WHAT WOULD DONALD Trump have to do for the U.S. media to frame what he is doing in Venezuela as an act of war?
This isn’t a rhetorical question. It’s an actual inquiry, the pursuit of which can reveal a lot about how U.S. media’s default posture is state subservience and stenography. In the past few months, President Trump has committed several clear acts of war against Venezuela, including: murdering — in cold blood — scores of its citizens, hijacking its ships, stealing its resources, issuing a naval blockade, and attacking its ports. Then in a stunning escalation on early Saturday morning, the administration invaded Venezuela’s sovereign territory, bombing several buildings, killing at least 40 more of its citizens, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their bed, and announcing they will, henceforth, “run” the country.
This episode seems to indicate that the president can do almost anything in the context of foreign policy, and the media will still overwhelmingly adopt language that is flattering and sanitizing to the administration when describing what has unfolded. This dynamic reached a new low Saturday morning, when the U.S. media rushed to frame the administration’s unprovoked attack as, at worst, a “ratcheted up” (CBS News) “pressure campaign” (Wall Street Journal) and, as was more often the case, some type of limited narcotics police “operation” (CNN).
The US media is owned by the same oligarchs who benefit from his fascism. Why would they bite the hand that feeds?
The world is sleepwalking into WWIII
Seriously, the US isn’t going to be the only country looking to put their finger on the scale in Venezuela. Heck, there’s plenty who will do so just to further entangle the US.
It is an act of war, the “capture” of Maduro is a kidnapping, and the deaths of ~80 cuban and venezuelan security and civilians is murder.
USA is a rogue state.
Not many people are bringing up that the US invaded a country and not only kidnapped a guy, but left a trail of bodies.
Please, we desperately need to be invaded and conquered by the most convenient communist country
Edit: not sarcasm
The subscription billionaire media companies are all complicit, and have been for quite a while.
As written by General Buttler in 1935, War is a Racket. The billionaire cabal benefits from war immensely, and the media they own and control will always sing the praises of war.
International law is very clear that the seizing of ships is not a casus bellum. Claiming it is a “clear act of war” suggests the author is more interested in rabble-rousing and news-as-a-team-sport than answering the question, which is disappointing.
It’s churnalism like this that landed us with Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, and all the other crap.
Seizing of ships? My sibling in Christ Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by the USA
Its in the article.
I’m aware the US has seized ships, the act of war would be the invasion of the country, bombing of civilians, and kidnapping of the president
Right, but the article claims theyre all acts of war.
I think this is not necessarily the case, the article could be interpreted as calling these “acts of war” from a colloquial standpoint, which is a judgement informed by the fact that we know now that the USA performed the kidnapping. It’s not necessarily saying that these acts should’ve already been called acts of war back then.
If you told me ten days ago the US would capture Maduro, bomb the shit out of a variety of military sites, and kill a bunch of civilians in the process, I would ask which American navy vessel was attacked to start the war.
But, uh.
This was an act of war wrapped in the shroud of narcotics enforcement
Who actually believed that justification? Not even the MAGA crowd believe it, they just straight up say its about oil. Back in 2016 they called neocons “rhinos”, now MAGA is neocon, cheering for the very same things they previously hated Bush Jr. for.
I agree, I’m describing what THEY call it
USA Nukes Poland
“The president took another eyebrow-raising strategy today, let’s talk to a panel of assorted youtube streamers to analyze what he meant with this action…”
Friggin RIGHT?!?!?!
The semantics at play indicate the media “watchdogs” have put their tails between their legs and pissed themselves.
Media is just bought and controlled by the corporate donor class who have installed this administration to begin with. Every major outlet is compromised.
Every time you see media making the administration angry or they have spats, it’s just performance. I think if everyone realized how much of what we are experiencing is kayfabe people would have a mental breakdown.
I keep trying to point this out to my mother, who keeps overreacting to one news story after another. She agrees in the moment that it’s all theater, then goes right back to being outraged by every obvious bait story.
My parents were also people whom I would make great efforts to explain things to them with reason and logic and they would understand it and act logical when presented with logical arguments, but the moment an emotion rose up in them again it would all go out the window.
Some people can’t deal with emotions, they never worked out the basic concept that emotions are not the same as factual reality, they just respond to a feeling and let their brains write whatever story fits immediately to explain and validate those feelings, even if the story doesn’t make sense. The only way you can get people like that to stay aligned on a particular idea is to present them a constant narrative that provokes their emotions.
Unfortunately, this is a known technique now for capturing large segments of the population. Fear and anger are much stronger emotions than any others so as long as you can keep people scared or paranoid or angry at some other group, you can tell them anything and they won’t bother trying to reason it out.
You’re not a mean cow at all! As someone that’s about to start therapy with a spouse with a similar issue, you just handed me the beginning of the proverbial thread I need to start pulling on. So serendipitous!
I’m very glad to hear that you’re taking the right steps to working something out with your partner.
I guess if I were to pass on any measure of aged wisdom on the issue, it would be that having an emotional/reactionary state of mind is not entirely bad. If you’re a logical thinker who defaults to reason first before reacting to an emotion, that will serve you well in life making decisions and figuring out problems, but it’s not necessarily “better” than being someone emotional.
