Mexico is an ally, a neighbor, and a trading partner. While no place is perfect, I would certainly hope no powerful country would look at the daily mass shootings and conclude they need to invade us. The blatant unfettered racism spewing from the mouths of so-called adults is mind-boggling.
But let’s not call it an invasion. Right. Use of force, intervention, police action, mission, but not an invasion.
For the sake of accuracy, from Oxford Languages:
noun
Lindsey Graham is never going to be confused for Churchill diplomatically or Einstein intellectually, but what he has proposed in a massive overreaction to a tragedy goes beyond political theatre.
But before I get there, I would like to show you a television channel write-up about the situation, and I want you to tell me if this is straight out of Fox’s editorial department.
WASHINGTON (WMBF) – South Carolina U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is stepping up in the fight against Mexican drug cartels bringing fentanyl into America. The senator held a press conference on Wednesday to discuss the bill just moments after speaking with family members who lost loved ones after being abducted by members of a suspected drug cartel in Mexico.
“Not to invade Mexico. Not to shoot Mexican airplanes down. But to destroy drug labs that are poisoning Americans,” Graham said.
Let me stop and pause here to consider the ramblings. If someone walks up to me, slaps me in the face because they previously saw me scratching stubble, I am not going to then state, “Thank you, that was itchy.”
Graham believes, he truly believes, that we as a nation can waltz into any country we want that we deem to be a problem, and slap them around and just walk out, leaving behind a “You’re Welcome” on the bottom of an invoice.
A military incursion into a sovereign nation is an invasion, unless it is done in cooperation with the partner nation. This is unlikely to be reality in this case, as President Lopez Obrador is probably not making postings for The A-Team on Craigslist.
“To the president of Mexico, you have let your country slide into the hands of narco-terrorists. Your capability or your will doesn’t exist to the point to stop what is, I think, the poisoning of America. You’re leaving us with no other choice,” Graham said. “To the president of Mexico, fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction being unleashed on America from your country… You’re allowing safe havens for these groups to operate without impunity because what you’re doing is not working.”
Perhaps Graham is ignorant of President Lopez Obrador’s name. Perhaps he is attempting to deliberately anonymize him to undermine his leadership. Maybe he is just an idiot. But what is WMBF in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina? Well, WMBF is the NBC affiliate there. Not Fox. Not Newsmax. Not OANN. NBC! I would also like to point out that author Kristin Nelson’s blatant editorializing would have seen me flunked out of my Communications 101 class in college.
I highlighted the use of “stepping up” as it is casting Graham as a hero, before the main point of the story is even examined.
This is what I have been saying. This is the message I am sending, that everyday hundreds of millions of Americans are being practically brainwashed by a drastic lurch to the right in local press, to the point where it is not even using coded language. Between this, and rampant Russian bots in YouTube and Yahoo and most any comment board, it feels like we are losing ground daily to rogues and scoundrels looking for their next blood fix.
Like vampires.
Only, with vampires, one only needs to defend their neck, not their subconscious.
Look, the reality is that under President Biden, we have no immediate need for formal military actions at the moment, nor do we have the desire for it. But Republicans need someone to fight somewhere, and they are more than willing to send our young people to take on professional killers in order to “clean up” the border.
And none of this even addresses the precedent such an action could set, if Mexico were to respond similarly using the incident in El Paso in 2019 as a justification.
Imagine if the “President of Mexico” had said these words-
(To be clear for the search engines, the following is a hypothetical and NOT an actual historical record.)
“Mexican citizens have been shown to be in danger in American cities, and can not even safely shop at a Wal-Mart in Texas. If the U.S. will not take actions to protect our nation’s citizens from gun violence when visiting, we will.”
And by Graham’s logic, what would be our ability to contest that position?
-ROC
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In depth analysis of the national plague of gun violence against school children
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Love,
-ROC