As I write this, following the news from Venezuela seems to take precedence over any attention to the performing arts. Fortunately, The Old Reader provides me with three sources that I find equally reliable: Al Jazeera English, the home page for BBC News, and the “World news” site for The Guardian. Where the last of these sources is concerned, Diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour recently filed an article with the headline “European leaders appear torn in face of new world order after Venezuela attack.”
Quite honestly, this article did not surprise me. What I learned in high school in American History was that the President of the United States was expected to promote the best interests of our country in his diplomatic engagements with other heads of state. Many decades later, I believe that this should still be the case, particularly where those engagements involve the European Union. In that context, it is important to make note of how Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, responded to the attack:
We stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and support a peaceful and democratic transition. Any solution must respect international law and the charter of the United Nations.
I read this as a tactful message to President Donald Trump when it comes to how Nicolás Maduro will be treated now that he is on American soil.
Will Trump “get the message?” On the basis of the Guardian article, my guess is that he will be more inclined to follow up on yesterday’s statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
Cuba is a disaster, run by incompetent and senile men. If I were them, I would be a little worried.
Many of my generation grew up reading the books of William L. Shirer. The best known of these is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, whose recent 50th anniversary was celebrated with a new edition. Sadly, Rubio is of a younger generation; and, it would not surprise me if he did not know who Shirer was. (To be fair, however, many of those reading this site may also be unaware of Shirer, which is why I provided the hyperlinks!) That said, if any reference to the Third Reich did not raise Rubio’s eyebrows, then I would be really worried!
Cover of the book that inspired this article (from its Wikipedia Web page)
This brings me back to my choice of title. For those readers that did not immediately “get the message,” it was inspired by a children’s picture book by Laura Joffe Numeroff entitled If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. This book has its own Wikipedia page with a perfectly good summary:
A boy gives a cookie to a mouse, Frank. The mouse then asks for a glass of milk. He goes on to request a straw (to drink the milk), a napkin and then a mirror (to avoid a milk mustache), nail scissors (because he wants to trim his hair using the mirror), and a broom (to sweep up his hair trimmings). Next, he has the boy give him a blanket to take a nap, read him a story, give him crayons and paper so he can draw a picture, and then hang the picture on the refrigerator. Looking at the refrigerator makes him thirsty, so the mouse asks for a second glass of milk. The circle is complete when he wants a cookie to go with it.
The point is that, while Maduro is the “cookie” in this scenario, I am less concerned with learning more about what happened and more concerned with what is likely to happen next.
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