Why it doesn't pay to make predictions
Neither Dan nor I put this on our list of 2026 predictions at all:
Suitably chastened by my failure to tell you this was imminent, I’ll refrain from telling you what will happen next, not least because I know next to nothing about Venezuela, to be honest. I mean, I know enough to fake it (and many would be convinced) but I’d know I was a fraud.
I hope this works out well for Venezuela. The people there have suffered terribly. That I do know. I hope the country can be stabilized quickly. I hope the most pessimistic predictions I’ve seen—involving a collapse into civil war à la Iraq— prove wildly incorrect. I hope Venezuela’s future is bright, democratic, prosperous, and peaceful. I have no idea if any of that will come to pass, but I hope so.
And I hope when I next check the news, I discover that we’ve put a missile down Khamenei’s smokestack, and that Putin and his entourage have perished mysteriously in an accident involving an exploding tractor or something. Wouldn’t that make for a great news day. (Given how surprising the news has been so far in 2026, who would be such a fool as to blithely rule that out?)
I’ll leave it at that.
If even one of these optimistic variants comes true, a lot of people will be dining on crow. On both sides of the barricades.
"TRUMP did this? No way, he likes dictators."
"TRUMP did this? After promising to keep us out of forever-wars?"
From Quico Toro,
https://www.persuasion.community/p/maduro-is-gonevenezuelas-dictatorship?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3pj38&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“For three decades, the most trustworthy principle for interpreting Venezuelan affairs has been a simple heuristic: whatever outcome makes Venezuelans’ lives most miserable is always to be treated as the odds-on-favorite. If, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio apparently told Senator Mike Lee, the United States really isn’t planning any follow-on actions against the rump regime, then for Venezuelans on the ground nothing may change. Things could get even worse: you can easily imagine a wounded and humiliated Chavista successor ratcheting up state repression to rebuild the regime’s now tattered aura of invincibility.
“Maduro’s abduction could easily become an all-purpose excuse to crack down on any and every sign of dissent: any expression of dissatisfaction will surely be used as evidence of connivance with the American enemy. Trump’s stunning one-day win could be remembered for heralding an even darker stage in Venezuela’s path towards totalitarianism.”
I chose “Maduro stays in power” on the quiz, despite disagreeing with “nothing happens”. I expected something to happen to leave Venezuela even worse off than it already was. I *am* surprised, of course, and hope it works out for the best.