When a Country Loses Its Soul

The death in Minneapolis is not an anomaly. It's part of a national unraveling — where cruelty is policy, lies replace truth, and democracy itself is on life support.

A woman is dead.

• Shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis.
• An ICE operation with no local justification.
• No crime. No threat. No explanation that makes it right.

This wasn’t law enforcement. It was spectacle — state violence as political theater. It happened because cruelty has become the point.

But this is bigger than one tragedy. It’s a symptom. Of a doctrine. Of a worldview.

One that has pulled America to the edge.

This Is What a Nation in Decline Looks Like:

🔹 Democratic norms shredded.
Trump’s allies ignore subpoenas, threaten judges, and openly vow to rewrite the Constitution. The rule of law is now optional — if you’re in power.

🔹 Federal agencies turned into weapons.
The DOJ still hasn’t complied with the court order to release the Epstein files. Who are they protecting — and why?

🔹 Naked imperialism, rebranded as policy.
Trump is taking Venezuela’s oil. He’s threatening to take Greenland and make it part of the U.S.
This isn’t foreign policy.
It’s looting.

🔹 Fear as governance.
Immigrants. LGBTQ+ Americans. Protesters. Scientists. Teachers.
Demonized and threatened — not for what they’ve done, but for who they are.

🔹 Disinformation as a weapon.
From Fox News to the darkest corners of social media, truth no longer matters.
Only the spin.
Only the shield.

🔹 Violence normalized.
A federal show of force ends in bloodshed.
Elected officials call for “bloodbaths” if elections don’t go their way.

This isn’t political hardball.
It’s the slow unraveling of a country’s moral center.

We Are Witnessing the Death of Democratic Conscience

When the law is bent for power…
When facts are drowned by lies…
When violence is praised and cruelty rewarded…

A nation doesn’t collapse all at once.
It erodes — moment by moment — until something unspeakable becomes normal.

That’s where we are.

And the question is:
Are you just going to stand by and watch?

Naked Imperialism: The Trump Doctrine

The words and actions of Donald Trump reveal a man who views power as entitlement and other nations as resources to be taken. That worldview has a name — imperialism — and history warns us what happens when it goes unchallenged.

In the past week, the former president has made his intentions explicit. Regarding Venezuela, Trump stated clearly: “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.” Not oil leases. Not diplomatic deals. Wealth. Out of the ground. And not through partnership, but through power — power wielded by a country that sees its might as license.

This is naked aggression.

It’s the same worldview behind his ongoing obsession with Greenland — a territory he has repeatedly claimed should be “part of the United States.” This week, one of his closest aides, Stephen Miller, when asked if the U.S. would rule out military force to claim Greenland, responded: “Nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

Let that sink in.

This is not foreign policy. It is conquest.

These are not isolated remarks or exaggerated interpretations. They are part of a deliberate pattern: a public re-embrace of raw imperial thinking — domination of land, extraction of resources, and the rejection of sovereign consent as a requirement for American action.

The response from the international community has been swift and unified. On January 6, in a rare joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Denmark reminded the world — and the United States — that “Greenland belongs to its people,” and that any attempt to rewrite that fact is a violation of the most basic principles of international law. They affirmed that Denmark, and Greenland, are part of NATO — and made clear that territorial integrity, sovereignty, and the inviolability of borders are not suggestions. They are the foundation of peace.

Let’s be honest: when American presidents speak, the world listens. And when they speak like this — about taking wealth from the ground of a weakened nation, or claiming a territory populated by people who have not asked to be ruled — the world is right to be alarmed.

The Monroe Doctrine was once a warning against European colonization in the Western Hemisphere. What we are witnessing now is an inversion of that idea: the assertion that this hemisphere belongs to us, not in principle, but in possession.

We must ask ourselves: is this who we are?

Because if we remain silent while this rhetoric is normalized — if we do not call it what it is — we are complicit in its return.

The Trump Doctrine Is About Power — and Venezuela Is Just the Beginning

A few hours after U.S. forces launched strikes in Venezuela and reportedly captured President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump stood before cameras and said the quiet part out loud.

“We’ll run Venezuela for a period of time, until there’s a transition…”
“We’ll be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

It was a stunning admission — not of policy, but of purpose.

The operation wasn’t presented as regime change or liberation. It wasn’t framed as a war on terrorism or a humanitarian intervention. The justification was narcotics charges.

The outcome was continued U.S. authority over Venezuela’s governance and resources. And the plan, according to Trump himself, involves seizing control of the country’s oil and mineral reserves — under the guise of transition.

If this sounds more like looting than law enforcement — it is.

And the most disturbing part is that none of it is accidental. It’s strategic. And it’s written down in black and white.

The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

In November 2025, the Trump administration released its new National Security Strategy. It included a bold new framing of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America: a sweeping agenda called “The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”

This updated doctrine lays out a vision in which the entire Western Hemisphere is viewed as America’s rightful sphere of control — politically, economically, and militarily.

Here’s what it says, verbatim:

“We want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us…
one that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets…
that supports critical supply chains…
and ensures our continued access to key strategic locations.”

That’s not diplomacy. That’s dominance.

It continues:

“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to own or control strategically vital assets…
We must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere…
[so we can] assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to.”

There is no ambiguity here. The goal is to control Latin America’s resources, supply chains, ports, and politics — and to use military, diplomatic, and financial pressure to ensure that outcome.

This isn’t just about Venezuela. It’s about asserting ownership over the region itself.

Follow the Resources

The new National Security Strategy makes no secret of the real prize: natural resources.

It repeatedly highlights the need to:

• “take wealth out of the ground”

• secure “critical minerals and rare earth elements”

• ensure U.S. access to key geographies and infrastructure

• build “near-shore manufacturing” hubs to replace China as a source of cheap labor

This is not hypothetical. It’s operational.

