Andry José Hernández Romero, the gay hairdresser whose only crime seems to be having the wrong tattoos, is still stuck in CECOT. His lawyers haven't been able to contact him. No one's sure if he's alive. https://www.advocate.com/news/andry-romero-family-worried-ce...
It's important to note that he made an appointment to seek asylum, then crossed the border when it was time for his appointment. He was granted asylum for credible fear. At no point did he break any US laws as far as anyone knows.
thunky · 5h ago
This story and others like it should be front page news every day until this abuse is stopped. Yet sadly this is the first I've heard about this man.
tastyface · 9h ago
And based on their rhetoric and behavior, I’m sure people like Miller and Noem only smile at the thought of what he may be going through.
pavlov · 12h ago
A country that specializes in building outsourced concentration camps and hosting foreign cryptocurrency hustlers.
El Salvador is starting to sound like the location for a side plot in a 1990s cyberpunk novel.
No comments yet
potato-peeler · 8h ago
Meta comment: have noticed some posts get flagged. Is it because they are political?
IAmGraydon · 2h ago
This really isn't the forum for political discussion, so many users here flag political posts. One the one hand, they're trying to keep intelligent discourse from devolving into flamewars, and I very much agree with that. On the other hand, sometimes I want to hear what the crowd here, who I view as far more intelligent than the average internet forum crowd, thinks about these political issues. So I see both sides. I think Dan G is doing a admirable job with riding the line as well as is possible.
nozzlegear · 25m ago
> One the one hand, they're trying to keep intelligent discourse from devolving into flamewars, and I very much agree with that. On the other hand, sometimes I want to hear what the crowd here, who I view as far more intelligent than the average internet forum crowd, thinks about these political issues.
Agree with you here. HN users can have some well thought-out and nuanced takes on political issues that span the political spectrum†, but the flamewars are often some of the worst I've seen as well. It's unfortunate because I can't think of anywhere on the internet that has better potential for reasoned political discourse. The only other place is Reddit, and the subreddits there are strictly echo chambers for your own preformed opinion.
† Funnily enough, I've seen flagged accusations that HN users are both too conservative and too liberal; too libertarian and too socialist.
bananapub · 6h ago
no, there's just a concerted flagging campaign for anything about atrocities perpetrated by the US government.
sundaeofshock · 3h ago
Gary Tan is a right wing tool, so this makes perfect sense.
IAmGraydon · 2h ago
Why does everyone want to invent a conspiracy these days? There's no "concerted flagging campaign". We, the users, are here to uphold the content policies of HN, and we do so by voting to flag posts that violate it. The content policy is what it is, and it doesn't play favorites. There have been MANY political posts in recent times that have not been flagged. Here's a handful in just the last week:
This is new information about the type and extent of extrajudicial torture (and likely murder) the USA is engaging in against its perceived political enemies. This hasn't been discussed in depth since Abu Ghraib.
archagon · 1h ago
Some people flag them because they’re not tech related. Some people flag them because they frequently fail to produce good discussion. Some people flag them because those people are authoritarian conservatives and want to stifle as much discussion as possible in service of their agenda.
What’s the split? Who knows. But I’ve seen all three types on HN.
throw0101b · 7h ago
See also "DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship":
These do not seem like conditions that an ordinary person would survive for very long. What happened to the other deportees, such as Andry José Hernandez, the gay barber? Are they even still alive? Or just experiencing hell on earth every waking day for the crime of having some tattoos?
The people complicit in this scheme are monsters who've chosen to shed their humanity. Certainly the guards who partake in sadism as a career and enjoy it; but in particular that grinning ghoul Bukele and his virulently racist enablers in the US, as well as anyone who doubles down even after learning that many of the convicts are, in effect, innocent. For God’s sake, they prettied this man up, paraded him out to Senator Van Hollen, and cracked jokes about drinking margaritas. How morally vacant do you have to be to pull a stunt like that?
I desperately hope that all these people someday face their own Nuremberg.
atoav · 12h ago
Which explains why the administration has acted the way it did.
