Content Warnings: Cheeto Hitler, War, Violence, Racism
Naranja Puto recently rattled a saber at the president of Mexico, which had me thinking about how that horrifying disaster of a war would play out, and then a ray of hope dawned on me in this: Mexico would totally kick our fucking asses. It won’t come to that. If the gold-showered one declared war, I could imagine our armed forces refusing to carry out the order because it’s foolish as all fuck. Way more ridiculous than occupying Afghanistan.
Militarily, there’s overwhelming power. We have that. We can shred cities, irradiate the universe, make a place into a hellscape so desolate you could only imagine ghosts living there. But then, that isn’t everything. Unless you literally kill every man woman and child in a place, someone can resist you and may. And they use the flipside of overwhelming power – guerilla tactics and terrorism. Mexico has vast armies of people with training experience and will to do the kind of things that would make the Viet Cong blush. It has the cartels.
So they’d win the same way Vietnam kicked our ass. Meanwhile, the chaos at home would again make Vietnam look like a church picnic. Latinx people are something like one in five Americans. Think they’d try to do internment on that scale? I know they’re already trying to prepare for it, but you think they’ll pull it off? What of the non-Latinx friends neighbors and loved ones? Do they get interned too? How many of them would resist? If the military – itself disproportionately Latinx – didn’t directly defy the war order, how much do you think they’d be collapsing from within?
Much of this country was Mexico before it was ever the Estados Unidos. The wall doesn’t keep all of Mexico out. There’s a lot of Mexico we’re arbitrarily calling USA at the moment. How peaceful will that occupied territory be? There would be no need for intervention by foreign powers on Mexico’s behalf. They’d win. I’m glad they won’t have to be through the horror show that would test my little theory, but for alternate timeline victors, I’m proud of y’all. Good job.
¡Viva México!
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well, the publicized ICE raids last week, and the leaked draft memo about using Natl Guard to arrest and deport 11 million does make me wonder if White House think they could remove/intern all citizens of Latin heritage while invading Mexico …
but yeah, just look at the bigger numbers: TX and CA both are more than one third Hispanic, and more than 80% of Hispanic Texans and Californios are of Mexican descent. Seems like that would be an immediate problem compared to, say, Cuban descent or Brazilian, if US govt goes to war with Mexico.
So that’s more than 60 million persons to put on the “enemies list”. And they’re (mostly) not recent immigrants; there is no legal way to deport them. They’re at least second generation while many are from families here before US existed. They’re local business people, police, gov’t officers, landlords; entire cities would collapse if the Hispanic-American population were removed.
Even Donnie Duck can’t be that stupid.
I wonder how well Trumpites will like $9 per gallon milk and $12 per pound hamburger after deporting our dairy and slaughterhouse workers. Not to mention doing their own laundry at the motel….
I know thinking things through isn’t the strong suit for a lot of the fact-averse community, but this, at least doesn’t require very many intellectual steps.
As a peace activist since the US war on Vietnam, I’ve often wondered why Washington hasn’t sent the boots to Latin American ground in the last few generations (except for quickies like Dubya Daddy’s regime change in Panama).
My present conclusion: between the abundance of Latino/as in the military, and the relative ease of learning Spanish when starting from English, the troops would fairly rapidly pick up the local lingo – and start hearing from the locals about what was really going on. Dissent would grow and turn to mutiny real quick. (Remember the Saint Patrick’s Brigade!)
Our glorious leaders face much less risk of that sort of inconvenience when occupying nations which speak linguistically distant/difficult tongues such as Vietnamese, Pushtun, and Arabic. Plans seem ready for troops to get more exposure to Bantu and Swahili too!
Hotshoe @1- Having read about the contents of his call to Mexico, underestimating the foolishness of the Crapsack would be a mistake. His hubris might be the only thing that reigns him in, given that the Rethuglicans are too busy leveraging his power to burn this country to the ground to bother considering the future.
Cora @2- Big time. I worry about my own grocery bill. Always living close to the line here.
Pierce @3- Grim biz, but at least I learned about the St. Patty’s Brigade. I love it! Thank you.
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I agree with your analysis. Mexico is huge and inviting an insurgency next door (which could pull in most of Central America) would make Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam look easy in comparison. It’d probably be worse than all three, because Mexico isn’t safely on the other side of the planet.
The elite in Washington think the military can solve anything, because they are not students of history, are *foolish*, and corrupt. They listen to the weapons-salesmen and think tanks. They’re an inverse “domino theory” waiting to happen.
Edited your post for what I considered an ableist term, hopefully my replacement is coo. You’re a sharp cat, glad to see you agree with my assessment of the main topic.