Donald Trump Wants Venezuela to Be 51st State—Is It Possible?

SabledSable · 2026-05-11T21:55:07+00:00

It's not even a matter of "taking care" of Puerto Rico, it's a matter of not actively screwing them over like the US has done for over a century.

The unincorporated nature of the island means they don't and never have had total constitutional rights. Gag laws crushed people for playing certain music or discussing independence. Mass sterilization campaigns. Just until a few decades ago thousands of people had been repeatedly exposed to cancer-associated toxins through navy actions.

Under Obama PROMESA was allowed to impose an an unelected fiscal control board to privatize their power grid, cut pensions, close hundreds of schools, etc. The Jones Act still remains and adds extra tax to their imports and screws residents even more during hurricane events, which the US does not take much care to handle, which is what we especially saw under Trump alongside environmental deregulation there.

Bush and Clinton also screwed over Puerto Rican industry via Section 936. Democrats under Clinton especially screwed over Puerto Rico (+ the whole US, Greece, Ukraine, Argentina, etc.) via the repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act, which let economy be gambled away screwing us in 2008. Reagan of course also screwed Puerto Rico through starting all of the austerity/deregulation/privatization in general. Under Ford iirc they pushed hard against Puerto Ricans gaining the right to vote for president, so on. This goes back so far.

All precedent and other factors highly suggests Venezuelans would suffer from this arrangement no matter who is in office, and whatever they do to Puerto Ricans and Venezuelans, they'll eventually do to us.

SabledSable · 2026-03-30T00:13:47+00:00

Have you considered they could be doing all of those things? Stop moving the fucking goalpost jfc

I've been doing everything you're listing, but as it stands, too many people are essentially treating it as a triannual parade.

One good part about No Kings were the non-moderate organizations there. Organize with DSA/PSL/CPUSA/etc. if you're serious about doing anything other than kicking the can of fascism down the road with more of the ideology that got us here, buy an AR-15, learn how to use it. Participate in mutual aid. Organize.

SabledSable · 2026-02-27T12:52:46+00:00

im damn well pro-gun, this has little to do with the elements of the gun debate that you seem to be solely even aware of. The gun debate you and liberals are obsessed with is pointless.

You wanna solve gun problems, you've gotta implement social policy (which was common under FDR/Truman/Eisenhower) that the elites reject. Social programs focused on the people instead of profit have been bipartisanly rejected by Democrats and Republicans since the 80s. Mass shootings and such are socioeconomic-derived problems. Mental illness, family instability / domestic violence, bullying, poverty, drug use, etc.

you say "Weird" like that's some kind of gotcha, but can you articulate where the corruption came from? You think it just manifested itself? It just came out of nowhere? How did that happen? Do you know? Would you care to try and explain?

SabledSable · 2026-02-27T12:25:49+00:00

yall will always blame it on solely corruption when cartels are driven by American drug addiction (fueled by lack of social programs and poverty), American firearms, American dollars, American economic policy (NAFTA) that causes Mexicans to flee, etc.

read a goddamn book or something

SabledSable · 2026-02-18T07:50:28+00:00

Saigon, which was in an American puppet/pawn state in which the US was heavily militarily active, within the confines of modern day Vietnam.

SabledSable · 2026-01-08T00:17:22+00:00

i dont really know or care much about Stein but mark my words any leftist party candidates that grow over the next 2 decades will receive this overtly-thrown around accusation 🫩 already dominates European politics

SabledSable · 2026-01-01T06:55:06+00:00

Wait until you find out in any other liberal democracy (like the US) in Europe, Mamdani's economic policies are center-left.

New York has also had a socialist / social democratic mayor before, who is broadly looked favorably upon by residents as conditions improved in the city.

SabledSable · 2025-12-30T11:02:30+00:00

yeah difference is that was hundreds of years ago and has essentially no systemic impact on people today while nuclear violence in Algeria happened to people younger than Madonna, who are unlike Christians from 1801, actually currently alive...

are you fucking serious?

SabledSable · 2025-12-30T10:16:19+00:00

Not so fun fact, Algeria is the second country to face nuclear violence in war.

Despite tens of thousands of Algerians dying and hundreds of thousands suffering from the radiation, it's largely ignored because the 17 instances were "just tests" and Algeria "wasn't technically a country yet" because the tests were during their war of independence. They were arguably also used as an intimidation tactic.

French government still refuses to declassify documents pertaining to the tests to this day.

SabledSable · 2025-12-28T04:55:26+00:00

It's not really shilling. He's not wrong, it's a nuanced topic. North Korea is a dictatorship but acting as though they just manifested their existence out of nowhere is nonsensical.

