If you're anything like me, you've been absolutely apoplectic this past week watching the United States orchestrate a coup in Venezuela. It has been truly horrifying to watch these things play out in real time. How bold and brazen these thugs have become! They are doing this right out in the open, they hardly even try to hide it.
Sure, they try to whitewash it with their typical propaganda. They obfuscate key facts. They paint Maduro as a criminal. They pass around cheap slogans. Where once we heard, "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists", now it's, "either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you're in league with Maduro and his mayhem". It's disgusting.
It's disgusting and horrifying and saddening, but if there is one thing we gain by watching this tragedy unfold, it is a certain clarity about the state of affairs in the world. It makes it clear that conflict is inevitable. I'm not talking about conflict in Venezuela, although conflict is likely to unfold there too, I'm talking about a much larger conflict. I'm talking about a global conflict that must eventually occur between two ideologically incompatible groups.
There is one group of people which considers war both necessary and routine. Some members of this group make their money building and selling bombs and guns and tanks and missiles. These people need wars, otherwise they don't make any money. Other members of this group make their money by taking and selling the natural resources of other weaker nations. These members need wars to ensure they get easy access to the resources they want. Other members of this group make their money enslaving the poorest people in these subservient conquered nations, putting them to work in factories with inhumane working conditions for inhumane wages. Other members of this group are facilitators, working in government or media. They plan, organize, fight, and sell these wars to a largely unwitting public. All these groups of people have formed a close knit coalition, working together to control and exploit the people of the world for their own collective material gain.
But there is second group of people which is the polar opposite of this first group. These people hate war and love peace. They hate the idea of exploiting the poor. They hate the idea of destroying lives for profit. These people cannot and will never accept such exploitative behavior. Period.
Herein lies the conflict. One group wages wars for profit, the other cannot bear to see people slaughtered. One group exploits the poor, the other cares for the poor. One group destroys the environment and pollutes the earth, the other cares about sustainability and the health of the planet. One group rules by might, the other by principles of individual sovereignty, equality and justice.
This is the inevitable conflict which must eventually occur. These two groups will eventually clash, because there is no way for the one to reconcile with the other. As long as one group is making war, killing people for profit, the other group must struggle against them.
Of course this struggle is already taking place, probably it began a long time ago. Certainly battles between these groups raged in the 1960's during the anti-war and civil rights movements, but for a time the people of peace were largely beaten back. For a few decades the rulers of this world went largely unchallenged, but tensions are rising again as the battle resumes.
For now the battle is being waged mostly as an information war. The peace loving people are fighting to expose the truths of what is occurring around the world, and the war mongers are fighting to keep those truths hidden. For some decades the rulers mostly maintained information superiority, they managed to keep the truth of their affairs hidden, but lately they are making mistakes.
Hence the silver lining to this Venezuela coup. It is truly disgusting to behold, but it is being done very carelessly and very much out in the open. Hopefully it will fail, hopefully Guaido will realize he's a stooge and have a change of heart, hopefully the people of Venezuela will come together and not be overcome by the U.S. imperial efforts to destabilize their nation, but if this coup attempt does lead to chaos in Venezuela, it might nonetheless work against the war-mongers in the end. The whole world is watching these events unfold, people in all the nations of the world can see ever more clearly what is being done by these criminals, and they will not remain silent forever.
The people saw what happened in Iraq, they saw what happened in Libya, they saw what happened in Syria, and now they're seeing the U.S. imperialists go to work on Venezuela. Each time, with each new intervention, the truth about what is actually going on becomes clearer, and this inevitable conflict gets nearer.
That this conflict is inevitable is obvious. That tensions are rising, especially as the imperialists have in recent years gone into a kind of militaristic overdrive, is also quite clear. What I believe is not so clear to many people, especially the peace loving people of the world, is that this conflict will eventually be incredibly violent. So this is the final point I want to make in this piece, that eventually this conflict is going to become violent, even for us peace loving folk.
That this conflict will eventually become violent derives from the very nature of the war-mongers who currently control the world. These people end human lives for profit. If some group of people joins together to stop them, what do you think their response will be? Will they simply step down? Will they acknowledge their crimes and submit to their fate? Will they relinquish their positions of power without a fight?
Why do you think the police all over the Western world have been militarized? Is it really, as they say, simply a kind of accident, the result of having a surplus of military equipment, or have they been preparing for an eventual popular uprising all along? These people are in the business of controlling populations. Do you think they have not considered the possibility that people might one day stand up against them? But of course they have considered this. They know as well as anyone that this conflict is inevitable, and so they have taken measures, well in advance, to protect them when it happens.
So this is the point, whoever is on side of peace needs to be prepared. Conflict is rising, and soon it will come to a head. When it finally does come to a head, there will be a great struggle, and great violence will be perpetrated against all those who stand up for peace. All of us should expect this, and we should prepare for it. If we truly want to succeed in this, if we want to end their tyranny once and for all, we need to be prepared to meet it and overcome it.
Cover photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash.
