I have written many times here that the situation in Venezuela was a slow-motion coup. When I was at the OAS I used to label it in Spanish, "un golpe a camera lenta" (a coup filmed with a slow-motion camera). This would infuriate the Venezuelan representative, Ambassador Roy Chaderton Matos, and get him to unleash a string of anti-American, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic insults--he saw Venezuela assailed by Jewish plotters working with Washington and the Vatican (no kidding).
Well, I can't use the phrase "slow-motion coup" any longer. Venezuela's thuggish President Maduro has dropped all pretense of respecting democratic institutions and processes, and got his thuggish Supreme Court to (essentially) dissolve the Congress and give the Presidency all powers.
Maduro is the unchallenged captain of the Titanic after its encounter with the ice. The country is sinking in a sea of critical shortages, corruption, debt, and violence, and Maduro is only concerned with having on to his bit of power. Like Satan in Paradise Lost he has decided that it is "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." And that is what Venezuela, potentially one of the world's richest countries, has become under less than 20 years of socialism.
Venezuela is collapsing, almost quite literally. Its people have ever fewer basic food items, medicine is a luxury, the currency is worthless, police and fire services are virtually non-existent, gasoline is in short supply, electric power is erratic and increasingly rare, and Caracas is the world's most dangerous city. Even Venezuela's neighbors, who bear a considerable amount of guilt for enabling the schemes of Chavez and Maduro, are becoming concerned. The United States, of course, missed many opportunities to put an end to this hideous state of affairs both under Bush and under Obama.
It, however, appears that now Washington is taking a tougher stance--how that will play out, we'll see. Even the OAS, usually asleep at the switch, has begun to stir; the Secretary General, leftist Luis Almagro, has denounced developments in Venezuela, referring to them as a "self-inflicted coup." He has called for Venezuela to be suspended from the OAS. Maduro's traditional buddies, the dying and dead Castro brothers, are in no real position to help him out, and even the Chinese are tiring of pouring money into a bottomless pit.
Maduro and his thieving clique must go, or when the curtain rises on the last act of this horrid little Greek-style tragedy there will be blood. Lots of it.
Maduro likely knows the game is up. But like most dictators in this situation, he will ride it out to the end, unless a cushy exile opportunity is offered that allows him to flee with considerable assets.
ReplyDeleteI think you got it.
DeleteOr he walks in front of a bullet.
DeleteMy guess is that Venezuela will descend into chaos, and everyone will blame the USA.
ReplyDeleteTime for Trump to offer the ambassadorship to Caracas to Sean Penn.
ReplyDeleteHow about to Hillary? ;-)
DeleteEven the Kennedy boys here in Mass ("Joe for oil") have stopped referring to "our friends in Venezuela" since they were cut off from Venesuela's free oil two years ago. There is no clearer indication of the Kennedy clan's corruption gene than their past loyal support of these despotic thugs.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Joe-for-Oil simply needed a job and was willing to be a pitchman for Citgo (I think that was the Venezuelan-owned company)? I've worked in sales myself.
DeleteThis being said, I have not been a fan of the Kennedy clan for most of my six decades.
DeleteJoe Kennedy took over from his brother (after he met his maker on a ski trail) in a company called Citizens Oil who posed as a charity giving away SOME oil it was given by Chavez. It really is a oil trading company ala Enron and Joe pulls down around 800 large per year and his wife around 400 large. Nice to pose like you care for others when you really are lining your pockets ... again the Kennedy way.
DeleteWhat US states are involved in a slow motion coup?
ReplyDeleteDavod
Blue
DeleteLike Cuba, I expect the Venezuelan middle class is in Florida or some other refuge. The stupidity of the rulers of that country is matched only by the ignorance of the poor who put them there with elections.
ReplyDelete"now Washington is taking a tougher stance": no, Washington's stance should be to turn its back. Ignore it, save to point out occasionally that it has no intention of invading, interfering, or paying Marshall aid. Be superior. Be indifferent. Keep calm and carry on. Washington interferes far too much in far too many places, usually for motives that are pretty disgusting, or addle-pated.
ReplyDeleteTreat them with benign neglect, with masterly inactivity. Let them to go hell on their own hand-cart. If it is not necessary to do something, it is necessary to do nothing. Tell 'em you've got your own fish to fry.
But I'm sure that we can trust Uncle Sam to do something mutton-headed.
"Washington's stance should be to turn its back. Ignore it, save to point out occasionally that it has no intention of invading, interfering, or paying Marshall aid."--dearie
DeleteThat Sounds like a permanent invitation for a Chicom satellite state in SA dear1!
Would be much better if we bought Valenzuela out for Cash, we can use the countryside sandlots as a short-term repository for our deportees. A farm system where prospective American illegals can learn the art of good citizenship, working hard in the fields, and playing by the rules of the game, before they're invited up to the Big League!
Play Ball~~~
OW o^o
Dangerous to ignore oil resources of that size....
DeleteIf only they were to try *real* Communism. Certainly it would work this time...
ReplyDeleteGoes without saying
DeleteThe key, as always, is the military. If a few high placed rogues in uniform could be "turned" with offers of immunity from prosecution etc. it may facilitate a less bloody end to this regime.
ReplyDeletePoor Venezuela, they have run out of other peoples' money.
ReplyDeleteDid the Venezuelan people really vote for Chavez and Maduro? One questions the veracity of election results there. Heck, one questions election results here often enough. "Margin of fraud" is a term for good reason. And the Venezuelan people voted in a legislature opposed to socialism at least twice in a row now, I think, but the rest of their government pretty much ignores the legislature, as I understand it.
ReplyDeleteIn the face of universal criticism the regime has walked back the announcement that the Supreme Court would be taking over the functions of the parliament. Belatedly seen as a bridge too far.
ReplyDeleteNow the finger pointing begins as they hunt for a scapegoat.
In '98? yes, the venezuelan people, by all objective measures I've seen, voted for Chavez. Soon enough it became the proverbial "one man, one vote, one time" dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteThe vz elite bear a good chunk of responsibility for this disaster. They had incredible wealth at their disposal, yet much of the country lived in poverty, providing fertile ground for the abject stupidity that is lefty populism. One vz acquaintance I knew here in the states said: "I like it here, but life is so much harder. Back home everybody has servants that take care of food, laundry, cleaning, and driving!"
"everybody" indeed.
Did vz elite and the populus 'deserve' Chavez and the carnage that is his legacy? No. Obviously that was 'too much correction', but they did let the dice roll, imo.
- reader #1482
The United States, of course, missed many opportunities to put an end to this hideous state of affairs both under Bush and under Obama.
ReplyDeleteIn 1998, Mark Falcoff diagnosed Venezuela's problem as cultural: it was widely believed by the elite and the man in the street that national wealth comes from natural resources rather than human capital. Falcoff's view was that Venezuela was just going to have to learn the hard way that this was not so. A laissez-faire policy re Chavez / Maduro allows that.
No, they've submitted to (somewhat sketchy) electoral contests repeatedly. They lost the last one and nearly lost the one before that.
ReplyDelete