The Plundering, Imperial Presidency
Donald Trump is turning Venezuela into an American colony, with all the abuses that entails.
On Sunday evening, I was getting into the shower when my husband, who was headed out on a run, rapped on the door. “Uhhhh,” he said, “have you checked your New York Times app? We’re bombing Venezuela.” By the time I had toweled off, I was texting him: “holy fuck” and then “We captured Maduro?!” Now, we not only have Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife in custody, but, according to Trump, we are running Venezuela indefinitely.
It’s hard to even comprehend the utter lunacy of this moment, and hard to comprehend why, exactly, anyone thought this was a good idea. Under the pretext of a drug bust, we invaded a foreign country, kidnapped the president, and are now occupying the nation indefinitely, while threatening its neighbors that they might be next (“watch your ass” is how Trump put it). It’s not regime change, exactly — Trump may have removed the corrupt and repressive Maduro, but he is keeping Maduro’s corrupt, repressive regime in place, because he has concluded that these are people he can work with. It is blatantly an effort to extract Venezuela’s oil resources for the personal benefit of American oil companies and, one assumes, Trump and his family (according to Trump, he informed oil companies of his intent to invade Venezuela, but he did not inform Congress). And of course there is the usual MAGA hypocrisy at play: The movement that claimed isolationism and America first is now enmeshing America in yet another foreign war, this one wholly of choice, blatantly extractive, and in defense of nothing.
The thing about MAGA, though, is that the policies and rights and wrongs — intervening abroad or not, pardoning violent criminals or not, sexually abusing children or not — don’t actually matter. Ideology does not matter. Morals do not matter.
What matters: Domination. Subjugation. Abusing the less powerful simply because it feels good.
