Let Them Hate Me, As Long As They Fear Me / Oderint Dum Metuant

Like anyone else, every day the sun rises I receive numerous short videos, taken from a movie or created specifically for this purpose, whose plot is always the same: a thug attacks a vulnerable person, hatefully abusing a defenseless individual.

Images that provoke revulsion, outrage, helplessness… until a vigilante appears who, in a matter of seconds, thanks to his photogenic musculature, his gun, or his mastery of martial arts; hapkido, jiu-jitsu, judo, kappap, karate, kung fu, capoeira, muay thai, krav maga, or a kick to the balls, I’ll skip the useless ones, in his understandable rage as a tough guy, punishes the aggressor and restores the bonhomie inherent in the philosophical order born in the minds of Hollywood, an order masterfully portrayed in his day; among so many others, by a luminary of the performing arts who lives on forever in the memory of movie lovers: the great Ronald Reagan.

In this way, with proven efficiency, justice, or what passes for it, is enforced at gunpoint, thereby bypassing the slow, cumbersome, and unnecessary intervention of the judiciary.

What about democracy? What about the rule of law, the Constitution, and the laws? As Horacio says, such distinguished corpses are accompanied only as far as the cemetery gate...

Adherence to the rules is inversely proportional to the number of missiles and drones you’re capable of manufacturing, and to the size of the balls of whoever has his finger on the button.

The track record of the United States; a state that should rightly be labeled criminal, includes the somewhat forced enthronement of illustrious representatives of the imperial order in Latin America: Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza, Jorge Ubico, Rafael Trujillo, Humberto Castelo Branco, Augusto Pinochet, Alfredo Stroessner, Hugo Banzer, and Jorge Videla, all the result of interventions in Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina. Not to mention the coups d’état and the imposition of civilian dictators. Or the rest of the world.

What is happening in Venezuela is the latest crime in a long list that punctuates the history of the empire; a history that includes the assassination of local presidents: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963); as well as the genocide of the Native Americans, the enslavement of the imported African population, and the racial discrimination that still persists.

Nothing new under the sun in the free world.

So what is most striking is to see to what extent Donald has made Caligula’s aphorism, “Oderint dum metuant”, his own, turning it into his symbol, coat of arms, and insignia:

Let them hate me, as long as they fear me...

Emmanuel Macron not only hailed the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro as a promising move, but he also failed to even mention the trampling of a country’s sovereignty, the disregard for the United Nations, and the use of international law, Congress, and U.S. laws as ad-hoc substitutes for toilet paper, not to mention the “bad duck” threats against anyone who dares to oppose the designs of the White House boss.

Macron’s timidity is matched only by the cowardice of his peers and the masses of trained journalists who hypocritically celebrated the capture of Nicolás Maduro, declared a dictator in the country of the “Century of Extinguished Enlightenment.”

Meanwhile, you get the impression you’re watching a game of bluff poker. Listening to Donald’s speech, or rather, his rambling, in which he can’t even string a sentence together, and then the torrent of praise for his glory sung by Hegseth brought to mind that French proverb that says:

Marchandise trop vantée... est souvent avariée

In plain English: “Goods that are too highly praised… are often spoiled”…

Once again, as Horace says, when he finally dies… they’ll put the handles on the inside of Donald’s coffin: no one will want to carry that corpse.

As for Venezuela, there you have a strange “triumph.”

Assassinating presidents, bombing defenseless countries, organizing coups d’état, destroying societies, etc. the Yankees know how to do all that. Occupying territories by force, staying there until they’re kicked out, they know that, too.

Always in their own interest: when they find out there’s oil somewhere… they get an irrepressible urge to sow their democracy there.

Now, in a Hollywood-style scenario, they’ve kidnapped a president under a pretext that not even they believe… They haven’t occupied any territory, they haven’t overthrown the existing regime, they haven’t crowned Corina as a handful of Captain Arayas had hoped, nor have they seized the “oil that was stolen from them”, they simply left like any common thief who breaks into a house to steal and then flees.

