In another era, the kidnapping rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro might have consumed headlines for weeks. Amid the most frenetic news cycle in modern U.S. history and after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has quickly faded. That normalization is the point. The Trump administration is working to frame the operation as a straightforward removal of a fugitive “narcoterrorist” and a transition of Venezuela from a pariah state into a cooperative partner. In this telling, there is