Comment by kristopolous
6 days ago
So if Americans don't like Trump then, say, Italy can unilaterally bomb San Francisco?
Or should this only be a one way street? Is dropping bombs to disapprove of elections how we're being adults in 2026?
6 days ago
So if Americans don't like Trump then, say, Italy can unilaterally bomb San Francisco?
Or should this only be a one way street? Is dropping bombs to disapprove of elections how we're being adults in 2026?
It’s not a one-way street on principle. Italy could go do whatever it wanted. It’s a one-way street in capabilities to take action.
There isn’t anything stopping Italy, the sovereign state, from doing anything it thinks it could do. What is stopping it from bombing San Francisco (besides it not making sense whatsoever) would be that the US would physically stop the Italian Air Force and navy.
The US spend years building the UN and the system of international law and it benefits a lot from it. The US is like 4% of the world population and 2% of the area, but dominates pretty much anything you care to measure. It is really not in US interest to overthrow the current system. Its wild that the main threat to international order is coming from the US. Not just this latests development, but the talk of annexing Canada and Greenland, the undermining WTO and WHO etc. Read Hobbes, even the strong do not benefit from “jungle law”.
People who drive policy believe it has already collapsed; now it’s just about asserting control over the resources that will let US(or them personally) thrive in an isolationist, post-AGI world.
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The conspiracy nuts are taking over.
The lunatic fringe has long seen global institutions as arms of a shadowy conspiracy to destroy national sovereignty and impose a world government. Far from being instruments for exerting US control, they’re seen as holding us down.
It’s just like vaccines. Why would a country deliberately weaken and sicken its population by discouraging the most effective medical interventions ever devised? Because the nuts have take over and conspiracy theories have gone mainstream.
The point is we should be adult enough in 2026 to have an international order that we can draw a line between our modern behavior and what we did in the bronze age.
If you think this kind of caveman-era diplomacy is the future And want humans to be a multi-planetary species then lol, good luck.
>should
This word is doing a lot of lifting here. You are essentially saying "the world should be better" without even a hint of suggestion of what a minority of countries could do to achieve it (in the presence of adversarial, nuclear states)
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It's also rather telling that nobody in Caracas seems to have really tried to stop the US from doing this, it doesn't take all that much to shoot down at least one helicopter.
You'd expect them to have air defenses on high alert 24/7 prepared to immediately respond to any US actions.
They're using Russian air defense that don't seem like much of a barrier for the US military (iirc same hardware Iran has)
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No not really. Actual leftists (as opposed to authoritarians who have seized the language) have a tendency to cede power gracefully.
Look at Dilma Rousseff who stepped down without much of a fight. Mujica, Allende, Morales, the left wing is really bad at holding on to power because they give into perceptions and affectations of mass sentiment regardless of their authenticity or accuracy.
It's part of the praxis.
Americans can delete Italy.
Venezuelans can't delete America.
Yes, a bit of a one way street.
If Americans delete Italy they will be the Pariah of the world for a very long time
Maybe, but it's still the reason Italy can't bomb America.
The rest of the world wouldn't do anything about it either, IMO. Just like they're doing for Ukraine now.
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Pariahship only really matter if you care. Look at both India and China. For the past 80 years countries cared about being pariahs because there was only one real country: the United States of America. Today, there are a handful of truly sovereign countries (America, China, India, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea) who will actually defend themselves without resorting to nominal allies .
In the normal state of human affairs, being a pariah doesn't matter as long as your goals get done
> Americans can delete Italy.
Boy, Americans really do have an overinflated sense of their power.
There are american military bases all over italy already...
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What would actually happen?
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I don’t know how many Americans actually approve of this. The left will hate it. Trump’s base has largely been isolationist.
Obviously if someone like Italy bombed us we would invade and beat the shit out of them. We did a two decade, trillions of dollars revenge tour for like 2700 people dying.
(I’m not advocating for any of this but US policy is pretty consistent. Part of the value of a US passport is knowing (and everyone else knowing) that the government will go to incredible lengths to get you back.)
I don't know either but I've spotted two comments in this thread that pretty much argued for that. Multiply that by the US population ratio vs HN size and it could really add up.
> Part of the value of a US passport is knowing (and everyone else knowing) that the government will go to incredible lengths to get you back.)
Is this even the case anymore?
The government has shown to turn a blind eye when natural disasters affect states that voted majority voted for the other party. Their own citizens.
If you were stuck overseas but are an outspoken Democrat, I would not count on your government to get you home.
> Trump’s base has largely been isolationist.
Given the Jan 6th insurrection attempt (which made trump ineligible for office) I think a clear eyed spectator thinking deeply about the US political situation would find that his base will think whatever he tells them to think
Huh, I thought that the courts said he could run.
The point is we say "well some people don't think much of their elected leader in X, so that justifies us destroying their cities, overthrowing their government and killing hundreds of thousands of people there!"
