#11: The Enshittification of my Sanity
"The game is rigged, but you cannot lose if you do not play."
I bought a pair of computer speakers recently like it’s the early 2000s. All I have are work laptops with integrated speakers so I don’t need them, and yet I realized that I missed having a physical volume knob. I bought them on Amazon.com and finding any decent tech there, especially in a non-USA market, is an abysmal process. It’s not like there’s a good place to go to buy computer speakers locally, Amazon has gutted most specialty retailers.
Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? (guardian)
In 2009 a still fresh President Obama visited with Hugo Chavez, shook hands, and was gifted a copy of Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. It immediately became a best seller on Amazon.com, and elsewhere. Remember when Amazon used to be a book seller?
Republicans jumped on this immediately with complete disingenuousness. They wedged their slimy little fingers and made an issue out of nothing:
Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker and potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012, said: “[...] He has made life easier for the Castro dictatorship in Cuba, why not embrace or at least be cheerful and friendly with Hugo Chavez? I think it sends a terrible signal to all of Latin America, and a terrible signal about how the new administration regards dictators.”
Obama's handshake diplomacy (Politico, 2009)
By the end of 2011, ahead of Venezuela’s elections, the Obama government started raising “concerns” about who the country was friends with and their democratic values. Millions were spent on USAID and the International Republican Institute1 and other NGOs to fund the opposition and open (aka. ‘paid for’) elections. All of it failed.
Cut a few years ahead and Obama, now fully invested in the imperial state’s anti-Chavismo push, signed an executive order sanctioning Venezuela while labelling the country “a national security threat.” That GOP slime poisoned everything. The Republican position won out, under a Democrat. It set the stage for a decade of this and now lives are being destroyed and military action, if not an invasion, is looking more and more likely (Oct 5).
In New York city Zohran Mamdani came to prominence on a true grassroots campaign, under the nose of those in power, campaigning on the material conditions affecting the people living in his city. He won the primary handily and in the process got the attention of the mainstream. That’s when the questions about the “intifada” and Israel started, and suggestions for a thumbs up or thumbs down to Hamas game on late night TV, for a mayoral candidate in a city 9000 km away from all that.
Mamdani deflected them, though now that he’s the de facto lead the questions come in hot and the cracks are starting to show: Mamdani Breaks Silence About Maduro and Cuban President Díaz-Canel, to a former Univision news anchor:
“I want to be clear on where I stand. I believe both Nicolas Maduro and Miguel Diaz-Canel are dictators. Their administrations have stifled free and fair elections, jailed political opponents, and suppressed the free and fair press. And yet,”
And yet… it doesn’t matter what you say after that. You give an inch, they take a mile. It’s a mild capitulation. It’s still capitulation. What else will you give up? Why even play the game? If or when Venezuela is attacked will you oppose it and if so you will be called out on it: “you said you believe that he was a dictator??”
Mamdani got to the top of the ticket by not entertaining those distractions, so why start now? Has the success brought Democrat consultants and other losers close to his ear, including the aforementioned great capitulator? Maybe someone should gift him a copy of Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano off of Amazon so that years down the line he can hang by the rope they gave him.
I bought Seth Harp’s Fort Bragg Cartel on Amazon a few weeks ago. It seemed relevant then. It seems more relevant now. Buying it on Amazon was an abysmal word search of having to find the real book out of pages of fake AI clones. How did Amazon get so rubbish?
One of the obvious points of the book is that the USA military is, informally or otherwise, the very thing they accuse Venezuela of being. USA-occupied Afghanistan was one of the largest narco producers ever, and it was there that a lot of the Fort Bragg special forces got their hands dirty. I wondered what Seth Harp’s thoughts on the Venezuelan (and apparently also Colombian) extra-judicial killings were and his twitter post says it all.
Back in July, Wired wrote about The Enshittification of American Power (July 15, 2025) (archive link)
Ever since Trump retook office in January, in fact, rapid enshittification has become the organizing principle of US statecraft. This time around, Trumpworld understands that—in controlling the infrastructure layer of global finance, technology, and security—it has vast machineries of coercion at its disposal. As Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, recently put it, “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony.”
I think about that line “monetize its hegemony” a lot. Venezuela is plainly a big part of that. The tactics, already shitty under Obama, have become even shittier still.
Back then, in 2004, one-time Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, and one-time owner of Univision (Bloomberg), met with the American ambassador to talk about funding the opposition and getting rid of Chavez. “Stay Focused; Think Long Term” was the advice. Fund opposition group Súmate (wikipedia) “from European sources to protect it from accusations of being a US pawn.” All of this was documented in a 2004 diplomatic cable on wikileaks.
It’s been clear for a long time that one of the key investments in this hegemony has been María Corina Machado. She shows up frequently in those mid-2000s diplomatic cables. Here she is meeting with the USA Ambassador and a group of “opposition” to talk strategy2. Months later after being rightfully charged3 for conspiracy she’s asking the USA Ambassador what to do, no doubt wearing her “not involved in a foreign conspiracy” shirt. Years later, despite crying about unfair prosecution, she was apparently free enough to meet with USA Senator Dodd, amongst others, where it was stated quite clearly:
Senator Dodd encouraged Sumate to seek international financing from non-U.S. sources so that Chavez cannot credibly label Sumate as a USG-backed organization. Machado contended that foreign financing for NGOs is legal, despite the GOV's contention to the contrary,”
(And lest you think Canada was not complicit in supporting this, that same cable says “Machado said they received an invitation from the Canadian foreign ministry to visit Ottawa” and in 2004 the Canadian Ambassador was suggesting that “he would gladly recommend both Plaz and Machado and their families for refugee status in Canada.” Keep in mind also that this was still under the pre-Harper Liberal government.)
