The century-long year

Like me, many of you probably woke up on Saturday to find that the U.S. had bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its ethically and electorally dubious but de facto president, Nicolás Maduro.

We now know what happened, at least in broad terms. U.S. forces attacked Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, kidnapping Mauro and his wife, Cilia Flores, before flying them out of the country and into the United States. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced existing indictments for the couple in the Southern District of New York. News reports out of Venezuela listed dozens of fatalities from the operation, including some civilians.

Today I’ll write about what happened, how these events fit into history, and why it’s imperative to stop Trump. I’ll also argue that the larger crisis in our country is hardly about Donald Trump at all. And that matters a lot when it comes to figuring out what to do right now.

Midnight in Caracas

We still don’t know everything about how the weekend attack unfolded. The BBC has reported 32 Cuban officers and intelligence agents were killed, with Cuba having provided Maduro’s personal security detail. Some independent reports suggest two civilians were killed along with security officers.

Hauled into court on Monday, Maduro entered a plea of not guilty and declared himself still president of Venezuela. The Miami Herald has been reporting since October that backroom negotiations brokered by Qatar had been happening. The U.S. was seeking Maduro’s ouster and cooperation from the vice president and others in Venezuela whom the U.S. government indicated it might leave in power.

Surely the administration was disappointed by vice president Delcy Rodríguez’s earliest statement on Maduro’s rendition, in which she called for his return and accused the Trump administration of extremism. Under pressure Monday, she backtracked, expressing her willingness to partner with the U.S. going forward.

Whatever the Trump administration is really hoping for in the long run, it’s not yet clear how events will play out. But the lack of any resolution beyond the kidnapping hasn’t stopped Trump from discussing the control he expects to exert over the oil industry in Venezuela.

And it seems to be just the first in a potential series of violations of sovereignty the administration is eyeing, from Cuba to Mexico and Greenland. Deputy White House chief of staff and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, who’s been the principal for some time now on the brutal operations kidnapping and detaining undocumented immigrants (and US citizens), is said to be taking a more “elevated role” overseeing U.S. interests in Venezuela.

What it means

First and foremost, the attack on Caracas is illegal. In an interview with Isaac Chotiner, incoming president of the American Society of International Law Oona Hathaway explained, "Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a legal basis for what we’re seeing in Venezuela. There are certainly legal arguments that the Administration is going to make, but all the arguments that I’ve heard so far don’t hold water."

Trump has himself acknowledged that the U.S. kidnapped Maduro. His administration is mired in the dead dreams and rhetoric of the twentieth century—treating oil as the most critical resource, and communism as the greatest threat to the country.

And if Republicans in Congress refuse to act, few institutional means remain to stop Trump’s Venezuelan takeover. As Steve Vladeck wrote this week in his One First newsletter: “A blatantly unlawful use of military force overseas will go un-remedied—because there’s no viable legal pathway to challenge it; and because the one branch of government historically in a position to hold the executive accountable in these cases (you might remember it—Congress) has become completely feckless not just in general, but in pushing back against unlawful unilateral uses of military force, specifically.”

Hemispheric history

When I first started this podcast, I wanted to give readers examples of how we were repeating grim history at home and abroad and illustrate what that might mean for the future. A year into the second Trump administration, people seem to be able to see how history is repeating more easily, in part because Trump and his allies embrace the brutal parallels.

Still, today I’ll run through a little of the history, to make the current pattern clear. Under the Monroe Doctrine, established two centuries ago, the U.S. claimed a right to block foreign governments from influencing the leadership and policies throughout the Americas. The doctrine was established in the face of the the expanding independence of many countries in the the Western Hemisphere.

A century after the Monroe Doctrine was announced, Teddy Roosevelt expanded it, claiming via the Roosevelt Corollary that even beyond preventing European interference, the United States also had a responsibility to preserve order and protect life and property in the hemisphere.

In 1933, FDR shifted the century-old policy by emphasizing collaboration over military intervention, instituting his Good Neighbor Policy. But during the Cold War, the threat of global communism was seen as justifying the kind of interventions that had been widespread before. Across the twentieth century as a whole the U.S. interfered to install or directly support dozens of dictators in the Americas.

