It's funny how many people already see this as a book that is opened and closed on the same day. That's not how these things work. This is like the first stone of an avalanche. It could stop here, or it could roll on for quite a while. It will take months or even years to know whether or not the outcome here was desirable or not and what the final tally is.
Considering the extreme amount of crime and violence that currently exists in Venesuela removing it's government without being able to put anything in its place will not be pretty at all...
Without a full military occupation it might just turn into another Haiti just on a much bigger scale. Of course US will probably have to intervene to "secure" the oil industry...
Personally, I think most Americans don't give Venezuela much thought.
I think Trump is hoping to get a short popularity boost the way George Bush did with the capture of Manuel Noriega, but people cared more about who controlled the Panama Canal in the 1990s than they care about who controls Venezuela today. And I don't know anybody who expects this to impact drugs coming from Venezuela or Latin America in general.
But, we also still enjoy all of the benefits of being like this. Cheap oil(that impacts you even if you don't drive), globally very high income, resources of all varieties from all over the world, relative security etc. All these things don't happen to use because we're a nation of swell people. They happen because we do awful things to people around the world in a variety of ways in order to maintain our way of life.
The truth is Americans do want this, they just don't like that they want this.
Another comment was discussing how shocked they were with how brazen a move this was for oil, and that in the past the government wouldn't have been so honest. As though the issue were being honest with what we are doing.
>The truth is Americans do want this, they just don't like that they want this.
The truth is Americans mostly don't like this, but have little means to do much due to the political structure of how our government works. Our legislature is silently approving and it is clearly costing the seats, even thought it is still 10 months before the next cycle of elections for those seats. But that's 10 months away, and while tensions were strong for months this happened in a single day. It's so much easier to tear down than to build up.
And the truth is that most of us aren't going to try and perform a violent upheaval against a trillion dollar military complex. We lack the skills, resources, and even geography for that. I can't even afford a plane ride to DC at the moment.
I'm not a particular fan of the "you critique society yet you participate in it" argument. This assumes a lot of agency in the individual that doesn't exist without collective bargaining.
>As though the issue were being honest with what we are doing.
Every country has inconvenient truths it tries to hide. It being brazen about the evils it commits is the truly surprising part. The whole point of propaganda is convincing your people that they are the good guys, and there was none of that pomp here.
The strategy of the administration appears to be that they have authorization to “breaking things quickly” and then can ask the powers at be to approve any “fix” or simply accept the broken state.
If Venezuela descends into a state of anarchy, they can ask congress to approve a plan to restore order. We’re irrevocably involved in the situation now.
But I will be blunt, the problem is not just the current government. One of our political parties starts at least one large conflict every time they are in power. This has happened for 35 years now, if this continues my entire lifespan will have existed in a perpetual state of war.
George W. got reelected - by a razor-thin margin - for three reasons: lucky timing, an unpopular opposition candidate, and a deliberate campaign to smear Kerry's record in the service.
GW's popularity steadily declined from the summer of '03 until the end of his presidency. If the election had been any later, he would've been below 50% and wouldn't have been able to pull it off. Meanwhile Democrats chose the least energizing presidential candidate I've seen in my entire adult life. (I've been voting since Bush v. Gore.) And when Kerry was nominated and the Swift Boat smear campaign started - a group whose claims have been since been discredited - Democrats did very little to fight back.
Even if we did "want this" back then, support for the invasion of Iraq plummeted during Bush's second term and has never recovered. Two-thirds of Americans, and almost that many veterans who actually fought in the war, said it wasn't worth fighting and still say so today.
Excellent comment that really gets to the crux of the matter. Countries like China and India see themselves as civilizational, America sees itself as a perfect marketplace - it exists to feed its customers's wants and whims as efficiently as possible. I don't necessarily mean this in a demeaning way, it is what it is. In some sense, America is a state-level example of hedonic adaptation with its positives being improvements in quality of life and development of new tech, negatives being a bully in world politics, endless wars and bloodshed.
In general, hedonic adaption ends either with internal retrospection (shifting from pleasure to purpose) or an external disruption. In America's case, the former is extremely unlikely IMHO - the American people will not put their money where their mouth is because they enjoy the wealth generated this way. It will be upto external disruptors to check on Uncle Sam's endless thirst.
As long as people all over the world are using ChatGPT and GMail they have all the intel needed to control the world, just like they won wars by all telegrams going through them in the 1800s.
China is their only competitor, but so far people clearly prefer to chat with AI companies from USA.
I'm not so sure. Sure, they want the benefits that are provided. However, if being aware of what the costs are to get those benefits apriori, I'm not sure Americans would think the exchange worthwhile.
> Sure, they want the benefits that are provided. However, if being aware of what the costs are to get those benefits apriori
no being aware is the key here. For example just on NPR - 40% of American kids think bacon is a plant.
(Don't get me wrong - i intentionally immigrated to US and i like all those benefits of life here. Speaking about the costs of that to the rest of the world - back in Russia i worked for domestic employers as well as for a US based one, and being "exploited" by the US based employer were much nicer than by the domestics.)
>They’re children. They don’t need to know where bacon and hot dogs come from.
not sure about that. Around age 7 i saw a full butchering of a pig at my grandmother's farm, and i was still happily eating pork for the next 20+ years, and i don't remember anybody in my childhood not knowing where the bacon is coming from. I stopped eating beef and pork though about 20 years ago exactly for the reason where it comes from.
Btw, "They don’t need to know where ... come from" can be said by the powers-to-be about people of any age.
While that might certainly be true in the abstract, it isn't worth much.
Most people would probably eat less meat if they knew exactly what was happening to the animals in that process. We'd eat less chocolate if we really thought about the slavery in the chocolate supply chain. We'd not buy certain products because of the environmental impact and working conditions.
But instead we just mostly deliberately avoid learning and thinking about those things. And I count myself as well. The incentives all push Americans to be OK with this.
I think you and your parent think that people have more of a concern of others than actual reality. Most americans walk past homeless people and think nothing of it. Most americans, and certainly those in wealthy cities, care about others at a superficial level. For instance you and your parent complain, and that’s where it ends. You will not sacrifice yourself or your life for others, asking others to is just negligent.
>You will not sacrifice yourself or your life for others, asking others to is just negligent.
I'm asking about 218 elected representatives and 67 senators to do their job. This isn't a matter of "we (the people) need to start a civil war to show our disdain for these actions". At least, not yet. There's so many channels to address this that doesn't involve "sacrificing ourselves", but the channels are at best clogged and at worst compliant, despite what they were voted to do.
Because you don't know what you're getting yourself into with a stranger, and most people aren't social workers or drug counselors with experience helping the homeless.
thats nonsense. I hang out with the homeless all the time. some of them are really just mentally ill, some are real shitheads, but there are alot of
perfectly normal people out there that are just reacting to daily trauma. if can live through not having a place to sleep where you dont have to worry about getting fucked up or raped, and having your shit jacked by the police and other homeless all the time, and still keep some semblance of sanity, then you're a stronger person than I.
"in the past the government wouldn't have been so honest"
I'm 37, so I was young at the time of Afghanistan/Iraq, about 14. I recall thinking the adults who said it was "for the oil" were dangerously naive: neither had significant oil resources that would alter supply dramatically, gas prices weren't high, the administration had 0 to say on that front, and it wasn't even close to a focus once fighting settled.
This leaves me curious about conclusions drawn from that.
I find it mildly amusing I'm at -1 for an obviously-correct observation re: oil not being a clear motivation & the top reply is "we wanted control of heroin trade, to help Israel defeat their principal regional rival Afghanistan, and pay off military contractors."
In reality, an administration with an ideological bent towards using military force reacted, with universal acclaim, to 9/11.
Future historians, it didn't used to be like this. Started getting really weird around 2018.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Sadam was a dictator that kept the various religious factions in line. America was just looking for an excuse to go in again. Everyone knew there were no weapons of mass distraction too.
The reasons for America going in are complex, but relate to control of the middle east, keeping USA currency top, resources, and money for various groups that benefitted.
And the us became a oil net exporter, which makes you more interested in a constricted supply. The whole story just never checked out, if you move it around just a little bit.
It was about giving US companies control over the profits from the oil industry and crushing an unaligned country in the region to turn it into a US puppet state, not just to carry barrels of crude oil home.
dont forget that Iraq _was_ a US puppet state for the bulk of the Iran-Iraq war. It's entirely plausible that Hussein just got too uppity, and needed to be taken out.
This is simultaneously A) true B) not particularly huge IMHO (~5% of global oil production, 8% of reserves) C) unrelated as to whether the US "got their oil"
If I'm understanding correctly, I'm reminded of an old saw I think I made up:
You can lie (shade people's interpretations) by either using percentages, or gross amounts.
I'm sure that's a TON of oil, gross amount.
I'm also sure 8% is "not particularly huge".
For instance, if I could get you without this frame, and told you that you got a 92% on a test, you got an "absolutely bonkers amount" of questions wrong...you'd argue with me.
If you started crying when I told you that you got a 92% on the test, then told you that's a "not particularly huge" amount to get wrong, I think you'd agree, if not be consoled.
And, sorry, but your analogy sucks. Multiple students can get 0-100% on any given test independently.
Now imagine if only one student out of a class of ~200 (~195 countries in the world) can get the right answer to each question (200 questions total) and once one person answers the question, no one else can get credit for it (if you burn oil, it's gone).
By default, each country should get 1 question or 0.5% (percent of oil) on the test. Now the teacher announces that the answer to 16 questions (8%) can be found in the library and the person who gets there first gets all those points.. Getting a hold of even ONE block of 8% probably puts you in the top 10 students in the class. If you can find such a block to add to your 3% (US), at 11%, you're likely to be in the top 5 students in the class. Add another 10% (Venezuela) and 6% (Canada), and at 27%, you're probably #1.
I respect the shit out of you for chasing this and coming up with an obvious angle I missed in my last volley. I agree to disagree, because my fundamental reaction at this point is you’re being obtuse on purpose and that’s unfair and wrong. I owe you a beer if we meet, good hard interlocution.
I find a lot of that type of thinking is born of conspiracy theory motivations: they want the world to make sense so there has to be "a plan". It leads to people chronically overvaluing money and chronically underestimating ideology.
Trouble is that Trump's ideology is all but explicitly rapacious and amoral.
I think you are correct that Bush had a very different ideology. I view him as more of a buffoon than a robber baron. (We spent $2-3T in Iraq -- if it was robbery, it was not effective.) I doubt it makes much difference to people whose lives were ruined. But it could be important in the broader context of predicting US behavior: Bush started the PEPFAR program which saved millions from AIDS in Africa; Trump wrecked it.
One very sad possibility is that Bush discredited the ideology of "compassionate conservatism" in the US through his bumbling, and that contributed to the relative popularity of Trump's "amoral conservatism".
> We spent $2-3T in Iraq -- if it was robbery, it was not effective.
The robbery was done against the American people. They are the ones who were robbed! Imagine in what shape the country would be if you would have gotten free higher education and free healthcare instead?
The other and with that the biggest victim were the causalities from the invasion, but they were not robbed but rather assaulted…
> They happen because we do awful things to people around the world in a variety of ways in order to maintain our way of life.
And having been lucky in the last century+ that none of your neighbors did anything wild. Not having to fight an actual war in your own country helps a lot in getting ahead.
And no, pearl harbor doesn't count, as bad as that was it's nothing compared to the destruction of 2 world wars that set Europe back a century
If we’re still chasing cheap oil we’re going to get crushed by China. Both from an economic and national security perspective, ignoring renewable energy to pursue burning more fossil fuels is the height of ignorance. Not only are we destroying the planet for future generations, burning oil is already more expensive than wind and solar + batteries.
Which is what I've come to realize: at least for the US, national prosperity comes at the expense of foreigners' misery [0]. I wonder if this holds for other countries, too? I wonder if --- for example --- former European colonist state's citizens stare at themselves in the mirror and question who built their large buildings; what the provenance of the gold decorations on their buildings? Would they be so well off?
Having moved to Europe from Mexico, I sometimes get asked if Spain is regarded as "having brought civilization" to Mexico; the first time I heard the question, it took me a while to collect my jaw from the floor: I could not believe someone was that accidentally uninformed... seems like it had been a deliberate choice to not teach about the race systems that their ancestors had imposed (i.e. inventors of apartheid, in a way), the raping, the slavery, nor systematic complicity of the church, as well [1]:
> In 1512, the Laws of Burgos forced the conquistadores to respect the rights and freedom of Indigenous peoples. This was followed formally by the papal bull, Sublimus Dei of 1537 which declared Native Americans were no longer to be considered “dumb brutes created for our service” but were “truly men” capable of thinking, acting, and deciding their own destiny, control their own properties, and enjoy liberty. It proceeded to formally prohibit the enslavement of Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, one year later, this was nullified (Pope Paul III, 1537).
And that's not even covering the destruction of written history and books [2].
So, I think you may be right... this entire world may be filled with selfish monsters that do not want to know --- really know --- how much they are benefiting from other people's suffering.
Well allowing Iran unlimited access to global markets would certainly help that.
Same for Venesuela, lifting sanctions and making it easier for them to develop their infrastructure would have lowered the global price of oil.
Governments in both countries are more than happy to sell more oil if anyone allowed them to.
It's not like US politically controlling a large oil producing country makes oil cheaper for Americans. They still have to buy it at the same price as everyone else.
Profits of American oil companies is quite a different matter, though.
Only because no one is presenting both options to the public as a choice - cheap gas but you'll screw up dozens of countries and create insecurity for your kids. They would be less likely to want that if they understood the tradeoff. Let's be clear, this choice was made by rich people who'll make a lot more money from it, and they won't be the ones bearing the costs. So this isn't on Americans' greed, just their ignorance.
It’s because we have a sense of fatalism about our political class’ ability to address any long-term negative consequences: climate change, and a ballooning debt that a future administration will use as an excuse to shred whatever is left of Social Security and America’s safety net. Don’t confuse that with acceptance.
The US is a shit country. I've been traveling around the world for months now and there's no benefit to living in the US. Cheap gas but no health care, no public transit, no trains, no affordable housing, shitty class relations? American exceptionalism is deluded. The imperialism isn't benefiting the American people quit fooling yourself.
I don't think the US has "shitty class relations". Most of your complaints are true, but in the US social class is mutable and upgrades to social class are encouraged and celebrated (even though this is becoming much more difficult in practice). Contrast this with Europe and other parts of the world with entrenched aristocracies and castes that survive generations. There are major problems but social mobility is still relatively better in US; in Europe healthcare is way better and being on the bottom rung isn't as bad, but fewer people from the bottom make it to the top.
There is a tiny portion that makes the GDP look nice, but as someone who knows average Americans outside of tech, it's an absolute joke. Especially when you look at necessities you basically cannot get around (medical costs, taxes, etc.).
Sure if you are on HN chances are you might not notice, but I know people that effectively live in somewhat close to slavery because they need to work every working hour simply to live and has been caught in a nice web where they don't even have time to reconsider life. Something the employer clearly set up that way, including things like being the landlord.
That's why there can be an elite and a "middle class" that lives off these people.
The homeless problem not just in SF but all the way to the midwest is ridiculous and how these homeless people are dealt with - basically like a pest is outrageous.
People here get severely upset about how bad people have it here, when they do have it much nicer. Meanwhile people in the US seem to largely turn a blind eye.
All that while taking the hit of refugees that have (largely) been caused by US politics.
I am sorry, but things don't work despite meddling with any country that has natural resources.
And I mean that as it is. I know it's not easy to come out of it. But the thing is starting a war every now and then doesn't seem to help a lot of fixing actual problems. Despite all the benefits it clearly has for the US.
How do we even know they're being honest? They've been lying about everything for so long, and now we're just suddenly gonna believe they're being honest only when it pertains to Venezuela? Why?
If they're lying... that's an awfully strange choice of lies. It makes them look rather thuggish. Usually you pick a lie that would make you look better, right?
The administration doesn't care about whether their motives appear palatable or not. Every decision is based on an ever increasing cascade of consequences they can dam up and then release on other people so said administration can go do something else during the cleanup. Aside from one person who's a massive narcissist they don't give a damn about how they're perceived. They only cared when other people had the authority to grand them authority, but now that they are the authority they'll never give it away. And when you don't have to worry about losing your authority you don't have to care about what people think of you. This is why the weakest monarchs were the ones with debts, and the strongest ones were those with centralized militaries.
> The truth is Americans do want this, they just don't like that they want this.
For myself, I could not disagree more. I don't want this. And if you know of a lever I can pull to make it stop, I'm all ears - as long as it's not voting, calling my reps, or holding a sign. I've been doing those things for over 25 years and they haven't done squat.
I appreciate the honesty myself... While I'd like to see the actually elected officials in Venezuela put in charge, I understand the govt will largely be working through the seated govt and other channels in order to encourage the desired changes.
