You know that Venezuela's crisis is coming to a climax when the U.S. embassy in Caracas orders all families out of the hellhole, obviously preparing for something horrific.

Yet strangely, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been AWOL from the scene, missing meetings, making no statements.

One can only hope he's being that way because he knows that something big is coming down.  It could be that.  Because as much as it may annoy and disappoint us to see that he's not out front on the situation in Venezuela – where its communist Chavista rulers under President Nicolas Maduro are holding a rigged referendum on July 30 to turn Venezuela into a Cuba-style communist state – you can bet it's annoying the Chavistas even more.  They have no idea what he will do based on his non-statements and non-appearances and apparent disengagement with their issue.  They may have been lulled into thinking nothing is going on.

The Sacramento Bee speculates that Tillerson is preoccupied elsewhere, generally with the Gulf Crisis and the Middle East.  He may also be staying out of the spotlight to avoid charges of conflict of interest from the likes of Swampland opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which has Chavista clients.

The one thing you can't say is that Tillerson doesn't know all about that hellhole dump, which he frontally confronted and did a number on when he was chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil in the 2000s.  Unlike other oil firms, Tillerson didn't let Chavista expropriators take his company's property without a whimper – he sued the thugs in court and effectively bankrupted them.  After that, he thumbed his nose at the Chavistas and had ExxonMobil explore for oil off Guyana, in an area claimed by the Venezuelan government.  So we know that Tillerson knows about the place.

What we don't know is about him.  We have to hope he is so on top of it that he doesn't have time to make appearances for reporters.