We're living in interesting times, a turning point in history.
Are we entering a dark authoritarian era or are we on the brink of a technological golden age or the apocalypse?
No one really knows, but I'm trying to find out.
From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat and on my show, Interesting Times,
I'm exploring this strange new world order with the thinkers and leaders giving it shape.
Follow it wherever you get your podcasts.
So it is a frigid Sunday afternoon,
and I am standing in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which,
improbably,
is where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife woke up this morning after their stunning capture by American troops in Caracas over the weekend.
And it's this truly surreal scene
because after 12 years as the all-powerful dictator of a major Latin American country,
a country with something like 30 million citizens,
Maduro has ended up in this jail next to the highway a few minutes from my apartment and a couple blocks from the nearest Costco.
It's just such a juxtaposition from what he was just a few days ago to what he is now.
And as best we can tell,
Maduro is going to remain in this detention center at least until he is arraigned,
we think as early as Monday morning in Manhattan.
And it's at that point that the U.S.
government is going to present its charges against him.