I don't think Oil is the sole reason for this, I think that the influences of Iran, China, Russia and Cuba in Venezuela as well as the drug trafficking coming through them is the larger issue... getting back the Oil trade in the end is just icing on the proverbial cake. I also think it could be better for the people of Venezuela in the long run vs the authoritarian and communist influences they've had over the past half century.
Trump is funny, dishonest as hell when it comes to his ego, but more honest than any other politician I've ever even heard of at the same time.
Besides being a fiction very much supported by dictators, international law is a delusion entertained by (a) those who have never lived under a dictatorship and (b) those oblivious to the fact that their freedoms and peace depend on the protection of the world’s most powerful military.
Or, is reducing it to “dictator bad; gone good” unobvious, and something that slipped by everyone?
To wit: we’re in a thread for the top comment for a 3844 comment post, and that comment is noting that when there’s a power vacuum, things usually* get worse for the citizenry.
If it had been about taking out dictators, they were kind of spoiled for choice in that regard. They could have picked an easier one, or at least one which made strategic sense in some way.
While it's true that so far they only removed Maduro, removing a sitting president and his wife is a show of power, it's a "we do whatever we want". What is stopping the US to remove the next person, and continue doing so until as they find someone that they like? Or to organize an up-rising or a coup? The writing is on the wall.
This already likely was a coup. They knew exactly where Maduro was and were able to get in and out, with no air defense issues, no alarm issues, and all presumably with just a small commando group. This isn't like grabbing Osama who was relatively alone on a compound - this is the current President of a country, who was already probably quite paranoid, and who now was under active threat and certainly behaving accordingly. Doing all that as an outsider is basically impossible, so they must have had substantial amounts of insider help, which is essentially the definition of a coup.
And the media is already reporting that 'somehow' all of his inner circle seem to have survived.
True but you don't need advanced defense to take out slow moving helicopters, the fact that nobody used manpads is extremely suspect. Also in syria the russians did token airstrikes while jolani's forces blitzed through the countryside.
It was done at night with stealth helicopters, and over 150 planes in the air. Not sure it's necessarily easy to take out US military helicopters in that environment. They move pretty fast.
Sure, but bulky chinnok helicopters flying low to the ground and barely getting shot at? Smelling an inside job honestly, especially with rumors of trump wanting have Venezuela's current VP ascend to the presidency instead of the other investor lady.
2-3 years max in a federal country club prison, minimum security. Then it's off to Switzerland or Dubai with his ill gotten gains. It is rather sad to see people having a personal stake in this. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
To be fair, an illegitimate president, who was being protected with forces from a foreign (to them) govt. A LOT of people in and from Venezuela wanted Maduro out. The dancing in the streets are a pretty big indicator of this. And it's quite probable there were insiders involved that helped this operation happen.
They should study political philosophy a bit more so they don’t say foolish things.
America is very clearly a legitimate democracy, even if who was voted in office and the actions of that democratically elected government don’t align with your expectations or world view.
I didn’t vote for the guy. But I did vote. And as a poll worker I can tell you first hand that we ran a free and fair election as we have for any year I can think of. Legitimate Democracy. Period.
That's a legitimately run _election_, which is necessary for but not the same as a legitimate democracy. For a democracy to be legitimate you need an impartial judiciary, an enforced constitution, fundamental civil liberties, and an accountable government.
Those are good points and the United States could do a better job, but those elements are all graded on a spectrum. I don’t think that having a few failures over some number of years means all of a sudden the entire thing is illegitimate.
Thank you for serving as a poll worker. (Seriously: thank you)
We have a legitimate democracy in terms of vote-counting, and you personally contribute to that.
It looks a lot less legitimate to me when I think about factors like votes having vastly varying weights because of gerrymandering and the Electoral College.
It gets even less legitimate when I think about how severely restricted our choice of candidates are, and how they are more or less chosen by party leaders and the oligarchy via billions of dollars of lobbying etc.
In this case, Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral vote... that said, I believe in the idea of the Electoral College in that it's important to balance population and each State's rights. The one thing I would like to see are a larger congressional body as there are too few congressional representatives for the size of the electorate. We should probably have at least 3x the members of the House to at least be closer to the founding norms. Just my own take.
I'd also like to see a better runoff system than what we have in place, which could give a chance to more parties coming out. Right now, there are alignments into the two major parties and a lot of infighting because they are at least closer to what each group wants, but not really aligned and these create hard splits where there shouldn't be on a lot of issues.
Well, in the same vein I could tell you to re-take your primary school civics classes and write me an essay on the key components of a modern democracy.
The mechanism by which we choose leaders isn’t even in the top three most important prerequisites for a functioning democracy. If you didn’t pay attention in history and civics classes this may come as a surprise.
Democracy is about voting. What you’re referring to is “modern government,” which is full of undemocratic institutions and run by unelected bureaucrats according to values that don’t reflect the public’s.
As corporate lobbying succeeds with its lobotomization/capture of public institutions, it fundamentally raises the bar for what constitutes legitimate democracy - for example ranked choice voting rather than raced-to-the-bottom plurality. Or to the point you're responding to - as Congress continues to sit by and let this dictator run amok, how much can we say that this is really the democratic system working as laid out, rather than a mere husk of the old democratic structure going through the motions while something else is actually running the show?
This should be doubly apparent in this thread, where this specific invasion would likely still be happening even if the fascists had lost in 2024 - this has military industrial complex's manufacturing consent and nation building all over it, regardless of it benefiting Trump to distract from the childrape files and whatever other corruption/stealing he can wedge in.
> You do realize the current government won the elections and the president won the popular vote right
Technically he won a plurality of the popular vote, but he didn't win the popular vote. This is typically not a distinction that matters, but in this case it's what happened. The majority of people voted for someone else, but he got votes from more people than any other candidate did.
Of course, what really matters is the electoral college, but the popular vote is often seen as lending even more legitimacy to a victory.
The reason it doesn’t matter is that everyone who chooses to vote third party does so fully knowing who the two front runners are, as well as the likely margin of their state. Most third-party voters are in extremely uncompetitive states, making it quite safe to make a statement vote, even though it potentially dampens your “lesser of two evils” candidate’s apparent mandate.
For instance, I wrote an invalid write-in candidate since both major parties ran clowns in 2024, but Harris carried my state by a mile.
This is very true... I used to vote Libertarian for all races where there was a Libertarian candidate... then my state shifted purple, and I'd rather see a Republican more often than not over a given Democrat candidate. While I don't agree with the actual far right fringe, I cannot vote for a party with prominent communists in it.
I agree that most people who vote for other candidates come from uncompetitive states. But this doesn't necessarily prove your point. If there were more other-candidate supporters who would have voted for Kamala (if they had to vote for one of the two main candidates) than Trump, then that would mean he wouldn't have won the popular vote if it was just between the two of them.
Regardless, I think it's important to be precise about claims like this, since there is actually a difference between winning the popular vote and winning a plurality of it. Imagine making the claim if 10% of the popular vote went to third-party candidates, or even 20%!
Don’t worry, the next out-of-touch geezer you run will definitely have the charisma to win. It looks like they may be up against JD Vance for Christ’s sake.
At this point the bar is so low, who knows? A criminal rapist fraudster grifter won and continues to have enthusiastic support. Personally, I blame religion for strengthening those tribalism neural pathways and eroding critical thinking abilities.
Critical thinking comes later, not before. So religion doesn't erode them, but delays them.
Secondly, tribal behavior is strengthened through sports teams, college allegiances, rep vs dem party lines and many other things, with the latter of those being the main reason.
Thirdly, the dems were very pro zionist while Trump was able to maintain deniability. This swung a lot of dem voters.
Lastly, Kamala got something like 0 votes in the primary. Wishing she would win the general election was delusional. Dems should themselves in the foot twice vs Trump with Kamala and when they betrayed Bernie to help Hillary.
You should engage in some critical thinking yourself instead of blasting your insecurities over the internet. Your media diet (bet $1000 that reddit is a big part) needs a do-over.
> Critical thinking comes later, not before. So religion doesn't erode them, but delays them.
Critical thinking is a base human ability, which religion can indeed erode before it has a chance to grow.
> Secondly, tribal behavior is strengthened through sports teams, college allegiances, rep vs dem party lines and many other things, with the latter of those being the main reason.
This doesn't negate anything I've said, it adds to it. It is notable that the more religious parts of the US act more religious about their political party, however - something not seen in most western countries.
> Thirdly, the dems were very pro zionist while Trump was able to maintain deniability. This swung a lot of dem voters.
They were not as pro zionist as the "Lets demolish Gaza and build new resorts" GOP.
> Wishing she would win the general election was delusional.
Only because the US population is what it is, which is why wishing the only rational choice got elected is too much to hope for.
> blasting your insecurities over the internet.
I'm doing no such thing, however the way you make assumptions so haphazardly shows you yourself could benefit from some critical thinking instruction.
The left barely altered course in any perceptable manner, at least to disinterested parties outside of the US.
The US right, however, went all in on woke .. they literally couldn't shut up about "the left", "woke" and immigrants eating pets.
Outside of that Fox / Carson / Turner Network et al altered reality bubble it was hard to see evidence of significant increases in Drag Conversion therapy in school libraries and litter boxes in school classrooms.
Good effort though, it was years of sustained make believe and dead cat after dead cat thrown on the table of public discourse.
Tell yourself that if you want, but it's well-documented that the "Kamala's for they/them, Donald Trump is for you" ad was the top performer in the 2024 election cycle.
Kamala declined to walk back her support for, among other things, taxpayer funding of transgender surgeries for inmates. This was an extreme position that most Americans do not support. It is also at odds with the global trend, including in progressive European countries, with regard to the risks/benefits of transgender surgeries.
The Left loves to play the "Republicans pounce" game, and say that the Right is politicizing things. But this is a situation where the Right was reacting to a move the Left had made. This situation helped the Right win in the 2024 election cycle because they had the 80 percent side of multiple 80/20 issues (especially border security and transgender issues).
You can dislike the outcome (I sure do!), but this was a case of the pendulum swinging back, not the Right getting out over its skis.
ADDITION: It also didn't help that the prior administration had lied its face off about Biden being competent, which undermined trust in Dems in general and Kamala in particular. But when Republicans called this out, they were not exaggerating, they were just 6 months ahead of CNN/MSNBC finally admitting it after the debate.
> Tell yourself that if you want, but it's well-documented that the "Kamala's for they/them, Donald Trump is for you" ad was the top performer in the 2024 election cycle.
That's the problem, though. It shows how gullible and easy manipulated the US population was. Trans people are already such a tiny part of society, and an even tinier part of the prison population.
Offering healthcare for prisoners is something a developed, first world country should do, and trans healthcare is considered by experts to be necessary most of the time.
To throw away a vote on this single issue can only be due to ignorance, hate or both.
> That's the problem, though. It shows how gullible and easy manipulated the US population was. Trans people are already such a tiny part of society, and an even tinier part of the prison population.
But Kamala's position was not that it wouldn't cost very much. She backed the ideology, and the vast majority of Americans disagree with that ideology.
> To throw away a vote on this single issue can only be due to ignorance, hate or both.
Many Americans saw this issue as yet another one (like the Biden competence one) where Dems were telling them to ignore what appear to be plainly obvious facts, like "men cannot become women". Some voters decided that they could not support a candidate who appeared to live in a different reality, on the thinking that "if she's willing to lie to me about such basic facts, what won't she lie to me about?"
> But Kamala's position was not that it wouldn't cost very much. She backed the ideology, and the vast majority of Americans disagree with that ideology.
I don't think that's really accurate. Most Americans are deeply misinformed on the issue, and a fair percentage of them think it's something like men making excuses to go in women's prisons.
A lot of those voters got their info specifically from misinformation sources like Fox News or those ads.
> Many Americans saw this issue as yet another one (like the Biden competence one) where Dems were telling them to ignore what appear to be plainly obvious facts, like "men cannot become women". Some voters decided that they could not support a candidate who appeared to live in a different reality, on the thinking that "if she's willing to lie to me about such basic facts, what won't she lie to me about?"
This is why I've said elsewhere democracy doesn't work when you have such an uneducated population. Those voters are not informed on issues of transgender health of gender dysphoria, and so were taken advantage of and misled by a party that created/stoked fears and spread misinformation to win an election.
> This is why I've said elsewhere democracy doesn't work when you have such an uneducated population
You're literally the person who downthread advocates for redefining "majority" to be a synonym with "plurality" because people who don't know the actual definition of "majority" use it that way.
> Those voters are not informed on issues of transgender health of gender dysphoria, and so were taken advantage of and misled by a party that created/stoked fears and spread misinformation to win an election.
> You're literally the person who downthread advocates for redefining "majority" to be a synonym with "plurality" because people who don't know the actual definition of "majority" use it that way.
No. Far from it. This seems to be a case of willful ignorance, as I said in a previous reply reputable dictionaries[0] define majority to mean 'most', i.e. a definition exists for the word majority which exactly matches the way people use it.
It would seem it is you who is unaware of at least one of the definitions of the word majority.
To the extent is is autobiographical, your comment about uneducated people who were misled by a party spreading misinformation is indeed objective. Good luck escaping your chosen bubble!
> The left barely altered course in any perceptable manner, at least to disinterested parties outside of the US.
Obama carried out mass deportations, claimed that undocumented migrants broke laws and must be held accountable, ordered extrajudicial execution of US citizen and was protected by executive privilege, invaded Pakistan to kidnap and execute Osama bin Laden, deposed Gaddafi and destroyed Libya, campaigned on a platform opposing gay marriage, wanted better relations with Russia and was secretly transmitting promises to Putin, vastly expanded the state surveillance apparatus, had citigroup appoint his cabinet, gave bankers bankers / wall st a pass for their role in the mortgage crisis. And he was (and very much still is), he was a darling of the left.
When pressed, many will try to claim they never really liked him, disavowed those particular things about him, that he was actually a right-wing president, etc., which in a weasely way might be technically true, but the difference in decibels surrounding very similar actions betrays reality.
The American mainstream left has changed quite a bit in the last decade. Not sure why I see so many denying this. Unless you're trying to say they never cared about any of that and still don't they're simply cheerleading for their team, which is more cynical but more understandable I guess.
> The American mainstream left has changed quite a bit in the last decade.
The only thing the American "mainstream left" did in the last decade is grow from a completely insignificant size, on a national scale, to a slightly less insignificant size, through a subset of the political disaffected becoming engaged (a big catalyst for that being Bernie Sanders 2016 primary campaign; DSA membership shot up, IIRC, more than 10-fold directly after that.)
The set of viewpoints in that group didn't really change all that much, nor did the set of viewpoints in the actually mainstream groups left of the GOP (which themselves are not actually left, but center-right pro-capitalist.)
Its the closest thing to both mainstream and left that currently exists.
And its also the source of the change in the overall Democratic coalition; the Democratic center-right that has been (and remains) the dominant faction of the party hasn't moved an inch, but the party as a whole has moved because the segment further left has grown substantially, mainly by mobilizing the previously disaffected.
> No it's not, that's just something the left uses to deflect rather than take ownership of their own problems.
No, it is the fucking left.
> The democrat party essentially is the mainstream American left
The US has no political party named “the democrat party”, and the Democratic Party is (as historically each of the two major US parties has normally been) a broad coalition party, the dominant faction of which currently is center-right neoliberal capitalist, not anything even approximating left. The center-left to left component of the party is substantially weaker (though it has grown stronger since 2016, with an influx of the previously disaffected, as I described.)
On a very zoomed out aggregate level, sure, the Democratic Party has changed—and if that’s what you want to talk about, just say that—but the source of that change is the part that isn’t center-right neoliberal capitalist drawing in new blood from outside the party, not a change in the positions of the left (or, for that matter, a change in the position of the dominant faction of the part,y, either.)
If you use “left” to refer to a faction that (1) is largely seen as an opposing force by those who identify as “left”, and (2) largely sees the “left” as the label of an opposing force, and (3) where even you admit there is a much clearer term for what you are actually referring to... Well, maybe you should reconsider your terminology.
No, you're just going berserk for no good reason. Everybody understood the words and the context, even you did despite feigning ignorance. These are commonly used terms, and were put in an entirely proper and understandable context. Having a little tanty on the internet won't change any of that that. Deal with it.
> Technically he won a plurality of the popular vote, but he didn't win the popular vote. This is typically not a distinction that matters, but in this case it's what happened.
Colloquially majority means 'greatest share', and he certainly had the greatest share of votes out of all candidates. I don't like it, but it's correct to say he won the popular vote.
I agree that some people use the phrase loosely. I would ask such people what they would say to distinguish between someone who actually won the majority of the popular vote versus someone who did not. It's not a "super-majority" situation, IMO. But surely it's worthwhile to have a different way of referring to the two cases, especially now that the less-common one has happened in recent history.
