Operation Righteous Tide: Correction at Sea

It was supposed to be a “targeted deterrence operation,” but the sea still reeks of diesel and fish guts, and the horizon flickers with the light of American ordnance. President Galen Grundy’s administration confirmed Wednesday that U.S. naval forces had “neutralized hostile incursions” by Venezuelan fishing vessels, calling them “unlicensed maritime aggressors operating in disputed freedom waters.”

To everyone else, they were just fishermen.

The explosions began before dawn. Locals in Puerto La Cruz reported seeing “metal birds spitting fire” over the Caribbean. Hours later, the Ministry of Correction released triumphant footage of the bombings — slo-mo edits, patriotic synth soundtrack, and captions reading: “Correction Begins at Sea.”

“We pay for this.”

Across the border, in Amarillo, Texas, Taxpayer Brenda Mott watched the footage between commercials for correctional cereal. “Look, I don’t even eat fish,” she said, clutching her patriotic debit card. “But if Grundy says those boats were uncorrected, then what choice do we got? You can’t have chaos out there. It’s bad optics for the markets.”

She paused. “Still, I guess I’d like to know what they were fishing for.”

“We hit them clean,” said Commander Roarke Delvin of the Angels Maritime Division — Grundy’s privatized, for-profit navy. “We’re not monsters. We radioed them in English, Spanish, and Compliance Code 47. They didn’t respond, so we proceeded with corrective measures.”

Asked if those measures included bombing wooden trawlers with depleted uranium, Delvin smiled thinly. “We follow procedure. The President approves every fish we fry.”

Meanwhile, on what remains of his boat, fisherman Ramón Cordero sat dazed amid floating barrels and stunned tuna. “We were catching snapper,” he said, voice shaking. “Then the sky… it opened. They said we were invaders. But I was born right here. The sea is my mother.”

He pointed toward a drifting American buoy still blinking red. “She hums songs now. Like your commercials.”

In Washington, Grundy called the operation “a moral success,” hailing it as proof that “America can feed the world by denying it fish.” Analysts expect another round of “liberation strikes” by week’s end, this time against uncorrected shrimp in the Gulf.

No official death toll has been released, though Correction TV has already branded the event Operation Righteous Tide™. A teaser for tonight’s segment promises exclusive footage — and, according to the promo, “a surprise cameo by the President himself, casting the first net.”