Quote :

"Guyanese are not happy about this"

i'll take your word for it but from my limited vantage point i see mixed reactions. but most of the unhappy people use a lot of the same kind of derangement syndrome "everything the US/trump does is suspect" rhetoric, which although i understand the historical case for where it comes from, i mostly see as reactionary "we're scared it COULD be the worst case scenario so we're just going to assume it is"

Quote :

"It was actually Maduros opposition (the Nobel peace prize winner) that was pushing for invading Guyana even more than Maduro"

i'm not familiar with this point of view and my quick internet search does not confirm it. can you elaborate

Quote :

"Stability is better than chaos."

not always. sometimes a little chaos now leads to a healthier and more stable prosperity over the long term. that's a risky option though and doesn't always work out. hopefully both venezuela and guyana will be on the winning side of this chaos in the years ahead

1/4/2026 2:09:55 PM

Trump is intrinsically evil so everything he does is actually evil. But the operation was wrong not because of that, but because it was not necessary to kill 40 people and risk American lives for this. We saw the template with the Iran nuclear deal that big things can happen with diplomacy. Trump is dragging us back to a 19th century era of barbarism where human life has no value. We need to try to keep making progress as a species and the trump/musk philosophy is counterproductive to this goal.

1/4/2026 2:13:23 PM

Quote :

"Trump is intrinsically evil so everything he does is actually evil"

it continues to be difficult to take you seriously with this kind of talk. your weights and biases are causing you to hallucinate.

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 2:20 PM. Reason : you wouldn't train a model on the bluesky corpus so why RLHF yourself on it]

1/4/2026 2:19:06 PM

^^^
They’re not actually trying to invade in the sense of taking over the country. They want the Essequibo region which is largely uninhabited rain forest, but likely has lots of oil reserves off shore (of higher quality oil than Venezuela currently has access to).

But annexing Essequibo was originally in Machados populist platform, but not a main focus. But she recently renewed calls for it.

https://www.intellinews.com/venezuelan-opposition-aligns-with-maduro-on-essequibo-claims-risking-us-ties-374789/

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 2:21 PM. Reason : ]

1/4/2026 2:20:58 PM

^^
Which part is wrong? I was watching back to the future 2 recently which the writers claimed Biff was modeled after Trump. He was evil then and he’s evil now. It’s the same hypothesis behind emergent misalignment— Trump is inherently self serving, he doesn’t value ethics or honor or human life.

If we can’t acknowledge Trump as evil, then the word has no meaning, we should just remove it from our vocabulary. The word was created to be used against people like Trump.

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 2:26 PM. Reason : ]

1/4/2026 2:23:21 PM

you said she was "pushing for invading Guyana even more than Maduro"

the article you linked says

Quote :

"unlike Maduro, Machado and González Urrutia rejected any military action to resolve the issue, stressing that Venezuela has always sought a peaceful solution"

Quote :

"Which part is wrong?"

"everything he does is actually evil"

the "everything" is the wrong part.

i don't care if you think trump is "evil" although i think it's nearly always a useless smooth brain take that only exists to signify your utmost opposition to it and the inevitable accompanying violence to resist it.

"Trump is inherently self serving"

i generally agree with this. this has always been the most signfiicant bit with him, not white supremacy

"he doesn’t value ethics"

also generally agree

"or honor"

self-serving beats out honor for trump, but i think his weights for what honor means and how it interacts with the self-serving bits are just different from yours. i don't have to agree with it to understand it. understanding other people who you don't agree with is extremely important for navigating interactions with them.

"or human life."

again, i think it's more complicated than that.

Quote :

"Biff was modeled after Trump"

yeah that's exactly the problem. most hardcore #resist people are humanities majors who see the world through narrative. realpolitik has to be grounded in reality, not fairy tale distortions to sell defectordotcom subscriptions

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 2:41 PM. Reason : .]

1/4/2026 2:25:29 PM

Yeah but there’s no peaceful solution to seizing another country’s territory. Thats just political double speak.

1/4/2026 2:27:42 PM

death toll up to 80

there is no excuse for this

1/4/2026 2:28:14 PM

Quote :

"I was born in Guyana and keep up with their politics and social media."

I see. Well I certainly won't claim to really know much about their politics, but i still think your analysis seems contrary to reality. I guess time will tell

1/4/2026 2:35:00 PM

Quote :

"there’s no peaceful solution to seizing another country’s territory"

one man's "seizing another country's territory" is another man's "resolve disputed territorial claims"

i don't know shit about Essequibo, i just want to see a mutually agreed upon border and both sides live in peace with each other. THAT can be accomplished peacefully, and i hope that's what the post-maduro leader of venezuela and the leadership of guyana figure out. the colonial era is long over, it's time for all the former colonies of the world to decide to just draw their own borders together instead of fighting over them for another century

Quote :

"We need to try to keep making progress as a species"

aka everybody needs to put the guns down and start building things that actually add value to our lives and our childrens lives. we'll get a lot further if we just agree on the borders and start working together across borders instead of arguing and murdering each other

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 2:56 PM. Reason : .]

1/4/2026 2:54:21 PM

Venezuela has a claim in ICJ now regarding essequbio… if they drop that claim after this it will put people at ease. The other key metric is refugees from Venezuela, if we see that drop then it would be a good sign that things could get better. the socialists like to blame American trade restrictions as why Venezuela suffers under socialism… if they can somehow offer ending embargoes for getting rid of Maduro, that’s a good test of that theory.

