Morning and Evening Asylum, 6th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): The first week of this 526th year on the Modern Era is now complete, and the world is already a far different one than it was in the last week of 525.

It's not just that the U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president and his wife. It's that in so doing, the U.S. showed the world that it's abandoned any and all pretense of abiding by international law or diplomacy, and the Stable Genius showed that he feels he's no longer answerable to anyone but himself. Not to Congress, not to the Courts, certainly not to the American people. "Yeah, I did it for the oil," he freely admits to anyone who'll listen. "We're going to keep the oil, and I'd do it again." Meanwhile, the sycophants around him are warning that Greenland, Columbia, Cuba, or Panama could well be next. 

His malignant narcissism, so dangerous before, has turned worse and now he's full blown delusional. His delusions of grandeur have moved him from Commodus to Nero, and now, after this week, he's in Caligula territory. It's as if we're getting both mad-king George III and the extravagant and lascivious George IV at the same time. It's both fascinating and horrifying as we watch his mind disintegrate before our very eyes. 

Horror grips us as we watch you die

All we can do is echo your anguished cries

Stare as all your human feelings die

We are leaving, you don't need us.

Yes, the Stable Genius, old mad King Caligula George III/IV himself, invaded Venezuela for its oil, as he keeps telling everyone. But the Stable Genius isn't as independent as he wants us to believe and there are powerbrokers and megadonors around him to manipulate (bit don't control) his actions. He may have ordered the invasion for the oil, but the U.S. attacked Venezuela to protect the petrodollar.  

As described yesterday, all OPEC and virtually all other oil is bought and sold in US dollars. This arrangement keeps the U.S. currency afloat and allows the U.S. to print unlimited money to fund its military, entitlements, and deficit spending. Countries that try to buck this system generally find their leadership replaced by the United States. 

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Daddy Bush used the U.S. military to drive him back to Iraq but left him in power, albeit with sanctions. When Hussein started selling petroleum on world markets in dinars and other currencies to skirt the sanctions, Bush Junior stepped in, had him deposed, and let disgruntled Iraqis hang him. The lesson was it's one thing to invade another country but another to sell oil without U.S. petrodollars. 

When Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African currency for oil trade, Obama had Libya bombed and Gaddafi killed.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are pursuing payment systems that bypass the U.S. dollar. The Stable Genius has placed large, double-digit tariffs on three of the countries (Brazil, India, and South Africa), and has a testy relationship, to say the very least, with China. He loves his Putin, but Russia has been selling oil in rubles and yuan since it invaded Ukraine, and the one and only time the Stable Genius ever criticizes Russia is over sales of sanctioned oil. 

BRICS has expanded to now include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years to get around U.S. sanctions and the Stable Genius has already bombed Iran once last year, and is now throwing gasoline on the flames of the current civil unrest there. He's bombed Nigeria, which isn't BRICS or an obvious enemy of the petrodollar, but is in OPEC and a significant oil producer and the bombs may have been a warning, a brush-back pitch in baseball jargon. 

Venezuela, another OPEC member, isn't BRICS either, but wants to be. Brazil blocked their application over democracy, or lack thereof, but Maduro has independently threatened that Venezuela would free itself from the petrodollar. It's probably no coincidence that Venezuelans were among the very first groups of immigrants that the Stable Genius singled out for deportation when he started his second term. 

The surprise over last weekend's invasion wasn't because he struck at Venezuela but because of the timing and how unilateral the decision was. Everyone, especially Maduro, knew G.I.s were going to arrive in Caracas eventually. They just needed to look at the flotilla offshore, or talk to the widows of the 100+ boaters the U.S. military had already killed.

I'm not saying oil wasn't a factor in the invasion - of course it was, the Stable Genius is freely admitting as much. But the invasion is also a part of a long pattern of deposing heads of state or otherwise punishing nations that sell oil outside of the petrodollar system. A nearby, oil-rich nation with a leftist, virulently anti-U.S. government was always going to be a potential target, but selling petroleum to the Chinese in yuans all but sealed their fate. 

It was inevitable.