Well, who’d a thunk it? Here we have another Republican administration heading out into foreign interventionism while deceiving and bamboozling the public. Ah, he’s a drug kingpin, one might say (neglecting that the other drug kingpin was just pardoned). Oh, heck — we all know it’s all about the oil. This is the guy who wanted grab the oil in Iraq and couldn’t understand why the U.S. didn’t just take it. But it’s not about the oil, really. It’s about the oil money. It’s about his billionaire buddies who are still owed 10’s of billions of dollars from when Chavez nationalized the U.S. oil companies’ assets last time. And if he happens to snatch a few himself in the transaction, well — immunity goes a long way toward dissolving any ethical considerations. Make the money where you can, whenever you can. Heck, what is the military doing these days, anyway. Might as well be used to crack open the treasury in Venezuela.
It really is a little unsettling to hear the string of possible international conflicts falling so nonchalantly from his lips. Colombia? Sure — sounds good. Greenland — Yep, we need it for national defense (because … Who’s coming?). Canada? Mexico? I thought we had enough with Iraq and Afghanistan. But, nope. Lessons learned are lessons best lost. We make our own history the Republican apparatchiks like to say. We don’t have to worry about knock-off affects, or tertiary concerns. We’ll just look at Muqtada al-Sadr and tell him to sit down, and he’ll learn to obey us. ‘Cause we command respect. And, well, how did that go? But that was just some guy in the desert, not like these complacent Venezuelans. They’ll greet us with flowers for real this time. Even if we leave the dictator’s representatives in power, who they despise. ‘Cause we’re Americans, full of wisdom, and if we think hard enough, close our eyes tight enough, cover our ears fully enough, we can magically think the world will obey our wishes and sooner rather than later we’ll actually come believe it. ‘Cause we’re Americans and we got really big guns and cowboy boots and gnarly military patches. We’re great again, man! Everybody’s gonna know when the crazy man comes knocking, and they’ll do what we say, whenever we say it.
And, in the end, Halloween is going to come around again and then we’ll see that we don’t get any more candy, nobody plays with us anymore, and nobody’s gonna care when the next World Trade Center goes up in flames. We’ll be alone on this stinking block ‘cause everybody’s moved on and learned how to live life without our dollar and without our tantrum-y belligerence.
There’s a reason that Peter Thiel bought up a huge plot of land on the South Island of New Zealand with plans to build an enormous survivalist bunker. But there’s no reason at all that we should consider that a clue.
Steve Moore
Kalispell