The fall of Venezuela is an atrocity.
The comic elements are clear enough — the further you remove yourself from the poverty, chaos, and collapse. We can wallow in a bit of Schadenfreude, taking glee as some American leftists squirm to explain why the socialist paradise they ballyhooed a mere three years ago now tail-spins to the grave.
The collapse of this socialist experiment offers an enormous level of tragedy. It’s not pretty.
The country’s leader, President Nicolas Maduro, makes his predictable desperation play. Rather than confront his own errors, and the futility of making socialism work in anything like a rigorous form, he boasts. “Venezuela Leader Says US ‘Dreams’ Of Dividing Loyal Military,” reads yesterday’s Reuters report. While no doubt true, this is one of those cases where whatever we dream to the north, our dreams are better than their current reality.
Of course the Venezuelan military should turn on Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s inheritor, protecting the right of recall, which Maduro is denying. By painting the U. S. as the bad guy, Maduro hopes to unite his people — especially his armed forces — around him. That’s what a desperate demagogic dynast does. Citizens and subjects traditionally abandon skepticism about their leaders when they feel threatened from the outside.
Which is one reason it would be a mistake for the U. S. to intervene.
Reuters poetically reports that the military is still united behind the socialist government, and resists the recall referendum, singing “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death!”
Wrong conjunction. Not “or” but “and” … if you insist on socialism.
The government, military pressure or no, should allow the recall vote, and soon.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Fatherland, Socialism and Death!”
The US should stay out, but it should covertly aid and assist those who want a recall, or if that fails, aid and assist those who desire regime change. The Venezuelan military should back a recall vote, but the those in the military who were against Chavez are now gone, Chavez and Maduro made sure anti-Socialists and anti-Communists were removed.
In hindsight, it’s said that George W. Bush did not support the Venezuelan military when they did in fact depose Chavez and asked for US assistance. Instead W cowered to the Left here and abroad and now you have this c___ in Venezuela.
The legacy of Hugo Chavez took awhile to become fully entrenched, but now even Sean Penn won’t be able to defend it.
Venezuela should remind us that no matter the beauty of the country, the abundance of natural resources, the intelligence of its people, nothing can overcome the degradation of collectivism and all its ramifications..
Your column is a dead nuts refutation of socialism, Latin America style. Nonetheless, the cast of characters behind the scenes who enabled that government to emerge has New World Order written all over it. Socialist regimes do not happen by themselves (or because of popular ideological upheaval – socialism is spiritually dead, after all), they are planned by the Men of the Power Sickness as interventions to accelerate their inevitable takeovers when countries collapse.
Schadenfreude? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Wallow — Wallow — Wallow!
This in the WaPost today:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/19/there-has-never-been-a-country-that-should-have-been-so-rich-but-ended-up-this-poor/?wpisrc=nl_az_most
From the article: “Never has a country that should have been so rich been so poor. There’s no mystery here. Venezuela’s government is to blame.”