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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   23897 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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Total aura shift for Trump. He was a lame duck, dead in the water. The Fuentes doomers were winning. Trump had failed. He hadn't met his campaign promises, and his approval rating was in the gutter. But then, in an decisive display of competence and leadership, he ousted a dictator and took over a country that had been a thorn in the US's side for decades. And he did it at almost no cost.

His speech was fascinating and a dramatic shift from anything we have heard in the past 80 years. No "muh democracy." He talked about Venezuela's crumbling infrastructure and the inability of their government (deliberate or not) to stop the drugs. Their mortal sin was not dictatorship, it was incompetence and the negative impact their incompetence was having on the United States. He openly acknowledges that the oil will benefit the US, and says this is a good thing. And it resonates.

Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it. Under his leadership, the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost. The outcome is truly astonishing. And he might not be done. He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker. We'll see how it all works out in the long-term, and whether it becomes of a legacy of greatness or failure.

I predict we'll see a boost in Trump's approval ratings. The average person knows nothing about Venezuela except that it was bad and a problem. And now they see that Trump appears to have fixed it overnight.

100% agree, no notes.

This is as close to a total regional fait accompli as you can get. More than that, the ecstasy from the Venezuelan and most of the South Americans is palpable. If it results in Venezuelans queueing up to self deport, even if its just a registration of intent, it secures Trumps decisiveness as the key unlocking US regional primacy. The US always COULD do it, it just never chose to, and it resulted in ill for itself as well as the region.

USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.

USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.

The US is no more responsible for South American drug activity than they are for North American drug users.

And he did it at almost no cost.

This strikes me as likely, but it's too early to know for sure. In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity

Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it.

Unless the country implodes, which is unlikely, or the country does a total 180° and becomes a functional western democracy+economy, which is even less likely, there will be no legacy here for Trump lmao

The regime of a shithole country will be more friendly to the USA, the cartels will still move drugs around, and maybe marginally more oil will be available on the world market if Venezuela manages to pump more?

the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost

No it didn't. It blew some shit up and then did a helicopter insertion to kidnap the head of state. This was very cool, and absolutely not "taking over a country" as that requires occupation.

He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker.

Agreed, but good luck with this one

In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity

Good news here is Venezuela doesn't have all that far to fall. It would be worse if fractured into civil war, but it doesn't look like the preconditions were there.

Yeah that's why I ranked it low likelihood lol

I could see some kind of Cartel coup leading to a situation proximate to Haiti, but 1) I think the country was already somewhat in the pocket of the cartels 2) the cartels seem to have more state capacity than Haitian gangs (bar is so low it's in the earth's core).

  1. the cartels seem to have more state capacity than Haitian gangs (bar is so low it's in the earth's core).

I think you've just explained Earth's magnetic field -- the bar for Haitian state capacity is a literal magnet.

aura shift for Trump

And/or a flex for US military capability or geopolitical power in general. Perhaps a much-needed face-saving after the adventures in the Middle East, even if the stock market has long suggested continued US-dominance. Massive aura boost when you're able to just go "feeling cute, might depose a foreign president later... idk" and follow through upon it.

There's also a China angle here. China is planning naval war games around Taiwan in advance of a planned meeting with Trump in April. Stealing Maduro while Chinese diplomats are meeting with him in Venezuela is kind of a tit to their tat.

its a good play. China can make a big show of its buildup and they are a serious threat, but a reminder that the USAs military stumbles in the 2010s was due to political constraints and not inbuilt capability is always good to hang over upstarts.

I predict we'll see a boost in Trump's approval ratings.

There will be a bump in Trump's approval ratings and then they will settle back to where they were before except lower. The bump will be from people who will not be voting for the GOP (more educated, coastal) in the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, Trump continues to hollow out his coalition.

George HW Bush had a huge shocking victory over Iraq in 1991 with approval ratings among the best ever recorded, and then he lost his re-election in 1992. Presidents do not win elections through foreign interventions in the US (and haven't for at least 75 years), but they certainly can lose them.

And the same will be true for Trump. Unless there are some major changes in policy (Trump's neocon interventions worldwide included) and a redirection towards domestic issues his voters actually care about with real major accomplishments, the GOP will have a 2006 style wipeout in the midterms. I would bet (and I will be) that near zero people will be voting for the GOP because of this Venezuela intervention (and Trump's other neocon shenanigans). Many will be staying home because of them, though.

Selling out your supporters and throwing them under the bus in favor of people who were demanding you be put in prison on Jan 7th, 2020, is a bold move. I guess we'll see if it works out for Trump.