But we’re getting mixed messages saying Rubio is going to run the country vs Venezuela following its constitution, seems chaotic and typically not well thought out for trump.

1/4/2026 2:54:54 PM

my understanding is that guyans reject venezuelan migration because they are guyani supremacists

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 3:00 PM. Reason : or something. might be too simplistic a take what do i know i'm just a dumb american]

Quote :

"the socialists like to blame American"

yes they do.

Quote :

"seems chaotic and typically not well thought out for trump"

i loled

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 3:05 PM. Reason : .]

1/4/2026 3:00:05 PM

^ the majority of my family there have multiracial kids, there’s no majority racial group actually, so people are pretty used to blending cultures. The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that Venezuelans look down on Guyanese because Guyana until recently had one of the lowest gdp per capita of any country (now one of the highest because of oil drilling), one of the highest aids rates per capita, and highest suicide rates per capita. Venezuela also has 30x the population of Guyana, they could feasibly take over the country by just moving a very small number of people in.

1/4/2026 3:11:49 PM

Quote :

" the majority of my family there have multiracial kids, there’s no majority racial group actually, so people are pretty used to blending cultures"

same here for my family. doesn't prevent some people from claiming that half of Americans are white supremacists

i'ma see myself out after this cus it's more fun to code and build rather than argue with my friends but it's just hard to see this kind of thing and not think

Quote :

"The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that Venezuelans Arabs look down on Guyanese Jews because Guyana Jews until recently had one of the lowest gdp per capita of any people (now one of the highest because of finance, law, medicine, physics, media), one of the highest aids cholera rates per capita, and highest suicide pogram rates per capita. Venezuela Arabs also has 30x the population of Guyana Israel, they could feasibly take over the country by just moving a very small number of people in."

1/4/2026 3:20:50 PM

Quote :

"half of Americans are white supremacists "

Not half of Americans, half of white Americans, but that’s mostly because America was built on white supremacy, as the 1619 project has assessed correctly IMO. Different countries have different histories, so you can’t really just swap nouns out like that and have it make sense.

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 3:48 PM. Reason : ]

1/4/2026 3:46:55 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/adamkinzinger.substack.com/post/3mbm5gs5sys2j

1/4/2026 4:01:13 PM

1/4/2026 4:30:18 PM

I despise Trump at this point, but I'm sorry moron, you're going to lose me every time when you attempt to back up your Trump is intrinsically evil argument by referencing a Back to the Future II character.

1/4/2026 5:49:11 PM

Quote :

"because America was built on white supremacy, as the 1619 project has assessed correctly"

LOOOOOOOOOL, 1619 Project

1/4/2026 5:52:40 PM

Quote :

"half of white Americans"

it reflects extremely poorly on your character and intellect to claim that HALF OF WHITE AMERICANS are white supremacists. wtf are you thinking dude. every time you go to walmart and look around and think half of these white people hate my guts and think they're racially superior to me? that's unhealthy.

Quote :

"Different countries have different histories, so you can’t really just swap nouns out like that and have it make sense"

History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 6:46 PM. Reason : the actual low single digits is for sure a problem, but being off by an order of magnitude is insane]

1/4/2026 6:44:55 PM

We are differentiating white supremacist and racist, right?

1/4/2026 7:49:35 PM

^^
Interpersonal prejudice and racism are 2 different things. That’s why I referenced 1619
Project specifically. You’re into reading counter culture things… you should check it out. I think NY Times did a whole series on it too.

Most white Americans are decent and polite to all types of people. Doesn’t mean they don’t also vote and are drawn to candidates who explicitly want to maintain and deepen white supremacy, like Trump/musk/vance.

I’ll quote letter from Birmingham jail if I need to… the premise of what MLK Jr was saying there hasn’t changed. It’s gotten better imo though.

Edit: kinda shocked you all are shocked by that statement too, I feel like enough statistics have been posted on who voted for Trump and why to make this obvious

[Edited on January 4, 2026 at 9:17 PM. Reason : ]

1/4/2026 8:48:01 PM

https://apnews.com/article/cuba-us-venezuela-maduro-e66899b41f0b84cf83f77a69d399b486

Quote :

" Cuba says 32 Cuban officers were killed in US operation in Venezuela"

1/4/2026 10:52:14 PM

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article312516272.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Weird how Qatar is involved with this.

1/4/2026 11:04:18 PM

it's bc

1/4/2026 11:18:18 PM

I feel like they changed maduros clothes like 4 times from time first pic came out to when he got to the brooklyn jail

1/5/2026 12:07:44 AM

CIA is cia-ing

Ironic, cia shenanigans was one of the top reasons my parents cited for emigrating

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00845R000100190003-4.pdf

You all can thank them for my presence here

1/5/2026 1:12:30 AM

Some good info from 2018, mixed in with some pre-covid era jokes

1/5/2026 2:37:15 AM

There might be some election math here where a boost in Venezuela and Latino voters offset broader losses but don’t think I’ve seen Americans unified on something this much since 9/11


https://bsky.app/profile/sfcpoll.bsky.social/post/3mboricm27k2c

1/5/2026 11:05:44 AM