> I would ask such people what they would say to distinguish between someone who actually won the majority of the popular vote versus someone who did not.
This is like asking someone to distinguish between a hypothesis of who killed JFK when they say they have a theory of who did. You're mixing the colloquial usage for no reason.
Majority doesn't mean more than 50% of the vote in everyday language, it means 'the most'. Trump got the most votes of any one candidate.
> Majority doesn't mean more than 50% of the vote in everyday language
I guess it depends on whom you hang out with and talk to. I completely agree that some people can't understand the difference and speak accordingly. But I don't think we should redefine words based on the lowest common denominator of understanding/usage.
And in this case, it's especially important not to redefine "majority" because if we do then there's no word left to refer to an actual majority. That's not the same thing as JFK conspiracy theories.
> But I don't think we should redefine words based on the lowest common denominator of understanding/usage.
No one is redefining anything. Merriam-Webster and Oxford both have a definition for majority meaning most, and that's the more common definition that is used in everyday speech.
Context matters.
> And in this case, it's especially important not to redefine "majority" because if we do then there's no word left to refer to an actual majority.
In this context, talking about the popular vote, no information is lost, nothing is miscommunicated by using the word majority and understanding how people are using it. Which, by the way, they are using correctly as per dictionary definitions.
> That's not the same thing as JFK conspiracy theories.
No, but it's the same as per my example in that you are being pedantic about a word in a way that serves no purpose, except maybe to try and make people feel stupid.
> Merriam-Webster and Oxford both have a definition for majority meaning most, and that's the more common definition that is used in everyday speech.
I don't have a subscription to Oxford's dictionary, but MW's lead definition mentions being more than half [1]. The fact that there is some other definition that doesn't specifically mention this is not probative of your claim that this is the more important definition. And your unsubstantiated claim that this is the more common usage is belied by the fact that your preferred definition is not the lead definition.
The definition you're attached to/fixating on, is marked as definition 'a'. Definition 'c' is defined as: the greater quantity or share - it's two lines below, you must have seen it.
That's the definition most people are using, and they are using it correctly. It's some shameful attempt at elitism to insist on correcting people, especially when they are not wrong - really it's just a completely inability to understand that different contexts use different definitions.
> And your unsubstantiated claim that this is the more common usage is belied by the fact that your preferred definition is not the lead definition.
I'm not sure the ordering of definitions indicates what you think it does, in any case it's trivial to find examples of the word majority being used to mean definition c. Ask your favorite AI, I bet they'll tell you you're wrong - and you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.
> a number or percentage equaling more than half of a total
a majority of voters
a two-thirds majority
I never said I couldn't find it, and I linked to it above. It's not a "shameful attempt at elitism" to point out that the first-listed definition is what I said. Your rejoinder that there exists some definition that could encompass your preferred usage does not refute what I said. Since you seem to be impervious to such logic, I'll leave it here. Have a good one!
> It's not a "shameful attempt at elitism" to point out that the first-listed definition is what I said.
That wasn't the behavior backing the claim, and you know it. The behaviour backing the claim was ignoring the definition being used as an excuse to try and correct people when you know well what they were saying. It's a sign of insecurity, generally.
> Your rejoinder that there exists some definition that could encompass your preferred usage does not refute what I said.
The fact that the word as a definition that shows that people were using it correctly is what refutes your claim.
> Since you seem to be impervious to such logic
I have no problem with logic, but I am critical of various peoples "logic".
> I'll leave it here.
I'm skeptical, but if you follow through I'll be appreciative.
All while Europe dabbles in outlawing and criminalizing opposition parties they’re deeming “far right”. Sure anyone who opposes unlimited unrestricted immigration is now “far right”. Regardless of opinion, democracy is about the people determining that conversation, not politburos.
Alternatively the UK violating the millennia old Magna Carta by halting jury trials for criminal offenses with less than 2 years of jail time.
It's actually a bit more complicated than that. And unlike the US during the 20th century, Europe has actually had to contend with the far right abolishing democracy and committing genocide on its own population before. It is understandable that Europe doesn't want to repeat that mistake.
As for your assertion that anyone who opposes unlimited unrestricted immigration is somehow far right: you are simply wrong.
If you want to find out how wrong you are I would encourage you to try moving to Norway. Then tell me if the process feels "unrestricted".
I would suggest knowing things before you express strong opinions.
The comment I was replying to is also whataboutism from Europe. It was Nazi's who didn't like free speech. Shutting down any sort of debate by yelling "far-right" at everything isn't a functioning democracy either. My grandfather tried to fight in WWII against the actual Nazis, but his politics would be labelled "far-right" now. That's just absurd.
If you're still treating Reddit, especially large subreddits, as a serious source of information rather than an extremely manipulated outlet of 90% propaganda bots, that is quite foolish.
Maybe I should make a website where example.com/e/Europe shows whatever I want people to think Europe thinks, and people will treat it as an authority for some reason? That's basically what you're doing with Reddit.
Yes, clearly the russian bots are running a campaign against Trump, the most explicitly pro-Russia president we've had in decades. Donald "Ukraine started the war" Trump.
The goal isn't to help one coherent team win, but rather to foment division that undermines cohesive action. This is also an attractor for anybody interested in neutralizing democratic governments, be it Russia or simply corporations that don't want to be regulated as they gradually form more and more of their own government.
It doesn't seem far fetched to me for Russia to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe.
I don't partake in that subreddit so I have no clue as to the content or if this claim is true or false but it doesn't seem like a crazy idea for Russia to do. Sure there's plenty of content Trump gives Russia to potentially amplify, but there could still be bots amplifying things and making some opinions or takes on a story be more popular than reality.
If you sit people down and talk to them, I think you will find that most people around the world are actually able to distinguish between peoples and their governments. However when you look at what people say online, or when you ask groups of people, they do not always make the distinction.
The people who can not present a problem. Regardless of what pairing of nationalities.
While there may be some truth to that (bots)... there are definitely a lot of quasi communists that are participating in these groups. They are active, involved and have an outsized influence in terms of being a squeaky wheel.
You just have to look at the protests in NYC over Venezuela to see it... they aren't actually for what the people of Venezuela seem to want (they're celebrating), the protestors are clearly pushing for and protecting at what represents communist values, even if Maduro isn't really much of a Communist.
You could start with none of them voting for their presidential candidate to be nominated.
The Democratic Party is at odds with Democrats, in my opinion. They just don't want to let anyone but the party itself pick the candidate, then are surprised when their own voters don't feel the candidate is theirs.
Obama was nominated in spite of the party, and people showed up for him.
Trump is awful, but losing to him twice is unfathomably stupid.
Yeah, polls are limited in a variety of ways. The election results at least represent when someone took some amount of effort to vote.
2024 eligible voters: 244,666,890
2024 ballots cast: 156,766,239. 64% of eligible voters cast a vote
Trump votes: 77,284,118. 49.2% of votes cast, 31.6% of eligible voters
Harris votes: 74,999,166. 47.8% of votes cast, 30.6% of eligible voters
Trump got 1% more of the eligible voting population to go through the effort of casting a vote. That's not nothing, and it put him in office, but it's not a landslide that grants him an unquestionable public mandate.
I didn't say it was a landslide. The electorate is closely divided. But saying "most people didn't vote for Trump" makes it seem like they wouldn't have voted for him if they had to choose. And the data we have points in exactly the opposite direction. The pool of non-voters is low trust and cynical about American institutions. In that regard, they are more Trumpy than the electorate as a whole. In the Blue Rose study, Harris would have won if only 2022 midterm voters had voted in 2024. And if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by almost 5 points.
Making assumptions that non-voters would or would not support particular policies is erroneous. Harvard-Harris did a poll question on this last month, and found that 76% of Americans supported the U.S. arresting Maduro and bringing him to stand trial in the U.S.: https://harvardharrispoll.com/press-release-december-2025. That means most Americans are further to the right on this issue than a bunch of isolationist conservatives who voted for Trump.
Well, then I'd first have to ask how you define "communist" or "quasi-communist" to understand what you mean. The term "communist" means different things depending on the context of the person who uses that term.
There's Option 3: Trump built a campaign on lies, a significant minority of the American public were gullible enough to believe him, and many of those people regret it.
Option 3 is consistent with national polls. This fact is not flattering to the American public, but it's also not damning. Unfortunately, our electoral system has a slow cycle rate so we're stuck with the consequences for a while.
Assuming you are European, I can only offer these small words of consolation: I feel confident that a significant factor Trump's plummeting approval ratings is his anti-Europe and pro-Russian rhetoric. Everyone was pretty aghast when Trump declared the new public enemies (Canada and Greenland) on his first day in office.
Americans generally have very positive feelings towards Europe. We all just need to make it through the next three years.
Oh, so we’re just making up our reality now? Biden and Trump each won the popular vote and to suggest otherwise would require a belief in a colossal conspiracy theory.
Hi, here in America we also know this is true. :) Just riding it out til the regime of crazy falls over. When it happens, there will be much rejoicing.
This one is probably also -- if not completely invented by -- at least seriously boosted by russotrolls. And weaponized for several pro-Russia talking points, such as campaigning against Kamala Harris ("she is not against Israel so don't vote for her") and driving global gaze out of Ukraine.
I asked why, not how. In any democracy that question is easy to answer. You can look at the candidates platform or poll the voters to find out why someone won. You can't answer the question I asked, because nobody knows why she got the job. The vote in the Europarl had a single candidate choice (her) and nobody else. Literally a rubber stamp.
Because the party groups negotiated with the heads of states comprising the European Council to find a suitable candidate?
You know, like how all parliamentary systems works? No parliamentary system directly has the populace vote for their prime minister.
After the election someone has the task of proposing an executive government to the parliament. In many countries that is the speaker of the house. In the EU it is the heads of states.
The European Parliament has also rejected commissioners from being appointed. How is that literally being a rubber stamp?
Yes, the EU is a bit more complex. What most people miss is that the EU functionally has both an upper and lower house, with the upper house being selected from the national elections and lower house from EU wide elections.
I personally would prefer a more transparent system with more involvmement of the people in the EU democracy. But the EU functionally is democratic where the votes in both EU and national elections leads to the current executive branch.
"Because the party groups negotiated with the heads of states comprising the European Council to find a suitable candidate?"
What negotiations? We have no proof any negotiations took place. We don't even know if there was a vote, or if there were discussions, what was discussed, or who the candidates were. The entire process is secret. Think about how mad that is.
"You know, like how all parliamentary systems works?"
No parliamentary system works this way.
"After the election someone has the task of proposing an executive government to the parliament."
There was no election.
"The European Parliament has also rejected commissioners from being appointed. How is that literally being a rubber stamp?"
The head of the Commission before vdL said that both national and Europarl vetos on commissioners are meaningless. They just suggest a replacement who is ideologically identical.
"What most people miss is that the EU functionally has both an upper and lower house, with the upper house being selected from the national elections and lower house from EU wide elections."
You just said it has a single chamber! It really has none because the Europarl can't pass its own laws so it's not a house of representatives, just a room full of theatre kids playacting democracy. The EU doesn't have an upper and lower house by any definition used anywhere in the world. Stop pretending to not understand things.
Do you have proof the negotiations take place before the speaker of a house/king/whatever process proposes a canditate to form the executive branch in a parliamentary system?
> There was no election.
Just stop with the misinformation.
The current Commission is the von der Leyen Commission II, which took office in December 2024, following the European Parliament elections in June of the same year.
> The EU doesn't have an upper and lower house by any definition used anywhere in the world.
Yes, every country is unique. And the EU moreso due to its history.
> It really has none because the Europarl can't pass its own laws so it's not a house of representatives, just a room full of theatre kids playacting democracy.
It is just the chamber that accepts the proposed commmission, and has the decision to unilaterally force a no-confidence vote if the commission does not propose the laws the chamber wants.
Yes we do have proof of such negotiations. Political parties often use elections internally to select their leaders, those campaigns are public, and then they may spend months negotiating between themselves based on their publicly stated stances in order to form a government, or in more direct non PR systems, just take power directly if they win a majority. The resulting coalitions or governments are explainable. The EU Commission isn't and it's deliberately so.
>The current Commission is the von der Leyen Commission II, which took office in December 2024, following the European Parliament elections in June of the same year.
And those Europarl elections had no influence on who became leader of the Commission, did they, so why are you bringing them up - this seems like the kind of obfuscation the EU regularly relies on. Make noises that sound like what happens in real democracies and hope nobody notices that key links in the chain have been severed.
> Yes, every country is unique. And the EU moreso due to its history.
The EU is not a country. Its "history" is short and artificial. It could work however the people who constructed it wanted it to work, and they chose a dictatorship. What does that tell you about their intentions?
> It is just the chamber that accepts the proposed commmission, and has the decision to unilaterally force a no-confidence vote if the commission does not propose the laws the chamber wants.
No democracy has a chamber that works like this because that is useless and undemocratic. The Europarl's power to fire the Commission is theoretical. It requires a 2/3rds majority so it was never successfully used in its entire history - the Santer Commission resigned, it wasn't fired. No MEPs have ever suggested firing a Commission in order to get specific policies passed, so MEPs have no influence over policy at all. They can theoretically veto things and then watch the Commission reintroduce it again in a different form, so nobody who cares about policy ever goes into EU-level politics.
The only reason that does not happen in the EU is that we do not have EU wide parties. Therefore the palatable candidate needs to come from somewhere else.
Take Sweden, the only requirement for the prime minister is to be a Swedish citizen without holding any position that would lead to a conflict of interest, followed by the parliament accepting the nomination.
It is only by convention and incentives that one of the party leaders of the government coalition becomes prime minister. Sweden has the past 3 years had the third largest party's leader as the prime minister since that was the one the government coalition found palatable.
> And those Europarl elections had no influence on who became leader of the Commission
Please. Just stop. How can they have no influence on who became the leader of the Commission if they are the one to accept the nomination?
Vote no and it is back to the drawing board for the European Council. Which it was close this time as only 51% of the MEPs voted to accept the proposed commission.
This is just getting ridiculous.
> The EU is not a country. Its "history" is short and artificial. It could work however the people who constructed it wanted it to work, and they chose a dictatorship. What does that tell you about their intentions?
True. It is a tightly integrated union which still haven't merged completely. Somewhere in the grey area.
How can they choose dictatorship if everything is democratic stemming from national and EU wide elections?
> No democracy has a chamber that works like this because that is useless and undemocratic. The Europarl's power to fire the Commission is theoretical. It requires a 2/3rds majority so it was never successfully used in its entire history - the Santer Commission resigned, it wasn't fired. No MEPs have ever suggested firing a Commission in order to get specific policies passed, so MEPs have no influence over policy at all.
This is just getting stupid. Please. The power was not exercised but a commission was forced to resign after become ineffective due to not being aligned with the european parliament.
The money quote from wiki:
> The crisis had compounded the already reduced powers of the Commission in favour of the Parliament's legislative power, the council's foreign policy role and the ECB's financial role. However the change with Parliament was the most profound, the previous permanent cooperation between the two bodies came to an end with the shift in power
I truly want to understand why you hate the EU so much? It seems like you are cherrypicking facts to embellish your view rather than seeing things for what they are.
An evolving democratic system with competing national and union interests.
So what are the parties in the europarl then? They're not EU wide parties but also not national parties. Waving national flags in the EU Parliament is against the rules, lol.
They're not genuine political parties at all, because you can't build such things in the EU. Parties with no ability to take power aren't parties.
> How can they have no influence on who became the leader of the Commission if they are the one to accept the nomination?
Because it's a pointless power as adequately explained already by Juncker, that's why the EU is designed that way. Europarl is given exactly one candidate and zero input on who it is. What happens if they reject? Assuming procedure is even followed (not certain in the EU institutions), they'll be given another candidate who is a carbon copy of the first. Same views, same background, same ideology.
And they know this stupid game because the EU operates this way regularly. See the number of times they lost referendums on constitutional change and then made people vote on the same thing again, or the way stuff like Chat Control never dies. That's why the only people who sign up to be MEPs are either just rubberstamp cheerleaders for the Commission who often don't bother turning up, or people who think the Europarl is fake and their countries should leave the EU entirely.
What kind of a chamber is it that can't even stop itself being spammed with the same legislation it keeps rejecting in different forms, can't repeal unpopular legislation, is full of members who openly say it's damaging/fake and gets openly disrespected on live TV by the real power center? A fake one.
> due to not being aligned with the european parliament
You mean: due to being corrupt.
> I truly want to understand why you hate the EU so much?
Why did Russians hate the USSR? There's nothing to like about it. It's an evil system designed to enforce left wing dictatorship on Europe using lies, secrecy and, when necessary, aggression. It sees any attempt to remain independent as a problem to be crushed by abusing its powers. It makes Europeans more divided and less cooperative. I've lived in two central/west European countries in my life. The EU has treated both of them like dogshit. That's enough reasons.
