Venezuela Invasion: American Diplomacy Happens at the End of a Gun

With Trump unilaterally invading Venezuela, it has become clear that US “diplomacy” now happens at the end of a gun.

Over the weekend, US fascist dictator, Donald Trump, unilaterally invaded the country of Venezuela. Following a bombing raid, US forces kidnapped Venezuela president, Nicolás Maduro and hauled him before a New York court over alleged drug crimes and the even more bizarre accusations of being the leader of a “naroc-terrorist” ring.

To be clear, Maduro isn’t exactly the good guy in all of this and is well known for causing a lot of suffering in the country. It’s why there are citizens of the country who are loudly celebrating on the streets both in the country and abroad.

What is also clear is that what Trump did was highly illegal. Whether that is because he did this without even bothering to notify Congress or violating who knows how many international laws. For international laws, there is a damn good reason why the most powerful countries are legally restricted from invading other countries because they don’t like who happens to be in power. Governments change and you don’t want people in power invading other countries for ideological reasons. At that point, you’ll just have never ending wars based on spheres of influence (re: Russia, China, and the US).

For the mainstream media, the response is a mix of surprise that Trump would actually do this, but at the same time, trying to normalize what is happening by effectively arguing that unilaterally invading another country is just another interesting political debate to discuss. I wouldn’t call it surprising so much as it is shocking – and the distinction is actually important.

The fascism in the US has been building up all throughout 2025. Whether it is sending in the National Guard to crack down in dissenting thought, the arresting of political opponents, arresting judges for failure to rule in Trumps favour, the sending in of masked jackbooted thugs with unmarked vehicles to disappear people right off the city streets, creating a 24/7 social media surveillance apparatus to search for thought crimes, or blocking people from entering the country over thought crimes, the fascism has been building all year.

The problem is that all of this fascism has been met with non-stop sanewashing from the mainstream media. The goal, of course, is to try and normalize the fascism by pretending that arresting political opponents, disappearing dissidents, and cracking down on the population in general is just normal every day politics. This even though it most assuredly is not. The affects are clear even on this little corner of the web. I’ve had people tell me that I’m being hyperbolic for calling this obvious fascism, well, fascism. In other words, it’s crazy for me to point to the complete and utter insanity going on and calling it complete and utter insanity. For that, I can definitely say that the mainstream media’s efforts to normalize the fascism has certainly worked for huge swaths of the population. There are days where I think I am in a small minority when I say that the US government abducting people right off the city streets for thought crimes is both ridiculous and scary.

That same sanewashing continued when Trump began using the military to murder random people in boats near the country of Venezuela. Indeed, there was never really any evidence that the people on the boats were somehow “narco-terrorists”. What’s more, the strikes on those boats were designed to ensure that there are no survivors to legally challenge these extrajudicial killings. These efforts alone have been largely seen as war crimes, but much like the rest of the pile of evidence of growing fascism in the US, the media played it off as little more than debatable politics for intellectuals to sit in arm chairs and calmly discuss these things and little more.

When it was made abundantly clear that the invasion was about stealing the oil from Venezuela, the mainstream media did not let up with the sane washing and downplaying of fascism. Instead, they doubled down and ran thought provoking pieces about how it would be possible for American oil companies to take over the other countries oil reserves and start extraction processes. I mean, never mind the fact that oil companies have good reasons to not follow along with Trump’s efforts to pillage the resources in the first place. No, the mainstream media is trying to sell the story that it’s just normal for the US to steal another countries oil as well.

All of this is shocking, though. I’m talking both the efforts to normalize and downplay the fascism and the unchecked fascism itself. It’s clear that Trump is continuing to push the envelope to see how far he can take things before someone stops his crime spree. So far, even the military invasion of another country is being met with little more than grumblings of not being part of military briefings. While Democrat supporters have called for immediate impeachment of the president, Democrat leadership has expressed reluctance to even bother with such silly little things and is perfectly content with watching the world burn. In short, it’s an open invitation to let Trump do anything (as per the Hollywood Access video) and, right now, he is openly musing about invading Columbia and Greenland among others. Authorities in Greenland, Denmark, and Europe in general have pushed back against such notions, but the prospect of one NATO country attacking another has certainly been opened.

As a result, it has become quite clear that we have crossed a very dangerous and scary line. Not content with just cracking down on the population and obtaining unchecked powers, Trump is actively engaging in imperialism on the international stage through military force. A handful of countries are already put on notice and Trump has very vividly demonstrated that he will not hesitate to bomb other countries (and even kidnap their leaders on questionable charges) if he doesn’t get his way.

It’s no secret that Trump is making considerable demands of other countries. Indeed, had it not been for Trump, Canada probably wouldn’t even be having a debate about warrantless wiretapping in the first place. There is no appetite for that in Canada, but Trump demands that and more. Thanks to the invasion of Venezuela, nations like Canada are forced to face the possibility that if Trump gets angry enough, he’ll just invade the country and ensure that he gets his way anyway. This is diplomacy at the end of a gun in action. If you don’t do as Trump says, he’ll shoot you.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.