Incurious and ignorant, Trump generally seems to be aware of only a handful of moments from history. But via some of his fixations, advisors are able to capture his attention and imagination. Just as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pressed George W. Bush to resume the war in the Middle East that they’d been forced to abandon during his father’s presidency, the current president’s advisors have made use of Trump’s fetish for fossil fuels to garner support for an attack on Venezuela.

And so it happens that we recycle history with regard to foreign intervention and oil. We are where we are as a country in part because because since the country’s Monroe Doctrine adventurism first began, America has erected only limited guardrails against past abuses of power, only rarely managing to make fundamental and permanent changes.

Medium, meet message

There’s a long history around the globe of leaders sparking foreign conflicts to protect their rule at home in moments of crisis. That’s part of what’s happening here, too. Yet it’s important to note that Trump and his hunger for power aren’t the cause of all our ills.

Today’s events are the result of a decades-long arc that brought him to power. Donald Trump didn’t hijack the system. He’s the fulfillment of a long-dominant strain of American presidential power.

The medium is the message here. Donald Trump is our sick nation—showing us our worst side: the country’s delusions, racism, hatred of women, gullibility, love of gross excess, cruelty, hypocrisy, and worship of money. There have always been unethical actors who—due to ideology, perversion, or both—want to oppress the vulnerable and garner power for themselves. Trump is both their leader and their conduit.

For anyone who worries about unfairly demonizing the Republican Party, let me say that until radio and television propaganda channels were established and mainstreamed in the wake of Watergate, it could have gone either way. The Democratic Party, having newly supported civil rights, might have walked away from it.

One can even imagine a Clintonian Democratic Party of expanding corporate interests and power leaning farther into scapegoating of Black America via additional rhetoric about superpredators and more Sister Souljah moments. In some other universe, Clinton’s second administration, which furthered the Reagan-era dismantling of parts of the social safety net, could have set the stage for a Democratic Party caving to a different but equally dangerous kind of populism in the U.S than the model we have at present.

But that’s not what happened. Republicans are the ones who have embraced the void.

And you could argue that it’s billionaires, not Republicans, who shattered journalism and broke our information networks. But our elected officials are the ones who caved to those billionaires’ interests.

A recent study from Yale and Columbia determined that the Supreme Court has joined in wholeheartedly, with justices far more often ruling in favor of the rich now. (This, as Adam Liptak reports, happens despite the judicial oath these justices take to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”) In return, billionaires have overwhelmingly abetted the Republican Party in its battle against functioning government over the last half century, and often joined in on its denial of human rights and civil rights.

It’s important to note that Donald Trump is not a tragic figure. There is no intellectual or spiritual conflict happening for his soul, no noble goal rendered unreachable by his personal limitations. Whatever his mental incapacity or illness, he’s incapable of reflection or regret. He is the pure, untrammeled desire for power and a greater ability to punish anyone he wants. All this makes him the perfect vehicle for nihilistic forces.

But there are others like him who will emerge if we let them. These crises will continue to pile up until we make real and lasting change.

Monsters, Inc.

Maduro is, of course, a horrific leader. Other countries have had their monsters, too. Looking at Trump, you can see the similarities to many of them: people like Berlusconi, Hitler, Duterte, and Orbán.

Yet U.S. presidents have always opened doors to unlimited and extralegal power. They have all been flawed leaders of a flawed country. In my lifetime, they’ve succumbed to the temptation to use force that was illegitimate under international law, whether through aggressive war, covert assassinations, unauthorized bombings, or drone strikes on civilians.

Some prior presidents were more judicious than Trump in their illegal use of force. But it has been vanishingly rare for a president to reject these measures wholesale—as happened for instance when through a veto attempt in 1950, Harry Truman tried to stop Congress’s from giving him the power to declare a state of emergency to round up dissident civilians and put them into camps.

In the past, the commander in chief often faced more pressure to resist his worst impulses, for fear of consequences. But over the course of the United States history, what the country has gotten away with is a long list.

Still, as the sum and simulacrum of nearly all our country’s flaws, Trump’s greed for unbridled power means that every time the temptation to use extrajudicial power knocks, he throws open a door.

