocuous as "fandom discourse"; it almost feels like a disservice to the levels of personal faith, passion, and vitriol people poured into voltron. the terms "pro-shipping" and "anti-shipping" have been around for ages, but the voltron fandom turned "pro" and "anti" into genuine identity markers.

this post is already way too insane so i need to quit while i'm ahead. but i would just like to conclude by reiterating that south park has annoying fans but not necessarily an annoying fandom, whereas the voltron fandom was annoying specifically BECAUSE it was the voltron fandom. i think the south park fandom could dissolve tomorrow and assimilate into other similar fandoms without a problem. whereas the voltron fandom was like lightning in a bottle; the activities of the voltron fandom are quintessentially wrapped up in the specific details, characteristics, and attributes of voltron. if voltron's characters or story was even slightly different -- if, say, every character was a college-student for example -- then the nature and activities of the fandom would have been irrevocably different.

and that is why voltron is the more annoying fandom and SHOULD HAVE SWEPT SOUTH PARK IN THE POLL.

#at any given moment i have a 300k thesis brewing in the back of my mind about how the american 2016 presidential election #(and general political developments between 2012 - 2020) is irrevocably tied up in how the voltron fandom developed #it's the most batshit insane thing ever. i know.#anyway i'm going to law school in boston this fall!! using my debate skills for. this.#ask #anonymous

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Donald Trump, in response to a question during a 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden, insisted that he closed down his bank account in China before his first campaign. But six years’ worth of Trump’s tax records, released Friday, reveal that wasn’t true.

“[I] had an account open, and I closed it,” Trump said with some irritation to moderator Kristen Welker, NBC White House correspondent, in the final debate of the campaign in October 2020. “I closed it before I even ran for President, let alone became President.”

Rep.-elect Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), who served as the Democrats’ lead counsel in the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, noted that the former President had bank accounts in China until 2018, from 2015 to 2017, according to his tax records.

“Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency,” Goldman tweeted Friday. “What business was Trump doing in China while he was President?”

Trump, who had accounts in a number of countries and collected income from more than a dozen foreign nations while in office, paid more in taxes in 2020 to the Chinese government than he did in American federal income tax that year, his returns revealed.

Trump also lied a month earlier to then-Fox News commentator Chris Wallace, who pointedly asked him during the first presidential debate in 2020 if he’d paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, as The New York Times had reported (which Trump immediately blasted as “fake news”).

Trump angrily responded — twice — that he had paid “millions of dollars.” His returns revealed that indeed he had paid just $750 in federal income taxes in each of those years. Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last full year he was in office, according to the tax records.

In addition, Trump did not annually donate his $400,000 presidential salary to charity, as he has claimed. He declared no charitable contributions of any kind on his 2020 returns.

Among the early revelations emerging in Trump’s tax records, some of the most troubling involve his financial entanglements abroad while he was President, “highlighting a string of potential conflicts of interest,” Politico noted.

Trump had multiple bank accounts in a number of foreign countries, and collected millions of dollars in income from more than a dozen nations ― including Panama, the Philippines (whose onetime dictator, former President Rodrigo Duterte, he has praised) and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.

While presidents routinely place assets in blind trusts while they’re in office, Trump’s eldest sons continued to openly operate the Trump Organization and forged deals around the world with nations affected by the Trump administration’s policies and expenditures.

Trump’s returns reveal hefty financial losses in the two years before he became President, some of which he carried forward to reduce tax bills.

Trump enjoyed an adjusted gross income of $15.8 million during his first three years in office. He paid $642,000 in federal income tax in 2015, $750 in 2016 and in 2017, just under $1 million in 2018, $133,000 in 2019 and nothing in 2020.

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sorryiwasasleep · 2 months

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Because i hate myself (actually cause I saw a bumper sticker today that made me scream in pure rage) (and also cause like… because i need to be armed to the teeth with knowledge and facts because conservative right-wing family members love to parrot bullshit propaganda when not just being outright bigots🙄) I decided to take a read through the entire Wikipedia page concerning Trump’s 2024 run (and then I looked at his actual campaign website cause I hate myself more and wanted to see some of his actual rhetoric that was mentioned but not quoted) and it’s just like…

He fucking wants to appoint himself as god-king (wants to expand power of the executive (diminishing the separation of powers), turn govt civil employees status to ‘at will’ for firing, and to impose congressional term limits while also abolishing his own) and “root out” the “vermin” in this country (literal rhetoric he has used) and with this Court it probably won’t just go unchecked, but like I’m afraid it could be affirmatively endorsed using principles of originalism and ‘history and tradition’ (whose fucking version of history???? Huh???? Because it certainly wasn’t fucking mine when you overturned Roe in Dobbs) but in the fast and loose way that they like to, where sometimes they want to be textualist and sometimes they don’t.