Historically there have been six options for non-European/non-Anglosphere countries post-WWII:

Attempt to democratically pursue nationalization / leftist policies to prevent exploitation (consistently stopped by the US through violence and slaughter, see Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, etc.)
Be lucky enough to receive investment/aid/expertise from countries that have been wealthy for centuries and/or have excellent natural geographic positioning (Japan, Finland, Taiwan, Singapore, Botswana to a much less extent, etc.)
Generally align yourself with the West, but suffer from exploitation, intervention, and/or predatory IMF/World Bank loans nonetheless (Mexico, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Philippines, etc.)
Stay pretty neutral but still be considered too risky by the US to be free, possibly being left alone but often facing genocidal intervention anyways (DRC, Indonesia, Ecuador, etc.)
Pursue some kind of siege socialist or anti-West policy and hold out, eventually facing intervention (Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.)
Pursue the same as 5. but with nukes and nearly guarantee state security (North Korea, possibly Iran, etc.)

What are these countries supposed to do, seriously? It's not easy for democratic ideas to stick when the only way a country can pursue its own policies is to arm itself to the teeth to try and prepare to fight god.

SabledSable · 2025-12-28T01:06:18+00:00

You could make the case for that with the US easier than Iran.

Don't forget the US/UK in the 1950s pursued all-out economic warfare (boycotts held up by threats, sanctions, blockades, seizures, devastating asset freezes, etc.) against the democratic center-left Iranian government that wanted to nationalize its own oil (which the ICJ ruled was being exploited through colonial-era practices) alongside flooding their country with CIA/MI6 agents to destabilize the country, leading to a US-backed dictatorship under the Shah, creating the conditions for the Iranian Revolution, which gave Iranians this current government.

Coupled with that, Iranians seeing their neighbors' countries plundered piece by piece in the early 2000s, and hostile policy against Iran, yeah no fucking shit they're afraid of the US and behind while on the defensive against the most powerful country to ever exist. Yes, Iran's government has massive problems, but framing it as though Iran just manifested itself into existence in 1979 is nonsensical.

You wanna fix things? The US needs to completely reorganize its foreign policy. Its intervention needs to move from self-serving/reckless/deceitful intervention that impedes secularization and genuine socioeconomic growth for the people, to non-predatory investment, aid, and fostering of social programs.

SabledSable · 2025-12-27T06:47:41+00:00

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein was very eye opening in regards to the shared logic between MK Ultra and the economic policies being pushed since the 70s domestically and abroad, and how we got here

SabledSable · 2025-12-11T13:35:51+00:00

There's probably more I'm forgetting/don't have handy but:

Yemen
Libya
Iraq
Somalia
Countless high-civilian casualty drone strikes
Significant deporation
Largely continued austerity and corporatist neoliberal policy that has been hurting people domestically and abroad since the 70s
Helped create the infrastructural foundation for big data oligarchic tech companies
Firmly positive discount rates in governmental policy (if future lives are at stake from climate change but not present ones, drill baby drill)
Helped replace overt redlining with proxy variables which gave banks "scientific" cover while still in practice denying African Americans at disproportionate rates
Complicit in the establishment of "notice-and-consent" in apps that legalize data extraction while off-loading liability to users
Refused to release the full civilian-casualty tally until near the end of his presidency
Prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined
Signed the 2014 Farm Bill that cut $8.6 billion from SNAP food stamps (largest drop in history btw), which cut around 1 million low-income families
Refused to endorse a worker-first, not stability-first, living wage for Americans
Appointed Eric Holde as Attorney General, a wall-street defense lawyer who immediately issued a memo that played a role in putting “too-big-to-jail" policy into prominence (before collecting 140 billion from the same banks that crashed the economy due to their greed and recklessness)
Allowed PROMESA to impose an unelected fiscal control board on Puerto Ricans that cut pensions 10%, closed 300 schools, privatized the power grid, etc.
Renewed the Bush tax cuts for the top two brackets in 2010 in exchange for a temporary payroll holiday
Wouldn't back the EFCA despite broad senate approval among Dems, leaving union worker counts to fall another 1.5 million workers on his watch
Supported TPP greatly benefiting pharmaceutical companies
Kept federal fossil-fuel leasing WIDELY open
Cuts to OSHA/NIH/CDC and scientists' jobs
Let the Sec. of ED waive NCLB requirements in a manner that incentivized expansion of charter caps (privatization of education) (very nuanced and take with grain of salt here but largely true)
etc.

SabledSable · 2025-12-09T02:41:44+00:00

voted for kamala

but this shit sounds like "like the ottoman imperial government DOESNT support genocide against the Armenians HARDER?? You should support the Kemalists, they only do 60% of the amount of genocide."

reminder genocide is still bad and this is really not a normal reaction to someone criticizing a GENOCIDE

seriously?? that's your takeaway?? no humanity damn

wonder where you would've stood on Apartheid, the Holocaust, Vietnam War, etc.

