The longer I am alive the more I realize that power is all that matters, and that rules are nice but only for the peons. "Acceptable" in this case means pretty much nothing and is a word that is philosophic in its meaning. You can yell into the clouds that something is unacceptable or unfair and it may be true in some ethical/moral sense, but it matters none. Power will always win out and if someone came to the WH and did the same thing, then there would only be one reason for it -- that there is somebody more powerful than the US and is able to get away with things like this. The masses would scream, cry and maybe some would be happy, but it wouldn't matter whatsoever. Maduro might have been bad (a great excuse for the masses to avoid revolts) but ultimately, the government made a decision to do it and that's that.
Trump lost in 2020. Harris lost in 2024. We have all sorts of external influence and nonsense happening in our social/political lives and yes many states are messing with people's ability to actually vote, but when it comes to what happens in the voting booth, US elections are incredibly secure and fraud/ballot tampering is so rare that calling it "rare" doesn't properly emphasize reality.
The vote count was accurate, Trump won, and we are all paying a horrible price for the self-inflicted chaos and regression that has ensued.
>Not that anyone would challenge it
If there were legitimate grounds to question it there is no way we wouldn't see action on it
Maduro was replaced by his equally unelected second. It is not as if Venezuela became democracy or something. Instead, a bunch of leaders got promotion including the main torturer.
I find it mind boggling that it is called regime change. Regime remained in place.
Maduro was a piece of…let’s keep this polite and say “work.” Everyone agrees. Does that mean what the US did was acceptable? There’s a lot of nuance and context being glossed over here.
It’s like with Iran. “Their government was horrible.” Ok, but that’s not why we attacked them. The Trump admin has explicitly said that wasn’t the motivation, but they randomly bring it up whenever they need to shift tactics. It’s a moral appeal supporters use to paper over the political realities and actual motivations.
Edit: toned down the intensity a bit.