Assuming he tries, I do think expansion of the executive might not get support from some of the conservative justices under principles of federalism which is— wrong math, right answer. But they 100% would justify his white Christian supremacist alloamatocisheteronormative patriarchal policies under originalism and ‘history and tradition’. As if letting the past guide the future isn’t a fucking BATSHIT thing to do. We learn the past to do BETTER in the future, not to fucking EMULATE it and use their standards to STAGNANT the lives of real people. EVEN THE FUCKING DRAFTERS OF THE GODDAMN CONSTITUTION KNEW THAT IN FUCKING 1787 SO WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL DOING THIS SHIT! But I digress from my originalism rant because this is a Presidential Campaign rant.

Like Trump literally said he wants to (and WILL BE) a dictator.

“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’. I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

“Baker today in the New York Times said that I want to be a dictator. I didn’t say that. I said I want to be a dictator for one day.”

*insert regina george* so you agree? You want to be a dictator? Pretty sure being one for “one day” is called establishing the dictatorship and suuure Jan im sure that it’ll stay limited in scope to the borders and drilling (as if that would fucking make it okay???) 🙄

And then the option on the ‘opposing’ side is Joe Biden, who, chief among his many faults, is aiding and supporting a genocide. The fact that he has no competition in primaries (literally only one other person is even trying) and will end up being the Democratic candidate has me so incensed and the fact that Joseph Biden is fucking painted as the ‘radical left’ by opposition is both objectively hilarious and just horrifying and dangerously (and probably intentionally) misleading so as to continue the shift of whatever “middle” exists to actually be further and further right wing.

There is not really a larger point here and I’m super not looking for discourse but if anyone is gonna try anyway— don’t bother me without a source.

Anyway I’m just fucking tired and fuck the electoral college and the fact that one of these two ancient men winning seems inevitable

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mezimraky · 1 year

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So what on earth is happening with the Czech election right now? Who is this general? Do people actually want Babiš? How does this vote work?

it's complicated! essentially, what is happening in czech rep right now is the third ever direct presidential election. meaning, every citizen over the age of 18 gets a vote. the last two elections ended with miloš zeman as the winner. miloš zeman is a bitter old man who is a rude drunk but people felt represented by him, and so elected him twice.

the second time around there was a big wave of dislike for zeman but the voters did not manage to pool in to one other candidate but instead spread to at least three fractions, making it impossible to beat zeman. this is not the case this year, with this election.

the first round of the election ended with two favourites. generál petr pavel and andrej babiš. they both had around 30something% of votes and ended within less than a percent to each other.

andrej babiš, the poplusist oligarch, is the head of the biggest political party in the country, ANO. andrej babiš is also a businessman who first went into politics in cca 2011 and his main positive was that "as a rich businessman he would not need to steal from the people as a politician." and "as a successful businessman he can run the country like he runs his company". they essentially built their popularity on populist policies that range the whole political spectrum without much of a system or reliability. they would form alliance with anyone who allowed them to be in the position of power.

the prominence of ANO has indirectly caused a crisis in democracy. the two sides of the political spectrum are out of balance. ANO's populist policies have replaced the political left almost entirely. if you'd watched the last government election last year, you'd see that the fight was no longer between the left and the right but between populism and democracy. the democratic right has won at the cost of forming a giant coalition made out of five different parties. they really needed that many in order to beat the ever so popular ANO, and babiš himself.

and this appears to be happening again. the choice of the second round of the presidential election is between babiš and generál pavel. babiš being a populist who will say just about anything to win (including pointing at the general's millitary past and claiming that he will drag our country into the war, take your kids away and whatever else). generál pavel being a guy with diplomatic experience in NATO, who mostly bases his campaign on his unshakeable calm and order. which, to be fair, following the many years with miloš zeman does seem like a very alluring concept.

both babiš and pavel also have a communist past, much like most people their age in this country. while pavel was a regular party member (and gained part of his millitary training under the old regime), andrej babiš has been proven to cooperate with the secret police at the time, being their secret agent of sorts. the cynics would tell you that there its not a real choice, that its between a communist and an agent, that they both suck. but.

