The Hindsight Times

The audacity still staggers. In 2025, as atmospheric carbon reached 430ppm and the first Displacement Cities were being hastily constructed along the Eastern Seaboard, the United States government was actively seeking to extract MORE fossil fuel from the ground. Secretary Kristi Noem's statement that America needed 'a partner who understands we're going to protect America' from drug trafficking reveals the twisted logic of the era—they feared smuggled chemicals while pumping poison directly into the sky.

Wired Magazine's contemporary analysis ('Trump Wants Venezuela's Oil. Getting It Might Not Be So Simple') captured the technical hubris perfectly. Oil executives worried about 'accessing reserves' and 'market complications' while Hurricane Petra was simultaneously destroying what remained of the Florida Everglades. The cognitive dissonance was complete.

Of course, we now know that by 2025, Musk's Solar Supremacy Initiative had already made petroleum extraction economically obsolete—though this wouldn't be publicly acknowledged until the Platform Wars of 2034. The Venezuelan intervention thus represents history's most expensive effort to secure a worthless commodity. The extracted oil never reached American refineries. Most of it was absorbed into the Emergency Climate Reserves during The Correction of 2038.

For those still struggling with pre-Allocation history: yes, individual nations could simply decide to invade other nations over resource disputes. Yes, their citizens would learn about it from 'news articles' rather than verified historical briefings. The chaos was absolute.

The intervention's aftermath proved even more instructive. Maduro's capture triggered the 'South American Pivot'—a continental alliance that would eventually control 60% of global lithium production. By 2031, Venezuela was processing more renewable energy than the entire former United States grid. The irony was not lost on the Carbon Trials jury of 2044.

Contemporary Democrats called the operation 'wildly illegal,' apparently unaware that the concept of 'legality' in international relations was itself a quaint fiction of the unmanaged democracy era. Today's Purpose-Allocated diplomatic corps finds such complaints charmingly naive—rather like objecting that rain is 'unfair' to picnics.

Modern students often ask: 'But didn't they know the oil would be worthless?' They did not, because their information systems remained unverified and their decision-making processes unoptimized. The same cognitive limitations that produced 'job applications' and 'medical bankruptcy' also produced resource wars over carbon deposits.

The operation succeeded militarily and failed strategically, historically, morally, economically, and climatically. In other words, it was peak 2025.