As a warning to the distinguished audience, fair enough. To show that an army that costs a trillion dollars a year is good for something, that’s fair enough, too. But Donald assured us that Washington will rule Venezuela until there is “a safe transition” (sic).

One gets the picture:

Not to mention the chorus of applause from the leaders of the “free world”- luminaries like Ursula von der Leyen, the aforementioned Macron, and the European Union’s bunch of carnations.

It remains to be seen how and when Donald will administer a country to which he won’t send troops (as Marco Rubio put it), nor does he control it except in his irresponsible little dreams.

James David Vance, a Charles III-style vice president (waiting for the other guy to die...), suggested using AnyDesk- a popular software program that allows you to take remote control of another computer, conveniently installed in the Oval Office - even though some say he would have preferred NinjaOne Remote because he likes the name.

Meanwhile, the attacked country,which until yesterday the “West” unanimously described as a horrible dictatorship,seems to have regained its democratic credibility, the kind the empire likes. So far, no European vassal,nor the Trump administration,has suggested that Delcy Rodríguez is practicing tyranny, and everything points to the conclusion that Maduro’s was a self-indulgent dictatorship.

All the other members of the government are respectable, as long as they obey and do whatever Donald, or Rubio, or Vance, order via AnyDesk.

Do you understand any of this? I don’t…

Even less so when,with the air of a housewife dusting off a desk,Donald dismissed Corina Machado’s invaluable collaboration (supposedly because she didn’t hand over that damn Nobel Prize to him…), that of the “charmed” presidents like Juan Guaidó and Edmundo González, or figures like Julio Borges, or the coup plotter Hugo Carmona and other hopeful democrats.

The response in the European Union,including from former leaders such as François Hollande (Flamby),is limited, or was limited, to emphasizing that Maduro is a disgrace and that the entire world is rejoicing over his “capture.”

Granted that he is, no one has dared to talk about anything else, and the press, radio, and television are playing right into their hands by interviewing every anti-Chávez “opponent” willing to celebrate the bombardment of their own country.

International law? The United Nations Charter? Regional and global peace? Way off in the background on the right…

Until… until Donald himself reminded us just how essential it is, “for U.S. security,” that the empire take over Greenland. “We’ll talk about it in twenty days,” he added.

As a very fitting echo that came at just the right moment, Katie Miller,wife of presidential adviser Stephen Miller,posted on her favorite social media platform a map of Greenland draped in the American flag, along with the message “SOON.” Pure coincidence…

The stunned silence, bewilderment, and diarrhea of the confused leaders of the European Union were total.

“It’s impossible; it would be the end of NATO; they can’t do this to us (after we’ve swallowed so many snakes...)” and other equally brilliant clichés,uttered in a trembling voice,were followed by references to the very things they had been shitting on until January 3: international law, the United Nations Charter, etc.

Today, in a waste of CO₂ emissions and time that would be better spent resolving the issues that concern European citizens, Macron welcomed,once again,Zelensky and more than a dozen Western leaders, as well as Donald’s son-in-law, to the Élysée Palace to… To what end? Asking the question is already stating the answer.

The European Union, a concept born in the midst of World War II, has always had the strategic objective of facilitating the United States’ administration of its transatlantic vassal. Without AnyDesk.

This is like the famous fable of the frog and the scorpion. Surrounding oneself with obedient lackeys is in the very nature of the U.S. It’s an innate tendency.

To those pure souls who criticize Donald and the American Republicans, hiding behind their preference for the Democrats, I beg you to remember that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan (1945) were ordered by a Democrat (Harry S. Truman).

Similarly, the attacks on Venezuela were initiated by another Democrat: on March 9, 2015, Barack Obama issued an executive order declaring Venezuela a “threat to national security (of the United States)” and ordered the Treasury Department to freeze the property and assets of seven Venezuelan officials, who were deemed responsible for human rights abuses, repression, and at least 43 deaths during protests.

The only difference between Obama and Donald is that Donald is crazy.

Which one is worse?

P.S.

(The Guardian, London, “Presidential Elections,” 2024)