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This will be my mandatory Venezuela post and then I’ll move on back to other egregious aspects of our culture and society on inequality, healthcare, energy, etc.
A few things:
This was illegal as all get out on so many levels (reads Asha Rangappa Here: Friday Round Up! 1/2/26
It seems very possible this was a coup by forces inside Venezuela facilitated by the U.S. After all, why arrest Maduro and leave the rest of the governing structure, including the Venezuelan Vice President (a professed hardcore Socialist whom Trump and Rubio must despise) in power. This article is from several months ago:
A group of senior Venezuelan government officials, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the National Assembly, have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative to Nicolás Maduro’s regime, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks. The proposals, funneled through intermediaries in Qatar, sought to persuade sectors of the U.S. government that a “Madurismo without Maduro” could enable a peaceful transition in Venezuela—preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.
It seems as if Machado is not the new President of Venezuela solely because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Trump wanted so badly:
Finally, I am in firm agreement with Josh Marshall’s take on Trump. Especially this paragraph (bolded by me for emphasis):
“I’ve heard a lot of people talking about not consulting with Congress or not receiving an authorization to U.S. force from Congress. I think this is far, far beyond what are essentially sub-constitutional technicalities. The U.S. president just went to war with another country and now will apparently occupy it for essentially no reason, with no warning and with public opinion overwhelming against all of it. Someone quipped on BlueSky last night that Trump hadn’t even taken the proper constitutional steps to lie the country into this war. This was more than just a funny line. Even lying the country into a war gives some due to the idea that the country is supposed to have some idea what the president is doing, why and some opportunity at least to register an opinion about it. Nor can any of this be separated from the broader domestic and global fabric of Trumpism, the casual illegality, the impetuousness and more than anything else the simple but always visible premise that Trump owns the United States, its military, its people, its wealth, everything. Someone told me earlier that this was like Trump taking his ICE raids global. And yeah, it pretty much is. Trump does what he wants, like one does with things one owns. You don’t ask your table what room it wants to be in and most employers don’t ask employees what tasks they want to do. In Trump’s mind he owns the country and its power. He won it fair and square in the 2024 election. Everything that stands in the way of that basic premise is an obstacle to be overturned.”
I had heated discussions yesterday with both of my sons about Venezuela after they asked my opinion. While they are both liberal and progressive and know Trump is evil, they basically accused me of Trump Derangement Syndrome, saying I was unable to give him credit for anything that he has done that might be good. I’ll spare you the details, but here is what I tried to explain to them (and what I believe Josh Marshall was getting at in his missive above):
We try to understand what Trump is doing and thinking in a rational way. But his mind does not work the same way as yours or mine or most anyone else’s. He is mentally ill and he is guided solely by brain impulses that he literally cannot control. They are not rational. They are guided by his malignant narcissism, among other psychopathic tendencies. He doesn’t make any decision that are not about him; some of his decisions may happen to be good for the country, but that is solely due to happenstance as a byproduct of “me, me, me”. We can’t wrap our heads around this behavior because, again, we don’t think in remotely the same way as him.
Until we and the media and others accept and acknowledge that, and base our responses and future political tactics accordingly, we are a sinking ship.
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