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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Trump has said a lot of wild shit. You got any reason for thinking that statement was any more revealing of his inner soul than any other?

If you look at what he's actually done in military actions over the five years of his presidency or so, he draws down forces if he can, doesn't commit to anything new, and if something happens he bombs something. Houthis? Iran's nuclear reactors? Drug boats?

Anti-war doesn't mean anti-military-action. Up until now, Trump has been quite careful and diplomatic with military action, waffling and A-B testing until everyone's arguing. Sometimes he uses the pressure to do a deal (North Korea) and it never comes to strikes. Sometimes the deal is done after strikes (Iran). In my estimation, the drug boat thing is no different, he's pressuring Maduro and by extension the various South and Central American rulers to get control of the flows of people and drugs to the US.

If he puts line ground troops into Venezuela, I'm wrong. If he bombs a few things, ratchets up tensions, threatens regime change and then does a deal where he's shaking Maduro's hand on TV, I'm right.

Edit: The imaginary deal I'm teasing will probably not change much materially, but that isn't the point.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/venezuela-resumes-accepting-us-deportation-flights-after-trump-closes-airspace-country

Trump threatened to declare the airspace "above and surrounding" Venezuela to be "closed in its entirety," causing Venezuela to cancel the twice-weekly flights of migrants from the U.S. on Saturday. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Tuesday that, at the request of the Trump administration, those flights have now resumed.

Seems likely to me you're right. This is not the deal itself, but if Maduro wanted to be defiant he'd say "fuck you and your deportation flights" and hold this as a bargaining chip against Trump, especially since it's short of escalation by any measure, but affects something important to Trump and his base. That he capitulated on this makes me think he's already decided to go, he's just working on the details of his exit.

He's trying to finagle mineral rights from Ukraine right now, and thinks that America's problems come from being "too nice" to the rest of the world so thinking US should be going around stealing oil would fit with that general pattern.

Exactly how many countries has Trump invaded and stolen their oil?

Once again, you're arguing from your imagination of someone else's psychology.

"We've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening," said Trump, who has been pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.

Asked what would happen with the oil, Trump said: "We keep it, I guess."

Time to move from "it's not happening" to "and it's good" phase?

ratchets up tensions

It's in the Diplomacy manual under "Yemen Gambit".

Step 2: Yeah, it's happening, but it's not a big deal

Syria, US took oil producing region from Assad and gave it to the rebels.

TRUMP: They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil.

INGRAHAM: We’re taking, we’re not taking–

TRUMP: Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.

INGRAHAM: They’re protecting their facility.

TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So, they say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil. We have the oil.

There's rumors that Maduro is negotiating an exit plan with immunity for family and elections to follow. If Trump takes it, he's a genius compared to who we've had lately.

But if he's really smart, he'll keep Maduro on hand. Just in case.

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