Posse Come At Us, Bro!

Is he maybe President of some other country? Like, one where there really is a flood of people rushing over the border and stealing jobs and voting for Hillary Clinton? Because this is getting even more bananas that usual. And by bananas, I mean escalating militarily. As in the President is planning to start using the military to guard the U.S. border with Mexico until he gets his stupid wall for racists.

Pictured: The President picking out paint swatches for that wall he promised
promised racists he'd build if they voted for him. He's got it narrowed
down to either Dystopic Grey, or Police State Slate. Tough choice...

"What can I say? I just hate America.
And babies. And freedom."

Which, can he even do that? Like, I know Republicans all share some bizarre, paranoid notion that the border is just an info kiosk where Nancy Pelosi personally greets every immigrant who wants in, hands them a fake social security card, a coupon for Planned Parenthood and tells them to vote Democrat but we actually do have a border patrol who job it is to patrol the border. Also, I'm not like a constitutional scholar, but in addition to being gross overkill, isn't using the Army against civilians, like, illegal?

The President is only authorized to use the
military for defense and the occasional
big parade that goes by his house.

Look, I went to public school in America, so most of my understanding of this sort of thing comes from Wikipedia and The West Wing but the Posse Comitas Act says the military is not to be used to enforce domestic policy and maybe border control falls into foreign policy, but illegal immigrants aren't an invading army, they're migrant workers looking for jobs. Illegal, maybe, but still not an invasion. And according to this, illegal immigration has been on a downward trend for a while, in fact, Trump is personally taking credit for it (despite the decline starting years ago), so why is it suddenly so crazily imperative he militarize the border?

And legal issues aside, isn't massing the military on the border kind of a terrible idea from an international relations perspective? Like, if Civ V has taught me anything-and it has-it's that placing military units next to your border pisses off whomever's on the other side of it.

So I usually downplay my expertise on various subjects, but I
honestly believe that my many hours playing Civilization makes me
more qualified than Donald Trump to handle international affairs. 

Clarification? About something insane
President Trump said without consulting
 anyone at all? You must be new here...

When asked by Christiane Amanpour what he thinks about all this, the Mexican Ambassador said that while his government has asked for clarification...

"[The militarization of the border] is not something that the Mexican government welcomes..."

-Ambassador Geronimo Gutiérrez,

Ambassador to the U.S. and

Chief Minister of understatement

Above: The Mexican Cession, negotiated among
the smoking ruins of Mexico City, ceded-wait,
is it possible we were the bad guys in that one?

I know part of Trump's whole image is based on utter contempt for places that aren't America or Russia, but Mexico, and yes, even Canada, are actual sovereign countries with just as much of a right to freak out about a foreign military on their border as we would. And for those keeping score, the last time the U.S. military approached Mexico, it invaded and annexed over half of it. Like, 55% of Mexico is now the U.S. so a tit-for-tat reaction on their part is not out of line. And you know the right would loose their absolute shit if Mexico parked tanks on the border.

So is it me, or does none of this sound like an actual effort to address illegal immigration? It does however sound like a bombastic and reckless measure designed to make the people who voted for him because he said he'd build a border wall feel like he's doing something other than tweeting and getting investigated.

Turns out reckless bombast polls really well among idiots, so...what do I know?