this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Trump is no longer bending the rules – he is demolishing them, with consequences far beyond Caracas

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[–] orioler25@lemmy.world 96 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Jfc how convenient to have a narrative that paints the US as a fundamentally pure society that is only violent when corrupted by foreign powers. The USA is an empire. It has always fucking done this, every president before this man has done this, none of it is surprising or exceptionally brutal for a fundamentally violent system.

I bet a bunch of people who read this and thought it wasn't pro-imperialist propaganda hadn't even thought of indigenous American nations as sovereign nations that USAmericans have invaded and inflicted genocide against for centuries. This isn't even the fourth time the US has inflicted its interests on a Latin American country through military action.

The USA is evil.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

So, what's the point here? Whatever the evils of the US in the past, this is nonetheless a dangerous and frightening escalation, smashing a fragile world order. This message of, "oh, this is nothing new, the US has always been evil" comes across as a resounding call to complacency, and is a rhetorical technique widely used by the fascists.

[–] orioler25@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're mistaken in almost every sentence here and it sounds like you're unlearning some things. The USA is and always has been a fundamentally violent, extractive, sexist, racist, genocidal entity. How something like that reads as complacency to you can only be explained by you.

When I say Donald Trump is not exceptional, I am encouraging liberals who are new to criticising the US state to not resort to further pro-imperialist narratives that views state violence as caused by individual bad actors and not a system that cannot exist without blood.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I see that I am not mistaken, as you have just proved by lashing out based on clearly faulty assumptions about me. I am telling you how your words may appear to others. (At least one other reader took it that way.) If you don't want feedback in order to reach an audience with your political goals, then I'll say instead: Wow. Very edge. Much brave.

[–] orioler25@lemmy.world -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Jesus. I don't know what you expected me to feel from that. You don't seem like a serious person.

[–] Carmakazi@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The people posting this want a West that is paralyzed by corruption, ineptitude, apathy, and guilt (demoralization), while China slowly takes the reigns as the world superpower for better or worse, probably worse. They are not interested in constructive thought or action from us because they are probably not Americans nor do they want a reformed US. They want you to be apathetic while you watch your home collapse around you, because we were evil anyway and we deserve it.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

they are probably not Americans

No, it's worse. They're Americans that think this is a football game, and who have chosen the edgier team. They shitpost about Deng and Marx, so that makes them honourary Chinese, right? /s

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

Apologetics for past US imperialism does not seem a productive strategy for criticizing present imperialist actions, nor preventing future imperialism.

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

comes across as a resounding call to complacency, and is a rhetorical technique widely used by the fascists.

Nope. It's just another warning that people will hand wave aside and ask what's the point here and shoot the messenger.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it's a warning, and you're actually trying to rally people, it doesn't help to be snotty.

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Being a wound collector is selfish. Notice how you are talking about the messenger and not the warning?

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 week ago

Lemmy likes to push a certain conspiratorial worldview about these things. That's the point.

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

From the article,

The international laws and norms Trump has barged through had already been loosened by previous US administrations. The operation most closely resembles the 1990 invasion of Panama and forced surrender of its strongman, by the first Bush administration.

That was followed by the younger George Bush with the invasion of Iraq on false grounds, and his administration’s broad use of rendition of torture. Barack Obama failed to hold his predecessor’s administration to account and pursued his own legally questionable drone assassination campaign against suspected terrorists.

These are arguably discrete acts of hypocrisy by earlier presidents, who claimed exceptions from international laws in the pursuit of US interests, but mostly embraced global norms in the knowledge that the “rules-based system” overwhelmingly favoured America.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There is no Putinization. Putin is an imperialist war criminal but the USA and it's proxy in the middle east and been destroying international law since the end of world war 2

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Even earlier than that, the US has been mucking around in regime changes and gunboat diplomacy since the late 1800s. Particularly in Latin America, this is a common thing. According to Wikipedia I counted liked 12 countries they've "regime-changed" over the last 120 years.

[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Putin is just the latest in a long line of Muscovite imperialists. Russia has always been an imperialist project, just lke China and the USA.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago
[–] Dojan@pawb.social 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah. This is the same shit they've always been doing. Wonder when they'll invade Greenland. People here seem to have forgotten that.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

Agree, this is just same symptoms of the same attitude

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What unfolded overnight in Venezuela will cause immediate anxiety to governments like Iran and Denmark, against whom Trump has expressed enthusiasm for taking radical action.

In recent days, Trump has said the US would come to the defence of Iranian anti-government protesters, and his officials have kept up a drumbeat of threats to take control of Greenland by any necessary means. Last month, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service labelled the US as a security risk, a declaration that would have been unthinkable just a short time ago for a Nato ally.

It accelerates the slide from a mostly rules-based world to one of competing spheres of influence, to be determined by armed might and the readiness to use it. One American commentator, David Rothkopf, called it the “Putinization of US foreign policy”.

Russian commentators have frequently suggested that Latin America lies in America’s domain just as Ukraine was under the Russian shadow. Vladimir Putin thinks the same of much of eastern Europe.

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And here I was thinking it is more akin to the 1930s Nazi government takeover and military acceleration. These perspectives are all true, in a way.

[–] aviationeast@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Russia, China, and the USA, the new axis powers

[–] Palerider@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Russia? They can't even win a war in Ukraine...

[–] Aqarius@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To be fair, neither could Italy...

[–] Palerider@feddit.uk 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Also, as a Brit, let's not mention the charge of the Light Brigade.

[–] evenglow@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

USA has been in a cold war with China for years. Picked up some when China started exporting green tech.

US does something completely American: "What are we a bunch of Russians?"

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago
[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

We did this long before Putin.

You could say that Putin adopted an "Americazation of US foreign policy".

[–] dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is this an option? So why not deport the stupid Elon muppet Musk? Oh wait, seize his assets then deport him.

[–] Insekticus@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago

Woah woah, hang on. If you just deport him, he can come back like the cancer that he is. I think you'll need to aggressively cauterize him out.

[–] theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 week ago

This is just common us imperialist policy to its "neighborhood" still terrible but not anything new its American as apple pie not an "import".

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maduro and Trump are friends

Maduro gets to escape his country and save face instead of being assassinated or executed.

Trump gets to manufacture a conflict so he can start martial law and become a dictator, and to distract from us learning he came inside little girls.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

I'll reply the same I replied to your other comment with the same text:

Trump doesn't have friends.

Trump has parasites who take advantage of his stupidity, narcissism, and pettiness, and now also his dementia. And I suppose at some point, before he was so far gone, he might have had marks he was talking advantage of.

He's psychologically incapable of friendship; he'll betray anyone without a second thought the instant they're no longer of benefit to him, or someone convinces him to, which these days doesn't take much effort.

And he'll die before (knowingly) helping anyone for free.

If he can't give Trump something shiny enough, Maduro is fucked, no matter how much of a friend he might believe him to be.