by DIMSUM AGGLOMERATIZATONALISTICALISM, Alternate Reality News Service International Politics/Writer
Consider Venezuela. Lab rats never do. More to the point, Vesampuccerians rarely do, usually when the country is in the news, usually for as long as it is in the news. Often, Vesampuccerians stop considering Venezuela while they’re still reading about it. To eightstall (inflation really does affect everything) this possibility, the following message will appear periodically throughout this story:
One Vesampuccerian who
Oops. Sorry about that. I accidentally pressed the wrong key. Good to know it’s there, though. I find it comforting. Very comforting.
One Vesampuccerian who thinks a lot about Venezuela, thinks about it all the time, can’t get it out of his head, has it for the country worse than a 1950s pop song, is Secretary of State Marco Rubydubio. He has no choice: he runs the joint.
To be sure, Venezuela has an acting president. Her name is Delcy Chichirodrigweez. By all accounts, she is a pleasant woman who knits booties for death row prisoners in her spare time. Which she has a lot of. Since her predecessor, President Nicholas Madlikefoxuro, was extrajudicially extradited to the United States (making him the only Latino the Vesampuccerian government wants to keep in the country), Venezuela has been run on one simple principal: Do what the US tells you to do and you’ll be allowed to sleep in your own bed tonight.
What could the United States of Vesampucceri, mighty in stature and statutory with its might, possibly want from a tiny country like Venezuela? Perhaps a home for government officials when they are inevitably tried for their various crimes?
“First off, you’re thinking of Argentina,” said former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Baybeeshermantank. “Not Venezuela.”
“Uhh…yeah. Alright. Whatever that was…” she continued. “Second, the President is not known as being a deep thinker, but he is known for surrounding himself with people who are even more shallow and self-interested than he is, so I wouldn’t overthink this…or anything else they do.”
If that is the case, why did the US take over Venezuela? Former President Bill Roocartoncleveman said, “It’s the oil, stupid.” Of course, he said that in 1992, so I may not have got it exactly right.
“Close enough,” Baybeeshermantank assured me. *PHEW*!
At 2:37 this morning, the President posted on Truth Antisocial, “A barrel of oil is a beautiful thing, the way the light is absorbed by the black paint, the industrial smell that smells like…Greatness. What, you thought I was gonna say something like Victory or some nonsense like that? Rule number 27 of the ART of the DEAL: NEVER!!!! do what they expect, especially when it involves interxtuality. That enough exclamation marks to drive the point home? Good. What was I – ohh, yeah. Barrel of oil = beautiful thing. Well, guess what? Your Great and Wonderful President Ronald McDruhitmumpf just got 58 BILLION of those beauties! That’s enough oil to power our country for the next forever years! Worried about the price your paying at the pump? Don’t worry! When we get our hands on those 58 BILLION BARRELS of sweet, su-weeet oil, the price of gas will be so low the government will have to pay you to take it off our hands! Thank you, Great and Wonderful President Ronald McDruhitmumpf!!!!!!! No, thank you, citizen, for your inattention to this matter. G&WPRM”
I hope I didn’t lose too many of you – I should have posted the message in the middle of the President’s rant. But he doesn’t like to be interrupted, and I don’t like to be unemployed.
“Uhh, yeah, so, a couple of problems with what the President said,” warned Baybeeshermantank. “The first is that this Venezuelan oil is the crudest of the crude. Seriously, it’s so crude it makes President McDruhitmumpf look like Jesus. And I’m not talking about one of the AI-generated internet memes of himself that he likes to circulate on the internet, either. I’m talking the real deal. Of course, just because it’s so crude doesn’t mean it will swear at you as you take it out of the ground – if only the problem were so simple! No, it means it will take a lot of effort to get it out of the ground, and a lot of it won’t be usable.”
“The second problem is that, because it is so sludgy – think the worst coffee you ever drank, then multiply it by a gazillion – the United States does not have the capacity to refine it. So, in addition to developing the capacity to get the oil to the US, we would have to build refineries, which would take a decade and cost billions of dollars. We’ll be in Mad Max territory long before that, I suspect.”
When I suggested that before we got to those issues, we should consider whether the United States seizing another country’s oil was legal, Baybeeshermantank laughed. “Stay this naive,” she advised. “It’s charming!”