How’s this for history repeating? The mainstream American media is botching its coverage of the Trump administration’s mounting military threats to Venezuela, and that failure is contributing to what looks to be a prolonged and violent disaster for both nations. Some experts inside Venezuela are warning that a U.S. armed effort at “regime change” could detonate years of brutal chaos there, much like Iraq in the years after the 2003 American invasion.
The media’s incompetence continues despite a major news event that should have instigated higher scrutiny and better reporting—the Nobel Committee has just honored the pro-democracy forces inside Venezuela by awarding the Peace Prize to one of its leaders, Maria Cortina Machado. This event, coming as it did inside a bubble of pure hype surrounding President Donald Trump’s doomed campaign to sway the Nobel Committee into handing him the award, should have been a flashing light alerting the press that a bigger story is already afoot in Venezuela.
It’s not certain that the message has gotten through. Meanwhile the media’s failures are stacking up.
They’re not oblivious. National Media (particularly FOX’n’Friends) has been screaming about the Venezuelan Menace for years, if not decades. Whether its “Venezuelans Yearn For Freedom” interviews with dissidents or “Venezuelan warmongering threatens all of Latin America” neo-con bait or “Venezuelan Illegals Are Invading Our Borders” slop for the nativists, they’ve been pumping this bilge through every frequency.
This goes back to Trump 1 and “Obama turned us into Venezuela!” anti-health care reform / inflation hawkery reactionary populism.
We’ve just been whipping people up to the point that “Kill all the Venezuelans” is a mainstream talking point.
Absolutely. And for anyone with something to lose, it tends to work. Just another edition of The Red Scare.