it's not just the choice between two people. it's once again between a real diplomat and a liar. they are many poignant arguments concerning these two, but let me just focus on this one, as it is the most important one to me. babiš as a person does not stand for anything. he will say anything to get what he wants. he contradicts himself on the regular and does not cope well with being called out. he makes himself out to be an underdog but he was the prime minister until last year, and as a prime minister proved himself to be both completely spineless and worthless. and yet, his loyal fans seem to forget. they seem to have a weird sort of parasocial relationship with the kind grandpa in a turtleneck that he presents himself as on the social networks. they don't care what he did or didn't do. they like him as a person. they don't care what he would do to the image or political orientation of our country. they don't care. they care that he baked a delicious vánočka the other day, just like they do, every christmas!!!!

generál pavel has his own minuses, one of the ones that get thrown around a lot-- having millitary past, it's not all clear what he's done while in the millitary. having had diplomatic affiliations before, they say we can't know for sure where all his allegiances lay. and he was a communist after all. but. the thing is. he's the only other option we've got. and he's not all bad. he speaks well, he's consistent in his opinions, and he's willing to listen to marginalised groups for reasons other than to make himself look good.

and he's decent. and unaffiliated with a particular political party. insistent on democratic values. it's a low bar, i know. but it's the best hope we've got...

#under the sun with kai #what i failed to mention is that there is a two week gap between first and second round of the election #and this time is so far getting used mostly by babiš to throw dirt on generál pavel and spread misinformation #which. makes generál pavel keep repeating the same shit every debate just defending himself.#this kind of past-based and fear-based campaign moreover sidelines the important issues.#such as actual presidential power. diplomatic relations. concepts for The Future of The Fucking Country.#i have a lot of thoughts. i hope i voiced them in at least a semi-understandable manner.#there is also a lot of memes made abt these elections if you're interested in those too hmu #i just didnt wanna mix up the serious and the funny because the serious already got so long #also for the record im not a politics student im an art student so this is my very basic assessment of the situation feel free to add to it #czech

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lightscamerabitchsmileee · 4 months

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To my American followers or any American on Tumblr that are sick of Biden and are looking for other candidates to vote for in the primaries

A debate in New Hampshire took place yesterday between candidates Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips its worth the watch please give it a listen and hear them out

Both Biden, the DNC and mainstream media are trying to blacklist them and deny them a fair shot in the primaries by not doing public debates, rigging the primary schedule in Biden's favour, smearing the other candidates and now to the point of cancelling primaries and only having Biden as the choice in some states like Florida and North Carolina denying voters a say in who they want to choose kinda hypocritical with Biden's "Democracy is at Risk" shtick so small debates like this one will really help get the word out that Americans have other options in the Democratic primary despite what the DNC is trying to force on voters with Biden

Anyways signal boost this, reblog and give it a watch the debate video is in 2 parts on Marianne's page and start around the 23 minute mark in the first video 😊😊

#marianne williamson #dean phillips #2024 democratic primaries #democratic debates #2024 us presidential election #joe biden #democratic party #democrats #democratic primary #2024 #united states #united states of america #USA #US

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curatorofthisdigitalmorass · 8 months

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From Quashing Teachers Unions to Pardoning Trump, Voters Reject GOP Positions: Poll

#gop #2024 election #presidential debate #us politics #polling #republicans

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vivalamusaine · 7 months

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Kinda crazy that the 23 conservative presidential debates is just a point buy system of how many people they can say they hate and walking a tightrope of trying to say they're better than trump without insulting him just in case (and there is an extremely high chance of this which is crazy) he wins and needs to choose one of them as his vp

#politics #us politics #conservative presidential debate #its also really funny hearing them say the statistics of how nobody can afford anything anymore #and they have to appeal to their lower class voters and also somehow appease their lobbyists and give tax breaks to the wealthy #the cognitive disconnect is wild #whats wilder is people listen to this shit and think.... hmm that does sound like a Solution #america get help pls

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daddysakic · 7 months

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Vivek Ramaswamy takes sigma male memes seriously

#us politics #vivek ramaswamy #sigma #sigma male #presidential debate #2024 gop presidential primary #us government #sigma memes

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netscapenavigator-official · 11 months

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We should let Biden say "slay queen" in the 2024 Presidential Debates, but only once.