George HW Bush had a huge shocking victory over Iraq in 1991 with approval ratings among the best ever recorded, and then he lost his re-election in 1992.

Because of Ross Perot, mostly.

No, Perot was broadly popular across the spectrum for various different reasons. Perot voters were either drawn near equally from Clinton and Bush voters or were people who were motivated by Perot who otherwise wouldn't have bothered to show up.

Not to mention, Perot ran to a significant extent because he soured on the later Reagan's (read Bush's) derpy foreign policy decisions, opposed the Iraq War, and was supported by the antiwar populists.

If anything, this is another example of how foreign interventions, even ones which turn out to be victories, do not win elections, but certainly can lose them.

I've never voted for Trump but his handling of foreign policy in just his first year of his second term makes me wish he could run for a third term so I could vote for him.

I realize the bloc that feels this way is effectively zero.

It’s no where close to 0. And like a puppet like a Trump son exists instead of Vance.

Trump daughter. Ivanka is supposedly his favourite child, and this would be the bonus of "First Female President" 😁

His foreign policy with respect to Ukraine and Israel seemed very naive. Though a Harris administration would probably have been worse on Israel.

More fun than H.W., FDR's Democrats won WW2 and proceeded to get smashed by a then presumed extinct GOP in 1946 over a messy economy.

Famously, the Brits did the same thing with war hero Winston Churchill - out the door as soon as the war was clearly over, to make room for post-war economic concerns.

"Now that the war is over, let's get these guys out of here. They're bad for business!"

One thing I find interesting about these threads is how the speed itself became part of the legitimacy. Whether real or perceived, “matter of hours” is doing a ton of heavy work here. In modern geopolitics, swift action reads as competence, and slow process as decay. A very post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan inversion where success isn’t measured by institutions built, but by how little time the public has to think about such quagmires. By this logic, it's not even about Venezuela itself. You just need to believe that disorder is contagious and that someone finally hit the off switch. Really shows how much the bar for persuasion has shifted from ideals to outcomes, or at least the perception of outcomes.

One thing I find interesting about these threads is how the speed itself became part of the legitimacy.

"There's three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!"

"Isn't that the wrong way?"

"Yeah, but faster!"

Or, perhaps more charitable and tropically: "I took the canal zone and let Congress debate."

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

But this action was both. Yes, the incursion itself was accomplished very rapidly, but there were also breathless stories about the exhaustive preparation for the strike; how Delta Force built an exact replica of the building they snatched Maduro from to practice raid tactics and timing on (similar to how the SEALS practiced on a mock-up of Bin Laden's Abbottabad complex); how the administration was monitoring Maduro's comings and goings for months in order to build up a perfect picture of his habits and whereabouts, etc.

I don't think this can be pattern-matched to a fascist-futurist aesthetic "Cult of Speed" thing.

Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt.

Not all of these are mutually exclusive. I'm pretty sure some careful planning went into the Maduro extraction at least from the professionals in the Armed Forces. That's why it was so quick and successful.

Quick and decisive execution doesn't have anything to do with rash decisionmaking. A well-prepared operation is more likely to go smoothly and achieve your goals with the minimum amount of action.

I'm specifically talking about perception and the role that plays in legitimizing the actions, per the comment I was replying to. I've little doubt that the raid itself was meticulously planned and rehearsed.

Quick and decisive execution doesn't have anything to do with rash decisionmaking. A well-prepared operation is more likely to go smoothly and achieve your goals with the minimum amount of action.

Yeah, FWIW I would guess that the US has been planning this for years. Or more accurately, we've had a plan in place for years to grab the leader of Venezuela.

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

"I have told your names to the Entmoot and we have agreed: you are not orcs." - Treebeard

The example of the Roman dictator Fabius also springs to mind. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race.

The comparison crossed my mind.

Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

Hence the term "analysis paralysis".

I think that the perception is that extremely long occupations (or similar) tend to be corrupted by the bureaucracy, and end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on doing nothing. It's a very common pattern (at least in Canadian politics, but I imagine that it occurs in American politics too) that something like the following occurs:

  1. There is some outrageous news story (let's say the Minnesota fraud case mentioned below); people are not happy.
  2. The government proclaims loudly that this is unacceptable, and it is opening a committee/beginning investigation of how this could've happened.
  3. 6-24 months pass, and the committee basically says "no one could've possibly predicted or stopped this, no one is to blame, and we're going to do some superficial reforming (so for example, in the Minnesota fraud case, they could mandate that all government employees take a course in recognizing fraud). They also have a bunch of recommendations that are completely stupid (like, adding land acknowledgements to all daycare subsidies) that are supposed to help by decolonizing the space or some such stupid nonsense.
  4. Meanwhile, the fraud or whatever else has continued, and now we're also paying for the cost of the committee, which did less than a 5 year old could've worked out.