Elections is only one characteristic of a democracy. Other characteristics include freedom of the press, freedom of speech, minority rights, rule of law, accountability and transparency, and separation of powers.
Nothing about democracy implies minority rights, the rule of law, or the separation of powers. Indeed these things are in greater or lesser degrees anti democratic.
None of those things are characteristics of “democracy.” Many of those are exactly the opposite: they are anti-democratic checks on democratic government. They empower a privileged class of lawyers and judges to overrule majorities based on supposed “rights.”
You'd make an excellent politician, as you have a great way of using words in an emotive manner to win a point.
"privileged class" immediately plays on people's emotions, along the lines of "the people have spoken", meaning if you didn't vote the same way, you're not "the people". I lived through all this in the brexit vote, and your language is all very similar sounding.
Over the years, democracies around the world have evolved these kind of checks and balances. They are part of the system, not imposed on it by some "privileged class" for their own nefarious reasons.
Historically in the American Republic, this has been true more often than not. There's a reason something taking "an act of Congress" is not a new expression for difficulty.
"Act of Congress" has always implied "something that is hard", but it has also implied "something that is fairly definitive". Today, congress can be largely ignored by the executive and congress seems to support it vocally. Is this also something that has been true more often than not in the American Republic?
And I wouldn't exactly say that Congress is wholly supporting unrestricted presidential power currently either. E.g. Senator Thune continually shooting down Trump's more oddball pleas.
There are very vocal supporters of the president in both the House and Senate GOP caucuses, but they're not the majority.
I think the strongest version of your argument would be something like 'In recent US Congressional history, both parties when in power have used congressional power to tactically check opposition party presidents, but neither have sought to permanently expand and defend the bounds of congressional power.'
Wouldn’t a functioning congress have resisted the executive aborbing its powers? After all, congress was supposed to be the most powerful branch. For good reason.
> congress was supposed to be the most powerful branch
Just re-read the USA constitution. Despite much effort, I did not find any "power rankings" of the three branches. Please point me in the right direction.
It was written before Dragonball Z existed so they didn't have the convenient framework of "power level" to use. Instead the power of Congress is indicated by the fact that all acts of the government are derived from bills originating in Congress, which the president rubber stamps (or not, which congress can then override), and the supreme court judicially interprets - but only if someone brings suit.
Now the president can do police actions and stuff but it seems like the intention was congress being the branch that had independent autonomy to just do things and get the ball rolling.
Congress sets the president's salary and has the power to fire him. The president has no such reverse power. The legislative branch is clearly the more powerful. "co-equal" is a fiction made up out of whole cloth by Nixon to further his criminal activities.
Until the party system existed, this was true. As soon as the party system evolved (pretty much immediately), with the President nominally the head of the party and the President has at least 1/3 of the Senate, the President comes near to immune from dismissal.
At that point, combined with the recent Supreme Court decisions holding 'official acts' as non-prosecutable, has swung the power meter severely to the executive.
Really? You read the constitution and managed to not absorb how the system is structured?
Hint: Look at who has which powers. Congress has the power to check every other branch. Neither the President nor the courts have symmetrical power over Congress. This asymmetry reflects its position.
I must admit I am a bit flabbergasted. How can you not understand what you read? And if a portion of Hacker News users, who are likely to have above average cognitive ability, don’t understand this, how poorly does the rest of the population understand the core ideas of how their political system works?
I'm not sure which Constitution you read but apparently it was a different one than the one I read.
Congress was not set up to be more powerful than the other branches. The president can veto laws that Congress tries to pass and the Supreme Court can also completely undo laws that Congress has passed.
There are degrees. I don’t think congress has been this weak before in our lifetime. And most people seeming not to care scares me.
I have been looking at productivity numbers for congress over the past decades. And I don’t get why people aren’t furious over the current congress not doing their job.
That is rubbish. I loathe Trump more than most, but there's no serious claim that he wasn't freely elected in 2024. There appears to be a lot of buyer's remorse and we'll see what happens in the mid terms. But (sadly) Americans asked for this and they got it.
The opposition refused to address internal issues with the incumbent until they were painfully evident, then switched in a much weaker candidate in the final months who had never won a primary.
Had a stronger candidate been offered from the beginning, Trump well could have lost.
In a way, America didn’t ask for what it got. America voted for a guy who claimed to have never heard of Project 2025. It got Project 2025.
Also, Trump ran on a populist message. Yet if you look at what he has done materially since he got into office, it seems his true allegiance is with the billionaire elite.
Gerrymandering alone would be enough to disqualify the US elections as 'free and fair' by many standards. And that's before we get into dollars are votes and other little details.
Indeed. There's plenty of other forms of disenfranchisement (restricted polling access, overly aggressive purging of voter rolls, etc)
It's a pity that this is perceived as such a hot-button partisan topic, because that's not my intent -- I just want to see free and fair elections.
The more distressing fact is that despite my assertion of election fuckery, there's clearly a large number of people that are willing to vote against their best interests because they are so easily swayed by anger and hate. Democracy really is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Gerrymandering is atrocious and anti-democratic but it didn't affect Trump's election. States' electors are winner-take-all[1] based on statewide popular vote so district boundaries don't factor in.
[1] I just learned there are two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska. But they have few electors (9 total between them) so this was not significant in the 2024 election.
But it does affect congressional elections, and despite the effective neutering of the congress, having a majority there is crucial for maintaining power.
I don’t really care to get involved of the affairs of foreign governments. This isn’t about “narcoterrorism” or democracy. You’re a fool if you think that.
I don't really care what it's "about". I care that the Venezuelan people get their democracy back. Even if Trump is doing this because the voices in his head told him to do it, ending Maduro's rule is a step in the right direction.
Well first the Venezuelan people will have to wait while the Trump administration runs their government (the remaining Maduro administration) and oil fields until a stabile transition can take place as determined by the US government. So they haven't gotten their democracy back yet.
And Trump has decided the Nobel peace prize winner doesn't have enough support of the people to take over. So whatever democracy there is to be had in the future seems to be up to a foreign government.
Yes, foreign intervention worked wonderfully in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world. We should also thank Russia for trying hard to extend its thriving democracy to Ukraine.
That just shows that popular will is not a justification for something. If the popular will was self destructive would a powerful entity be justified in giving them what they desire?
> If Venezuela recovers and improves, are you willing to fundamentally change your opinion about US interventions?
Uhh, no?
My opinion is that US interventions are incredibly risky. There have been numerous successes. There have also been numerous failures. Both have required immense resources and focus from us.
Some interventions are worth the risk, and others are not. I have not seen any compelling rationale for the risk-reward of this particular intervention, and have very low hopes for the follow through, which makes the risk-reward calculus even worse.
You don't think Venezuela having the largest oils reserves on the planet and it being a strong ally to Russia, Iran and China make the possible reward fairly significant from a US standpoint?
Sure it's conceivable. Can you go a level deeper on your analysis?
Are you suggesting that cutting off oil flow to those nations will be advantageous to us? Is this like... tomorrow? During a potential armed conflict? When?
By what specific mechanism does the US assert "control" over the oil? POTUS just now said it's via a ground occupation "until transition of power." What's the transition plan?
Not cutting off, but it's enough that the US increases oil supply which lowers the prices to significantly hurt Russia and Iran. And then you have China which is the main consumer of Venezuelan oil so you get another point of leverage.
Also probably helps to ensure the petro dollar is here to stay for longer.
Obviously this is a very shallow analysis, and there's definitely significant risks, but I do think it's obvious that it has large potential upsides.
It's not shallow, it is gullible. Of course Trump has an angle otherwise he wouldn't have done this. We can speculate about what the angle is but there is absolutely no way that he did this for the good of the Venezuelan population.
Edit: So, that took only 8 minutes, the other shoe just dropped, it was about the oil after all. Where do I collect my check?
Oh yeah, I'm certain the intent behind this wasn't for the sake of the Venezuelan population, but that in itself doesn't mean it won't result in a better outcome for the population (but also not saying that it will)
The thing I occasionally say about Trump is: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
We ("the opposition") can't get into the frame where we say that everything Trump does is wrong. It's not frequent, but sometimes - yes even for totally wrong reasons - he does things which are probably right. Our identity needs to be more than just "the opposite of what Trump does", otherwise the Trumpists will frame all debates around issues that make us look crazy, rather than the issues that demonstrate blatant grift and criminality.
If Maduro is gone, it's a good thing. Let's go back to talking about the clear and obviously terrible things Trump does. Don't let them change the subject.
Agree with your overall sentiment but this is just a ridiculous position to hold at this point. History is absolutely full of horrible people being toppled just for more horrible people to take their place. There is literally no evidence whatsoever of a plan for post-Maduro Venezuela. At all!
They're either acting completely clueless for the cameras for some unknown reason, or this is very likely going to go really badly.
Venezuela has already been going really badly, by nearly any quantitative metric of "how going". This is a country that - a couple decades ago - was a rare success story of democracy and prosperity in Latin America.
I think the Venezuelans will work it out, despite Trump's ineptitude.
I can appreciate that but taken to its conclusion it's a recipe for paralysis and complacency. It always could be worse, so let's just let sit here and let shit happen?
Unlike all those places you mention, Venezuela has a democratic tradition which was only recently derailed. This isn't some middle eastern theocratic monarchy. It's "get back on track" not "find new tracks where none existed before".
No, shit can always get worse so act carefully and with a plan.
I and many others are asking for evidence of such a plan. The US administration has denied the existence of such a plan.
Maybe those factors you mention will turn out to be relevant or even determinative, and maybe not. I suspect in absence of an actual plan, the mere tradition of democracy will not suffice.
The Trump administration is incompetent to manage a pre-school, let alone world affairs. We're not going to get a plan. The best we can hope for is an occasional random steps vaguely in the right direction.
Maduro in prison is an improvement from Maduro still in power. Accept it as a tiny win and move on.
Frankly insane position to hold ~24 hours after the events and with the information currently available.
You are aware you're allowed to say, "it'll take some time for this to shake out sufficiently to understand whether it's a tiny win, a huge win, net-neutral, or regionally catastrophic," right?
The future is always uncertain. Sometimes you just have to take the rare chances afforded. "Maduro suddenly recognizes the value of democracy and transitions power to Gonzáles" wasn't on the table.
I'd push the delete button for every unelected dictator on the planet if I could. Repeatedly. It's morally offensive not to.
China is heavily dependent on oil imports and a big part of Germany's defeat in WW2 was due to difficulties obtaining oil. This move may - if successful - change the calculation over Taiwan
> Ethics debates are not served by utilitarian arguments.
There isn't just a single universally agreed upon moral framework that serves as the basis for ethics.
Depending on whether you adopt a Rawlsian, Utilitarian, Libertarian, or Communitarian moral framework, your actions would look different depending on the circumstances.
Specially, the Utilitarian moral framework optimizes for the greatest good for the greatest number. Willing to sacrifice the few of the many. It might not be your or my moral framework, but I don't know that we can rule it out as a valid way to approach ethics.
> Specially, the Utilitarian moral framework optimizes for the greatest good for the greatest number.
No, the proponents of the utilitarian moral framework try to justify illegal actions retrospectively if the outcome was good and refuse to take responsibility if it is bad.
Ethics should guide your decisions beforehand and require you to take responsibility for all possible outcomes.
Are you arguing that Utilitarianism isn't a way to guide decisions? And are you saying it is an invalid moral framework?
FWIW, many ethicists suggest using multiple frameworks and would argue using Utilitarianism for policy.
For example, in the EU utilitarianism is rarely used as the sole moral foundation but serves as the primary tool for practical decision-making and public policy. Most visible in how the EU balances competing interests to achieve the "greatest good".
If your hand is on the track switch, you're just as responsible for the trolley no matter which way it goes. Walking away from the switch does not absolve you.
The issue with regime change is whether there's enough political cohesion in a country's population after a despot / autocrat is removed.
"The opposition" is rarely a large and representative enough group to effect national power transition. (Btw, thanks for flagging that incorrectly as affect, Apple)
Especially in multi-ethnic states, most cohesive national identities are forged through extremely popular singular leaders.
Unfortunately, those are exactly the same leaders external regime-change initiators are wary of (too independent).
This year's winner of the nobel prize is highly organized and ran a parallel election campaign, which was obviously dismissed by the Maduro regime. There is a slim possibility of a peaceful transition given the democratic efforts underway in Venezuela for many years at this point.
POTUS just said she's not involved, won't be involved, doesn't have the support necessary to lead. Who does? Unclear. His plan appears to be: "oil companies come in, sell the oil" and I'm seriously not exaggerating.
> His plan appears to be: "oil companies come in, sell the oil"
In terms of nation-building, it's not the worst plan. See Carville's "It's the economy, stupid."
Popular support of any government is mostly (a) quality of life & (b) individual freedom. Quality of life is directly correlated to the economy and public finances.
If someone can quickly boost Venezuelan oil production, and therefore state revenue, then all sorts of social funding programs become feasible.
The issue with autocracies is that they selectively enrich key supporter groups (internal police, military) at the expense of others (wider population).
If you can substantially boost public revenue, then you don't have to make a tradeoff -- everyone gets more!
And there are certainly worse beginnings for new governments.
(All of this ignoring the flagrant violation of international law, international ramifications vis-a-vis Taiwan, climate change, etc.)
Well, Trump is probably the least qualified person in the administration to ask that question of, while at the same time no one wanted to risk contradicting his fancies on recorded television.
A bad look, but I seriously doubt the state department doesn't have some sort of plan for continuity of government.
Especially since, in critical difference with post-Hussein Iraq, no one in this administration seems ideologically opposed to working with the old guard, if they put on new colors.
Would be very surprised if the remaining elements of the government aren't put in temporary charge with guidelines (no killing protestors, freeing political prisoners, monitored elections on X date, etc.), then things are left business as usual.
With additional strikes if anyone tries to buck the system.
But higher placed members of corrupt regimes tend to be pretty pragmatic about their own skins when the winds shift, so I'd be surprised if anyone goes to the mat for a leader who's already been extradited.
The President of the United States has stated over and over now that there is no transition plan. There is no successor. There is no plan for elections.
This isn't "he hasn't been asked" or "he has declined to comment." He has said affirmatively there is no plan.
So either he's lying or there's no plan.
In either case, my presentation is correct, and your assumptions are completely unfounded.
Trump's Reaganesque in Reagan's weaknesses, without any of his strengths. Except maybe charisma to some people.
At this point in his second administration, I'm firmly convinced that the bulk of the details aren't communicated to him and/or he forgets them.
Big decisions? Sure, he makes yes/no. But "Let me hear the plan for day x+1?" In what universe would the Trump we've seen ask that question? We're talking about the McDonald's guy.
> I'm firmly convinced that the bulk of the details aren't communicated to him and/or he forgets them.
But at the same time:
> time no one wanted to risk contradicting his fancies on recorded television.
So they're making plans, but they won't actually commit to any of the plans because in the end the plans are meaningless and Trump is going to push for whatever he wants at the moment. Doesn't that make the actual plans practically worthless?
Under the hood here you're assuming Trump is (largely) incompetent to lead but surrounded by people who 1) know that and 2) are competent themselves.
A scarier possibility, which I think is actually far better evidenced, is that he's surrounded by people who largely believe he's competent (because it's a cult) and who are themselves not competent at all.
I think the people around him believe (1) he's competent to win the popularity contest that is an election & (2) he's vengeful against any perceived disloyalty.
There are probably some true-believers among his cabinet, but most of those are evidenced by their paper-thin CVs and lack of their own power-bases (Hegseth, Bondi, Rollins, Chavez-DeRemer, Turner, McMahon, Noem, Zeldin, Loeffler).
>In terms of nation-building, it's not the worst plan.
Building which nation? The despotic dictatorship of USA one would have to assume you mean. The profits are no more likely to go to Venezuela's further development than they are to bring in universal health care in USA.
QoL is nothing if it is bought through the pain and suffering of others.
I don't know why you think this is a new beginning, it's just extension of USA's dictatorship to ensure even more people suffer and the USA oligarchy gets even more insanely wealthy.
The popular will is the woman the majority voted for. Trump already said she will not be allowed to run the country, that the US will and that we will help them develop, read steal, their oil.
The majority voted for Edmundo González, and María Corina Machado has called for him to be recognized as the leader of the nation.
It's complicated because Maduro banned her from running in the last election (and still lost anyway). In a just world maybe she deserves the position. But if we want to restore democracy in Venezuela, González would be a natural place to start (along with new elections).
For what it's worth he did stop the Taliban from raping the wives and daughters of the opium farmers. Obviously not for humanitarian reasons but I was rather fond of how he dealt with it even if for the wrong reasons.
> This looks a lot like when the U.S. & Israel were running dry on interceptors last year, and made a deal with the Iranians to pretend to blow up Fordow in exchange for ceasing hostilities.
