Comment by yepitwas 13 hours ago
War on Terror AUMF is still in force and is why the President can just decide to bomb whatever country they want without asking for permission, now.
All that shit after 9/11 was crazy and dangerous, and some of us said that at the time, and go figure, the fucking obviously true things we were saying have turned out to be... true. What a surprise.
People who protested this horse shit were called unamerican for christs sake. Bush Jr said the literal words "you are either with us, or against us". The right went into utter hysterics about France not wanting to help our BS invasion.
The right loves to say that violent rhetoric is the left's fault, while they wished us harm for not wanting to invade a random country in the middle east that wasn't even related to the terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, all that horseshit with the TSA only ever enriched a couple people connected to the admin.
> Meanwhile, all that horseshit with the TSA only ever enriched a couple people connected to the admin.
I'm pretty sure Homeland Security was only created because it was easier to steer a pile of brand-new contracts for a brand-new organization to the "right" places, than it would have been if they'd simply expanded the roles of existing parts of the government that were already supposed to be doing what Homeland was supposedly created for.
> The right loves to say that violent rhetoric is the left's fault
Well you know, they are the ones constantly comparing Republicans to Hitler, the Nazis, calling them fascists, making direct claims that electing Trump would lead to the end of democracy, having "punch Nazis" be a rallying cry, and so on. Not really crazy to see how that might influence people to think that killing Trump or even a conservative podcaster is necessary to save the world.
Generally, accounted instances of credible calls for political violence originate far more often from the right side of the political spectrum[0], in fact it’s nearly their entire domain at this juncture (remember that both attempts on Trump’s life were carried out by registered Republicans, for example)
Additionally, it’s disingenuous to say allegory statements to the behaviors of a person is inciting violence. Calling someone Hitler, describing them as “like Hitler” etc are not credible calls to violence. They aren’t even inherently violent in so far as they suggest nothing as to what to do with that information
[0]: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-poli...
Trump's the guy who suggested when he ran against Hillary that the "second amendment people" would be the only ones who could "do anything about it" if she won. Like, holy fucking shit, and then Republicans elected him president after he said that! TWICE!
The right's been laughing it up for decades when liberals get attacked, and calling for aid for their attackers (Kirk did this exact thing with Paul Pelosi, and was, I kid you not, in the middle of trying to blame trans people for the prevalence of mass shootings in the US when he got shot). Calling families of shooting victims crisis actors. Working people up over invented child abuse conspiracies to the point that folks get violent over it. The left aren't the ones doing most of the actually killing people over politics for the last couple decades, at least. There hasn't been significant rates of political violence from the left since like the '70s.
AI Apocalypse Now image of scene in which a large assault featuring napalm takes place, with Trump inserted, re: invading Chicago, and shit like "Chicago's going to learn why we're calling it the Department of War"? This isn't coming from fringe randos, this shit's from republicans holding positions of power and their immediate advisors. These are just examples, there's a constant stream of this stochastic terrorism and actual threats of violence from leaders on the right. It's a huge part of their messaging. Where's Obama talking about West Virginia like it's a foreign country that's wronged us and we're getting ready to Shock and Awe their asses? Doesn't happen.
The left isn't pulling these comparisons out of nowhere, you know? They're comparing them to fascists because they target minorities and promote political violence fucking constantly (plus commit it! Rather often!) while publicly describing and then following through on plans to centralize power to the executive. I know there's a set of somewhat politically-disconnected folks who are super dedicated to the "both sides are equally, but differently, bad, and this doesn't vary over time" thing as if it's a law of nature, but it's extremely not true, in fact.
> War on Terror AUMF is still in force and is why the President can just decide to bomb whatever country they want without asking for permission, now.
The War on Terror AUMF relies on a Presidential determinatiom that the targets “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or person”.
But the President has had implicit blanket permission to bomb whoever he wants with a time limit ever since the War Powers Act was passed.