Trump’s Venezuela Misadventure is Much More Dangerous than Illegally Taking a Country’s Leader or Oil

1. Narcissism
2. Trump’s Executive Dysfunction
   1. Removing Maduro was a One Shot
   2. No Coordination with Big Oil
3. The New Authoritarian World Order
4. Big Oil Owns Trump
5. Image Attribution

Trump’s misadventure in Venezuela has more layers than an onion and will keep us crying long after it has been put in the compost heap. Many people are decrying the illegality of the move and whether Venezuelans support Maduro’s removal, but they’re missing the real point. Here are the real points:

• It isn’t whether it is legal or illegal, it is that international law is dead.
• Big Oil still runs Trump, US foreign policy, and our energy policy.
• And, Trump is going to make his billions no matter who it hurts or what he harms.

Like everything else about Trump, it is driven by his narcissism. Let’s Psysplore!

Narcissism

One of the most important symptoms of a narcissistic personality disorder is that the narcissist steadfastly believes that the rules don’t apply to them and exceptions to the rules will be made for them. You may have noticed that Trump has been pretty contemptuous of our laws, starting with the Constitution.

He doesn’t think that the law applies to him. Exceptions to the laws, expectations, and norms are being made for him everyday by the Republican Party, the legacy media, and the disinterested barely conscious general public. His crimes included committing murder on the high seas, pirating oil tankers, kidnapping the head of a government, and stealing the oil of a sovereign country.

Trump’s Executive Dysfunction

Narcissism forces Trump to focus on the here and now — Eckart Tolle be damned — denying the past and ignoring the future. Trump is constantly in damage-control mode in order to preserve his delusion of perfection. Since none of us are perfect, it is a losing proposition.

Trump doesn’t plan and can’t stick to a plan.

Removing Maduro was a One Shot

Supposedly, the military had had this operation planned for months — probably true knowing the way our military does things, meaning it was one of the contingency plans someone put together — so why now? Because back in November, Maduro danced to “No War, Yes Peace” on Tik Tok. Wait, causing Trump yet another narcissistic wound. That was like six weeks ago; could they put the operation together that fast? Yeah probably.

Trump says we’re going to “run” Venezuela for the time being and many of the people who will be running it were standing behind him, Marco “New Times Roman” Rubio and Pete Hicupseth were back there. With the level of competence displayed by Trump and his current administration, do you really think Marco “I was for immigration reform in 2013, but now I’m for concentration camps” Rubio and Pete “Day Drinker” Hegseth are going to spend every other week in Caracas tending to matters of the Venezuelan state?

Trump’s dementia has him stuck in the 70’s and 80’s, so he is fixated on the nationalization of Venezuelan oil industry in 1976 and the further expropriation of the infrastructure in the early 2000s. Having denied him the kickbacks from steering the contracts to oil companies like a common Spiro Agnew. That was another narcissistic wound. His executive dysfunction only allows him to focus on one goal, and in this case it is the ouster of Maduro and the confiscation of Venezuela’s oil.

There is no plan in place beyond bring Maduro to the US to stand trial. Like all of Trump’s super jenius plans, we are all supposed to be amazed by what he’s done and be satisfied with it When Trump says we’ll run Venezuela, we’re supposed to accept that it is true regardless of what actually happens.

But, what is clear there is no plan for “running” or administing the country. He’s not backing their Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Machado, and is trying to bully Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

No Coordination with Big Oil

Even though Trump has said that our oil companies will go in and redevelop the oil infrastructure, it isn’t clear that these same companies are actually interested in doing so. For one thing, it’s going to cost a helluva lotta money to rehabilitate modernize their oil infrastructure. It will take decades to do. We can’t even guarantee the stability of Venezuela for a day or a week much less the time it will take for these companies to start seeing a profit off of their investment.

Once the US has withdrawn, and we will withdraw at a some point, there is no guarantee that Venezuela will not nationalize their oil industry again, causing them all to lose their investments, yet again. The only thing that is sure is that Trump will have gotten his cut, though. And, to Trump, that is all that matters.

The New Authoritarian World Order

For approximately eighty years, we’ve been building a world order based on the liberal democratic ideals of international laws and human rights. It has been an effective curbing war and promoting free trade between nations.

In the current world order soft power bests hard power, just ask Putin about how his gold reserves are doing (spoiler: he’s selling his gold reserves to fund his illegal invasion of Ukraine). Authoritarians aren’t interested in following the rules or letting international courts arbitrate disputes. They want what they want, and they want it when they want it.

Authoritarians rule through force. It isn’t through the law. They make people do what they want. They use the power of the state in order to achieve their goals, which usually are self serving and self enriching. They systematically eliminate obstacles, checks and balances, and guardrails until they can operate without legal constraints.

Authoritarians want to conduct their foreign policy in the way they do their domestic.

The US has been the chief force behind the liberal democratic world order. Now that we are on the side of authoritarians, taking Venezuela is an endorsement of nineteenth century gunboat diplomacy and sphere of influence by the Great Powers. This is rule by might, not by law.

In effect, Europe has just been ceded to Russia and Asia to China. Putin gets to reform the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and China gets Taiwan and all the disputed islands and whatever the hell else it wants.

Big Oil Owns Trump

By taking over Venezuela for its oil, Trump is telling us that he is all in for oil and fossil fuels. With Trump in office, we’re heading for the worst case scenario on climate change. He will keep the oil flowing until the climate completely collapses.

The only funny thing here is that the oil companies (a) seem to be as surprised as the rest of us and (b) as unprepared to move forward as the Trump administration is… which isn’t surprising given that Trump has no plan.

The conclusion is that Trump will keep blundering along violating laws, rights, norms, and whatever else strikes his fancy until someone stops him. With Trump there is no floor. He has no self restraint. There isn’t anything that he won’t do if he thinks it will benefit him.

Trump is completely unrestrained. It will continue to get worse until someone steps up to stop him.

Image Attribution

This image was found on Collections using a Creative Commons license search.