Magical thinking is nothing new in American politics. Ronald Reagan was known to conflate old movies with reality, but he wasn’t surrounded by abject sycophants. They usually told him when he strayed too far from the facts. The result was rarely to my liking, but their policies were largely reality based. There is, however, no one of the stature of George Schultz or Jim Baker in the Trump regime. Yes men never say no.
The second Bush administration is when the GOP’s embrace of alternate reality became perilous to the country. W’s war on Iraq was based on a lie: that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he’d gotten rid of them years before.
Team Bush continued their march of mendacity with claims that Iraqis would greet American troops as liberators. Instead, there was no occupation plan, which made guerilla warfare inevitable. It was a bloody mess that sucked the air out of our politics for years.
The Bushies talked about their opponents being part of the “reality based community” as if that was a bad thing. It was not then or now.
In 2025, we face a similar situation with the Insult Comedian’s Venezuelan saber rattling. Team MAGA has declared it a narco-terrorist state, which means they believe they can sink as many boats and kill as many shipwreck survivors as they want. They do not have Congressional approval. They’re relying on a doctrine from the Bush 2.0 so-called war on terror that’s irrelevant to the current situation. They do not care because they’re in a state of delusion.
Delusional thinking drives many MAGA policies from immigration to health care to the economy to the Epstein mishigas. It worked in the past, so the Kaiser of Chaos is convinced he can lie with impunity to distract voters from his broken promises.
The most egregious broken promise is Trump’s pledge to end forever wars. The war of words with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro gives the lie to those claims or is it a delusion? Trump increasingly seems to believe his own lies. It’s unclear if war is likely or it’s yet another distraction from his dismal record.
The irony of the Venezuelan stand-off is that the founder of that leftist dictatorship, Hugo Chavez was a rather Trumpy figure. He was a garrulous leader whose speeches were as long-winded as those of Trump or Fidel Castro. Maduro lacks his predecessor’s charisma and his iron grip on the Venezuelan polity seems to be slipping.
The reality is that Maduro’s Venezuela is a failed state, but it has oil. That’s obviously one of the attractions that a Venezuelan invasion has for President Pennywise. Pete Hegseth digs the idea because he likes killing people almost as much as calling himself the secretary of war; another MAGA delusion. The Miami Cuban Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems to regard wagging the dog at Venezuela as a prelude to a move against Cuba. So much for pledges against forever wars.
It’s hard to separate facts from fantasy or the truth from lies with this administration. Delusions are baked into their thinking, which is likely to have catastrophic consequences for the country and our relationships in Latin America. Instead of emulating FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy or JFK’s Alliance For Progress, Team MAGA’s policy resembles Bush the younger’s so-called war on terror. That’s the last thing we or the world need right now.
Does the saber rattling foreshadow regime change in Venezuela or is it just a distraction? I’m inclined towards the latter view, but Team Trump’s policies are based on the dear leader’s impulses and gut feelings. That means that anything can happen as long as we live in MAGA’s state of delusion.
The last word goes to The Kinks. Just change confusion to delusion and Bob’s your uncle: