This is the sound democracy makes when it dies.

We woke up Saturday morning to discover that the President of the United States had invaded Venezuela, captured its leader, and announced plans to take its oil. No congressional authorization. No legal justification. Just power, exercised because it could be.

Venezuela is what happens when a ruling class decides democracy is disposable. Elections rigged, courts captured, the press crushed, corruption as state policy. This was deliberate,a systematic dismantling of democratic restraints so a small group could loot a country without consequences.

The moral obscenity is how this remains theoretical while millions flee, starve, are disappeared. Authoritarianism doesn't announce itself with tanks. It arrives with lies, loyalty tests, and the normalization of lawlessness. Venezuela proved that when leaders break the law unchecked, the result is suffering, repression, and national ruin.

We understood this. We said this.

Then Donald Trump invaded Venezuela.

He launched the strikes and told Congress afterward. His Vice President announced Venezuela's oil must be "returned" to the United States,returned, as if it had ever been ours, as if conquest could be renamed repatriation. No debate about whether a president can unilaterally invade a sovereign nation. No pretense that this was about democracy rather than resources and dominance.

Trump looked at Venezuela's collapse and saw not a warning but an instruction manual. The question was never whether authoritarians would destroy democracy,it was whether we would recognize it when our own leader did it with our flag.

Yes, Maduro is terrible. He rigged elections, crushed dissent, oversaw economic catastrophe, built a narco-state. He deserves accountability. But Trump didn't remove Maduro to restore Venezuelan democracy. He removed him because no one could stop him, because there was oil, and because demonstrating unchecked power is now the point.

The precedent is set. Russia will cite this. China will cite this. Every authoritarian with a military will understand what we just taught them: sovereignty is conditional, international law is decorative, and might makes right when you're strong enough to ignore the consequences.

You cannot defend democracy by destroying it. You cannot oppose tyranny by perfecting it. We spent years warning that unchecked power ends in ruin, then elected a man who heard that as permission.

Trump has done what we said leaders must never do. He broke the law because he could. He ignored institutions because they couldn't stop him. He invaded another country and called it Saturday morning. The warning about Venezuela applies to the invasion,which means it applies to us.

Venezuela was supposed to teach us what happens when power goes unchecked. Instead, we learned that the lesson doesn't matter if no one enforces it. Trump looked at a nation destroyed by lawless leadership and saw only opportunity. He understood that if you're shameless enough, brazen enough, powerful enough, the warning signs become a to-do list.

This is how it happens. Not with awareness or regret, but with a Vice President announcing theft like fiscal policy. Not with shock, but with normalization that makes atrocity sound reasonable if you say it with enough confidence.

The tragedy isn't that we failed to see authoritarianism coming. The tragedy is that we described exactly how it would arrive, then pretended not to recognize it when it showed up in uniform.