Venezuela is a hot news item. Thanks to a Washington Post report, allegations of war crimes against Pete Hegseth are swirling around the capital. Regime change is in the air, as the Trump administration remains adamant that its strikes against alleged narco terrorists are just and legal. We don’t know where this saga is going, but from what has happened so far, we can still glean a couple of tough but important lessons.
Social media is good for exposing propaganda
I’m not old enough to remember the news cycles of the early 2000s in the lead-up to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But from old headlines and op-eds I have seen or read, it’s clear the media were fed a bogus narrative and ran with it, all hiveminding to the same conclusion: war. This was a time in America when the media was top-down and had control over the information on broadcast television and newspapers.
Today is much different, of course. The media landscape is decentralized, with X, podcasts, websites, blogs, Substacks, etc. This makes it more difficult for the government to craft a narrative, feed it to the media, and keep the narrative controlled in its favor. Even if the Trump administration wanted to make a case for war against Venezuela with congressional authorization, it would be a million times more difficult to control the narrative and win the argument than it was two decades ago. For all its pitfalls, social media gives a voice to anti-war activists who may have been relegated to a tiny blog in the early 2000s and creates more transparency.
Neocons are winning behind the scenes
Despite two decades of failed interventions and wars, the neoconservatives are still very powerful. Marco Rubio, neocon par excellence, has been instrumental in pushing the Venezuelan regime change war. Behind the scenes, Elbridge Colby, the Undersecretary of War for Policy, is once again under attack from Senate Republicans. Colby is one of the good guys, in my opinion. He’s a realist and understands the limits of the American military. He has pulled the levers of power at his disposal to keep the United States from getting sucked into another hot world war. For him, it’s more important to stay focused on China than Ukraine, Iran, or Venezuela.
Unfortunately, the neocons are having a moment. Their arguments and ideology may suck. They usually get vivisected in the court of public opinion on X when they advocate for toppling Maduro. But they have the ear of the president and the backing of powerful special interest groups and donors. Money and proximity to power talk.
Blaming ‘permanent Washington’ isn’t a good excuse
The next two lessons involve Vice President JD Vance, who quietly made a very interesting statement Monday. It revealed a lot, despite it only being a reply on X. Vance is trying his best, and has – pardon my French – a sh*tty job being VP. But this needs to be said.