A Risky Game
Want to know what in the world Trump is trying to accomplish in Venezuela and Greenland? Go check on the board game "Risk." Popular with middle-schoolers, it's right at his IQ level.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
As I watched and read about the United States’ invasion of Venezuela, the actions had a familiar feel to them that I could not immediately place. I had seen this play before.
This vague familiarity hounded me like the identity of a long-ago classmate you see at your 25th high school class reunion and have no idea who they are nor that you ate lunch together every day of sophomore year. You are further confounded when that unknown classmate slaps you on the back and asks if you still eat Fluffer Nutter sandwiches every day for lunch. (To which the obvious response is: I’m 43 and married with children. Of course I still eat Fluffer Nutter sandwiches for lunch.)
The removal of the Venezuelan president and his wife had definite echoes from my schoolboy past but without marshmallow residue on my chin. And I was pretty certain I was never involved in any Delta Force clandestine operations in South America during Mr. Fluck’s gym class.
Soon after the Venezuela nation building began, the Trump administration started rattling their saber further and talked about our need for Greenland and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s wife even posted a meme of Greenland with the stars and stripes covering the entire country. This too reminded me of similar past events like when Lady Bird Johnson once used a cocktail napkin to blot her red lipstick before a speech and the red residue sort of looked like the stars and stripes covering North Vietnam if you looked close and had detached retinas in both eyes.
History shows that Lady Bird was not creating memes and was simply jotting down some thoughts for an important speech as First Lady, and on the other side of the lipstick-stained napkin she had written: “Where flowers bloom, so does hope.” (Our modern equivalent would be when First Lady Melania Trump apparently prepared for a speech by listening to Rick Astley and then said this of her husband: “He will never, ever give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever let you down.” Doesn’t exactly conjure images of hope and beauty and just means she was ‘rickrolled’ which is not as promiscuous as it sounds.)
As clues in this mystery, I now had Venezuela, Greenland, and Fluffer Nutters as reference points when I recalled a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Though improbable, I had at last discovered the truth. Trump and his minions were in Mar-a-Lago playing a real-life game of Risk, and they wanted to collect the five armies you get each round for controlling North America.
Some readers might dismiss this idea as patently absurd, but they obviously do not have a deep understanding of the Parker Brothers board game, and they also fail to recognize that Trump, Hegseth, and Company are merely 13-year-old boys who are bored because it’s raining outside and they can’t go golfing or ride their bikes. As any boy of suburbia who was a teenager before Atari was released can tell you, Venezuela and Greenland are vital to a successful Risk campaign built around North America.
Truthfully, I’m not sure I have ever played a game of Risk to completion because even when we were kids we understood that life was finite, and we would be able to drive and have access to the mall before the game was over. Even if we did not devote four days or four years to the venture, we understood the importance of Greenland and Venezuela, and it had nothing to do with natural resources or mineral rights. Those two countries were invaluable pressure points for winning and controlling North America.
For those of you who may not have the Risk board memorized because you dated in high school, there are three entry points to North America in the game. If you control Congress, The Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court, then you already control most of North America, so all you have to do is insulate those interests by securing the three points of access which are, unsurprisingly, Venezuela, Greenland, and Alaska.
In this light, Trump’s unprovoked attack on Venezuela makes perfect sense. The President and his cabinet are gathered around a dining room table in the Southern White House over Christmas break, eating McDonald’s, just like me and my boyhood friends, when it dawns on them that if they take control of those three entry points there is a very good chance that they will be invulnerable to future attacks from Iceland, Kamchatka, or Peru and Brazil. They can amass armies on those borders and continue to sell sneakers and Bitcoin inland with impunity, and they don’t have to roll triple sixes.
Of course, that scenario begs the question of what we are doing to protect our interests in Alaska and the easy access via the invisible Bering Strait (beyond Sarah Palin watching Russia from her front porch), but if you consider the Risk board you will recognize that Ukraine is portrayed as the largest country in Europe as well as arguably the largest territory in the game. As such, Ukraine is going to attract the attention of all of Asia’s shaded green territories as Moscow continues to fail to heed Vizzini’s warning in The Princess Bride: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” Kamchatka’s eyes and spies are directed to the three-year land war to the west.
Risk was advertised as the “game of global domination.” I do not claim to know how this real life game of Risk being played from a gated estate in Florida will end, but if my past experiences are any indication someone’s mother will need the table for dinner, and all the players will give the board one last look before we sweep all the colored pieces into their respective plastic boxes and put it back in the closet--a larger world, forgotten and unconquerable. Until it rains again and we grow bored with health care.
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