Just like an emotional/reactionary person needs to learn that their system isn’t the only valid way to deal with the world, a logical minded person isn’t necessarily having a “better” experience in life. We are all deeply emotional creatures and trying to squash that can be just as damaging as letting our feelings run away with us and falling down some conspiracy hole. A feeling person has more potential for healthier emotions and emotional intelligence than someone who just sticks to systems and “policy” about life.
Making this concession is key to reaching out and bridging that gap. We all have things to work on in ourselves, the key to good relationships is deciding together, as a team, what traits or values you’re going to share and what you need to work on improving, and acceptance that you’re never going to “get there” and be the best version of yourself, you can only keep trying for someone who you decide is worth it, and hopefully that person will share that same perspective.
Billionaire owned media isn’t covering this?
ABC was covering it like it was a football game. “Incredible performance from the US military”, “Flawless victory over the Venezuelans”, “Impressive display of professionalism from the troops”
Makes me sick.
Remember when the invasion of Afghanistan got its own theme tune and title sequence?
That is nauseating. These are human lives, 80 people died
And its the military’s job to kill people. I’ve never got people who love soldiers.
Soldiers are still human beings and there are enough instances where soldiers did the right thing. Aside that, soldiers do what they’re told. Kill the one person in charge and all soldiers stop
That’s cause only white people matter.
Unfortunately, those 80 human lives are almost nothing compared to the 38 million the US and EU have murdered over the past 50 years through economic sanctioning (still murdering half a million per year).
<citation needed>
DAE all the Lemmings saying that the good men in the military would refuse to carry out unlawful orders because they swore an oath to the Costitution?
“Special Military Operation”
If China decided that trump had violated some domestic law of theirs, and sent their military into Florida, dragged him and his third wife out of their beds, flew them back to their territory, and put them in prison, would these assholes consider that an act of war?
Stop, I can only get so erect.
I wouldn’t! 😇
lmao the lemmy replies showing exactly why no one has declared it war, literally no one gives a shit about an oppressive dictator who clung to power using the military post being voted out
That’s not the point. The point is, who made specifically the US the World Police? This kind of forced intervention is how you create the Taliban, ISIS, etc. What is your response to that?
The world made the US the world police. Where were Venuzuela’s neighbours when dictatorship set in? Why weren’t they parking their tanks on the president’s lawn? Why has the UN Army been repeatedly rejected by members?
The usual disinterest, apathy and self interest governs all countries.
MAGA would be screaming about it until the end of time if that happened. Because it’s different. Somehow.
It’s called American Exceptionalism, and it’s much older than MAGA.
“Me? you want Me to pay tax? To Revolution!”
Valid point. MAGA is just the latest iteration.
Don’t get our hopes up
50% chub, and rising.
Now, that would definitely feel like one of those ultimately rare and rarer “Nature is healing” moments, and everyone would live happily ever after.
Don’t promise me a good time
They’d say “interesting that you’d use China as an example you commie”
No no no, you’ve got it backwards. It’s .ml users who’d get mad at you for comparing China and the US. “It’s a false equivalency!”
Like I had happen to me just the other day when I compared the US regime’s invasion to the invasion of Ukraine and the lack of any real response from world leaders.
They could’ve said any European country and everyone would have just laughed.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”
Or the support of the press !
Major news organisations in general are really scared when it comes to pointing out things which are extreme, because they believe describing those things as extreme will lead to accusations of sensationalism. The reason they think that is because sensationalist outlets are indeed more likely to describe everything as extreme and make unjustified comparisons to extremities, so major media outlets often think that to be “unbiased” is to refuse to acknowledge that an action is extreme.
Vox described this as the “this is fine” bias.
Major “news” organisations are owned by oligarchs who support Trump so they have abandoned any pretence of accountability
This is bullshit, though, legacy media have no problem using sensationalist headlines when it suits their ideology. Example from New York Crimes on Oct 7th:
Death to America, death to “Israel”
Once you have replaced the press leadership with lackeys then yes. They had a very very productive 2025 for doing things to eliminate resistance
“Special military operation”
At least Dr Evil was evilly cool compared to these facists!
Hey if big daddy Putin can do it, why can’t diaper Donny?
Calling in war would make both of them criminals.
Ehm… I’m sorry if this comes as a blow, but they both are criminals (Trump already found guilty on 34 accounts). They have been criminals for most of their lives.
Yes yes. Other one is an old KGB murderer and kleptocrat the other one an old KGB asset, convicted conman and kleptocrat.
the other one an old KGB asset, convicted conman and kleptocrat.
And pedophile.
Will be interesting to see what Maduro’s trial judge says.
As IF he gets anything close to a fair trial. Everything about this kidnapping was illegal to begin with. All world leaders can now be kidnapped in their beds by US Special Forces. What happened to Noriega will happen to Maduro.
Why haven’t they captured genocider Netanyahu?? Oh right…….
There’s a longstanding law which says a court can disregard how the defendant ended up in the courtroom, regardless of the legality of the means used to get them there.
SHAME