What has the US become? I am not surprised by the fact that Trump is a fascist, this is a thing I knew in 2016. What surprised me is how little popular resistance he has gotten and with which ease the US population gave away its rights.
I remember a time where americans scolded me online for my countries laws preventing certain types of speech (related to nazi insignia and Hitler), you guys do realize that if your government can just make up bullshit about you and send you to a torture camp abroad without due process, that free speech is no longer free?
Back then you people were adamant that your second amendment was there to protect free speech. But my suspicion back then was that this was mostly a thing guys who grew up in the comfort of a first world civilization would say to come across as tough and manly. And guess what.
easyThrowaway · 11h ago
As someone from outside US but who spent some time in LA can't really believe anyone ever took those "second amendment" guys at face value.
It was always the most obvious cover for "say or do something we don't like and we shot you". The current US administration policies were always their end game.
ghufran_syed · 10h ago
why would this be the case? Taking the 2nd amendment argument to its logical conclusion, wouldn't the speaker also have a firearm?
rgblambda · 10h ago
The speaker would need to sleep every night with a gun under their pillow, in a room with no window.
easyThrowaway · 10h ago
In a game-theory-prisoner-dilemma kind of situation, yeah, maybe. In the real world, those guys were always sure to point their to guns to those they knew very obviously couldn't retaliate back. And I'm not strictly talking about minorities, by the way. Simply, those who weren't part of their circle had a rough time and the police made very clear that they would act in their defense if anyone tried something funny.
I've only seen shit like this in sicily in the early 90s, when the mob controlled much of the big cities.
ethbr1 · 5h ago
This is how you get revolutionary militant resistance like the Black Panthers (and militias).
rgblambda · 10h ago
>were adamant that your second amendment was there to protect free speech
I've gotten into arguments with people (usually non Americans who tend to have an American tinge to their accents from consuming so much U.S. media) who are very pro 2nd amendment and wish their country had similar.
I always ask "How do you destroy an M1 Abrams or F-35 with a licenced hunting rifle?". They usually say "Well at least they have that" then quickly move the discussion on to something else.
Anyone who's seen an episode of Cops knows how much protection a firearm provides you against law enforcement. Zero.
matwood · 10h ago
At an individual level you are correct, but that's not what the 2nd amendment was about. An armed populace can stand up to a government. All you have to look at are the wars that the US has lost - Vietnam and Afghanistan come to mind.
With that said, it's moot since a large portion of the population wants an authoritarian dictator/king. I'm not sure if the founders addressed the issue of the people possibly wanting a king again.
mdhb · 16m ago
The balance of power hasn’t made that a logical argument for a long time now.
Compare and contrast say the provisional IRA fighting the Brits to a stalemate in Northern Ireland for 30 years from the 70s-90s and then look at a modern equivalent in Palestine. The idea of a “well trained militia” doesn’t work when they can bomb you from the skies.
rgblambda · 10h ago
I don't believe either of those examples are appropriate. The U.S military is never going to withdraw from the U.S due to the public growing weary of the war. The opposite would happen. The insurgency would surrender.
Also in the case of Vietnam, it's worth noting that the Viet Cong for all intents and purposes lost the insurgency. The war was won by the conventional forces of North Vietnam after the U.S ceased military aid to the south.
I also missed the most important point. Neither country had a 2nd amendment and both insurgencies imported arms illegally. And actual military hardware at that, not revolvers and sporting shotguns.
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> U.S military is never going to withdraw from the U.S due to the public growing weary of the war
But the military may turn on its commanders if forced into a guerilla war against Americans.
The point is to draw out and make more difficult the oppression. There is a massive difference between pacifying a city with a couple of Marines and National Guardsmen and calling in air strikes on the homeland.
rgblambda · 7h ago
>But the military may turn on its commanders if forced into a guerilla war against Americans.
You mean a counter-terrorism operation against "Unpatriotic terrorists"?
>The point is to draw out and make more difficult the oppression
You can achieve that more effectively with a general strike, without alienating those who aren't willing to fire on their own countries military. Legally purchasable firearms would be more of a nuisance than a threat for a modern army.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> a counter-terrorism operation against "Unpatriotic terrorists"?