#shitpost #shit post #biden #joe biden #2024 election #2024 presidential race #2024 presidential election #us president #2024 #slay #debate #presidential debate #american politics #politics

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npi · 4 months

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Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley blast each other in CNN-hosted debate while Fox fetes Trump

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley trashed each other, traded talking points, and took issue with frontrunner Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election tonight, during a ferocious debate staged in Des Moines five days before Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses. The stakes in this Republican brawl could not have been higher. Either DeSantis or Haley will survive the Iowa and New…

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#Republican Presidential Debates #US-Pres

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newnewz · 5 months

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Nikki Haley-Vivek Ramaswamy Fight In Focus At 4th Republican Debate

Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy sought to halt former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s gaining momentum in the fourth Republican Presidential Debate today. Four candidates were up against each other to secure a spot as the party’s presidential candidate through a stringent selection process.

Indian-American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were on stage for the face-off.

Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy took an early lead in the fourth Presidential Debate regarding speaking time. Nikki Haley relatively remained silent in the debate but remained in focus and centre of attacks from her opponents in the debate.

A close contest took place between Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, with almost similar speaking times. Speaking time is not the sole metric to judge a candidate’s ability. More speaking time and convincing arguments can help sway public opinion in the candidate’s favour during the voting process.

Nikki Haley defended her decision to accept corporate money and is emerging as the top target of her rivals during the fourth Republican presidential debate.

The Republican debate started with a pile-up of allegations against Nikki Haley, with Ron DeSantis attacking her, saying, “She caves anytime the left comes after her,” CNN reported and said he is the only candidate who has delivered against the Democrats. Nikki Haley responded to the allegations and said, “He is lying about her track record”.

Vivek Ramaswamy attacked Ms Haley too for acting on the will of the donors and said she had joined the board of Boeing after stepping down as US ambassador to the United Nations and gave paid speeches “like Hillary Clinton”.

The candidates hoped to stall Nikki Haley’s momentum in the presidential debate. Haley’s rise has been attributed to strong performances in the previous three debates, and she is riding high on a key endorsement from the powerful Koch family and $250,000 from billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

A heated back and forth was seen between Vivek Ramaswamy, the leading candidate in the fourth debate and Chris Christie. The former Governor accused Mr Ramaswamy of changing his positions in the Ukraine war and said his plan for resolving the war in Ukraine was to give Russia all the territory it had seized in Ukraine. The Indian-American entrepreneur said this is not what he proposed.

“You do this at every debate. You go out on the stump and you say something, all of us see it on video, we confront you on the debate stage, you say you didn’t say it, and then you back away,” Mr Christie responded.

Chris Christie also questioned his opponents over their stance on sending US troops to Gaza in the ongoing war in the region and said he would “absolutely” send US troops to rescue American hostages and slammed Ron DeSantis for not responding to the question directly. Like the previous three Republican debates, Christie is after former US President Donald Trump, who is hoping for a Republican ticket to contest for another term and questioned his opponents on why they are not discussing Trump.

“Truth needs to be spoken. He is unfit,” Chris Christie said on Trump’s Republican ticket hopes and referred to him as Voldemort — the antagonist in J.K. Rowling’s series “Harry Potter,” CNN reported.

#Vivek Ramaswamy #US Republican Presidential Debate #Republican Presidential debate

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 8 months

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Rising GOP support for the U.S. taking unilateral military action in Mexico against drug cartels is increasingly rattling people on both sides of the border who worry talk of an attack is getting normalized.

Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate featured high-stakes policy disagreements on a range of issues from abortion to the environment — but found near-unanimous consensus on the idea of using American military force to fight drug smuggling and migration.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the strongest pledge on the stage with his response to Fox News moderator Martha MacCallum’s question asked whether he would support sending U.S. special forces into Mexico to “take out fentanyl labs, to take out drug cartel operations.”

“Yes. And I will do it on day one,” said DeSantis.

The Governor’s eagerness reflects a growing normalization of the idea, which Republicans have embraced from the campaign trail to the halls of Congress.

Even more moderate GOP candidates such as former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott have suggested support for some version of unilateral military action across the Rio Grande.

Former President Trump’s hawkish approach to the bilateral relationship has led the way in mainstreaming the idea. As President, he sought Pentagon advice on launching missiles into Mexico, according to “A Sacred Oath,” a memoir by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Esper talked Trump down, but the proposal still casts a shadow on U.S.-Mexico relations.

