[dragonwriter]

More importantly, its a tool to paint the fact that fentanyl is imported from Mexico as an actual attack and use it as a pretext for another domestic invocation of the Alien Enemies Act targeting people in America for arbitrary action without due process, after the one using Tren de Agua as the pretext.

This, in turn, is a tool to try to advance Trump’s mass ethnic cleansing policy, without the case-by-case judicial oversight which it would otherwise be subject to.

[actionfromafar]

Ding-ding. I think we have a winner. Venezuela was just a test. Seriously, a US president can order strikes abroad without a judge getting in the way. But for expelling people, then you need at least a pretense.

[dzhiurgis]

Hate to say it, but it's a clear TDS...

Do you think Mexican people enjoy living cartel life?

[morkalork]

The Iraqi people living under Saddam weren't so happy either but did that justify invasion on the false premise of WMDs and the resulting hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths? I'd be on board with your statement if another Republican hadn't already pulled the same dumb shit within my lifetime before..

[dzhiurgis]

What would have been a justifiable premise for invasion then?

[geon]

Actual WMDs?

[dzhiurgis]

Life in Iraq before WMDs wasn't exactly paradise...

[ben_w]

"wasn't exactly paradise" places the bar is so low it would justify invading Disneyland.

Iraq gave up its WMD research programs in 1991, so the "before time" is 1962: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

"Doesn't have any WMDs" is also something I can say about Disneyland.

But Disney World did get permission to build their own nuclear reactor: https://www.ans.org/news/article-6500/disney-world-should-ha...

[maxerickson]

My understanding is that they would like it if US people stopped giving the cartels huge sums of money to feed their drug habits. I'm not sure they want US military incursions.

[dragonwriter]

> Do you think Mexican people enjoy living cartel life?

Whether Mexican people enjoy living “cartel life” is completely irrelevant, one way or the other, to the trends in the linkage between Trump's foreign policy rhetoric and domestic actions that I am talking about.