"Guts, grit, and glory."Venezuela 10:46 p.m.,Boots on the ground, Happy New Year!

jnwashington0905
Jan 3
2 min read

Happy New Year, Is this who we are as a country? These are my limited observations as I listened to the press conference and followed the breaking news on Venezuela. From within my Motherist sensibility, a deep spiritual dread surfaced. I heard our leaderhip extol military dominance, power framed as righteousness, force as legitmacy, and killing as resolution. The logic was clear:might makes right.

The experience felt disturbingly similar to watching a military video game, Call of Duty, Battlefield 4 where human destruction is objectified, scaled, and rendered switchable. Violence becomes spectacle. Lives become units. The reality, however, is not a screen that can be powered down. For a country of Venezuela's size, the implications are catastrophic and disproportionate under the auspice of corporate leadership and violence. And yes this truth coexist with sovereignty, and democracy, they elected their leader.

Haven't we seen this playbook before?

Iran.

Chile.

Nicaragua.

This is not innovation; it is repetition.

What troubles me further is the historical amnesia. We speak as though sovereingty is negotable for some nations and sacred for others. The world is once again being asked to submit to a hierachy of power reminiscent not of progress, but of domination politics we claim to outgrown. The language of planes, guns, and military superiority is not neutral. It emerges from a long tradition of white, male, imperial authority...now rebranded under slogans like "Make America Great" and religious self righteousness, Project 2025.

Where is the truth meter?

We ae told this is about drugs, yet the largest trafficking corridoers run through Mexico, Afghanistan, and China. We are told this is about stability, get Venzuela holds the largest oil reserves in South America, just as Nigeria holds some of the largest in the world. We are told this is about democracy, yet I heard...clearly..."we are going to run the country, " spoken over and against the people who actually live there (and yes I saw the celebration in the streets). I do not believe that is about US governance. This statement spoken over and against the people who actually live there. Meanwhile, at home, the contradictions multiply.

Unemployment persists.

Homelessness is rising.

Healthcare acess is eroding.

Federal aid programs are shrinking.

And yet we build new ballrooms and expand global ambitions. But we are poised to govern other nations.

What is wrong with this picture?

If we are now peparing to "run" Gaza and Venezuela, what comes next...Nigeria under the auspices of killing Cnristians?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are ethical ones, that Motherism innately respond to in their building. These questions demand more than slogans, more than force, more than nostalgia for empire. The require moral imagination, historical honesty, and a commitment to human dignity that cannot be reduced to military spectacle.

And yes...there are many questions. And we should be deeply concerned if we are no longer willing to ask them.

#boots on the ground

#guts,grits, glory