Yes. The traditional framing is riot or rebellion suppression.
> can achieve that more effectively with a general strike
This is civil action. If protests and strikes work, the point is moot. Where weapons and training have historically made a difference is when the army is sent in to quell a strike.
js8 · 9h ago
> With that said, it's moot since a large portion of the population wants an authoritarian dictator/king. I'm not sure if the founders addressed the issue of the people possibly wanting a king again.
You're wrong, twice. Most population doesn't want a dictator king. And founders actually put protections against such scenario, in the form of supreme court.
The actual scenario you're facing is the majority of supreme court (and congress) wanting (or willing to bend a knee to) a dictator king.
magicalhippo · 6h ago
> Most population doesn't want a dictator king.
He didn't say "most" he said "a large portion", which is definitely correct since he got almost half of the votes. And he's been very clear about wanting to be a dictator, so it should come as no surprise to his voters.
ethbr1 · 5h ago
> the majority of supreme court
Pointing out that if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired under Obama the SC wouldn't now be as extreme.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
archagon · 1h ago
I’m sure the Republicans would have found some way to ratfuck that appointment.
matwood · 6h ago
I said a large portion and not most. Trump was very clear what his intentions were and people voted for him anyway.
SCOTUS has zero ability to execute on their decisions - that's up to POTUS. Congress is also voted on by the populace, and most GOP not towing the MAGA line have been primaried because once again, a large portion of the population wants exactly this.
yread · 9h ago
I don't think you can draw conclusions from wars us lost if you cite such different examples as Afghanistan and Vietnam. By that measure US lost also in Korea and Iraq
SauciestGNU · 4h ago
Is that not the case? The North Korean government is still in power and Iraq, while not under Saddam, turned into a power vacuum that eventually gave rise to ISIS and various other regional instability.
throw0101b · 7h ago
> An armed populace can stand up to a government. All you have to look at are the wars that the US has lost - Vietnam and Afghanistan come to mind.
The US did not 'lose' Vietnam to a bunch of citizens/people: it was fighting a proxy war against China and the Soviet Union.
Further, South Vietnam existed for many years and when the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, and for a further two years. When the South fell in 1975 it was not because the US was beaten, but because it had moved on in its priorities.
The Vietnam theatre achieved its larger goal of driving a wedge between the Soviets and Chinese in the Cold War. See this lecture from Sarah Paine of the US Naval War College, "Who Lost the Vietnam War?":
> US did not 'lose' Vietnam to a bunch of citizens/people: it was fighting a proxy war against China and the Soviet Union
You really can’t imagine an American insurgency finding sympathy among foreign powers?
matwood · 6h ago
Or sympathy among the US military itself.
throw0101b · 7h ago
> I always ask "How do you destroy an M1 Abrams or F-35 with a licenced hunting rifle?". They usually say "Well at least they have that" then quickly move the discussion on to something else.
In a historical survey of ~600 movements between 1900 and ~2010, researchers found those that used violence succeeded in their goals ~25% of the time, while those that did not use violence succeeded ~40%:
You almost double your chances by eschewing violence. Further, they found those movement that used violence tended to then enact authoritarian structures (perhaps thinking that someone will come along later and do what they did in the same way).
shiroiuma · 10h ago
>I always ask "How do you destroy an M1 Abrams or F-35 with a licenced hunting rifle?"
The same way the Taliban forced the US military out of Afghanistan, despite not having an air force or any tanks of their own.
rgblambda · 10h ago
As I've said in another reply, the U.S public growing weary of the war would not result in a U.S military withdrawal from the United States, but instead would likely result in a surrender of the insurgency.
And the Taliban had Soviet era military weaponry, not legally purchasable under the 2nd amendment firearms.
spwa4 · 8h ago
I would argue that the taliban's scorecard in Afghanistan is pretty good.
Taliban insurgency vs USSR (technically vs "People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan", who, one might add, killed more people in peacetime than the Taliban did in wartime). They had the support of the entire population, because, frankly, the Taliban are an improvement over these communists. Communists left to make the terror attacks stop, and because the USSR collapsed.
