Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/15/newly-elected-mexican-congress.html
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Wow, that’s terrible news. The pols and the press got it bad down there over the border. Here’s hoping she comes out of this OK.
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I used to live on the border in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez when the first major, public massacre took place. It was shocking for a lot of reasons, but the sheer brazenness of the act was what really shook everyone.
I can’t believe how much worse it’s gotten since.
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I heard of a retired American moving South with his truck completely loaded with all of his life’s possessions. As he’s tooling down the highway a big SUV stopped at the side of the road pulls across and stops to block him. There’s no place to avoid them there and he figures they’re going to kill him anyway, might as well take a few with him, so he puts the pedal to the metal and obliterates both vehicles.
Ironically, he survived and they didn’t!
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At what point do they decide that their democracy is no longer functional? Do those numbers need to double? More?
It sucks, but I think Mexico needs to declare war on these monsters.
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Even here in the US, we have a naive sort of cargo cult faith in elections as a sure fire sign that democracy is alive. Since voter suppression is not tallied the way voter participation is, there’s little evidence to suggest otherwise.
Be assured, the strong-men are just as deeply entrenched here, they just get to sound slightly more polite is all.
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While voter suppression is bad enough that I’d call America’s democracy not really functioning anymore, Ocasio-Cortez survived her political ascent. There’s a gradation here, and America’s on the downslope, but Mexico is, as far as I can make out from a distant and ill-informed remove approaching bottom at an alarming clip.
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Or, as orange man would say, “My dream society!”
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The horror she must be going through… 
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Sounds like a failed state like Somalia or something.
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The US media really tends to ignore just how serious the situation is in Mexico as a rule. Haven’t heard more than the slightest peep about what would most accurately be described as “moderate civil war” that’s been going on there since it broke out in the 90’s, and the little you do ever see about it ignores the reasons why it’s happening.
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As an American, it’s really weird to hear about stuff like this while living down here. At street level, everything seems so normal. It’s only when somebody does something to interrupt business or expose the cartels that scary shit goes down.
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What you’re describing is indicative of systematic government corruption and the way that crime, civil conflict, and politics have conglomerated one big mess. It’s scary stuff, but it’s happening in the US too, just along different lines. I mean, we’ve got militias taking over state park facilities where the perpetrators face very little in the way of consequences and the government was very careful not to “provoke” while only a little while later people protesting an oil pipeline run across their native lands and through their water supply were met with guns, armored vehicles, and the very real threat of fatal violence.
We’re not quite to politicians being kidnapped at gunpoint, but we seem to want to get there. I mean, just recently a guy who has been radicalizing people for over a decade got a little bit of censure over the fact that he has been perpetuating a conspiracy theory that a horrific national tragedy is a hoax created by his “evil” political enemies, and for literally telling people to “get their battle rifles ready” in response to people opposed to fascism. He’s been saying dangerous shit like that since day one, and there are some very scary people who will do exactly what he’s saying the very moment they think they have the political clout to pull it off.
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When you read these numbers, it’s incredible that there are actually people left running for office. What a testament to their spirit.
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I think of it as kind of like the photographs of people pushing baby carriages and shopping trolleys through the damaged streets of London during the blitz. Humans adapt to their situations, even when those situations are heinous. It’s one of our better traits, more or less.
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