{"id":43168,"date":"2019-01-26T08:32:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T13:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43168"},"modified":"2019-01-26T08:32:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T13:32:54","slug":"top-5-dumbest-arguments-defending-trumps-venezuela-interventionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43168","title":{"rendered":"Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump\u2019s Venezuela Interventionism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2019\/01\/26\/top-5-dumbest-arguments-defending-trumps-venezuela-interventionism\/\">Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump\u2019s Venezuela Interventionism<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/medium-1.png?fit=720%2C480&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ever since the Trump administration announced that it was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\/antiwar-hero-medea-benjamin-disrupts-venezuela-coup-circle-jerk-993fc3624fe7\">no longer recognizing the legitimacy<\/a>&nbsp;of the elected government of Venezuela I\u2019ve been arguing with people on social media about this president\u2019s brazen coup attempt in that country. The people arguing with me in favor of Trump\u2019s interventionism are almost exclusively Trump supporters, with leftists and antiwar libertarians more or less on my side with this issue and rank-and-file centrists mostly preferring to sit this one out except to periodically mumble something about it being a distraction from the Mueller investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I engage in these arguments not because I enjoy fighting with strangers on the internet, but because it helps me get an idea of what propaganda narratives have been seeded throughout various political sectors. Take a stand online and you\u2019ll quickly have people running up to you saying, in effect, \u201cMy media echo chamber told me I\u2019m supposed to disagree with you about that,\u201d and spelling out what they\u2019ve been told to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have not received a single robust argument in favor of Trump\u2019s Venezuela interventionism, but I have received a whole lot of really, really stupid ones. Here are the top five most common and most astonishingly idiotic of them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>1. \u201cSocialism is bad!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/caitoz\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/profile_images\/1039998813606477825\/AdPTYshZ_normal.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/caitoz\"><strong><\/strong><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/caitoz\/status\/1088888214541164544\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Me: US interventionism is always disastrous and it always lies about its reasons for targeting South American and oil-rich nations.<br>Tsunami of Trump supporters: SOCIALISM IS BAD THO<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This one is easily the most common and most stupid of all the arguments I\u2019ve been receiving. I\u2019m not familiar enough with pro-Trump punditry to be able to describe how the MAGA crowd got it into their heads that attacking Venezuela has something to do with fighting socialism, but it\u2019s clear from my interactions over the last couple of days that that is the dominant narrative they\u2019ve got swirling around in their collective consciousness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump\u2019s Venezuela Interventionism Ever since the Trump administration announced that it was&nbsp;no longer recognizing the legitimacy&nbsp;of the elected government of Venezuela I\u2019ve been arguing with people on social media about this president\u2019s brazen coup attempt in that country. The people arguing with me in favor of Trump\u2019s interventionism are almost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17039,2127,2799,827,851],"class_list":["post-43168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-interventionism","tag-socialism","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43169,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43168\/revisions\/43169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}