Dear 2120,
You already know this, of course, but 2026 is off to a turbulent start. The US has kidnapped the Venezuelan president under the pretense of him being a ‘narcoterrorist’ – whatever that means. For the Trump administration it means supplying the US with drugs and contributing to the fentanyl crisis. Trump, however, has subsequently been characteristically forthright and disturbingly honest about what they’re actually doing in Venezuela: seizing control of the country’s world-leading oil production.
Now, Maduro is certainly no saint, and Venezuela’s government is clearly an oppressive dictatorship. But any sane person can see that this is just another imperialist US power grab. It’s about the oil; it’s about consolidating the American position in a global political landscape with China on the rise.
There’s nothing new to these sorts of power grabs. What’s new is the complete and utter honesty from the Trump administration about their brazen colonial intentions.
In the old days, US coups required plausible deniability: CIA-backed insurgents, carefully staged color revolutions, years of economic warfare disguised as sanctions. Before Trump, the US would manage it coups and invasions in more surreptitious and clandestine ways, pretending to ‘spread democracy’ and whatnot.
Now they barely give a fuck. They just copy the Iraq propaganda playbook (which was pretty sketchy to begin with), and let DJT say the quiet part out loud because he can do no wrong in the eyes of the MAGA cult.
They might be coming for Greenland next. Watch this space. Or not. It’s already in your history books, I guess.
Letters to 2120 