Taliban insurgency vs US/International Coalition. They certainly did not have widespread support, with constant claims that it's much less than 50% (in an election, not that 50% of the population was prepared to fight). Essentially the coalition left and the Afghan government surrendered to make the terror attacks stop.
There's 2 lessons here. First, what matters is who's willing to fight (and equipment, to a lesser extent). Afghans are willing to vote against Taliban, but that's just not enough. The Taliban are some 10-20% of the population, and have since betrayed part of their own groups, so it's less now. Part of the problem is that nobody sees a future in Afghanistan under a decent government (or under the Taliban, but that doesn't matter, it's mostly people who can't leave). Two: terror and destroying everything and everyone until you're the only option left ... at least that can work. Communists demonstrated it doesn't work if you keep killing everyone but the Taliban don't do that. Life is terrible under the Taliban, but they don't kill large amounts of people, or at least not quickly. And the UN doesn't mind working with the Taliban, they're even prepared to exclude women from UN departments that work with the Taliban, so I guess that means they're "accepted".
I believe it's fundamentally an economic problem. Either there is some way to give Afghanistan a decent economy that depends on it's people, at which point the Taliban will have to make big concessions, or everyone basically "exchanges terror" with Afghanistan (not the Taliban, the entire population, the same problem as in Gaza if you will) to maintain some kind of balance. They kill/attack/kidnap/... people around the world, effectively in schemes to get money. The rest of the world attacks Afghans and Afghanistan to keep their terror below a reasonable level.
rgblambda · 8h ago
I don't want to reply to your entire comment except to note that the USSR dissolved in 1991 and the Taliban formed in 1994.
The Wikipedia article you linked does not back up your claim. Osama Bin Laden was not a member of the Taliban.
Some of the Taliban's founders had previously fought as Mujahideen in the war against the Soviets, but the government that the Taliban overthrew in 1996 was founded by the Mujahideen.
lysp · 10h ago
I also put this blame on the US supreme court too.
1. Presidential absolute immunity decision.
2. The fact that they constantly consider the dozens of presidential appeals.
If DT has no risk of jail, he does what he likes with impunity. Also the SC has allowed him to not take any lower court decisions seriously, by not rejecting his numerous vexatious appeals.
No accountability, no risk of punishment = free reign.
sussmannbaka · 10h ago
They didn't "become" anything. They didn't "give away" anything. The torture prison and fascism isn't a bug, it's a feature. People voted for this. A large part of this community voted for it, probably the majority.
CursedSilicon · 10h ago
I think this will be a veeeery unpopular opinion on this site. But I think the simple reality is this is the natural end state of unchecked capitalism.
The entire model the US has been on since Reagan has been a rapid, uncontrollable concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer. The reality of that is of course, wealth translates (roughly) to power
On the reverse, in an authoritarian state you need to concentrate power in the hands of as absolutely few as possible. The loyal ones who keep the empire running
Of course you also need to convince the working class to "play along" with your game as you fleece the blind. So you enter the role of the fourth estate, particularly after Nixon. You just have to convince enough percentage of the population that you're "fighting for them"
So you create enemies. "The Gays" "The Trans" "The Browns" and all other cornucopia of manufactured enemies. Anything to divide and conquer and prevent the proles from rising up and obliterating your empire
JumpCrisscross · 10h ago
Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)
This has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The police state we built internally, lack of trust we engendered externally, economic straitjacket trillions of useless spending caused to our livelihoods and then resulting collapse of the party of Reagan into the vindictive mess it is today, all of these trace from the Iraq War.
CursedSilicon · 10h ago
>Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)
What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?
Really the only other comparison is China. Which went from an existing authoritarian state to an authoritarian state using its working class as effective slave labor for western capital. It's "state capitalism"
JumpCrisscross · 7h ago
> What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?
All of South America, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia [1]. Also every single pre-industrial society.