Do you have a citation for this? (Genuinely curious)
The author’s claims that “there was never any credible evidence that Iranian medium- and long-range air defenses against fixed-wing aircraft were attrited to any significant degree“ and that the B-2 is easily to track and target… seem rather questionable. Unfounded even.
> the silence of the Iranian government on this point suggests something coordinated to me
Or, you know, a theocratic autocracy that realizes the perception of its military power is critical to keeping the populace in line?
And admitting to an inability to stop military action on one of their most heavily defended targets by the very enemy they've whipped their supporters into a froth over is a bad look?
In your zeal you seem to have misunderstood the point I was making. The Iranian government did not dispute American claims of having flown over and destroyed Fordow, which is the opposite of the "they'll say anything to look strong" thesis you're advancing.
I think the U.S. whipped the Iranian government's supporters into line by treacherously using peace negotiations as a pretext to target their scientists, helping Israel launch a completely unjustified sneak attack with all the Mossad rats they had hidden in the country, and facilitating the genocide in Gaza. With enemies like that the Iranian government hardly needs help.
I used to be a Skeptic magazine reading, blanket conspiracy doubting "classical liberal." Since this system is predicated on lies, everyone with a base level of commitment to the truth eventually turns their back on the official narratives.
I mean, it's hard to tell what is really going on in Venezuela right now, but as far as I can tell the only truly fragmented or "schizo" worldview would be that the United States was able to hover a Chinook over Caracas and extract Maduro without firing a single shot, without some kind of pre-agreed deal being in place.
I guess we'll see if Trump's blustering that he'll install American oil execs in Caracas pans out, won't we? Given that Chinese officials met with Maduro just before all this, I'm open to the idea that some kind of deal has been made to hand Latin America to the U.S. in exchange for our forbearance elsewhere in the world, so we might see something more serious, but at this point we just have the removal of a single head of state under extremely suspicious circumstances.
And it appears they did so with assistance from within the government, at least with assistance from the military. That's why the operation went so smoothly. It seems like it was unusually easy, precisely because it was.
Any details/sources on this? I thought it was strange that the airspace seemed almost entirely uncontested. Scrambling fighters take a while of course (particularly if unmaintained and you're corrupt), but I had at least expected some ground-based air defences to be active. Maybe they were being blown up in the first few videos that surfaced? Unless they were disabled by other means, that's another catastrophic display of the Russian systems.
In addition, USAF/USN have been flying ELINT platforms (e.g. RC-135s) off the coast for months now.
So even without the cooperation of any of the Venezuelan military, it's possible the mission was:
1. Precision long-range strikes on air defense radars around Caracas (and possibly assets)
2. Closer SEAD with F-35s to clear a path
3. SOAR Delta Force infiltration with tactical air suppression
4. CAP from F-35s to intercept any scrambled fighters
5. Exfiltration along same route
If the intelligence was good (location of air defenses and Maduro), it's entirely possible the above just went off cleanly.
See: Desert Storm air campaign. Having capable anti-air assets doesn't matter when your enemy has access to more timely intelligence and the means to do something with it.
I think that might be a step too far, rather I'd guess the US just knows the Russian systems very well. The success of the latest campaign against Iran shows that too, and if anything they learnt even more from that.
Either way, although Trump might every now and then be a bit too friendly with Putin, but a) cooperation at this scale and b) the bad looks and damage to Russian investments I think makes it seem unlikely. Putin doesn't stick his neck out for others unless it serves him. I'm not that well read on the Russian involvement in the area though...
Update from Reuters: ‘"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition," Trump told reporters. […] "We can't take a chance at somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn't have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind. We've had decades of that. We're not going to let that happen."’
I'd like to stress that Trump not only said this during the conference from his luxury resort, but repeated and belabored the point several times that the United States would be taking over Venezuela.
He's trying to hide the impact his failed economic policies are having. He can't let the 16 Nobel Prize winning economists who warned him that he'd crash the economy "win."
Medieval kings were considered the embodiment of the government, but that didn't make them autocratic. Indeed, they were not only bound by a thicket of obligations and customs, but authority itself is only legitimate when it is just, a view that is traditional; it is modern legal positivism that roots authority in fiat, making it inherently tyrannical.
> Indeed, they were not only bound by a thicket of obligations and customs, but authority itself is only legitimate when it is just, a view that is traditional;
Ultimately they were bound not by tradition, but by the reality that they may lose their heads, often at the hands of a competing relative, but also at the hands of starving subjects.
Not yet. Once the anger metastasizes into a new wholly anti-american government, new targets will emerge.
Trump is far from universally loved, but just imagine what the US would become if an outside nation swooped in and captured him. 100% of the american people would be screaming for blood.
I'd be concerned about exactly what price would be asked. No one country spends their cash and soldiers to "liberate" for free. I've turned down free gifts before because I knew they came with strings attached.
People say that, but the sight of say Russian/Mexican/Chinese/Canadian troops parachuting onto the whitehouse lawn to abduct a sitting president, no doubt killing many in the process, would be such an afront that domestic politics wouldnt matter.
This already happened. Trump lead a Russia-backed coup against the United States in January, 2021 to overturn the 2020 election and illegally take the presidency. It failed, but he and every government employee who supported him after that is guilty of treason and is serving illegitimately.
Trump is president because he was elected by the American voter while the opposition was in power. I would not label that as illegitimate and I think it is dangerous to spread that narrative.
Trump lead a coup against the US, is guilty of treason, and is ineligible for public office. I agree it is dangerous to have a traitor to the US in the presidency.
A lack of prosecution does not imply innocence. There were several attempts to go after him for it, but the courts are intentionally set up to favor the wealthy and powerful, in this case via infinite delay tactics. I still think it could've been done and I'll never forgive the Biden DOJ for delaying forever and letting him skate. He should've been in jail by February, serving his sentence by summer.
There will always be enemies and corrupt people. We need to establish a system of government and culture that doesn't so easily give over the reigns of the nation to these bad actors. If we don't actively do this we will long for the good old days when the corrupt leaders just wanted to steal money for themselves and hurt trans people.
for what is Maduro an enemy of the US. He wasn't willing to sign over the oil reserves to US oil companies. wanting to keep what is theirs away from rapacious foreign invaders would make most of the planet an enemy of the US.
I doubt Vance is capable of getting the support from Congress and the maga voters that Trump has. Once Trump is gone, the Republican party is going to have a hard time putting itself back together.
Meanwhile, the individual upthread suggesting they’d support a foreign power invading the US and capturing Trump is the ridiculous, childish, and deeply unserious brand of self-loathing that we are voraciously (and necessarily, if our country is to survive) opposed to.
You, personally, might, but I think it's going to be a clusterfuck. You can't stick a different person in a cult of personality and expect it to act the same.
I would not be screaming for blood. It is the world order he wants, and perhaps the only possible lesson in why we shouldn’t give him that world order.
Capture might not be the aim. The coming decades will see anonymous effective asymmetric warfare with USA infrastructure and the USA political establishment as prime targets. That's the big concern.
Huh... they better build some readily-available hyper-powerful infrastructure, pronto, or that next election could hand power to folks that don't have the best interest of the country in mind:
Trump is Russia's guy. There is no way I'd be screaming for revenge over a horrifying complicated nightmare becoming even more toxic, even more complicated, and even more nightmarish. If anyone comes and gets Trump it ain't Russia: he is already theirs, and acting in such a way as to further all their aims and all their narratives.
The oil production there is completely decimated. They have huge reserves but production is low and falling because the regime doesn't do any maintenance or support of anything in the oil production and supply chain. It is very much the meme of "living in the ruins of a once great society".
Completely dishonest answer. Sanctions decimated Venezuela's ability to maintain its oil infrastructure. Everything, from machined parts, to the various chemicals needed, everything, was affected.
It just took a few years for the sanctions to bite, as the Venezuelans conserved & used stockpiles.
Again, a completely dishonest take. Speaks volumes, when most defenders of todays criminality keep spouting arguments to this effect.
Venezuelan oil production was cratering years before the first oil sanctions because they replaced everybody who knew how to drill oil with loyalists. I didn’t realize this was debatable.
>While reports circulated that Ms. Rodríguez was in Russia at the time of the attacks, Ms. Rodríguez is in Caracas, according to three people close to her. Russian state media also denied reports that she was in Moscow.
(Permalink, since it's on the second page of the live thread now.)
This live format is kind of irritating. Here's another one:
> He claims the oil business in Venezuela has been a "bust", and that large US companies are going to go into the country to fix the infrastructure and "start making money for the country"
You made the mistake of believing that Trump is more than a zero step thinker. Many do.
The fact is, his tactics and plans end where his nose does.
Many of his advisors are capable of planning, but there are times he just doesnt listen to them and lets whatever heavy metals are in the spray tan do all the thinking. See January Sixth for one example that got people killed. See USAID for another.
On the one hand, I agree. On the other hand, I don't think this administration would have bothered to talk to China at all. I don't think they need to.
China isn't giving up any barrels of oil. It's a global market. If Venezuela is selling 5 million bbl per day to China, and it stops selling to China, someone else will start buying it. Since they are now buying 5 million bbl per day from Venezuela, that means they are buying 5 million bbl / day less from their existing suppliers. China will buy that oil.
Although that doesn't seem like much of a solution though: the press will be bored of this by the end of the week and the only news that can come out is bad news.
Today. She's still part of the same regime and party. It's not obvious Trump will let her stay in charge. Also the control the government had over the criminal gangs/syndicates/cartels was seemingly very weak anyway. Even if the current decapitated regime is allowed to stay it won't be very strong.
The US has long recognized Edmundo González as the rightful president of the country following the 2024 election. I imagine they will try to install him.
Alternatively there's María Corina Machado who overwhelmingly won the presidential primary for that election but wasn't allowed to run.
I am not sure what you mean by "control the government had"...they are the same thing. It is like the situation with IRA and Sinn Fein, this bizarre roleplay where people (for various reasons) went to massive effort to imply they were separate when it was obvious they were led by the same people. There is no distinction between the government and cartels...the assumption that there is makes no sense at all given the latitude they have to operate.
Low level officials can be eliminated through missile strikes.
If if had to guess, Maduro could have been take out with a GBU or two, but the US holds a grudge against him so they took him out to humiliate him, and send a message to others.
There's a big international diplomacy difference between assassinating a leader and forcibly extraditing one on drug charges.
Not too many countries will go to the mat to support a leader who was engaged in narcotics trafficking, if the US is able to present a viable case (which they seem to intend to, if he's being charged in US federal court).
I'm skeptical, as it seems to have that ring of circa-2003 WMD justification about it, but I won't dismiss it out of hat.
And if the US intends to prosecute Maduro on drug crimes in SDNYC (good!), then they'll have to present evidence to the court, which presumably means they think they have a case.
Personally, I doubt Maduro intentionally ran a narco-state as a primary focus. But I can very much see a sizable narcotics enterprise, with state support, being used as a key way for him to enrich select supporters absent a viable economy. Money to pay the generals has to come from somewhere...
You can't credibly pardon one massive drug dealer and then go and kidnap the head of state of another country based on the same kind of thing. The lack of consistency alone should cause some serious headscratching.
Headscratching is not an international consequence.
"Right" rarely matters in geopolitics.
What matters is who opposes a course of action, and how far they're willing to go in their opposition.
Is China or the UK going to insist that former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández be prosecuted on drug crimes? If not, then the US is realpolitik free to do what it wants.
Similarly with Maduro. Who's going to support him? And how far are they prepared to go?
> > Pardoning a different drug dealer can be a way to show Maduro that they were serious about the offer, that they really would have gone easy on him.
Maduro is not a drug dealer and even if it was not directing all the limited resources of its government to stop the drug trade we are talking about allocation of resources which should have happened in order to put Americans Interests first whereas Venezuela has so many other serious problems.
Also even if all that was true we are talking about cocaine, the party (and somewhat productivity) drug.
The fentanyl is produced 10,000 miles away from Venezuela, in CHYNA which used to be a great talking point in 2016 but of course nothing ended up happening
It's possible to imagine all kinds of fantastical explanations but usually the simplest one is the correct one: Trump is receiving bags of money for the pardon. Also bolstered by his past (and ongoing) behaviour of openly and shamelessly enriching himself at every opportunity.
You could do whatever is good for your country. Credibly.
Getting rid of a head of state that brings your primary competitors (china) influence to your doorstep is not head scratching. Just try to think in real-world terms
This seems like the type of comment the parent comment is referring to. It's day 1 of the invasion. Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?
> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?
Any student of history would be skeptical. The US record after interference in a country is abysmal. Relatively recent failures: Iraq, Afghanistan. Less recent failures: Nicaragua and throughout Central America.
I would include Libya. Gaddafi died, we were happy, Libya became a hellhole with open slave markets. The same can easily happen here if they don't have a good plan.
Afghanistan was a weird "how long to we have to pretend to give a shit before we give it back to the guys we never really wanted to take it from in the first place" situation.
Iraq was a textbook example of why you don't dismantle the entire administrative state.
I don't think either is relevant here. Other central american shenanigans are the better reference points IMO.
They got lucky, the economy needed to be rebuilt and the Pinochet government had no idea how to do it and not much interest in it. So they put the economists who wrote the "Ladrillo" in charge because it sounded like a good plan. This combination of a stable government combined with libertarian economic policies lead to the success. Usually you don't get this combination under dictatorship.
No strongman in charge, sorta-kinda democratic government (more democratic than almost anywhere else in the Arab world), violence has subsided, the country didn't disintegrate into pieces unlike Yugoslavia, the economy has grown moderately, and they haven't become an Iranian puppet regime.
Frankly, by the standards of the Near and Middle East, this is very much not an abysmal failure.
The insurgency that preceded this was very bad, though. No denying that. But some other modern nations have such insurgencies in their recent history, such as Ireland, and that didn't stop them from developing towards prosperity.
It took decades for the US to stabilize itself as a nation after its birth.
Why would you think Iraq would find it easy to stabilize itself post Hussein, such that you'd declare their future void already. Iraq is not yet a failure and is dramatically more stable than it was under Hussein (dictatorships bring hyper instability universally, which is why they have to constantly murder & terrify everybody to try to keep the system from instantly imploding due to the perpetual instability inherent in dictatorship).
Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Kuwait, and most of Eastern Europe (which the US was extremely deep in interfering with for decades in competition with the USSR). You can also add Colombia to that list, it is a successful outcome thus far of US interference.
I like the part where people pretend the vast interference in positive outcomes don't count. The US positively, endlessly interfered in Europe for the past century. That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well.
And what about the precedent it sets for other world powers?
Why shouldn't Russia or China just do the same and interfere with the leadership of countries they don't like.
Also it is impossible to argue the cost of the war in Iraq was worth the benefit, even if we agree Iraq is in a better place now then it was under Hussein.
> Also it is impossible to argue the cost of the war in Iraq was worth the benefit, even if we agree Iraq is in a better place now then it was under Hussein.
But the Iraquis didn’t pay the military monetary cost (arguably they paid a different cost, but it’s very hard to balance that against living under a dictator, and I said that from experience), and I’m sure US’ imperialist shenanigans could recoup the monetary cost. Seeing as US doesn’t have compulsory conscription, that takes away part of the reprehensibility of the human cost of US’ personnel caused by its interventionist policy. Which, to my eyes, leaves the thing as a net positive.
One thing can be said with certainty about countries like Venezuela and Cuba: they are broken and they cause untold pain to their citizens. The moral imperative to fix them is there, even if one can certainly discuss how and maybe quibble a little about the monetary cost.
Just noticed the “whataboutism”. I don’t have a particular take on the comment above but those countries do those things in their own parts of the globe.
The government of nations is anarchy and in anarchy the only rule is that “might makes right”. Some seem to have a view that there is a world government and that there are “rules” when in reality there are none.
There are international agreements, consequences, and parties that may or may not choose to enforce those consequences.
E.g. the entire UN Security Council was predicated on the idea that no other country could/would force a nuclear power to do anything it didn't want to
"That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well."
What an absurd thing to say. The US doesn't only overthrow dictatorships - it supports them too, as it suits its self-interest. Why not include the US interference when it SUPPORTED Hussein and later changed its mind - still think "interference turns out well" after backing a genocidal monster, supporting his invasion of a neighbour, invading twice and related deaths of 400 000 people?
Countries stabilise over time, that's what their people make happen. You ignore Indonesia, Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua and dozens of disaster of US imperialism but give credit to the US when their populations rebuild them.
The US has done some positive things but they're the convenient accidents you've cherry picked to make your point.
So true. I think everyone should remember exactly that anytime a MAGA tribesman uses the language of reason and compassion to gain an air of respectability. They have no concern for truth or ethics and don't deserve the legitimacy of respectful discourse. Identify it early, call them out on it, smash their hollow arguments and show everyone how little respect it earns. Reason's due for a comeback.
