We are in year two of the Great Con II. In light of the unprovoked and unsupported action in Venezuela early Saturday morning, it is worth sharing a few assessments. One is that the message to our hemisphere is clear: if you do not manage your country in a way conducive to the Trump administration (and it is critical that we do not view this as an American action), then unilateral action will be taken regardless of international law and order. Behind the scenes and unreported, it is highly likely that high‑ranking Venezuelan military officials were bought off to ensure a quick operation. It was also essential, for the sake of maintaining the guise of an operation in the name of justice, to capture Maduro alive.

Be mindful that the long game here is to meddle with both Cuba and Mexico. What does this do for our allies? It gives China cover to invade Taiwan. It gives Putin further cover for his illegitimate and made up excuses for invading Ukraine. It puts all of the free world at greater risk of an event setting off a domino effect akin to WWI and WWII. It repeats the unheeded lessons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, full of hubris, failure, and blood.

This is also a timely effort to distract from the home front, where Trump spent the holidays rewarding loyalists and tightening control while pretending it is all “normal government.” The year‑end record includes mass purges of public servants, politicized prosecutions of rivals, blanket pardons for January 6 criminals, and continued litigation over blatantly unconstitutional executive orders targeting critics, immigrants, and civil society.

Apathy to such activity is the enemy. Do not give in.

My sons and I watched the first episode of The American Revolution on PBS. It fit nicely as I’m 2/3 the way through Ron Chernow’s Washington, a Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece on the life of our first president.

I’ve come to accept that man’s known history has a consistency of both progress and strife. I’ve also realized that we are in a constant battle to learn from and not repeat the mistakes of the past. That’s why reading and education are most valuable; because they help us understand past experiences to avoid repeating them.

In pondering this book and the PBS documentary, I now realize how much George Washington went through. Even in the case of fighting for individual liberty, history portrays a constant battle against greed, whether over money, words, time, person (in the form of slavery).

There is indication that Washington knew should the patriots lose the fight, he would lose everything. He went several years without visiting his home on Mount Vernon, preferring to stay with his army. He suffered through several losses in the field, had his leadership questioned continuously, and was hampered by an inept and self-serving continental congress. His notes and the eyewitnesses of the times describe a patriotic cause that was near doomed several times, even though Washington was himself helping to bankroll the fight and his soldiers were dying from cold, disease, and misery.

Washington persevered through all this by sheer determination, but there’s one occasion written about that sounded familiar to the themes of today.

During the time that Washington encamped his army at Valley Forge, he and his generals were doing everything possible to keep and provide for the men they had. Washington wrote in his notes on the brutal winter and the difficulties with finding provisions, yet all around them were colonists not only hoarding materials but actively selling them to the British army encamped in Philadelphia. Here’s the piece from Chernow’s book:

“What made Valley Forge so bitterly disenchanting for Washington was that selfishness among the citizenry seemed to outweigh patriotic fervor. In choosing winter quarters at Valley Forge, he had surmised, correctly, that the surrounding countryside possessed ample food supplies. What he hadn’t reckoned on was that the local farmers would sell their produce to British troops in Philadelphia rather than to shivering patriots….Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader, who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn’t always live up to the high standards he set for them. Though often embittered by the mercenary behavior of his countrymen, he tried to accept human nature as it was. He believed that many Americans had expected a speedy end to the conflict and, when the first flush of patriotism faded, were governed by self-interest.…At Valley Forge, Washington composed numerous screeds against American greed that make uncomfortable reading for those who regard that winter as a purely heroic time. Seeing the decay of public virtue everywhere, he berated speculators, monopolists, and war profiteers.

The greed around him nearly broke him. Washington was incensed that a “thirst for gain” would plunge the whole effort at freedom into ruin. He saw that the democratic principles he was fighting for were running straight up against one of the oldest sins in the book.

We are still in this battle today.

Democracy in 2026 is being stress‑tested by a president who treats public office as a personal enrichment opportunity, turning the presidency into a profit center while public services are gutted.

This is not a glitch.

It is the logical outcome of a culture that fell for the appearance of a wealthy and successful grifter as a leader. They confused freedom with the right to stay comfortable; a comfort to ignore the reality of difficult conversations about sex, race, science, immigration, and climate.

Democracy had to be fought for. It was never designed to come easy or guarantee an easy life. However, it was meant to spread both risk and opportunity, and to put some limits on greed so that rights and the pursuit of happiness could be shared. ​

Real self-government demands the courage to argue over painful trade-offs and to accept that legislation is sometimes needed to break the grip of those whose definition of freedom relies on looting our system.

A democracy that refuses that discomfort slides toward something softer and more sinister: a floating, well‑furnished bubble with faux-gold authoritarianism. Only later do they learn their comfort was bought with their own vanishing rights.

We might as well have stayed with the King.

Know your history.

​

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I wrote about the need for movie theatres as public places. This article gives meager assistance to that, almost expecting that theatres will soon be gone. I cannot imagine a world where we are even more clustered into our homes with less human touch. We will not be better off with more things to stream in home and less places to go in public. Whether you regularly adventure to the movies or not, do you think it’s more healthy for your child to always be home? Do they have plenty of places to go and explore? That’s my bigger attention to this issue. The loss of movie theatres is like a bellweather for the loss of normal gathering places.

Communities where kids roam freely to a friend’s house, to school, to the store, to the movies, or to go fishing are exactly the places that we must protect to raise resilient citizens. If our community becomes defined only by the edge of our property and what we can afford, that’s no community at all.

This is an excellent piece of writing from the English perspective on what we lose when there is no collective identity. The writer makes an analogy with what Trumpian politics have tried to do to the common good in America. England has its own share of far-right wackos to contend with, and there is much to be learned from reading this piece to understand the strategy at play. Doubt is their product. Always has been. Don’t give in to it. Public goods and public resources are what bond a country together. It’s not wealth for wealth’s sake or squeezing the last nickel possible. This will not stop until people realize once again that shared savings and shared resources help build walls against liars and thieves.

I hope you’ve considered your resolutions for this year, and that you attempt to learn from history through regular reading. You’ll find your time less wasted, your thoughts more informed, and your conversation more inviting.

Continue chasing your dreams. Above all else, use any improvements you make to be a better human.