by Alan Browne
The script is familiar, yet the stage is newly dressed. The recent reinstatement of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector, coupled with the Western media’s anointing of opposition figure María Corina Machado as a democratic savior, is not a break from history, but a direct continuation of it. Machado, touted as a future leader should the Maduro government fall, has promised to auction off Venezuela’s vast resources—a treasure trove of $1.7 trillion in oil, natural gas, and real estate. This is not a plan for national prosperity; it is a blueprint for a fire sale, a repeat of the catastrophic “shock therapy” that saw influential oligarchs seize state resources after the fall of the Soviet Union.
This is the modern face of a very old game. The United States, facing a loss of influence in Latin America with friendly governments gone in Colombia, Brazil joining the BRICS bloc to challenge the G7, and no longer controlling the Panama Canal, is returning to a proven, brutal playbook. We have seen this before, not just in Russia, but across Latin America in the 1970s, when the United States supported multiple military coups to overthrow democratically elected governments in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. The stated goal was to “contain Communism” during the unpopular Vietnam War, but the true aim was to maintain a grip on the Western Hemisphere for Commerce, Industry, and Banking. These forces have always ruled, designing a government by and for the ruling class.
The Domestic Illusion: How We Are Bought Off and Distracted
To execute this agenda abroad, the public must be pacified at home. The ruling class has long appealed to nationalism and patriotism to make us forget. Following World War II, the state flexed its power against workers with the Taft-Hartley Act, while simultaneously buying them off. Union membership peaked and standards of living rose, creating a generation of consumers whose spending drove GDP. The post-war boom created a fleeting illusion of shared prosperity, allowing working-class whites, African Americans, and immigrants to experience quality of living increases.
But that progress stalled, leaving a legacy of distraction. The American people are now fed a steady diet of consumption, entertainment, and patriotic fervor designed to divert attention from a crushing economic reality. This country is hurtling toward $37 trillion in national debt, and the corporations, banks, and foreign countries that own that debt expect their interest payments. The government’s solution? A vicious cycle of austerity—taking more from the working class and the poor, while simultaneously granting tax breaks to the elite and siphoning public funds to service the debt.
We now stand at the largest wealth disparity in the history of the United States, and the stage is set for another grand distraction. Just days after the government reopened from the longest shutdown in American history, we are being asked to focus on a supposed Nobel Peace Prize-winning democrat in Venezuela and a president in the United States trying to outrun a scandal. It is a classic bait-and-switch: as the pillars of domestic prosperity crumble under the weight of debt and inequality, the trumpets of foreign intervention are sounded once more.
The promise of a “Nobel Peace Prize” for Venezuela is a lie, just as the promise of liberation in Iraq was a lie. It is the sugar coating on a pill of plunder. The resources of a nation are to be carved up, the debt of the empire is to be serviced by its own people, and we are all encouraged to watch the spectacle, wave a flag, and forget that the true battle is not in Caracas, but in the ever-widening chasm between the ruling class and the rest of us. Until we break this cycle, the history of imperial incursion will continue to be written in the blood of foreign nations and the stolen prosperity of the American people.
FACTS FOR WORKING PEOPLE HERE