In various discussions about “what do we do with Venezuela?” we should not ignore that the people asking the question are representatives of a military superpower who took it upon itself to intervene in Venezuelan politics.

The US, as a superpower per se is hardly a good candidate to step and help the poor benighted Venezuelans set up a new government, considering that it has conspired in the overthrow of many publicly constituted governments and is, currently, led by a man who attempted to overthrow his own democratic process, then succeeded in the position electorily. The US, with its racist gerrymandered electoral college, is a duopolistic oligarchy that badly needs a house-cleaning in terms of the health of its body politic. We cannot ignore the effects of systemic racism in its founding, or its colonial projects.

My opinion is that the international community should no longer recognize the US as a legitimately constituted democracy and should remove it from the UN Security Council along with Russia (A dictatorship led by Putin) and China (another dictatorship led by Xi). If the populations of these nations adopt constitutions and sets of laws, and ratify them, that would be a good idea. I would further suggest that once the US gets the US, China, and Russia off the Security Council, the council’s bylaws should be rewritten to do away with the privileged veto.

Note that any ratifiable constitution cannot embody the idea that a nation should be allowed to maintain and deploy an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.* Currently there are several nations in the United Nations that have secret or semi-secret arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, or stealth first-strike weapons. They all need to adopt constitutions or amendments deprecating them as a tool of statecraft and turning them over to the UN, collectively, as wardens and controllers of their terrible power.

Furthermore, since the globe is facing a climate crisis, it would be a good opportunity, now, to establish a supra-national climate control authority with the power to set emissions standards, and the capability to enforce them first with political force then with military if necessary. The military of every nation (I am looking at you, United States) should be counted against their carbon “footprint” and their use, deployment, and equipment should be in line with international non-imperialistic goals.

I am not saying that everone needs to go forth and study Locke, Paine, and Rousseau. I am saying, however, that it would have helped. Humanity has allowed some of the worst among us to take control over the rest of us. The catastrophic damage that government-sponsored “free market” anarcho-capitalism in the United States model has done to the globe is possibly beyond repair and is about 50/50 likely to wipe us out. Never mind all the other stuff.

Reliable climate models appear to be accurately predicting the incipient collapse of fisheries and agriculture, and the onset of world-wide famines and catastrophes over the next 30-50 years. Governments that ignore Rousseau and Paine’s basic arguments – that they are there to serve their people – will fail and be replaced in turn with those that are capable of doing so, or at least trying. Our future is to decide if the film Mad Max is a cautionary tale, or a documentary. Is embedding ourselves in a thin layer of pollution along with the dinosaurs, racists, monarchists, flat earthers, and deranged sectarians – is that the best we can do?

Humanity has lazed along too long, allowing the worst among us, and the least qualified, to rule us. At the nadir, are the theocratic ethno-states, which purport that our political options should be selected by breeding and/or good luck. Again, I am not saying we all need to study Rosseau and Paine, but we all need to understand their arguments, or we will collectively perish of heat, drought, and famine while vain and foolish leaders argue about who gets to claim a popular mandate. We, the people, need to establish that mandate and – in the meantime – stop the sociopathic fringe that wants to rule humanity from stepping near the reins of power.

We have a lot of work to do, and the cliff is approaching fast. Honestly, our fall has begun already.
If I may address you so, we are all comrades, for we all depend on eachother making the right decisions.