There's a major problem with government accountability where any solution to the problem seems to be "sink more money into it forever." Something that meets the criteria of:

  1. Fast;
  2. Intuitive; and most importantly
  3. Done

Earns a lot of goodwill towards the policy.

It needs to be Fast because the problem is happening now, not later - I've mentioned before that fixing housing prices in 5 years is better than not fixing it in 5 years, but from my perspective, it may as well not matter; I only have one life in which I can start a family, and if I can't buy housing for 5 years, that's 5 more years in which I can't have the family I want to.

It needs to be Intuitive (or at least, more intuitive than the other solutions) for the same reason that we don't introduce more complicated voting methods; because there is a lot of space for people who are good at lying to grift off of it. It is easy to understand "each person gets 1 vote, most votes wins" - it's trickier to understand a situation where one candidate gets 45% of the "I want this guy" votes, a second candidate gets 35%, and the third gets 20% - but the second candidate ends up winning after "shenanigans." (I'm using Instant-runoff voting as an example here).

And it needs to be done because anything that is a process ends up costing way too much money and perpetuating itself for all eternity. After 2 decades in Iraq, the establishment that the US had set up had collapsed within a month of the US pulling out - that extra effort and process was worth literally jack and shit, and all it did was cost more money.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think there is separate issue, which is that when bad faith actors want to pretend to be addressing an issue without actually addressing it, they are naturally going to go for slow, deliberate options. This principle applies all the way from high level policy makers all the way down to the scummy local gym which is supposed to process your cancellation and give you a refund.

The upshot of this is that slowness is a red flag.

That is a very good point as well.

Time is a pretty good proxy for competence. Time is also money. Maduro was a thorn in the US' side, and for a minimal investment of time and money the US is at the very least going to get someone marginally preferable to Maduro running Venezuela. That's a good deal.

Why do you assume the next man up will be marginally preferable to Maduro?

The next man up will probably not be married to Maduro's wife, who was a central power player in the Chavista movement on the policy/coalition side and a queennpin in her own right who had held significant government power.

Flores was a non-trivial part of the political competence of the Chavista movement at the policy maker level, in the 'knows how to systemically setup an apparatus to coordinate harassment and violence against the outgroup' sense. In so much that the Maduro regime was on its way towards becoming an Nicaragua-Ortega-style dynasty, Flores was both the cause and a key parallel.

The US getting Maduro and Flores is probably one of the more significant things about today's raid, and honestly does more to imply a deal with someone- whether Maduro or someone else in the Venezuelan government- such that Flores couldn't step in as acting-president on her husband's behalf.

Well, No.

Trump has a natural, intuitive understanding of the American electorate, but he's always been rather incompetent at foreign policy personally. He clearly realized this after his first term and it has been plain to see that he's outsourced different problems to different people;

  • Ukraine - Witkoff
  • Gaza/Israel - Kushner
  • Central / South America - Marco Rubio

This operation, and Venezuelan "policy" in general, has Rubio's pawprints all over it. Remember, Rubio is a Cuban-American from South Florida. Venezuela, being Western Hemisphere public enemy number one after Cuba, has always been in his crosshairs. Here's an article about Rubio, in 2020, meeting with the Venezuela opposition leader for instance. Also, here's a 2020 Politico article calling this out specifically.

Trump is still a lame duck. The midterms, which are ten months away, are not going to be full of campaigning on "Caracas Hawk Down!" For a bizarrely chronologically similar parallel, reference the Soleimani raid over New Years in 2020. How did that go for Trump's re-election? The economy is probably already down bad but some creative accounting and a flaccid rate cut are plugging the dam for now. The Special elections this november in VA and elsewhere ... didn't go well. And, to find whatever the opposite of the silver lining is, this strike on Venezuela has some pretty not fun open questions regarding AUMFs and War Powers.

For a bizarrely chronologically similar parallel, reference the Soleimani raid over New Years in 2020. How did that go for Trump's re-election?

It’s a difficult comparison to make, given that the combination of the ‘Ronavirus and the George Floyd riots was such an unexpected and overwhelming black swan that quickly swallowed up everything else. It’s easy to look back at it and declare it a big nothingburger, but it was basically an order of magnitude bigger than 9/11 and the LA riots combined.

but it was basically an order of magnitude bigger than 9/11 and the LA riots combined.

