An old American story with a new harsh twist

I hesitated to write on this topic. Not out of reluctance, but because I thought it was so obvious that our media space would be cluttered with similar sentiments. That has not been the case.

U.S. President Donald Trump invaded Venezuela for natural resources, the personal animus of his inner circle, and expansionist imperial aims. The crimes, real or imagined, of Nicolas Maduro are not pertinent to this conversation. They are a red herring, no different than when after a police officer murders an innocent person, the media decides it’s important dig up any past criminal behaviour to frame the victim as “no angel.” It is textbook manufacturing consent.

The Trump administration does not care about the tyranny of Maduro’s government, nor the plight of the Venezuelan people. In fact, no government can claim to care about a population while supporting sanctions which undercut their capacity to survive there. Especially not when those sanctions are only applied selectively to economically unco-operative nations. Venezuela has suffered such treatment for decades.

The Trump administration has declared that they essentially own the western hemisphere. This sort of hemispheric imperialism is not new. One could spend every word of this column listing occasions when the U.S. has overthrown regimes in South America who did not bow to multinational corporate interests. Usually with the tacit, and sometimes even with the material, support of Canada, as when our soldiers helped kidnap the popular Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The blunt belligerence of Trump is new, though. Even with the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration took the time to fabricate a noble goal and an expected outcome of success. Some protested even before it was clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the American troops wouldn’t be greeted as liberators. But those voices of reason were drowned out by a cacophony of the media and political caste; cheerleading the troops and noble global policing and anything to obfuscate the fact that the Iraq invasion was base violence from bullying superpower.

The Trump administration has proven itself a more rabid beast than even that, and those voices of reason seem relegated to the margins once more.

It used to be that the U.S. would overthrow a leader and then install the corporate-friendly puppet of their choice. But when Maria Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who has been begging for Trump to invade and fits the bill of U.S. stooge perfectly, stood up to take her place, Trump rebuked her. This is reportedly because he is bitter that she won the Nobel Peace Prize instead of him, even though she went out of her way to dedicate the prize to him.

It’s such a display of pettiness one can only marvel at it. This is Trump at his core. It’s not unreasonable to believe part of his motivation for going after Maduro is that he wanted his moment of taking down a “Big Bad” like when Obama got Bin Laden. Trump just wants to be one of the cool kids.

There is no subtlety to this, no more room for anyone to pretend that it’s anything but “might makes right.” Trump has used America’s military to get what he wants out of Venezuela, and he is musing about doing so again in Colombia, Mexico and Greenland. He is casually fantasizing about global imperialism in a way that would have made Adolf Hitler blush, and we have the media and politicians who are ostensibly supposed to be the check on his power running interference for him.

The Democrats are only willing to object to the kidnapping of Maduro and murder of dozens of Venezuelans on the basis that Trump didn’t consult Congress. On the Canadian front, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is actively serving as Trump’s hype man, and Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t even mention the U.S. at all when discussing Venezuela, as if Maduro simply vanished into thin air. It makes one feel crazy to watch journalists and politicians talking about this in terms of geopolitical relations with Venezuela when Trump tells us out loud that he is a marauder doing crime. This lunatic is on our doorstep, and our prime minister is doing him the service of ignoring and appeasing. If only there were some historic precedent for how misguided that is. One can’t help but imagine the meme of the dog sitting at his kitchen table in the middle of a housefire declaring “this is fine.”

This doesn’t stop with Venezuela. Cuba seems an obvious next target, given the history of American animosity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s personal vendetta and the calamity Cuba will experience if cut off from Venezuelan oil. But then, U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham was also spotted in a hat reading “Make Iran Great Again.” They will chase this dragon from target to target as long as it feels like a victory, because the Trump administration is desperate for any victory amongst their deluge of failure and scandal.

We grant them that victory when we insist the glass is half full because Maduro was a bad guy or naively contend that American influence in the region will improve conditions for Venezuelans. We need to condemn this aggression without equivocation. We empower them further every time we shrug our shoulders at their flagrant imperial violence.

Maybe we ought to question how much power we want to gift to Donald Trump.

Alex Passey is a Winnipeg writer.