For some reason, I can't access this in the Substack app when signed in! This is Noel, not some anonymous commentator.
So ... I dunno, Randy, maybe you're right. But it is not how I would bet. You may have noticed that President Trump is bleeding support. Given how low his starting approval was, you can be pretty sure that's not from liberals who voted for him.
Would the outspoken MAGA types on social media justify or deny casualties? Of course! But that's irrelevant. What you want to ask is whether the marginal (or even not-so-marginal) Trump voters would ignore it. And that's where I say no, no they wouldn't.
If I may, since our countries aren't that different (for all the silly claims otherwise), the Conservatives bled support once Trump started attacking your sovereignty. That doesn't mean that Conservative supporters suddenly gave up all their opinions! It means that they rallied around the forces of right ... and the forces of right were smart enough to appoint Mr. Carney as PM and dump the unpopular social stuff.
Maybe you're convinced that the same wouldn't happen in the USA if we suddenly invaded Panama and shot up a mass demonstration. But I would contend that you're making the mistake of assuming that Americans are a weird alien species, rather than your close cousins.
Best,
Noel
P.S. Remember, I'm a Dutch citizen, and my other countrymen voted for another blond guy with a bizarre haircut who WOULD HAVE WON had Nederland used the same voting system as the USA or Canada. And the Dutch are rather more distant from America than you are. If I may, your country has been playing with fire for the last decade, and its only a combination of President Trump and that fact that the Liberal Party is an essentially undemocratic institution willing to throw overboard the opinion of its activists what has saved you.
God bless the Liberal Party of Canada, may they continue to never believe in anything. Would that we had such a party here.
> I know many MAGA types, they are my friends and relatives. Heck, I am close friends with people who’s political opinions I consider completely insane. And most of them would blanche at shooting Panamanian civilians in Panama.
Why do you think that?
Ignore that MAGA people have at best a tactical relationship with the truth, and do not quite get how things work. They appear to think that Trump's rhetoric is a perfectly normal way to treat allies and do not understand how it—and the lack of significant pushback from other Americans—is doing a great job of harming the United States' reputation. Getting Ford and Poilievre to align against the US was an achievement.
The US would not be invading a Panama that is labouring under a dictatorship. The US would not be invading a Panama on the edge of a nasty civil war. The US would be invading Panama because a perfectly functional democracy does not want to give up key elements of its sovereignty to anyone, least not the country that had signed a treaty recognizing the Panamanians' rights. The US, for its part, would be invading a country imagined as having stole American land, populated by people who refused to be Americans and who could plausibly be linked to migrant infiltrators who posed a lethal threat to the US. Trump said so.
American invaders, here, would not act as good guys.
Right! But my point is that the almost-inevitable brutality against civilians would make an invasion lose domestic popularity very quickly. And that loss of popularity would include chunks of the Trumpist base.
Was that point unclear? If it was, I'll have to rewrite it!
I should add here that my point is not that the entire Trumpist base would turn against an invasion. Heck, most would not, and the rally-around-the-flag effect means that the invasion would probably gain some support even from outside the base. But it would still not be a good idea from a domestic political standpoint.
No, the point you were making is that MAGA people would be upset about civilian casualties.
The point I was making is that you are probably, sadly, wrong. If things got as far as Trump’s United States invading Panama because the Panamanians refuse to give up their national territory and the violent narcissists in power in Washington respond with force, pretty quickly MAGAts will find ways to justify lots of dead Panamanian civilians.
Who knows? They might even celebrate it, or winkingly deny it. See the response of too many Russians to Ukrainian civilian dead.
For some reason, I can't access this in the Substack app when signed in! This is Noel, not some anonymous commentator.
So ... I dunno, Randy, maybe you're right. But it is not how I would bet. You may have noticed that President Trump is bleeding support. Given how low his starting approval was, you can be pretty sure that's not from liberals who voted for him.
Would the outspoken MAGA types on social media justify or deny casualties? Of course! But that's irrelevant. What you want to ask is whether the marginal (or even not-so-marginal) Trump voters would ignore it. And that's where I say no, no they wouldn't.
If I may, since our countries aren't that different (for all the silly claims otherwise), the Conservatives bled support once Trump started attacking your sovereignty. That doesn't mean that Conservative supporters suddenly gave up all their opinions! It means that they rallied around the forces of right ... and the forces of right were smart enough to appoint Mr. Carney as PM and dump the unpopular social stuff.
Maybe you're convinced that the same wouldn't happen in the USA if we suddenly invaded Panama and shot up a mass demonstration. But I would contend that you're making the mistake of assuming that Americans are a weird alien species, rather than your close cousins.
Best,
Noel
P.S. Remember, I'm a Dutch citizen, and my other countrymen voted for another blond guy with a bizarre haircut who WOULD HAVE WON had Nederland used the same voting system as the USA or Canada. And the Dutch are rather more distant from America than you are. If I may, your country has been playing with fire for the last decade, and its only a combination of President Trump and that fact that the Liberal Party is an essentially undemocratic institution willing to throw overboard the opinion of its activists what has saved you.
God bless the Liberal Party of Canada, may they continue to never believe in anything. Would that we had such a party here.
Is anyone else having trouble seeing the comment section on these posts?
> I know many MAGA types, they are my friends and relatives. Heck, I am close friends with people who’s political opinions I consider completely insane. And most of them would blanche at shooting Panamanian civilians in Panama.
Why do you think that?
Ignore that MAGA people have at best a tactical relationship with the truth, and do not quite get how things work. They appear to think that Trump's rhetoric is a perfectly normal way to treat allies and do not understand how it—and the lack of significant pushback from other Americans—is doing a great job of harming the United States' reputation. Getting Ford and Poilievre to align against the US was an achievement.
The US would not be invading a Panama that is labouring under a dictatorship. The US would not be invading a Panama on the edge of a nasty civil war. The US would be invading Panama because a perfectly functional democracy does not want to give up key elements of its sovereignty to anyone, least not the country that had signed a treaty recognizing the Panamanians' rights. The US, for its part, would be invading a country imagined as having stole American land, populated by people who refused to be Americans and who could plausibly be linked to migrant infiltrators who posed a lethal threat to the US. Trump said so.
American invaders, here, would not act as good guys.
Right! But my point is that the almost-inevitable brutality against civilians would make an invasion lose domestic popularity very quickly. And that loss of popularity would include chunks of the Trumpist base.
Was that point unclear? If it was, I'll have to rewrite it!
I should add here that my point is not that the entire Trumpist base would turn against an invasion. Heck, most would not, and the rally-around-the-flag effect means that the invasion would probably gain some support even from outside the base. But it would still not be a good idea from a domestic political standpoint.
No, the point you were making is that MAGA people would be upset about civilian casualties.
The point I was making is that you are probably, sadly, wrong. If things got as far as Trump’s United States invading Panama because the Panamanians refuse to give up their national territory and the violent narcissists in power in Washington respond with force, pretty quickly MAGAts will find ways to justify lots of dead Panamanian civilians.
Who knows? They might even celebrate it, or winkingly deny it. See the response of too many Russians to Ukrainian civilian dead.