It’s hardly into the new year and already it’s kind of depressing. It’s 4 January, and our president essentially performed an act of war without congressional approval. In the wee hours, as in early Saturday morning, the US struck Venezuela and removed the president and his wife to New York. Maduro is in New York because U.S. special forces captured him in this raid in Caracas and they have brought him and his wife to face federal charges dating from 2020, including drug trafficking , weapons charges, and “narco-terrorism.”

This article in an online journal called “The Conversation” is well worth reading on this:

https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-invaded-countries-and-deposed-leaders-before-its-military-action-against-venezuela-feels-different-272682

It might be too much to ask all of the armchair warriors and foreign diplomacy and constitutional and congressional scholars on Facebook to actually READ something versus just jumping on the Internet tar and feather bandwagon.

I felt obligated to shut down comments on posts on my blog’s Facebook page. I do that to bring the temperature down because it is the correct and responsible thing to do. I am not practicing censorship because it’s MY page. If people don’t like that, that is on them. It’s not their personal platform which maybe is something they don’t get. It’s only censorship if they can’t ever speak their opinion at all. What I am saying is they need to take their flame war elsewhere.

When I post something without the ability for people to leave comments, it means keep your cray cray to yourself and your page. Do not private message me. I have been receiving rather vile as well as idiotic private messages.

And FYI The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823, was NOT necessarily designed for this Venezuela’s it all. It’s also not the Roosevelt Corollary (as in Teddy’s era) or Cold War as used by Kennedy and then Reagan. This is most definitely yes still a controversial aspect of US foreign policy and should not be part of the toys used by a greedy grabby never served in the military man baby.

Donroe or Monroe, I am not debating it or having my private messages polluted with nonsense- by all means people discuss it on their own personal Facebook pages but I do not have to ride the crazy train.

A friend of mine quipped that the Epstein files must be pretty bad and intelligent beings do need to question the timing, yes? But even if Maduro being removed is possibly a good thing for the Venezualan people are there other motivations at play here including but not limited to oil and mineral rights?

The 4th day of a new year we need to contemplate where we are going. It’s frightening in my opinion. And it’s frightening what people don’t want to see and that includes our elected officials in Washington D.C.

So now this afternoon there are protests supposedly happening about Venezuela? Protests are getting to be like fireworks. So many and does that make their value dissipate?

A friend of mine wrote today:

As a daughter of a Vietnam Vet who I lost in 2025 after his post-war life battle from Agent Orange…this is a horrible time to have 13 & 18 year old boys.
I wish my dad was here to tell me it will be ok.

Another wrote:

I just explained to my boys what a military draft means.

Someone else I know said:

I had a ton of people calling me a Trump apologist when I said no war in Gaza and now people are calling me a liberal for saying no war in Venezuela. Some of us actually are anti-war and pro-rule of law!

There have been people who had arguments against my opinion which weren’t quite polite but not overly rude that I didn’t remove (or them) but it was about obviously I was never part of an EMS or lost a family member to drugs. No I fortunately never lost a family member to drugs, but lost a friend and two women I know have had drugs make them widows. I have had plenty of friends who have been on EMS crews for years and NOT one has spoken up all drug overdoses are stamped “Made in Venezuela.”

I think we live in a very different world today, so much so I honestly don’t trust that peaceful protests will remain as such. Sadly, No Kings in West Chester proved me right.

I will never say that people shouldn’t stand up for what they feel at the core of their being, but we live in a world that doesn’t necessarily respect that, at least in this country.

And then there are the tones of World War II Europe that seem to hum in the background. I have a friend in Poland now on a trip who sent me two photos that stopped me cold.

Do you know the meaning of the verbiage over the gates? It is “Hard Work is Freedom.”

These first concentration camps were at first prisons for the intellectuals, professors, journalists, etc. Poland has done a great job of preserving Auschwitz. The buildings there were carefully constructed and made of stone and bricks. So they still stand. That’s where Mengele conducted his eugenics experiments. Down the road from Auschwitz are other places like Birkenau, which was put up quickly essentially just to kill people. Only the chimneys remain.

Why do people choose not to remember and even respect the ghosts of World Wars past? When people stopped paying attention to World War I, World War II happened. If we continue to ignore the lessons of the past or try to rewrite history, the past could actually repeat itself.

I am not being an alarmist or conspiracy theorist. The markers exist and if we aren’t careful as a society and country, things our parents and grandparents never wanted us to experience may be come our new normal.

Now who will read this post? When it’s lots of words, that is debatable. We live in a world where people don’t read or research a thing. They read it on Facebook or TikTok so it must be true.

Look I wish we didn’t have to look at history, but we must. If we don’t look at history, even ugly inconvenient, horrible history we may be doomed to repeat it.

I am still tired of how people do not respect that sometimes there is no dialogue to be had when people merely want a break from the social media nonsense of others. We live in a world where everyone seems to think whomever gets all the toys, wins. That is unrealistic and unsustainable.

I think I am growing less patient with the craziness and hysteria on social media. People are such sheeple. And they have zero respect for boundaries of anyone.

Today’s world is a study of past is prologue as well as past is present. I don’t know that that’s a good thing.

Good night.