What is already being flattened into the same tired anti-Trump-versus-pro-Trump script does real analytical damage. What we lose, above all, is not only the policy subtlety but the emotional reality. Inside the Beltway, the question is legality, norms, hypocrisy, and whether Trump contradicted himself on “starting wars.” Outside the Beltway, the question is far more basic: The United States is no longer pretending to use moral rhetoric and justification as a fig leaf to cover its naked pursuit of power. The shock is not that the United States is using force. Americans have seen that movie many times. The shock, and for some the strange relief, is that the veneer is gone. There are no democracy fairy tales, no humanitarian varnish, just the interests, the forces, and the resources.
That’s why this feels like a mask-off moment, and why it can’t really be reduced to partisan theater: Venezuelans abroad celebrating the moment, Americans sick of elite lies, and a political class scrambling to reassemble the edifices of a bygone orthodoxy are all in the same scene. The celebration of a dictator’s fall isn’t the same as celebrating all it could bring. Criticism of Trump isn’t moral clarity unless it’s also an acknowledgment of America’s long imperial throughline. This isn’t about whether Trump is uniquely reckless. The question is whether the country is finally confronting what it has long been, now that the language of innocence has collapsed.
A paid subscription gets you:
Full access to the archives
The ability to comment and join the conversation
Stew’d Over, and other bonus daily newsletters!
Live Ask Me Anything sessions with paid readers — coming 2026!
This independent work is sustained by readers who want more than headlines and hot takes.
