CSotD: Empty Voices, Empty Rooms
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This is when I first heard “Yankee Go Home!” I was eight, Ike was president and Vice-President Nixon was visiting Venezuela.
As these cutlines read, the wreath-laying didn’t happen and Nixon scarpered on home. He was quite shaken by the event, which cracked the shatter-proof glass in his limo and shattered the image of the US as everybody’s friend. At least our self-image that we were.
It wasn’t an entirely isolated incident, though the fact that it involved the vice-president made it stand out from other Yankee Go Home demonstrations.
It would have been hard to shatter my illusions because I hadn’t formed many, at least not on that level. I was hip to Santa and the Tooth Fairy, but I hadn’t given Eisenhower and Nixon a great deal of thought yet. I assumed those people throwing rocks were the bad guys, because I assumed we were the good guys.
And all I knew about Venezuela was that it was where Matilda went with Harry Belafonte’s money, though well after Nixon’s visit, my grandfather went down there to look into the country’s iron ore deposits on behalf of his employer. Not everyone in Venezuela hated us, but about 20 years later, my grandfather, then retired, observed that “someday, all those little brown people are going to ask ‘Where’s mine?'”
They’re not only asking it of us, but of their own leadership. My grandfather was speaking of people in resource-rich places around the world, not just Venezuela, and, obviously, he was right.
In what may have been the same conversation, he observed that if the steel industry had spent the money cleaning up that they spent lobbying against the new environmental laws of the ’70s, they’d have made Pittsburgh into a paradise.
Once the laws passed, they had to clean up anyway. But we’re fixing that now.
Not only are we relaxing the clean air and clean water regulations in this country, but we’re boycotting the COP 30 conference to show that we don’t believe in all that sciencey hoaxy stuff they talk about.
Not that our absence seems to be making anything positive happen. Jennings offers a shrug from his seat in the UK, while Aussie cartoonists have been furious with their government, accusing it of undermining its own speeches with milquetoast promises of someday-but-not-yet.
And there are the usual criticisms that arise whenever nations gather to discuss environmental issues, apparently from people who have never been to a conference.
Yes, airplanes emit pollution. But if you think it might have been done on Zoom instead, you apparently think the things that happen at conferences happen during those parts where they sit around a big table making speeches.
I’ve never been to a conference, or covered anyone else’s conference, where the speechifying was where anything happened. It requires being there, in the small groups and private conversations and informal unannounced gatherings where whatever happens happens.
Boycotting those speeches means boycotting those meaningful interactions as well.
Not to worry. We don’t have to be global leaders, because Xi and Modi are happily assuming the role we’ve chosen to abandon. China is adding wind and solar at a massive rate and India has added both sources at an equally impressive rate though rankings in renewables and clean sources seem dependent on how they are measured and will be one of the things they can bat around at those polite, pointless roundtable discussions.
We’re also boycotting the G20 and the world seems grateful not to have the Universe’s Leading Authority on Tariffs and Trade Balances present. Our official position is that climate change is a hoax and we appear to feel the same way about international trade.
Juxtaposition of His Own Self
Meanwhile, back in the Caribbean, Broelman first suggested that, while Venezuela has no standing as an exporter of fentanyl and is only a minor go-between in the cocaine trade, the fact that it has the world’s largest petroleum deposits may play a role in Dear Leader’s sudden fascination, then later added the distraction factor.
Now, as young Americans without heel spurs are being rushed to the scene, Dear Leader offers lame explanations for his growing determination to Do Something about Maduro’s dictatorship or fentanyl or whatever.
It’s a good time to be a chickenhawk, and, as the Fish say, Wall Street’s big chance has come at last.
Maduro is not universally popular in Venezuela, which is why so many of his people have made the arduous trip to seek asylum in the United States, which, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, involved bringing cattle with them through the Darien Gap, a claim that would be laughable from the town drunk but is scary coming from someone in charge of our economy.
At the moment, while with one hand we’re somewhat sort of apparently looking into overthrowing the cruel dictator, with the other we are rounding up Venezuelan refugees and sending them back to him.
If you’d like to hear a serious discussion of this complex situation, I recommend David Frum’s conversation with Venezuelan exile Quico Toro.
And as a prelude to having other people’s children die in South America, the extrajudicial murder of people in the Caribbean continues. It’s not funny, but humor is a potent weapon against bullies, and Granlund’s cartoon makes the very serious point that we do not appear to be sure who we’re killing.
As I’ve noted before, when I covered border issues, the authorities were eager to show off the stuff they’d intercepted. Now they just blow it all up and please don’t tell me they couldn’t scoop up evidence, because boat fragments and body parts are washing up on the beaches of Trinidad.
They call these people “alleged narco-terrorists” and while I think they made up that latter term to scare everyone into silent obedience, I’d prefer “purported” to “alleged,” because purported is about rumors, while alleged means you’re working to prove the accusation.
Obviously, we’re not.
Good News! Since Cousineau posted this, Trump has announced he wants to meet with Maduro.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we wound up with peace in our time and profits in his.
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