ANS -- The Normalization of Moral Collapse

This is short but beautifully written.  Read it for the poetry in it....

--Kim

Linda Procopio Pacheco ·oSnepordtsi114g9m0tt51t00hu0f381mf3949tl8t8ic5ul63hl0hhlu2ig ·

Michael Jochum

 is in Denver, CO.

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For most of my 67 years on this earth I have tried, consciously, deliberately, and sometimes with enormous effort not to let my hatred of horrible people dominate my life. I have tried to live with the kind of moral discipline that my heroes modeled: Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis. People who confronted cruelty with conscience, hatred with courage, and injustice with an unshakable devotion to human dignity. People who believed that the long arc of the moral universe bends toward justice only when we are willing to bend it.

And then came this era.

And then came this movement.

And then came this crop of Republican grotesques.

What we are witnessing now is not simply a political disagreement. It is the normalization of moral collapse. It is the elevation of ignorance into identity, cruelty into virtue, and corruption into culture. These men are not merely wrong on the issues. They are not merely flawed leaders. They are inhuman destroyers of the civic order, architects of decay, and they carry their cruelty the way arsonists carry matches: casually, eagerly, without conscience or remorse.

They have dragged me back to a place I spent a lifetime trying to escape, a place where anger never sleeps, where the mind circles endlessly around the same moral wreckage, where even rest is haunted by the knowledge of what these people are doing to the country we love. It is exhausting. It is corrosive. And it is the inevitable psychological consequence of watching one's nation be methodically hollowed out by men who have no relationship with truth, no respect for history, and no capacity for shame.

History, however, is relentless.

Every era produces its monsters. Every generation believes its villains are unique. They are not. The names change; the pathology does not. The Hitlers and Eichmanns. The Stalins. The Maos. The Pol Pots. Men who mistook power for destiny and left only bodies, broken institutions, and the echo of their own lies behind them. What defines such figures is not merely the evil they commit, but the mass of ordinary people who enable them, the bureaucrats, the voters, the neighbors, the media figures, who look at cruelty and decide it is "necessary," who look at lies and call them "strategy," who look at moral collapse and label it "patriotism."

Which brings me to the most dangerous force in any collapsing democracy: the politically illiterate voter.

The person who votes for human garbage and then wraps the act in a flag. The citizen who trades conscience for comfort, integrity for identity, citizenship for cruelty. You were not tricked forever. You were not helpless. You chose the lie because it was easier than the truth. You chose the strongman because responsibility is frightening. You chose the mob because thinking for yourself is hard.

The cruelty continues to be the point.

It is the glue of this movement. It is the reward system. It is the signal flare of belonging. If you are not outraged by the suffering of others, you are welcomed. If you are entertained by it, you are celebrated. If you help inflict it, you are promoted.

This is no longer politics.

It is a moral emergency.

This is no longer left versus right.

It is conscience versus collapse.

This is no longer about winning elections.

It is about whether a civilization remembers who it is supposed to be.

History will record this moment with brutal clarity. Long after the slogans rot and the hats fade and the personalities dissolve into footnotes, what will remain is the simple accounting of who stood up, who stayed silent, and who actively helped drag the country into the mud.

This is the test of our time.

And far too many are failing it.

—Michael Jochum,

Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

ANS -- Rachel Hurley Speculates on Maduro

This is Rachel Hurley speculating about what may be happening with Trump and Maduro.  Interesting speculations. 

--Kim

Rachel Hurley 

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Something about Venezuela is not sitting right with me.

This is a long one.

And take this all with a grain of salt, because who the hell am I? I could be overthinking this whole thing.

Here's what can be backed up by reporting:

14 days before the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro, Russia evacuated the families of its diplomats from Venezuela. December 20th. Wives and kids. Quiet, organized, done.

Then on January 3rd, Delta Force drops in, grabs Maduro and his wife, and it's over in under thirty minutes.

That doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Russia publicly condemned the whole thing - called it armed aggression, demanded a UN Security Council meeting, the whole performative outrage routine. But you don't evacuate your people two weeks in advance unless you know something's coming. And if you know something's coming, someone told you.

Here's where it gets weirder.

Cuba - Venezuela's other major ally - didn't evacuate anybody. Cuban doctors are still there, confined to their quarters, families back in Havana losing their minds because nobody warned them this was happening. China? Same thing. No evacuation, just reactive condemnation after the fact.

So Russia knew. Cuba and China didn't. Or at least they didn't foresee any consequences from a US intervention - because sure;y they knew that Russians were leaving.

Now let's talk about how the operation actually went down.

Venezuela spent two billion dollars on Russian S-300 air defense systems - the kind that are supposed to turn the Caribbean into a no-fly zone for the U.S. military. On paper, these things track 24 targets simultaneously, knock cruise missiles out of the sky at 250 kilometers. Caracas should have been a fortress.

The U.S. neutralized all of it in under twenty minutes.

Either American military tech is so vastly superior that we can casually dismantle a Russian-backed air defense network before anyone even knows we're there, or those systems were ordered not to fire. Maybe both. But the speed of it - the totality of it - that's what doesn't add up.

