By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
As we’re culturally reeling from the finale of Stranger Things, it’s hard not to point out how weak the writing was. Many of the show’s flaws sat right on the surface. The story was bogged down in a convoluted plot and over-explanation of every nuanced movement of a paper-thin villain who, when put to the test, lasted about ten minutes. Then Joyce Byers went shogun after years of abuse. It was one of the only comforting scenes in the ending.
Poor writing seems to be at the core of the start of 2026. Prior administrations at least came up with fanciful stories—Demogorgons in faraway lands ready to attack people, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction. But when the Trump administration stormed into Venezuela, they didn’t bother with creative storytelling. They gave the ugly truth: this is about oil and taking resources from a sovereign nation weaker than ours.
Nicolás Maduro didn’t preside over a virtuous resistance or a misunderstood revolution. He ran an authoritarian, corrupt regime that oversaw rampant repression, arbitrary detentions, and a catastrophic economic collapse that drove millions into exile. At the same time, his inner circle allegedly enriched itself through collusion with drug cartels and narco-terror networks. Now that his grip has slipped, the U.S. isn’t swooping in to liberate Venezuela so much as to carve off its oil wealth for private profit.
What no one seems to understand is that the regime is still in place. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s second banana, remains in command, as does the entire cabinet he assembled. This isn’t a victory for human rights. When Trump acts as the boss of the country, it’s for a regime change friendly to United States oil interests—that’s it. As the Epstein files keep coming, the economy continues to flounder, and the jobs numbers stagnate, this was the answer: to flex muscle and take. Much like Vecna, stealing children from their classrooms and using them to feed a one-man vision for a better world, where the darkness matches the light.
Open theft of another country’s resources is precisely what Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine, just as Xi will eventually do with Taiwan, though the moral grandstanding will be different. None of these actions are OK. If the United States wanted intervention, why now? The guise of drugs is bogus, and we all know it. They’re not making movies and television shows about Venezuela; they’re about Mexico. The ingredients to make fentanyl come from India and China.
Who wins in this case? Oil companies. The thick, sludgy oil the country produces—oil that the big brands already have the machinery to refine. Exxon, Shell, BP. The producers are the ones who will eventually benefit. This isn’t about liberation, nor ridding the world of a villain. It’s another act of lining the pockets of the rich, while the idea of saviorism is splashed across Fox News like a warm hug wrapped in an American flag, because the villain at home needed a win.
Venezuela controls almost one-fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves, yet produces less than 1% of global crude today, a product of systemic decay, sanctions, and neglect. U.S. oil stocks vaulted double-digit percentages at the mere implication of access. That tells us why real power brokers are watching. At a moment when the U.S. economy slogs through slower growth and tepid job numbers, we’re sold a blockbuster narrative that collapses under inspection—a demonstration of storytelling gone amiss, both in fiction and in the corridors of power. We’re not heroes rolling dice to see outcomes, but the bad guys spreading the Upside Down, covered in black tar.
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