The consent manufacturing is happening at full throttle and, as is evident from the diplomatic cables, Canada and the European Union are being used to launder USA intent. Even the Norwegians, taking a nomination from Marco fucking Rubio, are playing that game awarding María Corina Machado a Nobel peace prize (and not before investing in polymarket first4.)
The same María Corina Machado that cheered on the boat murders. The same María Corina Machado that cheered Venezuelan sanctions. The same one that tried to coup a democratically elected Hugo Chavez in 2002. The one that is literally saying we will privatize for USA benefit5 (twitter). And the same María Corina Machado that is literally allied with Israel’s Likud. When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “Peace” Has Lost Its Meaning (codepink)
Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization.
Greg Grandin, during a Democracy now interview right before a talk with Cory Doctorow, who coined the term enshittification, said:
It’s really the enshittification of the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, they gave it to Kissinger in the 1970s, but at least he — they waited 'til he negotiated an end to the Vietnam War. I mean, I think of Rigoberta Menchú, who won it in the early 1980s, and, you know, her whole family was wiped out by U.S.-supported militarists and death squads in Guatemala. And now they've given it to somebody who’s completely aligned with the most militarist and darkest face of U.S. imperialism. It’s really a shocking choice.
Sure, I guess, though Nobel also awarded Obama in 2009, the year he shook Chavez’s hand and inadvertently caused a book on colonialism in Latin America to chart on Amazon.com, ”for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Back before the interests of Empire trumped all those supposed efforts. A man whose international legacy is regarded as drone strikes and sanctions. A man who kept propping up, financially, a Venezuelan opposition that cheers on drone strikes and sanctions against its own people and is allied with fascists.
In The Age of Enshittification (New Yorker, Oct 1, 2025) not even the Peace Prize is safe.
I had recently wondered, why is “enshittification” everywhere? The word, itself, not the concept it describes. And of course it’s because Cory Doctorow, creator of the neologism, has a book about it and it’s basically one big marketing campaign. It’s why he had a big profile in the NYT: Can Cory Doctorow’s Book ‘Enshittification’ Change the Tech Debate? Why he was getting interviewed on Democracy Now!: “Enshittification”: Cory Doctorow on Why Big Tech Sucks, Keeps Getting Worse & What to Do About It. et cetera et cetera.
I get it. In this age you either need to be viral to sell your book or be AI slop (or as is the case with Fort Bragg Cartel and Enshittification, AI slop based on a viral book.) And overall I think Cory Doctorow is still fine. I read his early novels, and his time as editor on boing boing in the early 2000s was a big influence on me and, full disclosure, I was a very minor contributor to one of boingboing’s game culture offshoots in the late 2000s. He stayed there, in a diminishing role, until he left in 2020.
I decided to check what’s going on there lately and Authoritarian Trump loses peace prize to antifascist. Corina Machado, “antifascist.” Enshittification comes for everyone, even boing boing.
In 2014, under the Conservative Harper regime, $8,000,000 of Canadian tax payer money went to, you guessed it, The Republican Institute. Probably more if you dig deeper.
Can you imagine if a Democrat leader met with, say, a Chinese ambassador to talk about replacing Trump? You would never hear the end of it. If anything, they’d likely be charged with treason. Yet we’re supposed to be weary of Maduro’s authoritarianism despite María Corina Machado literally being free to go around and thank Trump for the Nobel Prize and interview with Bari Weiss and Fox News.
Funny enough, what kept more direct Canadian involvement during the Sumate trials was that the embassy was too short staffed to be present.
The enshittification of insider trading.
Just absolutely clear with her intent. To Donald Trump Jr. I am so tired.
Related Links
Obama Requests Funding For Venezuelan Opposition in 2012 Budget (axisoflogic.com 2011)
This week Republican congressman and Head of the House of Representatives Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs for the Western Hemisphere, Connie Mack, called on the Obama administration to impose an economic embargo against Venezuela, citing alleged links to terrorist groups as justification.
Mack, a neoconservative representing Southern Florida, also requested the US include Venezuela on this year's "state sponsors of terrorism" list, a petition the congressman has made unsuccessfully during the last three years.
Two decades of USAID in Venezuela: a review of a criminal agenda (Feb 2025)
The balance of USAID’s contribution to the attempts to politically undermine and overthrow the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro concludes in human, property and political damages of immeasurable magnitude. It is certainly good news for Venezuela – and the rest of the world – that the agency is currently closed, but this does not mean that the regime change operations will not continue.
Quite the contrary: in the United States, foreign interference is not the central problem of USAID activities, but rather waste and corruption in agendas that no longer interest the current White House administration.
Indeed, the regime change operations did continue.
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