Look at historical conditions in apartheid South Africa or pre-revolution France.
cma · 10h ago
Under the first Bush and continued under Clinton, Haitian asylum seekers were interdicted at sea and sent to Guantanamo to avoid due process, which set the stage for its use in the war on terror. However, in these earlier uses it was for additional processing to give a chance at asylum for those claiming persecution and others not seeking it were deported back to Haiti directly.
But it was still used to avoid full due process. Under treaties that are supposed to be law of the land under the constitution, we are supposed to accept legitimate asylum seekers.
sureglymop · 10h ago
I was about to remind the person you replied to that we are on hacker news.
Judging by the name you'd think it would be a place where hacker ethics are prevalent (which would be most close to libertarianism in the original leftist sense, or anarchism). But of course we know that that's not the case, given how the site came to be and who runs it.
Personally I believe that the situation the US is in can largely be attributed to the failures of the democrats. When, due to material conditions, the voting population increasingly becomes accepting of more progressive ideas but instead gets neoliberal pseudo-progressives like Hillary Clinton as possible president, they become disillusioned with their party.
If you live in another country, let it be a lesson that neoliberalism can help the convergence to fascism by dismantling the leftist counter balance needed to be in place and try to stop it while you still can.
orwin · 9h ago
Note that this doesn't need to be neoliberals. Liberals/conservative do the same each time the status quo is at risk (see Spanish civil war). The most famous are Hindenburg and Papen making a deal with Hitler with the help of their midwife Shroder, because they were afraid of the agrarian reform supported by the left and saw the electoral decline of their 'center' and their right (including NSDAP) in the last free elections of 32. Nazi were given the power, they weren't voted into it.
throw0101b · 7h ago
> What has the US become?
It has become what the popular and electoral college vote wished it to become.
It's important to note that he made an appointment to seek asylum, then crossed the border when it was time for his appointment. He was granted asylum for credible fear. At no point did he break any US laws as far as anyone knows.
El Salvador is starting to sound like the location for a side plot in a 1990s cyberpunk novel.
No comments yet
Agree with you here. HN users can have some well thought-out and nuanced takes on political issues that span the political spectrum†, but the flamewars are often some of the worst I've seen as well. It's unfortunate because I can't think of anywhere on the internet that has better potential for reasoned political discourse. The only other place is Reddit, and the subreddits there are strictly echo chambers for your own preformed opinion.
† Funnily enough, I've seen flagged accusations that HN users are both too conservative and too liberal; too libertarian and too socialist.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44438884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44448854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44438360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44434239
What’s the split? Who knows. But I’ve seen all three types on HN.
* https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5445398/denaturalizatio...
"DOJ memo pushes for broader effort to revoke naturalized US citizenship":
* https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5379452-doj-mem...
"DOJ directs US attorneys to seek to revoke citizenship of naturalized Americans over crime"
* https://www.foxnews.com/us/doj-directs-us-attorneys-seek-rev...
The people complicit in this scheme are monsters who've chosen to shed their humanity. Certainly the guards who partake in sadism as a career and enjoy it; but in particular that grinning ghoul Bukele and his virulently racist enablers in the US, as well as anyone who doubles down even after learning that many of the convicts are, in effect, innocent. For God’s sake, they prettied this man up, paraded him out to Senator Van Hollen, and cracked jokes about drinking margaritas. How morally vacant do you have to be to pull a stunt like that?
Even more fucked up that the whole thing was a farce to begin with, given the dropped charges against MS-13 leaders: https://www.inkl.com/news/trump-admin-dropped-charges-agains...
I desperately hope that all these people someday face their own Nuremberg.
What has the US become? I am not surprised by the fact that Trump is a fascist, this is a thing I knew in 2016. What surprised me is how little popular resistance he has gotten and with which ease the US population gave away its rights.
I remember a time where americans scolded me online for my countries laws preventing certain types of speech (related to nazi insignia and Hitler), you guys do realize that if your government can just make up bullshit about you and send you to a torture camp abroad without due process, that free speech is no longer free?
Back then you people were adamant that your second amendment was there to protect free speech. But my suspicion back then was that this was mostly a thing guys who grew up in the comfort of a first world civilization would say to come across as tough and manly. And guess what.