The Soleimani raid or COVID?

COVID

Then I don't understand your original comment at all.

I’m saying the Solemani thing ended up getting overshadowed by COVID happening shortly after. That’s part of why it had no effect on the election.

his approval rating was in the gutter

A great sage predicted this moment 13 years ago…

Good God he was on fire back then

Obama lost those interventions. Europe got a migrant crisis as a result. Today doesn’t matter. It’s what’s created next that matters.

Also I think it’s fair to say Trump has been putting this in play for months. Rubio for a decade.

In the start-up world they laugh about NDAs because the idea doesn’t matter. It’s the execution. Day 0 was executed successfully.

Day 0 was executed successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

The US is very good at applying ordinance to targets. It is a lot worse at running countries.

Obama and Bush were at least wise enough to create migrant tsunamis and narco states on the opposite side of the planet, not close to home. Obama learned from Bush and didn't say he was going to rebuild Libya and turn it into a nation building project that is likely to fail.

The migrant crisis already happened in Venezuela. That’s in the past and occurred under Biden.

The migrant crisis already happened in Venezuela. That’s in the past and occurred under Biden.

Much longer than that, but substantially correct.

One of the weaknesses of the 'but this could destabilize the region like Iraq or Syria' is that Venezuela's collapse under Chavez/Maduro already has been at the level of the Iraq or Syria civil wars. Venezuela has a bit less than 40 million people now, but 2 million left during the Chavez years, and another nearly 8 million under Maduro. This compares to the 6 million Syrian refugees during the Syrian civil war. Caracas 'at peace' notably had a murder and kidnapping rate rivaling, and eventually surpassing, Baghdad. Rolling blackouts, gang paramilitaries, endemic corruption, refugee displacement, and all that.

It's also why the 'but the Americans will just steal the oil!' narrative has, so far, largely fallen flat on the Venezuelans, and gets more or less Yes-Chad response. Venezuelan oil was already being stolen for the interest of other countries- particularly Cuba- and the money was already being stolen by a corrupt elite. The (never particularly accurate) 'Americans stealing the oil' doesn't actually make things worse, because things are already that bad... or worse.

A lot of the online / social media response of 'Trump bad' is running into the Venezuelan/local regional perspectives of 'but Maduro worse.' Taking the hyperbolic claims literally, Trump is still better, because Trump's avarice/greed/etc. doesn't come with the police state repression of the Chavistas.

None of which means today's intervention a good idea / will work as planned / etc. But it's very hard to overstate just how bad the Venezuelan situation has been for quite some time. Appeals to 'but it could be a bad war!' lose some resonance when the status quo is already equivalent to some of the bad wars being raised.

America destablized Venezuela, put sanctions on Venezuela and the result was chaos in Venezuela. If the goal was to bring down Venezuela by making the people hate their government that goal will cause mass migration. The situation being bad in Venezuela is a reason to help Venezuela if anything. Chaotic failed state neighbours end up doing to America what Syria did to Europe.

  • -18

I mean, Cuba hasn't been in a state of near-continuous famine despite its own poverty. Its capital city isn't controlled by gangs creating a murder rate worse than most of the world's active war zones. And they've been under sanctions longer and harder than Venezuela.

It has been in the past, though. Chavez saved Cuba from just such a slow-rolling famine when he started shoveling oil money at the Cubans upon coming to power.

functor, functor, functor. Why do you have to deny the achievements of the global south? The Chavistas worked so hard and succeeded at sparking an even greater mass migration exodus than Syria all on their own.

The PSUV spent so much time wrecking the capitalist economy, cracking down on dissent, stealing everything they could, employing gangs and narcos to attack their opponents, and drove more people to flee Venezuela than fled Syria. They did so for decades over the protests of the Americans, and their neighbors, and their own people, in proud acts of defiance and national sovereignty. There's a reason even those who try to blame the American sanctions studiously try to avoid having to establish any relative share of responsibility for the economic consequences of Chavez's, ahem, distinctive economic model. Why, I bet even you will studiously try to avoid answering that prompt, and will try to bypass that uncomfortable, overshadowing context once more.

That is an even stronger argument for not destroying Venezuela. Failed states cause migration and drug cartels. If Venezuela is struggling the last thing they need is sanctions and war.

As usual the military industrial complex is a leading cause of diversity and immigration.

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A portion of the right has adopted the Chomskyite "everything that is wrong in the world is somehow due to America's actions", and it doesn't sound any better coming from them than it did from Chomsky.

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