“Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had,” Donald Trump said speaking to reporters. “As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
“They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there.”
Maduro was a president who oversaw one of the largest mass exoduses of citizens from his own country of any since the expelling of the Indians. 7 million people left Venezuela, more than the number of Jews that died in the holocaust and almost as many as the population of New York City today. The resulting migratory crisis saw hundreds of thousands of people streaming north through Colombia, central America, and Mexico onward to the USA. I write a little about that situation here. The repercussions of Maduro’s reign are still felt today, which is ironic because the exodus of the Venezuelans is probably the primary reason Trump became president. Maduro sealed his own fate in a way.
America, of course, did everything it could to ensure that Maduro’s dictatorship would fail. Full sanction of its economy after Venezuela nationalized its oil production killed its economy. Having an inflexible dictatorship ensured Venezuela would be doomed never to recover. And now, American capitalism guarded by the US military gets to return and seize the oil for itself. Venezuela will be “prosperous” now that American companies get to have the oil.
Will Venezuelans see an improvement in their quality of life under the USA? Maybe. Afganistan saw an expansion of freedom when the Americans were around. Women were allowed to read and learn type shit. Then America threw up its hands and left, plunging the people into darkness again (women are discouraged from reading in Taliban Afganistan). America doesn’t give one shit if Venezuelans live a better life. This is just another action packed scene on Trump’s stage meant to beguile us. America will do whatever the industrial complex believes is right in Venezuela, and the people of Venezuela may or may not someday be free.
It is interesting how America has the reverse of Venezuela’s oil problem. Under Chavez, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry. In America, the oil industry has nationalized us. Trump speaks of private companies as “us.” When he refers to Chevron having a lot of oil business in Venezuela 50 years ago, he says, “We had a lot of oil there.” Rare earth minerals help “us” because they let “our” companies make more stuff and reap bigger profits and make more jobs so the money can trickle down. He keeps talking about the American oil industry as if we are all one big team riding the wave of their massive profits to heaven on earth. In Trump’s vision of the world, the companies ARE us. Their success and the wealth they generate define America, in the president’s mind. In reality, however, there is no “us.” We pay for a product that we don’t have a choice in using. We burn the fossil fuels we are sold because we don’t have a choice. The success of the company doesn’t improve our lives at all. We just keep burning and commuting till we die.
Trump suggests that America is not GREAT if it is not the undisputed master of all natural resources in the western hemisphere. The great big companies NEED to succeed, for they are too big to fail. As if the geniuses at these oil companies (logistical masters and not the hereditary inheritors of grand industrial estates) alone guarantee our freedom and way of life. And to Trump’s crowd, this greatness is worth violence! I have to say that this is a dogshit imperial mindset that turns every American into a schizophrenic speculator praying for the success of his corporate masters so that he may have a small piece of the wealth back for himself. In the imperial mode of living, killing and coercing people in other countries with violence is a lamentable but unavoidable aspect of reality. “Realists.” My friends, we do not eat oil. In fact, I reckon we produce enough gasoline locally to keep our engines running and our heaters online just fine. You know what does eat oil? The 8 massive floating war machines we have had parked outside of Venezuela since August.
The military buildup outside Venezuela was ostensibly for the purpose of the eventual takeover of Venezuela. Like the world watching Putin mass his army along the border of Ukraine, we all sat dumbfounded while Trump amassed military power near Venezuela. The US military scoped out its target and tested the boundaries of its power by murdering small craft on the high seas. Trump and his allies literally all caps tweeted that Maduro was going down over and over again. America is sleepwalking.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country.”
This mad insatiable thirst for an ever grander global oil market that turns a profit every quarter forever and ever will be the end of us! Basing the health and happiness of a nation on its ability to suck poisonous black ichor out of the ground is just so incredibly wrong. No good will come of this!