Kuwait is a dictatorship. South Korea and Taiwan were, too until the 80s-90s. Especially, in the case of Taiwan it is unclear what US intereference there has been politically: the Chinese fought hard to be free of interference and although in Taiwan they need US support I don't think they are as controlled as South Korea and Japan (which has been invaded and "vassalised"). If interefence there is it is indeed to literally interfere to foster separation with the mainland.
Re. Iraq, interestingly the US invasion has vastly increased Iran's influence in the country because the majority is Shia while Saddam was from a Sunni tribe.
Which is somehow inherently wrong due to what reason exactly?
But yes, the South Korean regime in the 50s (and the RoC one in Taiwan to a lesser extent) was extremely brutal and oppressive and hardly much worse than the one in the north.
> The US positively, endlessly interfered in Europe for the past century. That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well.
Are we counting the financial support that Wall Street and the budding CIA boys at Sullivan & Cromwell gave Hitler to harass the Soviet Union, which ultimately had to take care of the problem they created, in the "turning out well" column here?
"surprised Pikachu face" lmao, just absurdly arrogantly wrong. Molotov-Ribbentrop was Stalin's last resort and (successful) bid for time and breathing room after trying and failing numerous diplomatic efforts to unite the Allies against Hitler. Many of those Allies were explicit, at the time, about their desire to use Nazi Germany to inflict a mortal blow on the godless communists in Moscow.
Em. After Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Soviet Union tried to formally join the Axis as the fourth Axis power.
It's hard to argue that was to buy time, especially given they had spent more effort conquering their neighbors and helping the Nazis than building defenses against the them. They just wanted a larger chunk of Europe and Western Asia.
Their attempt failed because Stalin got greedy with what chunk of Europe he wanted and their poor performance against Finland convinced the Nazis to double cross them and invade.
Hitler offered the Soviets to join the Axis in 1940, predicated on a bunch of conditions that they refused to accept. Where in the world did you come up with this completely false reinterpretation of that as "the Soviets tried to join the Axis"?
To describe the Soviet-Nazi discussions to join the Axis as the Soviets refusing because of Nazi demands is certainly an odd view of history especially given how Stalin's proposal, one he personally drafted, was received.
Perhaps this was one of the self-serving Soviet narratives, like the nonsense of having to side with the Nazis and invalid Poland because the Allies refused them - as opposed to actively double dealing and choosing the Axis because they offered the best deal.
Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more", "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory has become unbearable for Russia" so that "she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible."[12] Hitler had already decided to invade the Soviet Union in July 1940,[13] but this apparently accelerated the process.
It all goes back to what Zhukov said, "we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it."
And of course the Allies' own self-serving behavior and cutting deals with Hitler, or leaving the internal dissident generals within the Wehrmacht to twist in the wind, is always to be completely ignored, the fruits of four decades of history textbooks published by Ghislaine Maxwell's capitalist spook father.
> we rescued Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it
Yeah, they "rescued" it alright. Like they rescued, err stolen, Moldova from Romania and they kept it for more than 40 years. Heck, they're still messing with it. Then at the end of the war they robbed and raped civilians from the countries they "liberated".
They have flown the flag of USSR in several occasions during their offensive war in Ukraine. It’s not the troops trying to be funny, either: their MoD has been sharing such videos.
Germany would have quite literally run out of oil (and other materials and even grain) a few months after conquering Poland. Most was imported was imported from the Americas before the war.
The French and British could have pretty much waited Germany out had Stalin decided not to bankroll the Nazis invasions of Norway and France. The allies were quite seriously considering bombing Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan before France fell.
Presumably Stalin was hoping to prop-up Germany just long enough for them to get stuck in a protracted war in France so that he could swop in and "liberate" Europe. Unfortunately for millions it turned out to be a slight miscalculation...
Nah, Stalin didn’t anticipate the attack. And also deposing capitalist regimes, in what would become Allies, was famously the long-standing goal of the USSR
Those capitalist regimes were messing with the USSR continually from the moment of its inception, of course both sides were trying to undermine the other. Only one resorted to the sorts of terror tactics exemplified by the Phoenix Project, Operation Gladio, and the like.
Korea, by what metric? South Korea was through the 50 poorer than North Korea, North Korea was considered the roaring growth economy, huge success of planning and leadership.
Park Chung Hee took a country that could not be a functional democracy, provided leadership and put it onto the path of economic success. Iirc, the reduction in poverty through that period is the fastest in human history (when you consider that China, that is an incredible statement).
I think people (still) assume both that democracy is superior economically for every situation and that people who don't have any food care about being unable to vote...neither of these things is obviously true. Indeed, in the latter case, we now have a good test case of poor countries adopting democracy early and they have generally not been successful as power rotates between various quasi-dictators who give massive handouts to the poor to retain power (without doing anything actually useful).
The choice should be free though - everyone should be able to opt out. Restricting people to leave the country is a major red flag that something is going in the wrong direction.
Considering the Soviet strategy of stripping assets from the East and the fact that Britain and France were broke and in shambles - yes, the Marshall plan deserves great credit. To this day East German states remain the poorest in the nation.
To be fair they had kind of started implementing the Morgenthau Plan until they realized that maybe it wasn't the best idea (and the British played a significant role in convincing the US government about that...)
1945 to ~1947 were very rough in Germany even in the allied occupation zones (and that was at least partially an outcome of a conscious decision by the allies to not allow German industry to recover)
Grenada is something of a joke in this context - the entire thing came about because the communist government fell apart and started fighting internally, so it's pretty likely the regime would have shortly collapsed with or without the invasion
Idk man, if my country was ruled by a dictator who faked elections I would be very happy to see some outsiders removing him. Kidnapping (and hopefully jailing for a long time) anyone who is in power by cheating the election is a big moral win in my book.
Awesome. I think we should also extend that to leaders who have increasingly overwhelming evidence that they planned to and intended to overturn elections (just because they failed isn't an excuse, attempted murder is still a crime)...
Extensive polling also showed Hillary Clinton crushing Donald Trump in the 2016 US election. Polls have been wrong before. I'm asking for evidence not anecdotes.
I have not ignored any evidence. I've discounted vague allegations made without presenting any proof. If you care about facts then you should ask yourself why you are so sure Maduro faked the election when you haven't seen any evidence.
We both know you are. You'll immediately dismiss anything people bring up no matter what it is and then follow up with another fake question.
You simply dont care what other people have to say. Which is fine. But stop phrasing it as a question. Just make your opinion known, say you disagree and think they are wrong and you don't care what they have to say, and leave it at that.
But the whole Q/A thing? Where you phrase a dismissal as a question pretending like you care about the answer? Its boring. Played out. Predictable.
I promise you that you'll be much happier with yourself if you just say your opinions with the full force of your true convictions instead of playing faux debate games with others.
You might even be able to convince some people, if you stop phrasing your opinions as fake questions. The fake Socratic method just gets annoying after a while, once people see through it.
Oh I very much have a lot of facts. I'm just not going to waste my time writing a multi paragraph response when we both know that you don't care what the answer is.
Feel free to go ask ChatGPT for some answers if you like though.
You can just say that you don't care. It's fine. Lots of people don't care about other people's opinions.
Not really, though? Most polls going almost as fat back as September were within the margin of error.
Clinton won the popular vote by 2% and she was on average 3-4% ahead in the polls..
In fact she she got more votes than predicted in early November since 3rd party candidates significantly underperformed relative to what they were polling.
Have a closer look at the article. I read it after posting here.
Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino shared Mr Blinken's view, writing in a post on X, formerly Twitter: "We can all confirm, without a doubt, that the legitimate winner and President-elect is Edmundo González."
Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Peru have also recognised Mr González as the president-elect...
[Machado] claimed her party's candidate, Mr Gonzalez, won by a landslide and Ms Machado said she could prove this because she had receipts from more than 80% of polling stations.
Ms Machado appealed for help, saying it was now up to the international community to decide whether to tolerate what she called an illegitimate government.
I gather that the Nobel Prize does not convey a tendency for honesty.
"[Machado] claimed her party's candidate, Mr Gonzalez, won by a landslide and Ms Machado said she could prove this because she had receipts from more than 80% of polling stations."
Yes, the opposition claimed that it had proof. However, it has not allowed any independent third parties to verify said proof. That she won a peace prize is inconsequential. They gave one to Henry Kissinger too.
And even if we accept that, the US has declared effectively that the US takeover, while removing the supposed false winner, will also not restore the actual winner that called for help, but that the US will run the country directly, while seizing its oil resources (contrast with the 1990 invasion of Panama, where we also deposed and arrested a leader we accused of illegally holding power, and charged him with US crimes, but openly stated and followed through on intent to restore the government we described as having won, and did not declare that we would run the country or seize its resources, and did not, in fact, do that.)
If you have the data, are extremely careful and build a coalition, maybe. This admin has done none of that and the answer if asked will be “eat shit”. Blows my fucking mind that there are apologists for this.
> Why have you concluded the US is unable to put anything in the place of Venezuela's previous government?
Because they failed doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, both cases where they did try, and there is also Libya (where they did not try all that much, if at all, I'll give you that). I mean, they did put some of their puppets in both Kabul and Bagdad, but the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Talibans, while the puppets in Bagdad switched over to Iran's side by 2015-ish.
As far as I can ascertain, there is no invasion. Just a special ops kidnapping.
It is unclear what will happen next, but likely the regime or large elements of it will survive. Perhaps a more moderate faction will take control? That would be the best case scenario.
>> In geopolitics, an invasion typically refers to a military offensive in which a polity sends combatants, usually in large numbers, to forcefully enter the territory of another polity,[1] with either side possibly being supported by one or more allies. While strategic goals for an invasion can be numerous and complex in nature, the foremost tactical objective normally involves militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory. Today, if a polity conducts an invasion without having been attacked by their opponent beforehand, it is widely considered to constitute an international crime and condemned as an act of aggression.
That definition includes what happened here. Drop all the optional conditions (“usually large numbers”, “possibly being supported”) and the core statement becomes:
“an invasion typically refers to a military offensive in which a polity sends combatants to forcefully enter the territory of another polity”
Can you at least appreciate the irony of someone using their own definition that disagrees with yours, you arguing against their using their own definition, and then there being another widely-cited definition that disagrees with your own, which you also argue against?
I’m not arguing against the Wikipedia definition because it does not disagree with mine. It says “usually in large numbers”, aka not necessarily large numbers. It says goals are complex but “normally involves militarily occupying”, aka not necessarily occupying.
Well, absent further interventions - possibly even a real invasion! - there is no reason for the current regime in Venezuela to change its policy very much (aside from beefing up its air defense maybe)
They've already been threatened to play ball: "While it is conceivable that Rodríguez has agreed to co-operate with the Trump administration to save her own skin – Trump said the US was prepared carry out a second wave of strikes if necessary – she will not be seen as someone willing to implement change."
Intent is 90% of the law. We still call someone a murderer even if their attempt failed. And today there were action behind the words. I don't see any reason to argue this is anything but an invasion.
I would not agree. Intelligence operatives are often in place for long durations in hostile sovereign territory, and some were likely used in this event. Their presence is not an invasion.
Air operations also are not seen as invasions, and the recent stealth strikes by the U.S. in Iran are not seen this way.
It appears to me that armed troops in place that are taking and holding territory for a prolonged duration are the definition.
The dictionary definition below is "the incursion of an army for conquest or plunder."
We have the president of the United States, who ordered the assault, saying openly that “we are going to run the country” and you ask what the object of conquest was?
This is just making stuff up. None of the definitions offered up here posit this requirement aside from the one apparently in your head.
The United States sent ground troops into another country to depose its leader and install a government that will bend to United States demands. The president of the United States and his advisors have openly stated that this was done to take over the other country and extract money. This is an invasion by any reasonable definition, including the ones that have been shared here.
> Edit: if the Maduro kidnapping is an invasion, then it follows that the Eichmann kidnapping was likewise.
Was Eichmann the leader of Argentina? Did this action effect a systemic change in the government of Argentina or give Israel power or access to Argentinian resources?
Let's pretend that the International Criminal Court were to apprehend Donald Trump and take him to the Hague for trial today over this event.
His claims to control the country and its resources would be inadmissible as charges, because they have not happened. They would be admissible to establish intent, but that would lead to lesser charges.
While I realize that the lower limit of a legal definition of the events of the last twenty-four hours is in the thoughts of very few, no overt actions of force have been taken as yet to obtain those goals.
That lower limit is extra-judicial kidnapping.
Edit: if someone involved in an assault says the words "I want to kill you," then that can establish intent and trigger, among other things, a restraining order, or perhaps elevate the charge to aggravated assault.
The words themselves cannot be used to prosecute for murder.
In the same way, there are many ways that nations inflict violence upon one another, and I think "invasion" is premature, but certainly possible.
However, none but Maduro and his wife were taken, so perhaps the force of arms will be judged sufficient.
> His claims to control the country and its resources would be inadmissible as charges, because they have not happened.
I fail to see the relevance of this tangent. You haven’t even specified what the hypothetical inadmissible charges would be.
It seems like you are trying to say that an unsuccessful invasion should not count as an invasion, which is absurd. If Canada sent 100k troops to DC to take over America but they were all promptly killed, would that not count as an invasion?
Axios has a new article with information that is germane.
'...no U.S. troops would be on the ground "if the vice president does what we want..."'
'[Rodriguez] also left the door open to a dialogue with the Trump administration, calling for "respectful relations," according to the Associated Press.'
You're pointing to an article with the US threatening to do it again, and you're still trying to argue this isn't an invasion?
The semantics are cute for technical documents. But please get some perspective. Buildings and destroyed and innocent lives lost. I don't care what you call it, it's bad.
Surely the best case scenario is the regime collapsing, all collaborators of Maduro ending up dead or in jail and then the guy who actually won the election or a women who would have won it ending up in power?
Of course that would be great, but pretty unlikely with just a decapitation strike. Like most dictators, Maduro was not holding the country in a superhuman iron grip, but instead the representative of various elites and factions that kept him in power for their own interests. However given how easy this operation has been, there is a suspicion that one or more factions colluded with the US, and may now be consolidating control - and then maybe a peaceful transition back to democracy? We shall see.
No - Trump has just announced that he intends for the US to "run" Venezuela for the time being and that that will include ... shock horror... American oil companies taking a significant role in the country's oil infrastructure.
You think the business executives in this administration managed to organize the kidnapping of a head of state? Trump pointed at it and a massive machinery which was built over hundreds of years made it happen. People who have been doing this kind of work for decades organized this. Good thing those same business executives are also hell-bent on destroying the machinery, I suppose.
During the 2024 campaign, oil executives met at Mar-a-Lago and agreed to pay $1B to Trump’s campaign. It is one or more of those men who will be interfacing with the Venezuelan generals about shifting their oil away from China.
I still don’t get these kinds of comments. Is it supposed to be funny because it’s so hyperbolic? I’d hope debates here would at least acknowledge that he’s pursuing some broader aims even if most of it is probably just to benefit his friends. Does anyone really think his actions lack any ulterior motives especially with how the cabinet is selected? You can‘t deny that he has more agency then a Government-by-committee-by-proxy like Bidens final years were like, where it really felt like it was dementia taking over. I feel it’s absurd to claim that a president is incompetent for not serving his people if that is not his goal in the first place.
Without Greene, the campaign goals of MAGA wither. The “I don’t start wars; I end wars” president doesn’t even have the fortitude to start by asking Congress. It’s not as much hyperbole as it sounds.
Were they really campaign goals or were they just marketing material to win an election? It makes so much more sense to not view everything MAGA as stupid „because they are lying“. Well they’ve won the election. Is that not the goal of a campaign? I‘m not saying lying is good, but it’s not like a only minority of politicians do that and it’s not like only a minority of politicians then do the exact opposite of what they promised and incur damage to their country. Some do it by benefiting themselves like Trump, some do it by being to indecisive and weary like Merkel or Biden
Ok, so you hope debates here should charitably acknowledge wider aims. I think we can agree that campaign promises rarely align with those. But pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández means that precisely none of this is about Maduro at all.
No that’s not what I mean. I‘m saying we should acknowledge them, not necessarily by doing so charitably. My point is that you cannot have productive debates about politicians if you think they all act to benefit their people and if they do something that contradicts that suddenly everyone says they are incompetent or stupid. Only then we can start asking what is he trying to accomplish with that. Which could be an interesting debate. What is he trying to accomplish for US citizens with that is a stupid question
I‘m not making a moral judgement here. I‘m saying even if the attack happens for different reasons than those you have been told (honestly a US classic), the search for a coherent reason behind it (no matter if justifiable) cannot end by saying „It doesn’t serve us. He is a stupid president, he promised us something and did something else he’s so incompetent“ because incompetent has to mean in regards to something. And if his goal really is narcissistic validation and money, well then he surely either is very lucky currently or not incompetent.
