Well, to be more precise.

I think there is some possibility that the current Democratic leadership might eventually, in 2031 or something, permit a few enlisted soldiers to face a few years of prison time for the deliberate and cruel mass murder of dozens of people.

The fact that you think this is evidence that Democratic Leadership has credibility when it comes to prosecuting war crimes is literally the problem. They made some noises, tossed a few flunkies very lightly under the bus, then let everyone get away and *we* let the Democrats get away with that.

So no one giving orders, just a few low level flunkies, got it.

Not Ricardo Sanchez, Donald Rumsfeld, or anyone up the chain we know for a fact authorized the Abu Gharib torture.

Also, you know what policy the Democrats could have changed with full control of the House, Senate, and Presidency?

Don't get me wrong, there's practical differences. This is fascism, not apartheid, and there's practical differences in implementation, risks, and resistance strategies.

But it's the same rot, and pretending our past didn't have this is part of how it reestablished its hold on power.

You're telling me you would look a civil rights protester in the face and tell them that when the police beat their pastors' skulls with billy clubs that it was different from *this* racism because... why, exactly?

If anyone giving orders about the war crimes committed under George W Bush was prosecuted and punished for those war crimes, I'm not aware of it.

Obama should have handed Bush over to the ICC at a minimum and that certainly didn't happen.

Well it might actually be strategic. The Admiral involved had a falling out with the administration and resigned, so this might be an attempt to focus everything on this specific subset of murders and then pin that on the Admiral.

He goes down, and the other murders go under the rug.

I mean, I remember 2009. I'm not convinced Democratic leadership will stand for prosecuting *anyone*.

If it happens, it's going to be because we pushed in enough 3rd party candidates in though Democratic primaries, like Mamdani, that non-Democrats can force the issue.

God I wish I could believe that the Democrats would actually prosecute war crimes this time.

Even this article is a obscenity. It just directly accepts the framing that the smuggling of cocaine, even if it was real, could possibly be a justification for the first set of murders.

The Constitution also says only Congress can declare war or has the power of the purse and look how far that's gone.

It also says that everybody has the right to a lawyer, and Republicans killed that for immigrants more than 20 years ago.

The United States did not decay to this, this has always been part of the US. Progressives managed to win for a while, but we didn't succeed in stamping it out, it was still smoldering. This is the exact same shit from when you were a kid, just back for round 2. Or 10, really.

Look, uhhh, you remember Dr Rev Martin Luther King Jr was being beaten by racist cops through your entire childhood, right?

& mass deportations of citizens during Operation Wetback (yes that's what the government called it) when you were 6.

This is horrible, but it's also the US you were born to.

The fundamental rule of defending the indefensible is to not defend it. Instead, change that aspect of reality and argue about the resulting fiction. The fiction might still be indefensible, but it doesn't matter, because everybody defending the fiction is on board with changing reality if needed.

Lenme fix that for you.

USPS, a *service that we pay for*, operated an equitable and efficient postal system across an entire damn continent for a *mere $30/person/year* on top of their extremely reasonable shipping prices.

If I could have one miraculous change to our political system, it would be universal mandatory involvement with local politics (made room for by work week reductions), and random selectorate audits of local government actions.

That would fix. So. Much.

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