Threats and Delusions Multiply As U.S. Decline Accelerates

At the opening of the South American Defense Conference 2025 in Buenos Aires the commander of the United States Southern Command Alvin Holsey warned that the Chinese Communist Party continues its methodical incursion in the region, looking to export its authoritarian mode of governance, extract resources, and establish dual-use infrastructure, from ports to outer space. The admiral asserted that China's presence and influence has far-reaching consequences in the Southern Cone where vital shipping lanes like the Magellan Straits and Drake Passage function as strategic bottlenecks that could be used by the Chinese Communist Party to project power, disrupt commerce, and defy the sovereignty of Latin American nations and the neutrality of Antarctica. 

At the same time the State Department reiterates that it doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government and offers twenty-five million dollars for help that leads to the arrest and conviction of the Venezuelan Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello Rondón,* who it accuses of promoting a "narcoterrorist conspiracy" between the Cartel of The Suns and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Just a few days ago Washington displayed three destroyers equipped with guided missiles off the coast of Venezuela, allegedly to confront threats emanating from Latin American drug cartels, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said was part of President Trump's policy of "using all the resources in his power to stop the entrance of drugs" to the United States.

Rounding out this recent volley of U.S. belligerence, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against four judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court whom he characterized as threats to U.S. national security and instruments of judicial war against Washington and its ally Israel. For those keeping score, that now makes eight functionaries of the International Criminal Court that face prosecution by the U.S. for daring to suggest that Israel is guilty of genocide and its prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) of crimes against humanity. 

Meanwhile, on the home front, masked agents of the state continue abducting workers guilty of the civil violation of being undocumented as though they were Nazi gangsters, dispatching them to places like "Alligator Alcatraz," where they are subjected to systematic abuse while the Trump administration hawks alligator hats and MAGA enthusiasts take selfies in front of the prison as though it were just another Florida tourist site. This carnival atmosphere helps distract from minor matters like the gutting of Medicaid, more massive tax breaks for the obscenely rich, cuts in food aid to the poor, and rising inflation and bankruptcy. 

In short, what we're seeing is boundless hypocrisy, schizophrenia, Orwellian language, and imperial arrogance, washed down with a staggering dose of Trumpian vulgarity.

The verbal attacks on Beijing for its alleged intention to do everything that the United States has been doing in Latin America for more than a century-and-a-half almost defy belief. Washington accuses China of threatening commerce while it imposes arbitrary tariffs on the entire world. It talks of sovereignty while promoting coups, installing military bases, and imposing economic blockades. It arrogates to itself the unique right to appoint governments, dispatch warships to intimidate others, and offer bribes for the overthrowing of governments that refuse to obey Washington's dictates.  Meanwhile, the very existence of the Southern Command, tasked with "defending" Central and South America and the Caribbean, testifies to the fact that the only risk to regional sovereignty comes from the United States and its local right-wing allies.

Rubio denounces pro-Palestine demonstrators as "crazy," and J.D. Vance says the same about military officials who object to using U.S. soldiers to occupy Washington D.C. 

When madmen rule, sanity is a threat. 

Keep your wits about you.

 

*And $50 million for Nicolas Maduro 

Sources:

"The United States: Insane Government," La Jornada (Spanish) August 21, 2025

"Trump's Alligator Alcatraz ICE Prison Shut Down by Judge," Status Coup (You Tube), August 21, 2025