5 ms·

Footage is quickly spreading, looks like strikes on military bases as well as a bunch of low-flying helicopters, so a strike + a ground invasion? They didn't ev

Footage is quickly spreading, looks like strikes on military bases as well as a bunch of low-flying helicopters, so a strike + a ground invasion? They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent for a war against Venezuela. Wonderful.

fortyseven 10mo ago
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions-intl-hnk https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions...
cosmicgadget 10mo ago
Trump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Plus, the more of a splash, the more Epstein stays out of the news.
- cmurf 10mo ago
  MAGA: It's not really a war if they can't retaliate. No doubt the regime will come up with a "special military operation" equivalent to avoid calling it what it is.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > Trump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Or, he could acknowledge that their is a conflict, and pretend he didn't start it but Venezuela did. Like he could claim that Venezuela invaded the US first (oh, wait, he actually did that last March, using it as the pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.)
avidiax 10mo ago
We don't need to manufacture consent anymore. The days of protest ending a war that the US is engaged in are long gone, if they were ever here. Even the ballot box isn't enough. We don't have an anti-war party in the US. Our news media are largely captive to the military, with the embedded reporter system. Congress has abdicated broad war powers to the president, and the courts won't intervene. The global community can't do anything to the US. Sanctions are very unlikely.
- immibis 10mo ago
  Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history. When it's appeared to work, that has one of two causes: either the government didn't really care very much to begin with, or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face. (See civil rights)
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history This is nonsense. > or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face Violence isn't needed. Protest is designed to tip the balance of power.
    - immibis 10mo ago
      Name some times protests worked, then. It wasn't civil rights, nor was it Stonewall (which was a riot).
      - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
        > Name some times protests worked We're three days out from 2025 and Nepal and Madagascar have already been forgotten? Like, there is criticism of the 3.5% rule [1] for being too narrowly based. But the hot take that protest never works is genuinely one I haven't seen yet. Are you confusing protest and terrorism? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
      - avidiax 10mo ago
        Some of the Eastern European anti-Soviet revolutions probably qualify. I suppose it depends on whether the U.S.S.R. "wanted" to crush the protests violently but couldn't. It certainly did conduct violent reprisals in several cases. Civil rights in the US has been, I agree, sanitized. No, civil rights didn't progress solely because the majority in power was touched that minorities demanded their rights so peacefully and insistently. There was a violent side too, that provided necessary pressure.
dingaling 10mo ago
Unlikely to be ann invasion, they appear to be SOF Chinooks so probably a snatch or pinpoint raid.
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent Chomsky was smart and influential. But he was a linguist. Not a political scientist. The manufacturing-consent hypothesis sort of worked under mass media. But even then, it wasn't a testable hypothesis, more a story of history. In today's world, unless you're willing to dilute the term to just persuasion in general, I'm not sure it applies. Instead, the dominant force here is apathy. Most Americans historically haven't (and probably won't) risk life, liberty or material wealthy on a foreign-policy position. Not unless there is a draft. (I'm saying Americans, but this is true in most democracies.)
- mikkupikku 10mo ago
  Most of Manufacturing Consent is about ideological alignment in media and government being an emergent property, not the product of deliberate conspiring. People seek out jobs with people/organizations they already agree with. People hire people they already agree with. People are more likely to get promoted if their boss thinks they have good opinions, etc. It's not a conspiracy, at least there doesn't need to be a conspiracy, because Manufacturing Consent describes an anti-conspiracy. All of this obviously still happens today, there hasn't been any fundamental change in human behavior, people still have special affinity for people they agree with. Always have, and always will. Chomsky, as a linguist, was probably better equipped to understand the implications of emergent behavior than more mainstream political scientists.
biggestlou 10mo ago
Is that really necessary? Venezuela recently held an election in which the results were simply ignored by the leader in power. Very few US citizens will find this particularly odious.
- big-and-small 10mo ago
  Of course Trump is very much against election fraud in other country unless it's his buddy Putin: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595299071/president-trump-congratulates-putin-on-re-election https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595299071/president-trump-con...

