The Wall Street Journal editorial board has delivered its share of idiocies over the past few years, but its response to the capture of Nicolas Maduro has set a new standard. Calling the military intervention “justified” because Venezuela had allied with “Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran,” the board then declared triumphantly that “Mr. Trump is pursuing the Bush freedom agenda, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Are we all neocons now?”

Also living in a dream world is Sen. John Fetterman, who told Fox News, “We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here.” Fetterman then offered a benediction, saying that he just wanted to “remind everybody that America is a force of good order and democracy, and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys.”

That’s delusional, and I say that as someone who believed in humanitarian interventions abroad, who supported the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the bombing of Serbia and the invasion of Grenada. American power has been used for bad ends at times (the Mexican War was unadulterated aggression), but it’s hard to think of a country that has more often extended itself for good purposes around the globe.

To imagine that President Donald Trump is doing anything remotely like those interventions in Venezuela is risible. “Good order and democracy”? At his strutting press conference, Trump mentioned the country’s oil more than 20 times and democracy not at all. Asked later whether the United States would encourage elections, Trump dismissed the idea.

That press conference was not about democracy or human rights or even capitalism. It was about straight up plunder undergirded by threats. The country’s oil, Trump announced, would be pumped by American oil companies for American oil companies — not even for American taxpayers.

In the past, when the United States has toppled dictators, it has sought plausible leaders from among the democratic opposition and sometimes settled for less than inspiring choices like Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki. Not only is the Venezuelan opposition unusually united and organized; not only does it have a legitimate president in Edmundo Gonzalez; but it has a clear leader in Maria Corina Machado, who happens to be a global heroine.

There is no need to search for plausible democratic leaders. They are right there, but Trump said Machado is unable to lead: “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

Trump and his people don’t leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest, but the justifications are delusional. Trump’s obsessed with the fantasy that they somehow emptied their prisons and insane asylums and shipped the inmates to America.

This. Is. Not. True.

Back in 1980, when Trump was just a novice charlatan, Fidel Castro did something like that during the Mariel boatlift. Trump got that idea stuck in his brain.

The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil.) We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.