Jan 3

Jan 3 Greenland Playbook

Chicago, Demonstrations, Donald J. Trump, Performance, Protest, Public Declarations

As an 18-year-old young man, Donald J. Trump “developed” bone spurs, enabling him to avoid the Vietnam-era draft. Now that he is the Commander-in-Chief, Trump has developed a newly found love for the U.S. military, apparently because there is no risk that he will be killed in action. We first saw that love last year when Trump staged a gigantic military parade that snaked through the streets of Washington, D.C. in celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary.

Like a 13-year-old boy who discovers that his penis has more than one function, Trump decided to pleasure himself today, using Venezuela as the lubricant and its president, Nicolás Maduro, as the Playboy centerfold. Until today, Trump may not have fully realized the pleasure that deploying the military U.S. produces in his loins. Setting aside whether Trump’s orders were legal or warranted, the resulting military operation was both impressive and flawless—at least as reported to date.

At this morning’s press conference, Trump exhibited the thrill and wonder of that 13-year-old boy after he makes his life altering discovery behind a locked bathroom door. Throughout the day, cable news commentators reported on Trump’s discovery, noting that the leaders of Columbia, Cuba, and Mexico should take note because when Trump locks himself in the bathroom again, those leaders may be the subject of his male gaze.

According to Trump, Maduro was targeted because he sat atop a gigantic narco-terrorist state that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. While Venezuela may supply cocaine to Europe, it is not a particularly large supplier of drugs to the U.S. Contrary to Trump’s assertions, it is not a source of fentanyl.

Venezuela, however, holds the largest oil reserves in the world, totaling 330 billion barrels of known reserves. Trump could not have been more clear during his press conference: U.S. oil companies will be put in charge of exploiting Venezuela’s underdeveloped oil reserves. He was far less clear about who would profit from Venezuelan oil sales. While he gave an obligatory nod to the Venezuelan people, Trump is keenly aware of Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez’s decision to nationalize the Venezuelan oil industry in 1976—an act that was set in motion in 1971. Trump viewed the attack he orchestrated today as payback for assets he believes were wrongly taken from the multinational oil companies and First World economies—never mind that Venezuela always retained ownership of the land and the oil reserves beneath it.

While the Venezuelan oil may not be siphoned off directly by the United States government, if Trump proceeds along the lines he has already established in other realms, the U.S. will likely demand a percentage interest in the profits from sales of the Venezuelan oil in exchange for the U.S. State Department’s grant of concessions to multinational oil companies.

As a child of the Fifties, Trump remains rooted in the era of fossil fuels, as we recently saw when he pulled the licenses for four wind farms in the North Atlantic. Trump, however, is no student of economics. He wrongly assumes that the oil companies are salivating over the opportunity to increase Venezuelan oil production. Oil is currently selling for $57 per barrel, which means increasing Venezuela’s meager daily production will not yield the huge profits that would warrant new investments in Venezuela’s oil industry, particularly with large parts of the world transitioning to wind, solar, thermal and nuclear power.

If any country should be nervous over today’s unlawful military action and the resulting U.S.-initiated coup, it should be Greenland. Venezuela may have oil, but Greenland has large, untapped reserves of rare earth minerals, copper, gold, graphite, iron ore, lithium, copper, nickel, uranium, and zinc. Two weeks ago, Trump appointed Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as the U.S. special envoy to Greenland. Trump has previously argued that Greenland should be incorporated into the United States, even though Greenland is a self-governing Danish territory.

Despite Venezuela’s population of 28 million and a sizable military, Trump was able to decapitate Venezuela’s leadership in a matter of hours, and then claim that the United States was now running Venezuela. Using the U.S. military, Trump therefore should be able to take control of Greenland in a matter of seconds, given the island’s population of just 57,000.

After today’s incursion, I have little doubt that Trump will seize control of Greenland before my next birthday (December 31). No country’s sovereignty is safe with Trump in office. Once a 13-year old boy learns the pleasures behind that locked door, he repeatedly locks that door.