fortyseven 10mo ago

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions-intl-hnk https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/03/americas/venezuela-explosions...

cosmicgadget 10mo ago

Trump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Plus, the more of a splash, the more Epstein stays out of the news.

cmurf 10mo ago
MAGA: It's not really a war if they can't retaliate. No doubt the regime will come up with a "special military operation" equivalent to avoid calling it what it is.
dragonwriter 10mo ago
> Trump ran on "no more wars". Manufacturing consent means admitting that he's entering a conflict. His more effective play is to pretend it's not happening and attack anyone who criticizes him. Or, he could acknowledge that their is a conflict, and pretend he didn't start it but Venezuela did. Like he could claim that Venezuela invaded the US first (oh, wait, he actually did that last March, using it as the pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.)

avidiax 10mo ago

We don't need to manufacture consent anymore. The days of protest ending a war that the US is engaged in are long gone, if they were ever here. Even the ballot box isn't enough. We don't have an anti-war party in the US. Our news media are largely captive to the military, with the embedded reporter system. Congress has abdicated broad war powers to the president, and the courts won't intervene. The global community can't do anything to the US. Sanctions are very unlikely.

immibis 10mo ago
Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history. When it's appeared to work, that has one of two causes: either the government didn't really care very much to begin with, or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face. (See civil rights)
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > Protest has never stopped a government from doing what it wanted. Not a single time in history This is nonsense. > or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face Violence isn't needed. Protest is designed to tip the balance of power.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    Name some times protests worked, then. It wasn't civil rights, nor was it Stonewall (which was a riot).
    - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > Name some times protests worked We're three days out from 2025 and Nepal and Madagascar have already been forgotten? Like, there is criticism of the 3.5% rule [1] for being too narrowly based. But the hot take that protest never works is genuinely one I haven't seen yet. Are you confusing protest and terrorism? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
    - avidiax 10mo ago
      Some of the Eastern European anti-Soviet revolutions probably qualify. I suppose it depends on whether the U.S.S.R. "wanted" to crush the protests violently but couldn't. It certainly did conduct violent reprisals in several cases. Civil rights in the US has been, I agree, sanitized. No, civil rights didn't progress solely because the majority in power was touched that minorities demanded their rights so peacefully and insistently. There was a violent side too, that provided necessary pressure.

dingaling 10mo ago

Unlikely to be ann invasion, they appear to be SOF Chinooks so probably a snatch or pinpoint raid.

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> They didn't even try very hard to manufacture consent Chomsky was smart and influential. But he was a linguist. Not a political scientist. The manufacturing-consent hypothesis sort of worked under mass media. But even then, it wasn't a testable hypothesis, more a story of history. In today's world, unless you're willing to dilute the term to just persuasion in general, I'm not sure it applies. Instead, the dominant force here is apathy. Most Americans historically haven't (and probably won't) risk life, liberty or material wealthy on a foreign-policy position. Not unless there is a draft. (I'm saying Americans, but this is true in most democracies.)

mikkupikku 10mo ago
Most of Manufacturing Consent is about ideological alignment in media and government being an emergent property, not the product of deliberate conspiring. People seek out jobs with people/organizations they already agree with. People hire people they already agree with. People are more likely to get promoted if their boss thinks they have good opinions, etc. It's not a conspiracy, at least there doesn't need to be a conspiracy, because Manufacturing Consent describes an anti-conspiracy. All of this obviously still happens today, there hasn't been any fundamental change in human behavior, people still have special affinity for people they agree with. Always have, and always will. Chomsky, as a linguist, was probably better equipped to understand the implications of emergent behavior than more mainstream political scientists.

biggestlou 10mo ago

Is that really necessary? Venezuela recently held an election in which the results were simply ignored by the leader in power. Very few US citizens will find this particularly odious.

big-and-small 10mo ago
Of course Trump is very much against election fraud in other country unless it's his buddy Putin: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595299071/president-trump-congratulates-putin-on-re-election https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595299071/president-trump-con...