Venezuela is the world’s largest proven oil reserve. It also has significant deposits of rare earth elements. So when the Trump administration justifies military action by citing narco-trafficking — and then immediately announces plans to “run the country” and extract its wealth — Americans have every right to ask:
Is this about justice, or about plunder?

From Security Strategy to Imperial Blueprint

What makes this moment even more dangerous is that the Trump Doctrine doesn’t just rely on raw military power — it combines it with a full-spectrum effort to reshape political regimes across Latin America.

The National Security Strategy outlines a plan to:

• “enlist and expand” regional partners aligned with U.S. principles

• isolate or pressure those aligned with rivals (particularly China)

• control ports, infrastructure, and digital supply chains

• and treat any independent economic ties as threats to U.S. security

According to reporting by journalist Ben Norton and others, this strategy has already played out through:

• U.S. pressure on Panama to cancel Chinese infrastructure deals

• support for the 2025 right-wing electoral takeover in Honduras

• threats against Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia for working with China

• and now, the use of military force in Venezuela

It is not a foreign policy. It is a corporate war plan.

The American Public Deserves to Know

None of this is about defending Maduro, or excusing Venezuela’s past failures. It’s about defending a principle: that we should not allow power — any power — to weaponize law, military force, and propaganda to hide what is ultimately a strategy of economic extraction and regime engineering.

The Trump Doctrine tells us exactly what it is: a plan to reassert U.S. dominance across Latin America, control critical resources, and block foreign competition.

“Taking wealth… while we run the country.”

Trump said exactly what this is about. And now we know, it will not stop at Venezuela.

Say the Quiet Part Loud

We are told this is justice. But Justice isn’t supposed to be a cover for looting resources.

We are told this is security. But security doesn’t begin with threats.

We are told this is leadership. But leadership doesn’t loot.

This is extraction, not liberation. And it’s time to say that out loud.

When Tribe Trumps Truth: How Identity Clouds Judgment

In a healthy democracy, disagreement is expected. People weigh evidence differently, value different outcomes, and argue their case. But something more troubling has taken hold in recent years: the growing tendency for identity to override evidence—to choose what feels loyal over what is true.

Social scientists have a name for this phenomenon. It’s often called identity-protective cognition or motivated reasoning—the tendency to process information in ways that protect one’s sense of belonging to a group. When beliefs become tied to identity, facts stop functioning as tools for understanding and start functioning as threats.

This isn’t a flaw unique to one political party, ideology, or faith tradition. It’s a human pattern. But in an era of fragmented media and algorithm-driven reinforcement, its consequences have become harder to ignore.

How Tribal Thinking Works

Research in social psychology shows that people are not neutral processors of information. We are more likely to accept claims that affirm our group identity and to reject or rationalize away those that challenge it—even when the evidence is strong.

Studies by researchers such as Dan Kahan at Yale have demonstrated that higher levels of education do not necessarily make people better at evaluating evidence objectively. In some cases, they make people better at defending the beliefs of their group. Intelligence becomes a tool for justification rather than correction.

This helps explain a puzzling reality: why large numbers of people sometimes support policies or leaders whose actions directly conflict with their stated values or material interests.

When Interests and Identity Collide

Consider economic policy. Over the past decade, multiple analyses by economists and government agencies have shown that broad tariffs increase consumer prices and disproportionately affect farmers, manufacturers, and working-class households. Retaliatory tariffs have repeatedly hit agricultural exports, requiring large federal subsidies to offset losses.

And yet, many voters whose livelihoods depend on affordable inputs or stable export markets have supported tariff-heavy policies because those policies were framed as symbols of national strength or group loyalty. The economic data was available. The consequences were measurable. But identity often mattered more than impact.

A similar tension appears in religious communities. Surveys consistently show that many Christians cite values such as humility, compassion for the poor, honesty, and care for the vulnerable as central to their faith. Yet political support has at times coalesced around leaders whose conduct and rhetoric openly contradict those principles.

This isn’t best explained by hypocrisy alone. It’s better understood as tribal alignment—the belief that defending “our side” is synonymous with defending what is good, even when evidence suggests otherwise.

Why Misinformation Thrives in Tribal Environments

Misinformation doesn’t spread simply because people lack access to facts. It spreads because certain claims feel right within a group’s narrative.

When identity is at stake:

• Contradictory evidence is dismissed as biased or corrupt

• Trusted sources are replaced with loyal ones

• Correction feels like betrayal

In these conditions, truth becomes negotiable—not because people don’t care about it, but because accepting it would require social or psychological cost.

The result is a breakdown of shared reality. People no longer disagree about solutions; they disagree about basic facts. And when that happens, democratic decision-making becomes nearly impossible.

Why This Matters for Democracy

A democracy cannot function if citizens cannot agree on what is real. Shared truth is not about unanimity of opinion—it’s about having a common factual foundation on which disagreement can occur.

When tribal identity consistently overrides evidence:

• Policy failures repeat without accountability

• Harmful narratives go unchallenged

• People vote, advocate, and argue from distorted premises

The cost isn’t abstract. It shows up in rising prices, weakened institutions, damaged communities, and people turning against one another based on fear rather than understanding.

A Question Worth Asking

None of us are immune to tribal thinking. The question isn’t whether identity shapes our beliefs—it’s whether we are willing to notice when it does.

If we all want safer communities, economic stability, and a future worth passing on, then we have to ask an uncomfortable question:

When evidence challenges what our group tells us to believe, do we lean toward truth—or toward tribe?

Rebuilding shared truth begins there.

(This piece reflects the collaborative work of The People’s Democracy).