Alright, is this the global rule now? Where's the cutoff? Trump is getting 41%, is that low enough? Who gets to overthrow Washington? My vote is the Swedes, they seem pretty nice.
> We did a two decade, trillions of dollars revenge tour for like 2700 people dying.
Then what is the expected scale of a revenge tour for 48,422 fentanyl overdose deaths in 2024 and 76,282 in 2023?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20250514.html
The US isn’t too progressive about addiction. The culture tends to blame it on the individual vs. the environmental causes (including over prescription of opioids) that lead to it.
We’ve pressured China to crack down on fentanyl and its precursors, which they have to some extent, but there isn’t someone to invade, really, to stop it.
Can you truly not see the fundamental difference here? Taking drugs is voluntary and the risk of drugs being laced is known by effectively everyone. Comparing THAT to people getting incinerated in their office place is nothing short of daft and insulting.
How about you stop using drugs, how about that?
Really if you want to bomb the people responsible for the overdoses it's probably the overdosers parents who abused them.
What happened to individual responsibility?
Beyond the other replies to your 'point', fent has nothing to do with Venezuela⁰. It's pretty obvious if you think about it for 5 seconds, it's a dense synthetic opioid. Is there incredible chemistry knowhow in the quite far off Venezuela? No. It makes as much sense as making meth on the Peruvian jungle.
The precursors are made in legal-ish Chinese and Indian labs and shipped to the US and Mexico (y'know close where the users are). It's finished state-side or in Mexico where the DEA has less power. In fact one of the routes is:
China Lab -> Conventional Post -> Porch of a clueless gringo with a new 'online job'-> Smuggled to Mexico -> Mexican Lab -> Smuggled to the USA -> Distribution
[0]: https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...
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I’m American and I don’t like Trump. If Italy did bomb San Francisco and you asked me what I thought of that, I’d say I disapproved.
If China invaded overnight and absconded with Trump, I’d say I disapproved even though I don’t like him.
You say you'd disapprove a violent action. But when it actually happens? I've seen explicit support for Luigi from many otherwise apolitical and non-violent people.
Because they see what the insurance exec was doing through his job as itself being violence, as it resulted in many deaths.
They view Luigi's alleged actions as self-defense/ defense of others, i.e. morally justified.
I wouldn't personally morally disagree with someone Luigi'ing Maduro or the other guy mentioned according to that same standard, but in this situation and the knock-on hypotheticals of government intervention, this is not an individual using personal force according to their beliefs, these are governments (which have no moral rights, just the assertion/ imposition of authority by violence) expropriating them for political purposes. So not defense of others.
That's quite different. Luigi killed the banker. You're thinking of Thomas Crooks. I don't think I've seen too many Crooks fanboys.
And even then, there's a difference between that and say if it was a sniper squadron working for say, let's pick the Azerbaijan military or any other organized state force.
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Interesting comparison. Did Luigi do anything wrong?
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I’d be upset and disapprove, but I wouldn’t ask them to bring him back.
Sure, they can certainly try. Sovereignty is an illusion until it is tested.
Anyone can already bomb the United States, and I think most people here in the US just don't imagine it happening here, no matter how much we invite a military response.
The only country I could imagine doing this is North Korea, because, while we would carpet bomb them, they can delete Seoul from the map with traditional artillery that we can’t stop.
But I don’t think that their leaders are actually suicidal. They’ve played their hand pretty well over the years, for their own survival and enrichment (no pun intended.)
There is no such thing as a military response to the USA.
Your way of life got destroyed by a guy in a cave half the world away, and then a dictator of a small country finished the job with some propaganda and some cash to grease the right palms. A response can be quite effective even if it isn't by men in uniform.
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Moral authority through physical superiority.
On the world stage I see everything on display that we try to teach our children to avoid. Lying, bullying, law breaking, it's all in our faces. And the real problem is that it is supported and even celebrated on television, in print, and socia media.
> Italy can unilaterally bomb San Francisco?
They can try.
I am not an expert but "Don't like" doesn't sound the same of multinational cartel organization overtaking countries, making 8 million people exilees.
To put this in perspective, Ukraine before Russian invasion had already lost 11 million people, that left the country because it was ruled by oligarchs and mobsters. 11 millions over 52 millions makes it a gran total of 21% of the population. Making it the fourth worse demographic decline in the world. Does it mean Russia was right?
If you have some hard numbers supporting how much Americans don't like Trump and how shit is their life under Trump, then ..maybe? (Also, why the USA, why not start with North Korea, Venezuela etc first.)
We kinda have the obligation to ensure that Earth is not a practical hell for many people.
"Bomb San Francisco" can mean many things, and it is ultimately a Trolley Problem[0], but the answer is not a simple no.
[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
"Bomb San Francisco"
Where does that come from? I've seen this verbatim in a few places. Let me guess, the s o c i a l m e d i a?