Nicolas Maduro is nothing but a thug who gained power over a nation. He’s not the only thug who has ever done so, of course; in fact, you can probably count on one hand the number of godly, virtuous, decent leaders there are in the world today. And I include America in that count. Power corrupts, and because the world has largely rejected God, more and more gangsters and human scum are rising to positions of power and influence in nations across the earth. It has not been a good thing—anywhere. But it’s the world we currently live in.
Governments have convinced most of mankind that only government—and that means people in power, “government” is nothing but a nebulous concept without “leaders” and bureaucrats to run it—are the major, or only, solution to humanity’s problems. That Marxist who is now mayor of New York City actually said so—“there is no problem that government cannot solve.” And that, apparently, includes taking people’s property away from them, the key facet of Marxism. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the people of New York do about it. Will they fight? Or will they be sheep? Stay tuned.
But government “solutions” are the universal answer now. I don’t know how many times—countless—when I was teaching in China, I read an essay in which some student discussed some problem, and their answer—every single time—included “government must do X, Y, or Z.” Well, that’s the way they’ve been taught to think in China. And, obviously, increasing numbers in America and the rest of the world also believe it. Governments (politicians) love it, of course. They have no reason to change it, only to continue to propagate it. And they will, until we stop them, like our Founders did 250 years ago. But I don’t see our Founding Fathers mentality in America today.
Personally, I don’t especially like America doing the kind of stuff it did in Venezuela. I’d rather we be able to mind our own business and let the rest of the world take a flying leap into the eternal abyss. But Presidents have intervened in other countries for a long time, including Bill Clinton in Haiti, George W. Bush in Iraq, and Abraham Lincoln in the Southern Confederacy, so what Mr. Trump did has a long, glorified precedent in American history. We can argue the merits of doing it, but it’s done, been done before, and will probably be done again. American politicians love power, too, and love to use it. If we don’t like it, we’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves because we put these kinds of people in the positions they occupy.
America has a serious drug problem, and it’s a demand problem, not a supply problem. As long as stupid people continue to want drugs, then monsters like Nicolas Maduro, Mexican drug cartels, Xi Jinping, etc.—because they are monsters—will continue to make billions by supplying the stuff. America’s drug problem is from the same source as the world’s thug dictator problem—a rejection of God and the understanding of what a virtuous life entails and produces. People have turned their backs on the Almighty, but still want something to live for. So, they try to find it in drugs, alcohol, sex—something that will fill the need, the void in their lives they’ve created by rejecting the Creator’s true purpose for them. Hence, we have people in the world like Nicolas Maduro, Mexican drug cartels, et al. We can try, and occasionally succeed, at cutting off some of the supply. But as long as the demand is there, the supply will be, too.
It’s not a new problem; indeed, it’s as old as history. But we never learn from history, and so we continue to repeat its mistakes. That will probably persist until the end of time.
How do you get people to change? How can blind humans be persuaded to see their own sins and fallacies and reject them? I wish I knew. Nobody, even Moses or Jesus, has ever solved that greatest of all human conundrums. And, if those two couldn’t do it, that probably means that mankind doesn’t want the answer, and thus the problem is insoluble. I haven’t especially noticed atheistic Marxism making the world a more humane, loftier place to live in the past 100 years.
So, Maduro is gone, and another Marxist thug is in power in Venezuela now. President Trump warned her that she had better do the “right” things. Will she? Well, she’s a politician who loves power. What do you think?
My substacks are a little unique. Not just current events, but history, our Founding Fathers, what America was meant to be, and Biblical exegesis. Check them out. “Mark It Down! (mklewis929.substack.com), and “Mark It Down! Bible Substack” (mklbibless.substack.com) Both free. Follow me on “X”: @thailandmkl. Read my western novels, Whitewater , River Bend, Return to River Bend, and Allie’s Dilemma all available on Amazon.
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