Ok it sounds like the best drawn-out support for your argument goes like this:
Since the Nov 21 call with Trump, Maduro and his wife knew to keep their bags packed. Maduro never had a strong hold on the generals, so gave them profitable organizational roles with the Sinaloa cartel. Trump was told that the cash offer had the best chance at good news in January. At least, he understands a cash offer even if he doesn’t know why he got an MRI or what for.
So the military buildup and strikes fulfill something else. What was it?
I don‘t disagree with that, in fact that’s exactly what I‘m saying. If someone becomes president to achieve those goals, do you really call him incompetent for building his cabinet around achieving that very goal?
I think that most people would define the quality of a president based on their performance for their country.
If a leader pillages the country and flees with the money, I doubt that they would be praised for their excellence ‘because they archived what they set out to do’.
That‘s entirely true, but my entire point is you cannot judge somebody as incompetent based on something they are not trying to achieve. You can say he‘s a bad president, makes sense because a good president serves his country. But you can’t say he is an incompetent one just because he has ulterior motives.
Who said they will remove the government ? From current news they could very well just leave it in place as long as they sell their petroleum in dollars and agree to other restrictions.
It's also a threefold solution to Trump's current problems -
1. it takes the Epstien files completely out of media discourse, which is what Trump wants after it was pretty much confirmed that he's a pedophile.
2. it satisfies the biggest donors to the republican party - weapons manufacturers and oil companies.
3. it allows Trump to control the narrative, and makes the media forget about the drugs that were supposedly being exported from venezuela. truth is there are effectively no drugs coming in from venezuela. i saw a deep explainer on reddit (yes, it could entirely be bullshit) that basically said that venezula produces between 0.02 to 0.08% of all illicit drugs entering the USA per year. No idea how that is calculated, but it makes sense in the context that Houndouras' president was effectively pardoned by Trump, and Hondouras by its very location is balls deep in the drug trade
Bonus: honors the practice of a republican president invading a country under bullshit premises to capture oil. Bush I and II both did so.
> which is what Trump wants after it was pretty much confirmed that he's a pedophile.
While there's no shortage of creepy anecdotes about Trump in what's been released, there's been nothing that comes close to showing he had sex with any underage girls, nor have any come forward to claim that.
> Bonus: honors the practice of a republican president invading a country under bullshit premises to capture oil. Bush I and II both did so.
People are missing the point here. This wasn't a regime change, this is psychological warfare against the ruling party to get them to be more compliant. And yes, of course it's all about oil. While this could potentially deny China access to Venezuelan oil in the long term, it also removes the threat to Guyana's production, which is skyrocketing.
Uhh, there is absolutely girls who have come forth to say that he at least has had girls perform oral sex upon him, and other sexual acts beyond "vaginal penetration" (hint: men generally don't describe thirteen year old girls' nipples as "pert". They generally don't have or find opportunities to evaluate them in the first place).
But hey, maybe that's MAGA's next spin, "it's not pedophilia if it's not actual vaginal sex".
If you have a source for that I'll be more than happy to go edit my original post to acknowledge being completely wrong on this. But my instinct is that if there was an even mildly credible report of an underage girl performing oral sex on him, we'd all have heard about it by now.
>if there was an even mildly credible report of an underage girl performing oral sex on him, we'd all have heard about it by now.
We could have the entire epstein report unredacted and you'd still be arguing that the video evidence was Ai generated. There's no helping people like you at this point.
I guess this is what Germany feels like with holocaust deniers. Too bad our constitution makes it hard to prosecute this kind of denial.
The woman known as Katie Johnson accused Trump of raping her and another girl at age 13 at one of Epstein's parties, but dropped the lawsuit. Michael Wolff said Epstein showed him pictures of Trump with topless girls who could have been underaged from his vault. Trump was accused of going into his underaged beauty pageants when they were dressing. Trump sent the birthday letter to Epstein with the nude female drawing and lots of innuendo about sharing a secret. Maxwell was given a very favorable deal by Todd Blanche, and it's known the administration didn't want to release the full Epstein files because of how much Trump was mentioned in them.
Plus Trump was very good friends with Epstein and Maxwell. Do the math.
Counter any of them with real evidence, I dare you.
1. Trump is a pedophile. This is confirmed by the fact that he's been sued for his pedaristic actions, and "wished well" his former Mossad-backed recruiter.
2. Weapons makers and oil companies have quite literally had their executives and shareholders go from the board room to cabinet or VP level positions in the US government. this isn't a conspiracy.
3. Venezuela produces very little of the drugs the US consumer consumes. Mexico, Colombia, etc.. produce far more, like double-digit multiples more. Context: I live in SoFLA and interact with Venezuelans daily, and I lived in Mexico for several years and am pretty familiar with how their cartels operate.
The previous poster totally misunderstands how the War Power Act works, and many of those statements are at best supposition and at worst demonstrably false. The war powers act does not allow any domestic action at all.
> 2. it satisfies the biggest donors to the republican party - weapons manufacturers and oil companies.
This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party. And the oil industry bit is just like the nonsense take on the Iraq war which saw virtually no contracts going to US companies.
Additionally:
>truth is there are effectively no drugs coming in from venezuela.
While Venezuela does not supply drugs bound for the US the regime there has long partnered with FARC to smuggle cocaine and weapons[1].
> Bonus: honors the practice of a republican president invading a country under bullshit premises to capture oil. Bush I and II both did so.
The first Gulf War was about kicking Saddam out of Kuwait, not capturing oil, so yeah conspiracy and false statements.
>This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party.
Wow, that's the most cringe thing I've seen in this thread. The defense industry owns both parties but contributes significantly more to Repbublican efforts than DEM efforts.
You'll notice that while the defense industry contributes to DEM candidates, they far outspend on "conservative" politicians.
>And the oil industry bit is just like the nonsense take on the Iraq war which saw virtually no contracts going to US companies.
The US oil industry didn't get any contracts during the Iraq takeover? The oil industry literally had a Haliburton CEO, Dick Cheney, go from the C-Suite to the Vice Presidency.
> The US oil industry didn't get any contracts during the Iraq takeover? The oil industry literally had a Haliburton CEO, Dick Cheney, go from the C-Suite to the Vice Presidency.
Until about a year ago most Iraqi oil contracts were held by a Chinese company that bought it's contract under Saddam an maintained it beyond the war. Haliburton mostly made money handling logistics for the war, things like construction and laundry. Oil law in Iraq was finalized post-Saddam in 2007 and pre-2000 levels of production didn't happen until 2011 after the US withdrawal.
> This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party.
Horseshit:
> Across 2017–2022, analyses based on OpenSecrets data find the defense industry’s contributions split at ~57% to Republicans vs ~43% to Democrats (a “kitchen-sink” strategy of giving to both parties).
Giving 1/3 (32.6%) more is not "pretty much even".
Here's the facts. In the last 18 election cycles, here's what happened (source: Open Secrets)
the Defense industry spent $242.54m on GOP candidates. They average $13.47m spent per election cycle on GOP candidates.
the Defense industry spent 181.51m on DEM candidates. They average $10.08m spent per election cycle on DEM candidates.
Only 4 times has the industry spent more on DEM candidates than GOP candidates - 1992, 1994, 2008, and 2010. For spending those years, the average difference between GOP and DEM campaign contributions is roughly $233k, or a grand total of $4.21m (as in that is the difference in overall political spending between GOP/DEM across all those cycles).
For the other 14 cycles, when the GOP was given more than the DEM, the average difference is $3.624m between parties, for a grand total of $65.24m. You could eliminate the industry's GOP contributions for the last 4 cycles and they'd still have given more to the GOP than DEM since 1990.
Bottom line: when the industry spends more on DEM than GOP, it's by a few hundred thousand dollars. When the industry spends more on GOP than DEM, it's by a few million dollars.
Splitting hairs? That's several million dollars. You're free to write me a check for that amount if it's truly splitting hairs.
Given the money spent on US elections $3.624m is barely anything. Most of this is probably down to which districts their plants are located in. Congressional candidates spent $2.7 billion on 2022 midterm races alone, $3m is a drop in an ocean of spending.
As soon as she won the prize she called up Netanyahu and praised him for what he's done in Gaza. They're not really even trying to make these hollowed out institutions look credible anymore.
> It's funny how many people already see this as a book that is opened and closed on the same day.
What gives you that impression? I haven't seen a single comment that is surprised or wasn't aware of the existing history between the two nations, nor a single comment saying that "Ok, I'm glad/sad that that's over now". What comments specifically are you talking about?
There is no unintended consequence. Regime change was the explicit consequence of wars in the Middle East, it was the intended consequence. It went very badly.
The intended consequence here is to demonstrate to an organized crime group that being part of the government does not mean they are safe. There is no other intention, it has worked.
One possibility is that Maduro’s security detail, mostly Cuban counterintelligence, have access to damaging Epstein records. Epstein was in contact with Castro as of 2003 and was able to travel there despite sanction which would have prevented less-connected people.
FWIW, traveling to Cuba from the US (via flight from Canada, Mexico, or a dozen other convenient spots) has never been difficult, even for completely non-connected citizens.
He used “I feel” language. He didn’t say it is or isn’t. Every small change, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can have profound negative effects in the future. Inaction too can have profound effects. It’s not a useful question imo other than to notice that radical changes are typically favored by progressives, while no change is favored by conservatives. Here we have an inversion of that, which to me is interesting.
Yes, he has to telegraph that to the world to try to minimize fears that the US _desires_ a prolonged intervention, regardless of what happens, and regardless of what he actually believes.
Statements made by politician need not be taken as truthful.
Even this long-delayed (for a shadow docket case) limited ruling (can't send troops for now but left door open for a rehearing after lower court is finished) is an exception for history's most compliant SCotUS (unprecedented 90% favoring admin).
What about the war powers act are you talking about? It just limits situations (or purports to) where the president can use the military without a declaration of war. Even if we were suddenly actually attacked (not just Venezuelan forces fighting back) it wouldn't give any path to "no more democracy".
The President can now tell "his" DOJ to indict someone in another country (like its leader), and use that to 'legally' justify an attack on said country to grab the person.
Ironically, the current administration thinks that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president.
This forum won't have any obviously partisan comments (that are visible, anyway) so you have to read between the lines. They will have an air of "hah, well, Trump already captured Maduro so what do you think of that liberal?" but instead disguised as something like this[0].
There is plenty of talk in MIGA/MAGA circles that say, in effect, that Venezuelans have now been liberated, there will be no occupation, and other related assumptions / coping mechanisms which they are using to preserve the facade of Trump being anti-war.
Reagan something very similar twice and it worked out reasonably(ish) fine.
Of course Venesuela isn't that similar to Panama or Granada in various ways. Given the massive amounts of internal issues, and insanely high levels of crime/murder removing the government and washing your hands might turn it into something like Haiti...
Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do. Of course nobody ever figured out how to prevent the situation from getting even worse in the aftermath..
Examples of US-facilitated regime change that resulted in lasting stability/democracy are more the exception than the rule, when you look at the track record overall.
So I dont think we should but doing regime change - however the ones you cited appear to have broad popular support in their respective lands and are at most minor nuisances to their neighbors - they're also participants in the international community too.
> the ones you cited appear to have broad popular support in their respective lands
So you're saying that authoritarianism works and is just fine. The implication is that Venezuala is a shithole and it's people are unhappy with their leader because of sanctions, not because of the lack of democracy.
I'm saying people have a right to choose that, and moreover it's not my obligation as an American to fund overthrowing those regimes, or for that matter make them pariahs for being undemocratic alone.
As much as I dislike it, there are also an acceptable amount of human right abuses before we care, and its somewhere between punishing dissidents and genocide.
Venezuela had economic issues before sanctions due to chronic mismanagement of the economy, which led to a humanitarian crisis causing a mass exodus (which made the economic issues worse).
> Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do.
If the issue was what was “right” then Trump wouldn’t have cozied up to Putin and abandoned Ukraine, or cozied up to MBS and waved away his murder of a US journalist, and on and on it goes. This administration has zero moral credibility. I don’t know what will happen in Venezuela but we should all be skeptical of fruit from a poisonous tree.
I do concede that it is possible the situation will deescalate from here on out, but there is no possible way to be sure of that. Right now the situation is very volatile and could very easily spiral into a huge mess. MAGA people don't want to acknowledge that possibility, because they want to believe Trump is honest and competent.
I think you would be best served prioritizing other areas of study over geopolitical conflicts; one that teaches you to respect people, even if their beliefs differ from your own.
We should just make them a territory like Guam and instead of assuming we'll fix everything and give it back, we'll just work under the assumption that we're keeping it indefinitely.
I see Google's AI and top results all give this answer, but "MIGA" most certainly does not refer to India in this or most contexts, but to Israel. It is a criticism of Trump's pro-Israel actions, and presumably Google recognizes its anti-semitic usage and so will not suggest that as an answer unprompted.
I'm pointing this out specifically because I'm surprised to see that Google and also DuckDuckGo both suppress the true definition if you don't already know it.
And things have already happened. Close allies have stopped sharing intelligence information with the US. Even if the US doesn't need the info the deterioration of those partnerships is concerning. Or maybe good from the perspective of weakening the global surveillance machine but that's a whole other issue.
Not to mention all the other things that happen that when you put together are more concerning.
People forget, there are no real "big things".
Instead there's just a bunch of little things that come together to look big. As programmers we should be intimately familiar with this. Though normally we're using it in the other direction: taking a big problem and determining all the little problems that come together to create the big one. Working in the assembly direction is much harder than the disassembly direction (far larger solution space) but the concept is still the same.
But I agree with you, this isn't the end. This is definitely a concerning inflection point.
Well, these days someone who just looked at the current situation and wasn't familiar with history might guess Russia, Hungary, Turkmenistan or even Venezuela.
Well if you exclude the politicians then most people share values. I mean we got a bunch of Chinese people living in America and a bunch of Americans living in China. Same is true for a lot of countries and ones where the countries politically are at odds. Yet the people... not so much.
There's some truth to that, although there can be value differences that aren't so obvious. But it does seem to be the case that power structures select for those most likely to abuse them.
No matter the outcome, we are not here giving judgement on the action. We are here questioning how is any of this legitimate? How did we elect a person who promised to keep america out of foreign affairs but is now doing the same thing his predecessors did.
Groups of people over time are a complex system. What more of us educated types can do is try to help more people get educated and have good jobs. The more vulnerable, ignorant folks we have in the population, the easier it is to end up with extreme crony types.
Not to disagree but venezuela's context is different from the middle east, and this was made so quickly it might cause a stable swap. Now that's just my bedroom geostrategist wannabee opinion and yeah it might create a long mess, especially knowing trump emotional profile, if things don't benefit him quick, he might add oil to the fire thinking he's the smartest.
The guy that partially demolished the universal symbol of the United States abroad (the White House, in case that wasn't clear) and tends to not have a plan beyond the next meal would really surprise me if he had contingency plans in place for if this backfires somehow. Right now it is a toss up, it could go any way from here.
The one thing that is a given is that kidnapping foreign heads of state - no matter how despicable - is now on the menu. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the last time we see this. And the pretexts are unconvincing given how Trump dealt with that other drug dealer. I'm guessing Maduro didn't want to play ball more than anything, this feels very personal.
>> Trump also said he believes that American companies will be “heavily involved” in rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.[1]
There we have it. The real reason for the invasion. Looks like the start of yet another avalanche as you say.
Jan 6th, extrajudicial killings, ICE deportations, threatening to takeover Greenland, and now the kidnap of a foreign country's leader. The world needs to wake up and realise the USA is just China/Russia with better PR.
Edit: And now he's confirmed the US will run the country until they decide otherwise.
Oh, something changed there. Iran's attitude towards nuclear weapons has changed considerably, and none for the better. They're a deal with Pakistan or Russia away from achieving that.
Iran was well on that path anyway.
The US strike absolutely did turn Iran from a peaceful actor with no interest in nuclear weapons into a regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.
Americans have remarkably short attention spans. In 5 years when Iran is widely acknowledged to have nuclear weapons, you’ll know what changed after Fordrow.
That’s correct. The point is that until now Iran has intentionally not built a nuke - they’ve kept themselves within range to make it a credible threat, but they’ve not completed the project because so far the tacit agreement has been that if they don’t build a nuke, the US doesn’t let the Israelis bomb Tehran.
These threads makes it depressingly obvious how "might makes right" is the main underlying principle in the end - albeit periodically latent. Suddenly proportionality disappears and it's one of the worst regimes out there, a narco-state. Obviously unlawful actions is reported as "legally questionable" etc. It doesn't even matter that the current US administration is an unusually vulgar example of erratic, dishonest, and self-serving leadership.
how "might makes right" is the main underlying principle in the end
This is not surprising, this is how society ultimately works, even internally, not just on international scale.