And while some of the countries in his sights are oppressive ones and bad actors on the international stage, the U.S. has long had the potential to do the most harm of any nation, because for now, the it remains the dominant power worldwide. Outside of nuclear conflict, the U.S. capacity for dangerous and destabilizing international crime sprees is far greater than that of other country. And Trump is leaning into it.

Bigger than Trump

Any fundamental change the country will rely on providing a better life for people who have ceased to believe it’s possible. The limited guardrails established in the U.S. before— built to protect the poor, the disabled, and other historical targets of discrimination, or to provide for public health and safety at home, not to mention restrictions on military adventurism abroad—those have all been shown to be woefully inadequate.

Through community action and pressure on our representatives, we can negotiate small restorations of these measures in the short run to save lives. But they will not be sufficient. They have already shown their vulnerability, and revealed the greed and cowardice of our elected officials. We have to reimagine government.

On the big-picture side, we need to elect representatives and senators, in state legislative bodies and in Congress, who believe that government has a vital role in improving the lives of constituents. On a more granular side, that can be done by embracing specific policies that we know about but have failed to adopt.

Congestion pricing in New York City is just one small example—one which turned out to be radical in its effects, but well-understood in advance by its successes elsewhere. People were alarmed about how it would work in practice, but it has been a gift to the city, reducing traffic, raising revenue, and improving the quality of life for millions overnight.

From vast troves of research on things like more accessible health care, universal basic income and housing the unhoused, we have a lot of data on measures that would transform the everyday lives of people in the U.S. They are doable in many areas already, and optimizing conditions for them can be prioritized elsewhere.

We also have a lot of existing information on how stabilizing other parts of the world with aid instead of military operations is very much in the U.S. interest. But all these failed policies that the Trump administration is emphasizing to the exclusion of nearly everything else will resurface again and again in our future until we choose to battle not just against the most extraordinary abuses but also create a government that serves people and creates a stable life for them, rather than serving billionaires and enabling demagogues.

Business interests, the interests of the ultra-wealthy, and profit-seeking have been valorized in the U.S. at the expense of everything else. In the case of the attack on Venezuela, Trump explained this week that oil companies had been tipped off to the operation. While members of Congress were lied to about the operations planned for Venezuela, oil companies had weeks to plan (though whether they are even interested in dealing with the risks of backing Trump’s escapade remains an open question).

The economy of oil and coal that Trump is locking the country into is a losing economy. And the U.S. will remain vulnerable to tyrants and mired in the obsolete past in every way—and will continue to wreak havoc at home and abroad—as long as people who vote can’t imagine a future or a country that actually meets their needs.

How to take action

Our current crisis marks the ignorance and inanity of Trumpism while also carrying the weight of history and the destruction of the existing international order. It’s easy to give up any hope that things could change. Yet I think that we can absolutely shape our future.

The reaction in Venezuela has been mixed, according to the Guardian. Even those who are happy to see Maduro gone are worried about the future of the country. Limited protests have begun in U.S. cities, but it’s not yet clear what will happen next.

You’ve heard me talk before about the value of showing up for public demonstrations against Trump and his policies. I do think a national movement is emerging from No Kings and antiwar protests, and from the actions taken to foil ICE and CBP operations.

As Laura Helmuth (my former editor for freelance pieces at the Washington Post, Slate, and Scientific American) wrote on Monday, the timeframe in which science is done represents a good indicator of the scale on which we have to think to make real and lasting change. Of course there will be things that we have to react to in the moment, but we also need to make sure to “move slow and build things.”

The current circumstances can lend themselves to fantasizing about making it all disappear with the snap of a finger. But we are moving mountains here. If at any given juncture, our president is really just the symptom—the means by which the national illness makes itself known—then the goal has to be actually changing the U.S. so that it doesn’t cough up someone like Donald Trump.

By all means, take up the challenges of the moment. But also pick a policy that you believe would make the country a better place, and work over the long term to bring that one good thing into the world. Millions of us taking action is the only path to peace and security in the long run. The country doesn’t belong to Trump and his crew. It’s ours.

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