The U.S.’s reputation around the world will suffer as a result of Trump’s masturbatory adventures. The world will come to realize that the U.S. no longer supports or protects democracy around the world, which will diminish the country’s ability to shape events and project the power that has allowed the U.S. to amass 30% of the world wealth with just 4.2% of the world’s population. Trump is successfully extinguishing the beacon of hope that the U.S. has projected for at least a century.

Trump now uses the U.S. military to take what he wants. If there are any doubts about our lack of commitment to Venezuelan democracy, why then did Trump choose Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to replace Maduro instead of 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corina Machado, who was barred by Maduro from running in the 2023 Venezuelan Presidential election? The candidate who served as a proxy for Machado won in a landslide, but the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner nevertheless.

Today was a very sad day for America, which explains why an impressive 400 people took to Chicago’s streets early this evening to express their extreme displeasure with Trump’s incursion into Venezuela. A month ago, several of the city’s Far Left groups presciently called for a demonstration at 5:00 PM in Federal Plaza on the day that the U.S. invades Venezuela. Today was that day.

Given the frigid temperatures, the organizers thankfully kept the demonstration short. The rally included five or six speakers. It was followed by a march north on Michigan Avenue, with a left turn onto Upper Wacker Drive, thereby ending the event across the river from Trump Tower. Ninety minutes from beginning to end.

Of the speakers, longtime activist Andy Thayer made the strongest case against Trump’s military incursion into Venezuela. Thayer sounded the alarm by pointing to U.S. adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those were supposed to be quick military incursions to improve the lives of the locals. In both cases, the efforts resulted in extensive death and destruction over prolonged periods of times. After spending billions of dollars and sustaining thousands of casualties, the United States retreated. It is open to question whether the lives of ordinary Iraqi and Afghani citizens were improved. While Thayer is associated with the Far Left, he spoke the truth when he said that everyone should be in the streets today, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

Regrettably, several speakers spoke out on behalf of the Palestinians, diluting the message behind today’s rally. Palestine may be an important issue, but it was not the issue de jour. As I have written many times before, those staging demonstrations should focus on one issue at a time. Because Venezuela is a relatively new issue, the organizers should have used the precious time that the cold allotted them to lay out the factual foundation that justifies speaking out against Trump’s Venezuelan adventurism.

In particular, Trump has altered the direction of long standing American foreign policy—not a surprise given the Heritage Foundation’s input into Project 2025 (see, e.g., page 181 of that manifesto). Instead of supporting democracy and freedom around the world, Trump seeks unfettered control over the Western hemisphere, free to do what he wants to do and take what he wants to take in Central and Latin America.

Trump’s policy has significant ramifications for world peace and U.S. supply chains. How can the U.S. now tell Russia’s Vladimir Putin to cease his war efforts in Ukraine, once an important part of the Soviet Empire? For similar reasons, how can the U.S. demand that China’s Xi refrain from invading Taiwan, the Philippines, or other sovereign Asian countries? Is Trump prepared to turn Finland over to the Russians, or Taiwan’s chip manufacturing industry over to the Chinese? If Trump believes natural resources from around the world are vital to U.S. interests, he should have thought twice about dismantling USAID. Since the end of World War II, U.S. soft power has been highly effective.

Returning to the morning press conference, Trump indicated that several Americans were wounded during the Venezuelan operation. As far as I can tell, the Trump Administration has yet to release casualty figures. Not doing so is disrespectful to those who were wounded. Moreover, Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are engaged in a coverup as they attempt to hide from the American people the true cost of Trump’s military adventurism.

Given the persistence of Chicago’s Far Left groups, we will undoubtedly see more demonstrations addressing Trump’s use of the military and his adventurism at the expense of the national sovereignty of other nations. Let’s hope for an early Spring thaw. Today, given the short notice and cold temperatures, the relatively large turnout was noteworthy. To move the needle, however, the country needs a repeat of the No Kings demonstrations that took place just two and half months ago, but on an even larger scale.

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]