And if we can do this - why is the Ukrainian war with Russia still happening?

Anyway - one helicopter took minor damage. That's it. No U.S. casualties. No significant Venezuelan casualties that anyone's bothered to specify. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez went on TV and said "innocent people died" but never gave numbers, never gave details, and hasn't brought it up again.

For a surprise military raid on a hostile capital city, that's remarkably clean.

And then there's Maduro himself.

He and his wife both surrendered. Not fought to the death, not tried to escape, not holed up for a siege. Surrendered. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team was part of the extraction force - not just Delta, but FBI HRT, the guys who specialize in cooperative extractions. You bring HRT when you're expecting the target to come willingly.

The whole transport route screams pre-arrangement.

Maduro goes from his compound to the USS Iwo Jima, then Guantanamo, then a nice clean flight to New York where a 25-page indictment is ready to unseal the same day he lands.

That indictment was prepared. The grand jury had already done its work. Jay Clayton's signature was on it before Maduro ever got on that helicopter.

They knew exactly when he'd be in custody.

Here's what I think happened - and again, I'm speculating here, but the pieces fit.

Maduro was cornered. His economy collapsed. He lost the 2024 election and the international community recognized his opponent. His former intelligence chief, Hugo Carvajal, pled guilty back in June and started cooperating. That guy would have known everything - security details, schedules, which officers were loyal, which ones would fold. Maduro's wife was indicted. His son was indicted. He was facing life in prison if the U.S. ever got him.

I actually watched a video of a recent interview that Maduro did where he said that he was ready to work with the US - he was just waiting for them to call.

So what if he made a deal?

What if Maduro, through back channels, offered to surrender in exchange for a reduced sentence? Maybe witness protection, maybe unfrozen assets, maybe immunity for his kid. The U.S. gets him in custody, gets control of Venezuelan oil, gets a clean regime change without a prolonged war.

Russia gets advance warning, pulls their people out, avoids an international incident. And everybody gets to maintain their public positions for domestic audiences.

Maduro looks like a victim - kidnapped by imperial aggression, not a guy who cut a deal to save his own ass. The U.S. looks strong - tough on dictators, military dominance, America first. Russia looks outraged - standing up to American hegemony. And Venezuela's power structure stays mostly intact because Trump's not working with the democratic opposition, he's working with Maduro's own vice president.

That last part is what really cinches it for me.

María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. She won the opposition primary. Her guy, Edmundo González, won the actual presidential election by a two-to-one margin and got international recognition as Venezuela's legitimate leader.

Seventy percent of Venezuelans support the opposition.

Trump dismissed her. Called her a nice woman who doesn't have support or respect in the country. Then said the U.S. would work with Delcy Rodríguez - Maduro's second-in-command, who is also under U.S. sanctions, who was appointed acting president by Venezuela's Supreme Court literally while Maduro was being transported to New York.

Why would you capture a dictator on narco-terrorism charges and then immediately partner with his deputy who's part of the same regime?

Unless she was part of the arrangement.

Look, I get it. This sounds like conspiracy theory territory.

Maybe the U.S. military is just that good. Maybe we walked into Caracas, deleted their air defenses, grabbed their president, and walked out without breaking a sweat purely through overwhelming technological superiority and brilliant tactical execution. Maybe Russia's evacuation two weeks prior was just really good intelligence gathering and risk management.

Maybe all the weird coincidences - the immediate indictment, the cooperative surrender, the FBI involvement, the decision to work with the existing regime - maybe that's all just efficient planning.

But 14 days?

Russia evacuated 14 days before the operation. That's not a coincidence. That's not good intelligence. That's advance notice.

And if Russia knew, someone told them. And if someone told them, this wasn't a surprise raid.

The real question is what everybody got out of the deal.

Maduro probably gets a reduced sentence if he cooperates, maybe stays alive instead of getting killed by his own people or spending the rest of his life in supermax. The U.S. gets Venezuelan oil back online - Trump literally said American companies will "spend billions of dollars" fixing the infrastructure and "start making money for the country."

Russia cuts its losses on a failed investment in Venezuela, maybe gets some Ukraine concessions we don't know about yet. And Venezuela's regime structure stays in place with a new face at the top who's already signaled she'll play ball.

Everyone wins. Except the Venezuelan people, obviously. And the pro-democracy movement that actually won the election.

But when has that ever mattered when oil and geopolitics are on the table?

We'll know more Monday when Maduro shows up for his arraignment. If he pleads guilty immediately, if he takes a cooperation deal, if this whole thing resolves quickly and quietly - that's your confirmation. You don't get that kind of efficiency in the U.S. criminal justice system unless the defendant's already made a deal before he walked in the door.

Like I said. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

But if you're not convinced - think about this - how massively bad would it have been for Trump if even one person died on this mission? If they had made a single mistake?

That's a fucking crazy chance to take if you don't already have the odds stacked in your favor.

#ratcclips

Rachel Hurley

I've posted 3 follow up essays about this if you're interested in reading them.