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https://newrepublic.com/article/214916/trump-venezuela-oil-deal-delusional>
"Here we go again. The new oil deal with Venezuela, Donald Trump bragged over
the weekend, will “substantially lower” gas prices and won’t cost the America
taxpayer a dime. It’s historic. It’s yuge. It’s miraculous. So much winning.
Hard to argue with in this case, right?
Actually, Ricardo Hausmann found these claims pretty easy to argue with after
all. Hausmann is a professor of political economy at Harvard’s Kennedy School
and a former planning minister and Central Bank board member of Venezuela. I’d
call that pretty credentialed. Responding to a Marco Rubio tweet boasting about
the deal, Hausmann wrote, in part:
Secretary Marco Rubio: You have just lost any trust Venezuelans ever had on
[sic] you, and it will come to haunt you. You opted to use U.S. power not to
free Venezuelans, but to go to bed with our oppressors.… Venezuelans will
not respect this illegitimate deal and no major U.S. oil company will take
it seriously because they know it will not last.
Hausmann is not alone. Skeptics included, at least initially, Florida GOP
Representative María Elvira Salazar, who tweeted: “Any oil ‘deal’ with
Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump
leaves the White House.” She also called Venezuelan interim President Delcy
Rodríguez an “acting dictator” and concluded: “No democracy. No lasting deal.
Period.”
Ah, but we know how things work in today’s GOP. She quickly deleted that post,
in both English and Spanish, and returned to X an hour later to write: “The
U.S.-Venezuela oil deal is a great deal for the United States and the
Venezuelan people.” Guess she’ll avoid a primary next election.
The Venezuela announcement tracks with a very well-worn pattern. Trump raves
that the deal in question is the greatest in the annals of history. It will
deliver scarcely imaginable benefits. It will cost nothing. And it all happened
because of Trump’s genius.
It’s been a lie every time. The tariffs were going to help farmers. Nope:
Farmers are furious at Trump, giving Democrats their first potential political
opening in rural America in ages. The tariffs were going to allow for
elimination of the income tax. Remember that one? The war in Iran was going to
take a month. The Reflecting Pool, ruined by Trump’s predecessors, was going to
be thing of unparalleled beauty.
It’s tempting to call these lies, and they surely were in the sense that Trump
just says everything he does is the greatest without the slightest bit of
analysis or conscience entering into the equation. But they’re not just lies.
They’re delusions. And delusions, in a way, are even worse than lies.
Why? Because while a liar can change course, a delusional person cannot. Trump
is sitting in the mid-to-low 30s in approval. If he were merely a liar, he
could try to correct course and do some things differently. He could realize,
for example, that the war he started has been a disaster and is massively
unpopular and, without exactly admitting it directly, sue for peace and cut his
losses. A liar can acknowledge, eventually, that maybe he screwed up a little
on the Reflecting Pool.
But a delusionist can do none of those things because the delusionist can’t
accept that he’s done anything wrong. And he surrounds himself with people who
understand that their only real job, whatever their actual specific
responsibilities may be, is to keep the delusions alive and the Emperor happy.
"
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
