Ed

You know, I hear you.

And I think the general kind of explanation that you're reaching for there, that a lot of different stars aligned in the case of Venezuela, that is clearly right.

Maduro made fun of him.

is one.

There is a lot of oil.

He just published a document saying we're not putting up with any nonsense in our hemisphere, and etc.

So all these things got into place at the same time.

I would just put the emphasis on oil.

the kind of hemispheric dominance, wild machismo side, rather than the economic side.

There is a very long thread

kind of intellectual thread that runs back to, I don't know, the 18th century, maybe even the 17th century, that says, if people just stuck to business...

If we all just worried about our material well-being and our economic interests, everything would get better, right?

And people have been talking that way since Montesquieu.

And you saw it, for example, in the view that we had 20 years ago that no two countries that had a McDonald's would go to war.

Or that Russia, once the wall fell and communism ended and became a capitalist country, of course they're going to be our ally and they're going to join Europe and whatever.

And so that kind of general school of thought that says economics will save us

is really deeply ingrained in a lot of people.

It's too bad that it's not true.

It's just not, right?

And we have to be reminded of it every quarter of a century or so.