I am dismayed and disappointed to see, this morning, that we’ve invaded Venezuela overnight. A lot can be said about this, from both news and opinion perspectives, but here I’ll address the three issues that came immediately to mind on hearing that the United States and its government is making a horse’s ass of itself.
- The putative problem for which this action is promulgated is not effectively addressed in my mind. We’re talking supply and demand, the supply of drugs, allegedly, by Venezuela in order to satisfy demand, the demand of American consumers, who continue to self-administer recreational drugs which consume their time, their minds, their families, and their wealth. Stipulating to Venezuelan drugs, destroying Venezuelan drugs does not destroy American demand; they’ll just switch to, say, Honduran drugs, or Chilean drugs. American demand is not caused by the presence of drugs, foreign or domestic. At this juncture, the common continuation might be A defect in American society causes American demand, but that suggests it’s a fixable problem, and I am unconvinced of the possibility. I think it’s a byproduct of how we run our society, an inevitable byproduct, and fixing it might cause a different problem involving excess timidity. Or perhaps not, it’s a difficult question.
- Venezuelan President Maduro simply did not properly manage President Trump. Readers should remember Juan Orlando Hernández, former President of Honduras, who, being convicted in an American court of drug smuggling, was pardoned by President Trump in November of last year. GovFacts suggests this was a reward for supporting Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2021, and for signing an Asylum Cooperative Agreement. GovFacts also suggests Trump’s fear of leftist governments motivated this action, in combination with a recent Honduras Presidential election and a dismayed National Party (conservative); I should not doubt that some dollars from Hernández were also involved. Maduro should have arranged to support Trump, making it difficult for Trump to use the justification of drug smuggling, an unproven accusation, for attacking Venezuela, even if the Venezuelan nationalization of the oil industry (1976) is of overwhelming importance to the Republicans, who are still outraged at the Cuban nationalization of various American properties in Cuba.
- How long will Trump hide behind Venezuela in order to avoid the Epstein Files issue? Historians must be licking their lips.
Whatever else I think, this’ll have knock-on effects for years to come, and that those may be unmanageable is what President Trump and his minions don’t get, an inevitable conclusion in light of issue #1, above. Confusing supply and demand is a simple mistake that should not have been made, and that they did….
Well, the future should be fascinating, but dreadful if you’re Venezuelan.