“I believe any action that is unilateral by the United States vis-à-vis Mexico, especially by U.S. uniformed forces, be they police or military, would be completely counterproductive to United States-Mexico relations,” said John Negroponte, who served as permanent representative to the U.N. under President George W. Bush and as ambassador to Mexico under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“Mexico is our largest trading partner. We share a 2,200-mile border and we have inter-relationships that are extensive and across an entire spectrum of issues such as migration, trade, people-to-people relations and environmental concerns. I believe such action would be extremely ill-advised,” Negroponte said.

Over the past century, bilateral relations have eased from the brink of war to deep collaboration on that catalog of issues, though many in Mexico remain distrustful of U.S. influence.

The last major U.S. military intervention in Mexico ended in 1917, as the latter country’s revolution entered its final phase. Known then as the “Punitive Expedition,” the mission led by Gen. John Pershing saw 10,000 U.S. combatants deployed to northern Mexico over the better part of a year.

Better commercial and cross-border relations came with decades of political stability in Mexico, culminating in the signature of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992.

While cooperation has only intensified since then, open and direct collaboration between U.S. and Mexican security forces remains elusive; the Pentagon’s long-term goal of better integration with the Mexican military hit a speed bump amid Trump-related tensions.

But a century of progress could be erased overnight, a Mexican official told The Hill.

“Any military intervention in Mexico would be a monumental setback for the U.S. and would derail the bilateral relationship. It can destroy the North American trading bloc and worsen the security situation, triggering a wave of migration in the region.”

Now, bilateral tensions are being stimulated on both sides of the border, with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pursuing an internal image of defiance against the United States.

“It’s been made worse obviously in the process by President López Obrador’s denial of Mexico’s role in fentanyl trafficking — the fact that he says that fentanyl isn’t produced in Mexico — which is absurd because its own armed forces parade seizures of labs and of fentanyl being produced in Mexico,” said Arturo Sarukhán, who served as Mexican ambassador to the United States from 2007-13.

“In many ways, López Obrador unwittingly has fanned the flames of anger, vis-à-vis Mexican positions on law enforcement collaboration, so it’s the perfect storm.”

Despite the political pressures that driven in part by a frantic search for solutions to the opioid epidemic, a few cooler heads remain.

On the debate stage Wednesday, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) opposed the unilateral use of U.S. military or police force in Mexico, harkening back to his experience as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We cannot be successful against the cartel unless we bring in Mexico as a partner. We have to use economic pressure to accomplish that,” said Hutchinson, though he added that López Obrador “has not been helpful.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence lauded Hutchinson’s appeal for economic pressure, but said he would “engage Mexico the exact same way” as the Trump administration to ensure security cooperation.

Hutchinson, who also served as the top border security official when the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003, was more channeling the approach of the pre-Trump GOP.

“What Hutchinson said last night is a clear reminder of the way the GOP would go about addressing issues of transnational collaboration in the fight against transnational organized crime with countries like Mexico,” said Sarukhán.

But the post-Trump GOP, according to its opponents, is a ticking time bomb.

“I think what you’re seeing is the unraveling of a political party in real time,” said Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee.

The idea of unilateral military action is a placeholder for a lack of policy proposals in other fields, said Castro, but he warned the idea is already snowballing.

“What happens is, somebody popular in their party starts talking about it, and then the other candidates start parroting it. And after time, their base takes it on as a core idea and gets behind it.”

“And then the base starts demanding that every Republican in the country, whether they’re running for President or school board, agrees with this idea. And that’s the evolution of this whole thing. And that’s what’s gonna happen here. If something doesn’t change, that’s what’s gonna happen here.”

Pressed for further comment on DeSantis’s hard-line position, his campaign said “he will do what is necessary to stop the deadly flow of Fentanyl and other narcotics from the Mexican drug cartels.”

“Ron DeSantis rightly didn’t back down to the Experts(TM) during COVID and he likewise won’t let them keep him from securing our southern border,” said press secretary Bryan Griffin.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a global crisis negotiator who served as U.S. permanent representative to the U.N. under Clinton, warned that military action in Mexico would both backfire and fail to solve the underlying issues.

“It shows the nativist shift of the Republican Party from internationalism to irresponsible diplomacy. It would be a disaster if there were any military action against Mexico — a foreign policy disaster for the United States,” he said.

“Plus, it makes no sense to resolve the problem,” Richardson added.

11 notes · View notes