It was always the most obvious cover for "say or do something we don't like and we shot you". The current US administration policies were always their end game.
I've only seen shit like this in sicily in the early 90s, when the mob controlled much of the big cities.
I've gotten into arguments with people (usually non Americans who tend to have an American tinge to their accents from consuming so much U.S. media) who are very pro 2nd amendment and wish their country had similar.
I always ask "How do you destroy an M1 Abrams or F-35 with a licenced hunting rifle?". They usually say "Well at least they have that" then quickly move the discussion on to something else.
Anyone who's seen an episode of Cops knows how much protection a firearm provides you against law enforcement. Zero.
With that said, it's moot since a large portion of the population wants an authoritarian dictator/king. I'm not sure if the founders addressed the issue of the people possibly wanting a king again.
Compare and contrast say the provisional IRA fighting the Brits to a stalemate in Northern Ireland for 30 years from the 70s-90s and then look at a modern equivalent in Palestine. The idea of a “well trained militia” doesn’t work when they can bomb you from the skies.
Also in the case of Vietnam, it's worth noting that the Viet Cong for all intents and purposes lost the insurgency. The war was won by the conventional forces of North Vietnam after the U.S ceased military aid to the south.
I also missed the most important point. Neither country had a 2nd amendment and both insurgencies imported arms illegally. And actual military hardware at that, not revolvers and sporting shotguns.
But the military may turn on its commanders if forced into a guerilla war against Americans.
The point is to draw out and make more difficult the oppression. There is a massive difference between pacifying a city with a couple of Marines and National Guardsmen and calling in air strikes on the homeland.
You mean a counter-terrorism operation against "Unpatriotic terrorists"?
>The point is to draw out and make more difficult the oppression
You can achieve that more effectively with a general strike, without alienating those who aren't willing to fire on their own countries military. Legally purchasable firearms would be more of a nuisance than a threat for a modern army.
Yes. The traditional framing is riot or rebellion suppression.
> can achieve that more effectively with a general strike
This is civil action. If protests and strikes work, the point is moot. Where weapons and training have historically made a difference is when the army is sent in to quell a strike.
You're wrong, twice. Most population doesn't want a dictator king. And founders actually put protections against such scenario, in the form of supreme court.
The actual scenario you're facing is the majority of supreme court (and congress) wanting (or willing to bend a knee to) a dictator king.
He didn't say "most" he said "a large portion", which is definitely correct since he got almost half of the votes. And he's been very clear about wanting to be a dictator, so it should come as no surprise to his voters.
Pointing out that if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired under Obama the SC wouldn't now be as extreme.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
SCOTUS has zero ability to execute on their decisions - that's up to POTUS. Congress is also voted on by the populace, and most GOP not towing the MAGA line have been primaried because once again, a large portion of the population wants exactly this.
The US did not 'lose' Vietnam to a bunch of citizens/people: it was fighting a proxy war against China and the Soviet Union.
Further, South Vietnam existed for many years and when the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, and for a further two years. When the South fell in 1975 it was not because the US was beaten, but because it had moved on in its priorities.
The Vietnam theatre achieved its larger goal of driving a wedge between the Soviets and Chinese in the Cold War. See this lecture from Sarah Paine of the US Naval War College, "Who Lost the Vietnam War?":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjXlvIBQmU0
You really can’t imagine an American insurgency finding sympathy among foreign powers?
In a historical survey of ~600 movements between 1900 and ~2010, researchers found those that used violence succeeded in their goals ~25% of the time, while those that did not use violence succeeded ~40%:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...
You almost double your chances by eschewing violence. Further, they found those movement that used violence tended to then enact authoritarian structures (perhaps thinking that someone will come along later and do what they did in the same way).
The same way the Taliban forced the US military out of Afghanistan, despite not having an air force or any tanks of their own.
And the Taliban had Soviet era military weaponry, not legally purchasable under the 2nd amendment firearms.
Taliban insurgency vs USSR (technically vs "People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan", who, one might add, killed more people in peacetime than the Taliban did in wartime). They had the support of the entire population, because, frankly, the Taliban are an improvement over these communists. Communists left to make the terror attacks stop, and because the USSR collapsed.
