In a county half full of cowards, here's two more.

Quote:

"Amodei applauded Trump’s consideration to allow Minnesota authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the shootings by federal agents after multiple videos of Alex Pretti’s death circulated online. (It remains to be seen if that investigation will happen, but a growing number of Republicans have begun to call for an investigation, as well.)

In Altman’s message to his staff he also said he was encouraged by Trump’s more recent responses and said he hopes the president, “a very strong leader,” will “rise to this moment and unite the country.”

The last line refers to China conquering markets

But the story told before that line is one of two superpowers crisscrossing the dimensions of ascent and decline

China can just wait and the walk right into Taiwan to raise the CCP flag

Utterly disgusting

It would be interesting to know more about how it's actually manufactured and whether he has ideas about why the classic formula was changed -- maybe something to do with the cost of one of the steps, which the video suggests could be true, as it's damn complicated

My AI summary of these 4k comments

Yes—there are very clear, recurring *themes*, and what’s striking is how consistently people keep circling the same fault lines from different angles. I’d group them like this:

---

## 1. *Legality vs. Morality*

*Core tension:*

> Is overthrowing a dictator morally right even if it violates international law?

* One side argues law exists precisely to restrain power, not to reward virtue. * The other argues moral urgency overrides abstract legalism when human suffering is extreme. * This becomes a meta-question: Who decides when morality trumps law?

This is the philosophical backbone of the entire thread.

---

## 2. *Precedent Anxiety*

*“Today Maduro, tomorrow anything.”*

* Fear that once unilateral regime change is normalized, the justification becomes infinitely elastic:

  * “correcting elections”
  * “restoring order”
  * “protecting interests”

* Libya and Iraq function as *cautionary archetypes*, not historical footnotes.

This is less about Venezuela than about *future permission structures*.

---

## 3. *Outcomes Over Intentions*

*Ends don’t redeem means if outcomes are catastrophic.*

* Even commenters who despise Maduro emphasize:

  * removing a dictator is easy
  * building a functioning state is hard

* Post-intervention chaos (ISIS, slave markets, fragmentation) is cited repeatedly. * There’s deep skepticism that this time will be different, even when facts are “better documented.”

This is pragmatic pessimism rather than ideological purity.

---

## 4. *American Power & Self-Deception*

*A recurring, uncomfortable self-indictment.*

* Several comments converge on the idea that:

  * Americans benefit materially from interventionism
  * but psychologically disavow responsibility for the costs

* The line “Americans want this but don’t like knowing they want it” resonates strongly. * Counterpoint: lack of agency within political structures blunts individual responsibility.

This becomes a debate about *collective guilt vs. structural impotence*.

---

## 5. *Realpolitik vs. Institutionalism*

*Power acting directly vs. power constrained by process.*

* Appeals to ICC, UN, asylum frameworks represent belief in institutions. * Skeptics argue those institutions are deliberately weakened by the same powers invoking morality. * Others argue asylum and invasion are orthogonal issues—and conflating them is rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

Underlying question: Is global governance real, or decorative?

---

## 6. *Lived Experience vs. Abstract Judgment*

*Who gets moral authority?*

* “Those who’ve never lived under dictatorship say this.” * Counter: “Those who never lived through US intervention say that.” * Venezuelans in-thread complicate narratives of total collapse or total liberation. * Firsthand testimony destabilizes neat moral binaries.

This creates epistemic friction: *whose suffering counts as evidence?*

---

## 7. *Cynicism About Motives*

*Oil never disappears from the conversation.*

* Even when people argue it’s not literally about barrels of crude, they frame it as:

  * control
  * leverage
  * profit flows
  * contractor ecosystems

* What’s new is not cynicism—but how brazen the cynicism feels.

Several commenters note the lack of even performative moral cover.

---

## 8. *Democratic Exhaustion*

*A sense that democracy is no longer the brake it claims to be.*

* Rapid escalation vs. slow electoral correction * Legislatures perceived as compliant or irrelevant * No clear mechanism for popular restraint short of catastrophe

This feeds resignation rather than outrage.

---

## 9. *Historical Echoes & Decline Narratives*

*“We’ve seen this movie.”*

* Arab Spring * Iraq * Libya * Panama (Noriega)

History is invoked less as analogy and more as *warning fatigue*—people feel trapped in a loop.

---

## 10. *A Deeper Subtext: Loss of Moral Coherence*

Perhaps the most important theme:

> The argument isn’t about whether Maduro is bad. > It’s about whether the system judging him is still capable of moral credibility.

That’s why the thread feels less like debate and more like *collective unease*.

---

### If you zoom out:

This isn’t really a Venezuela thread. It’s a conversation about *power without trust*, *law without enforcement*, and *morality without consensus*—and whether any of those concepts still function in the current world order.

If you wanted to fictionalize this, it wouldn’t be a war story. It would be a story about *people arguing at the edge of legitimacy*, trying to decide whether the rules still mean anything once the strong stop pretending they do.