A Plague on Both Your Houses
In the crazy political headspace I now occupy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Watching Maduro hustled into court, I fantasized that he was part of some significant opposition, that he had been targeted by the evil machinery of Trumpismo and wrongly abducted to face persecution in New York. Such are the deformations of the Second Term: delusional imaginings and disordered emotion.
Maduro, of course, is no such creature. He is a beast of authoritarian rule, responsible for the imprisonment and torture of his political opponents. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil deposit, yet it is a failed pauper state with widespread impoverishment. That’s why there are/were so many Venezuelans in the US, refugees from poverty and political chaos. In the last elections, Maduro probably lost, but the vote count was so rigged that he claimed a bogus victory. It seems like an unfortunate irony that we are talking about all of this on the anniversary of January 6, but such are the pinging rhymes of history. Trump certainly wishes that he could have pulled off a Maduro, retaining power against the will of the people, but not even an insurrection could reverse the vote. Yet the two men are still mirror images of the same sick impulses. A plague, I tell you, on both their houses.
And it will, of course, get infinitely worse. Naked displays of imperial power are never good for peace and prosperity, not for the colony and not for the imperialist. You would think that the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan would have left an imprint on American politics, but Trump seems to believe that he can conquer and hold when history teaches that you will conquer and die. We are just a few years away from the scene in Kabul, with people holding on to the wheels of departing aircraft, hoping to escape the wrath of the Taliban. Like you, I’m still waiting on the Plan for Gaza, soon to be joined by the Plan for Venezuela. Trump asserts that when you say “I’m in charge” you are actually, authentically, and operationally in charge. When it comes to his stupidity, it’s turtles all the way down.
But added to that is the sense of empowerment the invasion has given to Trump’s immediate circle. With the President talking about Cuba and Colombia (and Mexico and Canada and Mercury and Uranus), Steven Miller has just exploded in a fury of acquisitiveness. Claiming Greenland, he said in an interview with Jake Tapper, would be as natural and right as cornflakes for breakfast, because the Law of History is power and strength. If you are powerful enough to seize another country, no pitiful legal standards should stand in the way. I heard it myself on the sofa in our television room, and it had the same force as Hitler’s announcement about Sudetenland.
Good luck to civilization when it comes to Taiwan and Ukraine. Xi and Putin just got their official permission slips.