Taliban insurgency vs US/International Coalition. They certainly did not have widespread support, with constant claims that it's much less than 50% (in an election, not that 50% of the population was prepared to fight). Essentially the coalition left and the Afghan government surrendered to make the terror attacks stop.
There's 2 lessons here. First, what matters is who's willing to fight (and equipment, to a lesser extent). Afghans are willing to vote against Taliban, but that's just not enough. The Taliban are some 10-20% of the population, and have since betrayed part of their own groups, so it's less now. Part of the problem is that nobody sees a future in Afghanistan under a decent government (or under the Taliban, but that doesn't matter, it's mostly people who can't leave). Two: terror and destroying everything and everyone until you're the only option left ... at least that can work. Communists demonstrated it doesn't work if you keep killing everyone but the Taliban don't do that. Life is terrible under the Taliban, but they don't kill large amounts of people, or at least not quickly. And the UN doesn't mind working with the Taliban, they're even prepared to exclude women from UN departments that work with the Taliban, so I guess that means they're "accepted".
I believe it's fundamentally an economic problem. Either there is some way to give Afghanistan a decent economy that depends on it's people, at which point the Taliban will have to make big concessions, or everyone basically "exchanges terror" with Afghanistan (not the Taliban, the entire population, the same problem as in Gaza if you will) to maintain some kind of balance. They kill/attack/kidnap/... people around the world, effectively in schemes to get money. The rest of the world attacks Afghans and Afghanistan to keep their terror below a reasonable level.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#Afghan–Soviet_...
Some of the Taliban's founders had previously fought as Mujahideen in the war against the Soviets, but the government that the Taliban overthrew in 1996 was founded by the Mujahideen.
1. Presidential absolute immunity decision.
2. The fact that they constantly consider the dozens of presidential appeals.
If DT has no risk of jail, he does what he likes with impunity. Also the SC has allowed him to not take any lower court decisions seriously, by not rejecting his numerous vexatious appeals.
No accountability, no risk of punishment = free reign.
The entire model the US has been on since Reagan has been a rapid, uncontrollable concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer. The reality of that is of course, wealth translates (roughly) to power
On the reverse, in an authoritarian state you need to concentrate power in the hands of as absolutely few as possible. The loyal ones who keep the empire running
Of course you also need to convince the working class to "play along" with your game as you fleece the blind. So you enter the role of the fourth estate, particularly after Nixon. You just have to convince enough percentage of the population that you're "fighting for them"
So you create enemies. "The Gays" "The Trans" "The Browns" and all other cornucopia of manufactured enemies. Anything to divide and conquer and prevent the proles from rising up and obliterating your empire
This has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The police state we built internally, lack of trust we engendered externally, economic straitjacket trillions of useless spending caused to our livelihoods and then resulting collapse of the party of Reagan into the vindictive mess it is today, all of these trace from the Iraq War.
What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?
Really the only other comparison is China. Which went from an existing authoritarian state to an authoritarian state using its working class as effective slave labor for western capital. It's "state capitalism"
All of South America, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia [1]. Also every single pre-industrial society.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_...
But it was still used to avoid full due process. Under treaties that are supposed to be law of the land under the constitution, we are supposed to accept legitimate asylum seekers.
Judging by the name you'd think it would be a place where hacker ethics are prevalent (which would be most close to libertarianism in the original leftist sense, or anarchism). But of course we know that that's not the case, given how the site came to be and who runs it.
Personally I believe that the situation the US is in can largely be attributed to the failures of the democrats. When, due to material conditions, the voting population increasingly becomes accepting of more progressive ideas but instead gets neoliberal pseudo-progressives like Hillary Clinton as possible president, they become disillusioned with their party.
If you live in another country, let it be a lesson that neoliberalism can help the convergence to fascism by dismantling the leftist counter balance needed to be in place and try to stop it while you still can.
It has become what the popular and electoral college vote wished it to become.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
* http://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/...
There should be no surprise at what has happened, since this is what the US voted for.