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The United States of America is now at war with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Dozens of Venezuelan military targets have been bombed in the last few minutes, including a major army base just outside the capital. American Chinooks have been seen flying across the Caracas skyline.
This could be the most important geopolitical happening since the Ukraine War. We do it yet know if this will be a limited run of bombing like the Kosovo strikes, or a full on Iraq style invasion and regime change. If it is the latter, it will be an important test of America’s military might, and failure could very well be America’s Suez moment. I have speculated here several times that I thought the US would have difficulty conducting a thunder run of a non-peer or near-peer adversary in its current state, and it looks as though my theory may be put to the test. On a geopolitical and moral level though, I have little sympathy for Venezuela, for the same reason I have little sympathy for Ukraine. If you repeatedly antagonize your neighboring superpower, you get what you get.
This will also no doubt further fracture the Republican base in a major way, as interventionist neocons clash with America-First isolationists.
This is also adds to an intensifying pattern of conflict in multiple theaters that could lead to global war. It also increases the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan as American asserts are entangled in multiple theaters.
I will post more information as I hear it.
A true gentleman scholar post “inb4 source” and is vindicated in the light of history.
Edit:
There are now multiple airstrikes occurring within Caracas. The United States FAA has issued a NOTAM warning that civilian aircraft should avoid overflying the entire territory of Venezuela.
Reuters is now reporting that there are US ground troops active within the capital of Venezuela.
What the hell are you talking about? It's the USA that has been constantly antagonizing Venezuela and interfering with it. They've fairly successfully attacked the quality life of all Venezuelans by economic war via aggressive sanctions.
This implies American "conservatives" and Republicans have ideology. They do not. There is no indication of this, and plenty to the opposite. The Republican base runs on "vibes" and hatred of the other to give a sense of unity and "doing something." And has a massive proclivity towards political personality cults and authoritarianism. They'll be fine - for now. Our glorious tribe leader did something, it was even a success that feels tough, and enemy tribe doesn't like it = it was good libtards. Hell yeah!
Well username checks out anyway. Your most recent to this post stated:
But that was almost a year ago, so I suppose "soon" is relative.
The only thing that saves me is my infrequent posting.
And it's also a reference to how I am constantly banned for speaking my mind on Reddit, and how I don't think this place will be any different. It hasn't been. That post was immediately read in bad faith by some mod with an attitude and used as an excuse to freak out, self preen, and ban the scary wrong think. Surprise surprise. And you know, my very first post here was censored. You can't read it to this day, as far as I can tell. So I was banned before I even started, in a way. I wasn't pessimistic enough.
I stand by the name.
In my own time here I've seen far more offensive posts than yours, but typically framed as arguments with (what at least passed for) support. You're "boo outgroup"ing here hard. While you can't do that in one direction on Reddit, you're discouraged from doing it in either direction here.
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I see your username, and I immediately read your posts in the tone of that peasant in the Holy Grail who is complaining about being oppressed.
Using my elite noticing powers, I notice that flouncers with dramatic names begging the mods to ban them rarely, if ever, have anything interesting to say. Maybe the contents of your mind are simply uninteresting, or worse: boring. Why don't you know, make a good post, instead of preemptively winding up your victim complex?
If every bar you go to is full of assholes, maybe you're the common denominator.
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You ever looked into attribution bias? If you consistently perceive the world around you as being against you, the common factor is you, not the world.
Yes. But the thing is I get banned for contradictory things. I'm permabanned on /r/law for defending Donald Trump (I think it was either the Stormy Daniels sham trial debacle or saying he has a legal right to control the border), here I was banned and threatened with a future permaban for speaking ill Donald Trump. I was recently permabanned from /r/fantasy for pushing back against someone that was making things political and responded, keeping things political admittedly, with a post that implied the word fascism is used too liberally and irrationally (it was one of those "somehow punching Nazis is bad now?? posts). Here I'm already getting pushback and "fight me" posts for saying the word fascism at all - and implying fascists might be bad.
So what's the common line? Yes, I am the baddie. But it's not the content of ideas or character. It's having a very angry and abrasive tone of voice in writing, being a contrarian that speaks against the tribe in whatever tribe I'm in. Not liking circlejerks. The other common line is that the modern post-smartphone Internet is incredibly siloed and stuffed to the gills with ninnies that want to destroy people that vaguely disagree with them. And people like me that want to think in confrontational dialectic can't last.
It didn't use to be this way, and I don't think I've changed that much from the days of forums. So yes, I say it's the world, and you, and the children that are the ones that are in the wrong.
Yes.
... case in point.
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I removed your first post according to mod history. I don't remember why or even if I definitely meant to. I'll undo that now. Sorry it upset you, we do have lots of alts of banned users that persistently join and cause the same problems. Sometimes we are trigger happy.
What mod history? It was a first post.Nevermind, I'm dumb and can't read.
Edit: Thanks for changing it.
There's a log of all mod actions. He checked it to see what happened with your first post.
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Everyone's first posts are censored, it's something due to the code the website is based off of and the mods can't turn it off. They have to manually approve all comments until the user gets over a certain amount of karma. If they could turn it off, they would. They generally approve most posts but sometimes don't notice one is in the queue.
It wasn't a one time thing. Because I'm so used to being snarled at, downvoted, or just banned for posting my honest thoughts I eventually noticed my posts, not just the first one, were being shadowbanned. I think they eventually got manually reviewed and approved but I'd say about 1/3 never made it. Mind you I got started around Oct. 7 blow up, so that changes some things but still. No doubt the mods that were reviewing my anti-Israel posts and allowing the ones that went through through were patting themselves on the back as modern day Voltaires, but, again, not all Israel criticism was deemed a good enough fit.
And everyone has a ghost first post that has never seen the light of day? I don't believe it. And a moderator later said that it was personally nixed, so that further clarifies it wasn't normal.
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