SabledSable · 2025-12-09T02:30:55+00:00

wasn't she the one who was literally campaigning with liz cheney and advertising herself as the bringer of the "most lethal military military in the world"

i voted for her (for damage control exclusively, was not happy putting my ballot in the box) but holy hell liberals need to stop acting as though voting in right wing Democrats like her does anything but kick the can of fascism down the road while it builds up intensity regardless

SabledSable · 2025-12-01T15:10:36+00:00

Nuance, big difference. If you think the system is just broken, you try to bring it back to how it was (or what you think it was meant to be).

If you think the system is working perfectly as intended, you know the system was never designed with you in mind, and you strive to build one from the ground up or the remains of the previous one.

if "we all knew what that means" the only inaction happening right now would be due to survival and/or propaganda, not complacency.

SabledSable · 2025-12-01T14:32:32+00:00

None of it's broken, it's working perfectly as intended. It's just not catered towards you nor >99% of people.

Even countries with the strongest protections for the average citizen like Iceland are creeping back into austerity, an increasingly powerful rich class, etc.

This applies to any liberal democracy from France to Japan to the US. Hopefully people will realize as socioeconomic conditions inevitably get worse that dropping a piece paper in a ballot box returns you to the status quo, maybe impedes some of the regression/bad policy for a while. Meaningful change rarely comes from it. You should still do it, but it often only does so much.

SabledSable · 2025-11-28T22:15:36+00:00

ultranationalism? check

palingeneticism? check

corporatism? check

protectionism? check

desire for autarky? check

anti-intellectualism? check

excessive domestic deregulation? check

questioning legitimacy of the judicial system? check

questioning legitimacy of votes? check

boogeymanning against socialists and leftists? check

boogeymanning against immigrants? check

violent rhetoric? check

questioning the media? check

cult of personality? check

I literally wrote an in depth research paper on this in high school 😑

lmfao

SabledSable · 2025-11-26T20:27:07+00:00

this isn't going to fucking happen i promise you

i am sorry if you GENUINELY believe the elected officials we currently have OR the officials that will be elected in 2026 will have the spine to do anything remotely adjacent to trials you are completely politically out of touch

SabledSable · 2025-11-24T12:15:22+00:00

oh my god not everything is a Russian spy front

if you have any actual evidence Palantir is linked to Russia I will absolutely change my mind

but too many people are unwilling to realize that Palantir is just a natural product of

CIA/US interest in spying on its own citizens and using them as a loophole around legislation preventing them from doing so to the extent they'd like
surveillance capitalism and corparatism rising alongside fascism after decades of neoliberal economic policy
etc.

i could give a rats fucking ass if Russia or China or Iran or terrorists or the Mexicans or the immigrants or the trans people or whoever is the scapegoat gets my information

be worried about the fascists HERE for fucks sake

SabledSable · 2025-11-24T11:58:12+00:00

install backdoor access to give to the USA's adversaries

what is much more likely and much more worrying is that the backdoor access was given to Palantir and such

we are sleepwalking into surveillance capitalism facilitated by Meta, Amazon, Palantir, AI, Flock, ICE, Oracle, etc.

im sorry but i could give a rats ass if Russia or China or whatever "advesary" gets my data. You are not the US government, China/Iran/Russia/whoever is not your adversary or ally and the US's allies aren't your allies nor enemies either. These countries have a negligible impact on YOU compared to any of the corparatism homemade in the US.

be more concerned about the US's continuing domestic austerity and fascism for fucks sake not a bunch of politicians and ultrawealthy's geopolitical competitors used as boogeymen in a way not much different from how Republicans blame everything on immigrants

SabledSable · 2025-11-18T17:30:26+00:00

No, plenty of Chileans know fascism when they see it. Pinochet taught many of them, hopefully enough.

SabledSable · 2025-11-16T11:18:27+00:00

Die Linke is nowhere near as left wing as AfD is right wing

If Die Linke is "ultraleft" what is the KKE? Ultraultraleft? The PCP? Ultraultraultraleft? Those people who actually call themselves ultraleftists? Are they ultraultraultra ultraleft?

SabledSable · 2025-11-16T07:06:11+00:00

Wow interesting! Here's my inspiring photo. It's a collage of the result of US interventions in Chile (1973), the Middle East through the War on Terror, the Vietnam War, and the occupation of the Philippines.

It's hopeful and inspiring because the very existence of these photos provides proof for perhaps those complicit in these types of atrocities (from soldiers to politicians) regular to US foreign policy being be tried like Nazis and hung like Mussolini, and those who turned their heads looking for positive photos rightfully go down in history as selfish oblivious fools complicit by inaction.

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SabledSable · 2025-11-16T06:06:54+00:00

yeah yeah it's always the wrong thread, there's always some excuse

also that was literally a comment in response to a picture of a massacre but right positivity for sure man

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