I live in a democracy. I could still name several laws of the land that I consider fundamentally unjust, but the might of the majority translated into political and physical power means that I have to obey them, right or wrong. It is better that this power is controlled democratically and not by a single autocrat or a single ruling party, but it is still fundamentally coercion.
Are there even any alternatives? Ultimately we cannot all agree on what is right for everyone.
My point was to highlight the double standards of this kind of after-the-fact reporting and discussions. I'm cynical enough to know that "might makes right" is a part of life to various degrees.
Let's just focus on the not-legitimately-elected ones. Venezuela was a functioning democracy until Maduro took control through force and fraud. Shed not one tear for him.
I won't. That still doesn't mean this is over by a long shot. My bet is on the oil with a side dish of Epstein distraction. At least the latter seems to have worked. Wouldn't it be too bad if Venezuela actually gets to decide who they want to deal with regarding their oil and they pick France, the UK or China...
Jack Smith also made the clear case to Congress last week that he has the evidence that Trump did try to overthrow the 2020 election and inspired the January 6th insurrection, so he should not have been eligible to run in 2024. He should have been in prison.
To be fair, the English names for all other places named after Cristoforo Colombo use the English spelling for Christopher Columbus. It might be difficult to remember the (locally-less common) exception.
And our primitive spell checkers often cannot deduce from context, as there are many, perhaps most cases, where Columbia is the most-likely correct rendition. Even if we transcend our own difficulties, Siri might defeat us.
You are correct that the correct English spelling for Colombia is Colombia, and surely it is problematic to localize a foreign country's name.
So please reciprocally acknowledge receipt of our formal request for Colombians to stop calling the USA "EE. UU.", "Estados Unidos de América", and all other such indignities. :)
Plus, the stalemate on Taiwan right now is US strategic ambiguity. Maybe Trump “visiting” China to offer his strategic brilliance during their expansion will finally get him a bigger peace prize.
It’s also worth noting that, according to Trump’s former Russia advisor, Fiona Hill, Russia once pushed for a “swap” in which it would abandon its support for Venezuela in exchange for the U.S. abandoning its support for Ukraine.
> I haven't seen a convincing argument about why it would have been better if he remained in power.
You're way off base here. No one is arguing that he should be in power. It's the way it was done. You're also ignoring a very important question: now what?
Sorry, but the last year has not inspired confidence that this administration knows what it's doing.
I think no americans are afraid of venezuela, so what could possibly come that we don’t want? you think venezuela can stand toe-to-toe in a full scale military engagement? you see how we just walked into their country, took the president, and his wife, and walked out without issue? have you seen how many venezuelans are celebrating?
>> It's funny how many people already see this as a book that is opened and closed on the same day.
Trump just said in the press conference that from now on the US will run Venezuela...The US is "designating" the people that will run the country.
They mentioned the president of Colombia has to "watch his ass" and that Cuba is a mess. And said that the US will be selling the oil to other countries, and the US will take "our oil".
I hope to be wrong, but think it certainly will. all the money everyone is spending on arms it seems soon the only game left in town in the military industrial complex. the other career options are to become a doctor, or nurse.
the US in its current form is heading towards long drawn out collapse like the Roman empire, and they're dragging all their former allies down with them. there seem to be no peaceful options to prevent that collapse.
E.g.:
- I do not see any way they can modernize their messed up political system.
- their population is divided more than any country on the planet
- thanks to heavily propagandized citizens they don't have the critical mass to bring in change (not in a country where the companies have so much power)
To me this is one of those situations where regardless of what happens in Venezuela, there were better, more morally and legally justifiable, ways of achieving the same end.
Watching BBC news earlier, two interviewees were acolytes of Venuzuelan politician and exile Maria Corina Machado, who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize, and Juan Guaidó, the former American-backed coup (or whatever you want to call it) leader. They were adamantly pro-Maduro getting helicoptered away, but somewhat neutral on bombings on their own capital city. I think the consent factory is still making porkie pies.
Machado seems to be the opposite of an exile until she escaped to accept the Nobel Peace Prize last month.
Machado was prohibited from leaving Venezuela by a decade-old
government-imposed travel ban and, by late 2025, had spent months in hiding
amid the risk of arrest.
Yeah it’s surprising how little justification there’s been for this. As a well-read US citizen, I don’t actually know why we did this.
Was it for oil? Socialism bad? To stop drugs? I think you latter is the narrative I’m most familiar with.
Immigration would be the most logical, since this administration and political base care a lot about that, but I don’t think they’ve drawn a clear line between economic success and emigration. Logic isn’t exactly a cornerstone for these idiots.
I’m guessing we did it to flex and distract from our own economy, but usually there is at least some pushed narrative for why America did the thing?
Geopolitically the US has abandoned world hegemony and is consolidating in the western hemisphere.
Venezuela has massive oil reserves and its leadership has been anti-Zionist since Chavez.
It’s a juicy target close to home, been a thorn for decades, and not as prickly as Iran or Yemen.
But you’re right, it’s noteworthy they are not attempting to sell interventionism to the public anymore. 15 years ago they’d have staged a color revolution and gone with the populist uprising narrative. They seem to have dropped the narcoterrorist narrative already. The use of raw force without moral justification is a sign of decline. The Twitter right is trying to sell this as an imperial / Nietzschean triumph but few are going to buy it.
I think it’s just realpolitik grand chessboard strategy. Knocking out an unfriendly/uncooperative leader of a strategically important country. That’s always been the real justification for US foreign policy. It’s a game of risk, without moral considerations beyond optics. There isn’t much more to it than that.
You can be socialist if you cooperate. You can be a dictator if you cooperate. It’s not about political philosophy or forms of government, just playing ball with the hegemon.
The media has been branding maduro a narco-terrorist for a while now. And trump has declared fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and exclusively blamed venezuela for it. The establishment has a playbook and they stick to it. Let's not forget the nobel committee gave a "peace prize" to a woman advocating for war against venezuela.
Venezuela has been linked to the fentanyl crisis. "The Trump administration has described strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific as attacks against terrorists attempting to bring fentanyl and cocaine to the US.
However, fentanyl is produced mainly in Mexico and reaches the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border."
The 'wars on drugs' and the 'war on terror' have been abused many times in the past to just do whatever person 'x' wanted to do anyway. See also: National security.
Also, based on threats Trump has made and that recent national security proposal or whatever, it seems the administration is intent on regime change in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. I bet Brazil is watching its back too. So it’s really going to be many avalanches as America revives colonialism. All to the cheer of half the country.
I doubt any of our allies like Canada or European countries can trust us again.
Yep - That group of people have something we want (gold, spices, women, revenge or the ever classic we want to replace their religion with ours) and for the last 30 years especially now oil and minerals appear to be on the menu
The Arab spring was a mass uprising, this was the removal of one person - it's really not the same.
Think of it this way - Maduro could had died from choking on a turkey bone over Christmas - would there inevitability be a civil war?
What matters is whether there is a fight for political power as a result - and particularly what the generals think. ie any fight is much more likely to start from the top rather than the bottom.
My guess, and it's just a guess, is that the smoothness of the extraction mission strongly suggests serious inside info/cooperation. ie somebody did a deal with the US - involving giving up Maduro in exchange for removal of the sanctions ( particularly oil which the US has escalated with tanker seizures ) which was crippling the country.
So my prediction is an internal smooth transition of power, cooperation around oil, with neither the US nor the new leader being keen on quick elections as that will interfere with the execution of the deal.
All the Trump cares about is the public 'win' and the oil and minerals flowing. The Venezuelan leadership will want to end the US sanctions and get the countries economy working again - if this happens they will think election prospects will improve - can't see Trump caring that much about Venezuelan internal politics as long as he get's the win and a positive flow of oil revenue and strategic access to minerals.
The Arab world is different because the people are largely fundamentalist and there's many extremists while the governments are relatively moderate. So get rid of the government and all the extremists take over.
Venezuela is Catholic and while it definitely has crime issues, there's no religious/fundamentalist element to the violence so the odds of anyone fighting to the death to support their failed dictator and his ideology is slim to none.
Which government was relatively moderate? Gaddhafi who threatened to slaughter the rebellious cities block to block on TV? Assad who did just that and gassed his own people for a good measure?
The indecision of the international community to act is what caused the suffering lasting a decade, led to the rise of ISIS and refugee crisis of enormous proportions.
> Which government was relatively moderate? Gaddhafi who threatened to slaughter the rebellious cities block to block on TV? Assad who did just that and gassed his own people for a good measure?
Both of them were more moderate than ISIS lol.
But yeah, Egypt is more moderate than the Muslim brotherhood. Jordan is moderate. The non-Hezbollah part of Lebanon. UAE, Qatar, Oman all quite moderate. The Saudis are even secularizing a tad to try calming down fundamentalist sentiment. All these states actively suppress Islamism and generally are pro-west.
None of them where Arab Spring had struggled were "moderate", this is ridiculous. Assad has caused death of over 600k people (by the time they stopped counting in 2019). And ISIS is a natural consequence of these secular (if you can call personality cults even that) dictatorships lasting decades.
The US supported the Arab Spring not understanding that the public mob is worse than the dictators. No country that's not China and perhaps the most powerful NATO allies can resist US military superiority.
Most of the states I listed stayed on the right side of the US and US military equipment and aid keeps them stable.
Oh, so Obama admin was behind this? Same admin that had to be dragged by the French to help Libyans and that ceded Syria to Assad and Russia in 2013? Gotcha.
I think what was meant was moderate ideologically and religiously. Still extreme in their disregard for human life and their determination to maintain power.
> Venezuela is Catholic and while it definitely has crime issues, there's no religious/fundamentalist element to the violence so the odds of anyone fighting to the death to support their failed dictator and his ideology is slim to none.
Colombia managed a decades long violent armed conflict with the same demographics. Organized crime, political instability, political ideologues, etc all can get people to kill each other without religious extremists.
> So get rid of the government and all the extremists take over.
Oh, the so called "extremists" are/were the ones with power. This is where it tops out. I know it's hard to see from a distance but you have no idea how bad can it get under the safe and sound status quo.
And apart from the usual destabilisation possibilities, with the current US leadership there's no guarantee the outcome isn't Maduro agreeing to pay some oil revenues into Trump's personal bank account, makes some vague symbolic promise to stop drugs and emigrants and gets released to carry on as he was, but maybe with a few more internal scores to settle
Considering all the recent meddling of the USA around the world their track record is pretty bad. Higher chance it will end worse than they began with. Worse on an unpredictable way.
? The arab spring came from the islamic world regularly building population powder kegs, without having a modern industrial society to keep these populations educated, fed and with a perspective beyond fanatic death-cultist movements.
The arab spring exploded, because obama rerouted us-surplus food from subsidizing allied regimes (egypt) into bio-fuels, causing wild price spikes to the bread prices in egypt and the arab world. These situations are not really comparable - like at all. Not even on the surface level.
Neither Trump nor the GOP cares about the stability of the country or the health of its citizens. They care about distracting from problems (Epstein, affordability, etc) and about how they can extract Venezuela’s oil and minerals so they can make billions off this theft
As long as they can protect the mining and refining operations the rest doesn’t matter. And I fully expect the America First, America Only group that claims to be the next thing after MAGA, to find ways to justify this regime change and corruption.
6 years ago to the day many people were hysterical when Trump offed Soleimani on his Baghdad field trip. Turned out it brought substantial positive change to the Middle East.
It may not work out this time but when you start from a terrible rock bottom status quo the chances are already biased.
It impeded the Iranian colonial project considerably. Influence of Iran sponsored militias in Iraq have declined. It limped in Syria as well, which allowed for the fall of Assad regime a year ago.
You realize he was there at Iraq's invitation? The only impact of killing him is that both the Iraqis and whomever took his place is guaranteed to never forget why the job was open.
Looking at the middle east right now compared to 2020 I see a much bigger shitshow, including Syria. Having a bunch of people die chaotically doesn't serve anyone's interest, it just creates the next generation of radicals.
Remember in his first term how he had his loyalists, many of who were expressly in "support" of the 2nd amendment, cheering on the government jackboots who came in the middle of the night to make "cold dead hands" ? The cultists will believe anything. That's the fundamental problem with cults.
I think this is something thats really missing. In the vacuum of power who is stepping in? If its someone who is just going to sell oil to the us who gets to continue to oppress and destroy the Venezuelan economy then is it really a win?
It be like the Russians taking out Trump only to have Vance take over. Hes still propped up by miller, hegseth, bondi, the house AND senate AND courts and the cavalcades of sycophants who really only are doing the whims of oligarchs who have no interest in helping society as a whole.
Yup. Bangladesh’s government was toppled last year. With at least the tacit support of the Biden administration. Now the formerly banned Islamist is running #2 in the polls and looks like they will be part of a coalition government.
I’m not saying the U.S. overtly toppled Bangladesh’s government. I’m agreeing with the part about “be careful what you wish for.” What follows a revolution is usually worse.
Yeah I remember Occupy protesters. I got trapped in a gaggle of them shouting “Tahir Square!” again and again. I literally lost hearing in one of my ears.
It never really recovered. Probably need a hearing aid, but I can just use the other one.
> It could stop here, or it could roll on for quite a while. It will take months or even years to know whether or not the outcome here was desirable or not and what the final tally is.
Admitting that you don't know is often the most intellectual mature position to take. The world is in a chaotic circumstance right now, there's a sense of this being just the start of something far more horrifying, but anybody telling you they have a crystal ball is lying.
> Admitting that you don't know is often the most intellectual mature position to take.
It's actually more like grandstanding to satify oneself emotionally. It's "I am right" esque type of answer because "anything can happen" is always true.
The statement can be omitted because it literally adds nothing to any discussion.
> but anybody telling you they have a crystal ball is lying.
Then, we can add to a discussion saying which part might not be true, which assumption is incorrect, and etc.
Nobody would predict anything with 100% confidence. You make that up and state "anything can happen"-type of statement to satisfy yourself emotionally.
If those people were that sure about their predictions, they would bet on polymarket and become a billionaire already.
This is the Ron Paul position and its a solid one.
The non-intervention principle applies if you are not actively suffering intervention.
The flaw however, is that applying non-intervention in this instance, is choosing to ignore the real, direct hurt currently endured by non-actors (LATAM + US citizens) from the policies of Maduro.
I do concede that whatever follows Maduro, may be worse.
If I'm getting poked by a neighbor for years and i finally punch back, punching is a valid response. If the neighbor then comes back later and shoots me with a gun, it doesn't mean that my self-defense act was invalid.
> The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or head of state to head of municipal government or head of a chivalric order. As a result, the word sovereignty has more recently also come to mean independence or autonomy.
It isn't necessarily just a non-interventionist stance. Someone could be taking this position in this situation because they're highly skeptical that the Americans involved in this have the ability or desire to proceed in a way that will result in a minimum of casualities or in a way that will bring about real democractic change to the region.
People want an Eisenhower doing these kinds of things, not whoever is doing currently doing it.
> Someone could be taking this position in this situation because they're highly skeptical that the Americans involved in this have the ability or desire to proceed in a way that will result in a minimum of casualities or in a way that will bring about real democractic change to the region.
> People want an Eisenhower doing these kinds of things
Why would people who don't want Trump doing it want an Eisenhower doing it? He helped overthrow democratically elected Árbenz in Guatemala with even weaker justifications than Trump overthrowing Maduro (Maduro at least seems to lack popular support and probably cheated in elections).
Eisenhower:
Overthrow of Árbenz to protect fruit company profits > series of military dictators > 30+ years of civil war where the US-backed government committed a genocide against Maya people
Reports that Maria Corina Machado (peace prize winner) will be the next leader - so that is a good sign. I've also seen many reports and videos of locals celebrating.
Not a chance in hell. The regime is 100% intact. Maria Corina Machado would be executed the moment she lands. A complete military takeover will follow the ousting of Maduro.
I know nothing about her but worth pointing out that 'peace prize winner' is irrelevant. Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has since presided over ethnic cleansing.
We essentially took out the Venezuelan version of Trump. There are still the cabinet, remaining military leaders, courts, representatives, even down to governors and mayors who all profited from the current setup who are not going to be willing to just roll over cause the US supports someone
But in the end of the day, Arab spring worked just fine everywhere? In every single country where pro-Russian dictators were in power, they fell (Iran is not pro-Russian, just a potent enemy by itself, and is not Arab for that matter). Except Libya where they fell partially, with country being effectively split in halves. But this is already a big deal - there isn't a single pro-Russian regime now in the entire Arab world.
Why do you think it won't work like that with Venezuela?
PS: I realised that i made a mistake, so-called Palestine is absolutely pro-Russian, the entire ethnic group is created by Russians out of thin air in 1967, but it's a separate case and they did not participate in Arab Spring anyway.
So what if they're pro-Russian? America just showed to the world that they're a terrorist state just like the big scary Russians. Now you can expect Putin to make a BIG play in Ukraine and Europe very soon; the gloves are off.
Remember the 'Arab spring' and what came after.