Anyone who’s followed the political ascendancy of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement over the past decade should know that this corrosive force has a proclivity for manufacturing absurd pretexts to justify its authoritarian agenda.
Crime-ridden streets in blue cities need the firm hand of federal military occupation. Venezuela pouring fentanyl into America demands swift military intervention.
Reality, of course, tells us the truth. While violent crime is a problem that needs attention in any community, crime rates in cities like Memphis and Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration has deployed the National Guard, are decreasing, even to their lowest levels in decades.
It is Mexico, not Venezuela, where most fentanyl in the U.S. originates. The blame for the ongoing opioid epidemic should primarily be attributed to federal regulatory malfeasance that allowed billion-dollar companies here at home to poison American communities with over-prescribed painkillers. Trump himself admitted that the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was motivated by the prospect of seizing the country’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
You get the idea. Each of these state actions are justified by distortions and outright lies.