Mitt Romney was Right about Russia: The Cold War Redux

Still not feeling 100% so I will keep this short.

Given recent events in Ukraine and the growing number of reports of a stealthy Russian invasion of Crimea, one has to recall how the smug progressives and their leader Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney for his stating that Russia was our number one international opponent. They made snarky oh-so-clever little smirks along the lines of, "Hey, Mitt. The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back!" This was meant to cast Romney as a hopeless retrograde unable to keep up with the times, and to make themselves seem to have supported our foreign policy in the 1980s--something patently not true if you recall how they depicted Reagan and Bush--but ready to move on.  

Well, how about that? Mitt Romney was right about the disastrous impact of Obamacare, including the lie "if you like your insurance plan and your doctor you can keep your insurance plan and your doctor," and about foreign affairs. He bemoaned the Obamista gutting of our military and pointed out that Russia was doing the opposite with its own military and was preparing to go on the offense. Russia is our number one geopolitical foe.

In this vein, let me report something I wrote January 7. It might be more valid now than when written.

Proud Owner of a Cold War Mentality

Twice, yes, twice in one day I was "accused" of having a "cold war mentality." Once in a Twitter duel, and the other time in some weird Craig's List site which excerpted a couple of my posts, and let the lefties have at them. I also got called a "blithering idiot," which seems overkill since if you are blithering, then presumably you already are an idiot and vice versa; anyhow, it must have been a blithering idiot who made the accusation. It reminded me of my closing days at State when a senior guru in HR, informing me that my second ambassadorial nomination would follow my first one down the sewer, told me the same--not the "blithering idiot" thing, the "cold war mentality" thing. "Lew," she said, "you won't make it to the top because you won't let go of your cold war mentality."

Well! What an insult! How is it bad to have a "cold war" mentality (CWM)? Would it be an insult to tell somebody, "Sorry, you can't make it here because you can't let go of your anti-fascist mentality." This CWM accusation seems to be a meme (may we still use that word?) of the left. During one of the Obama-Romney debates, Obama snidely told Romney, "The 1980s are calling. They want their foreign policy back." The lefties thought that was so very clever. It is of a piece with other lefty "zingers," to wit, "I guess you watch FOX News," the oldie, "Cowboy," and, of course, "Racist!"

Let's look at these "insults," starting with the one about FOX News. I watch FOX off and on, as I do the other TV news outlets, and have not found FOX wrong about the major events of the past few years. FOX called it right, for example, on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS scandals, and, of course, the horrendous disaster known as Obamacare. The FOX pundits, in other words, people who come on expressly to opine, seem to range all over the place, with, admittedly the largest bunch gathering somewhere in the range from establishment GOP to Tea Party. I, however, see lots of "progressives" on FOX who state leftist opinions and keep coming back on. I have not heard the slime-ball language, gutter-level insults, and race-baiting on FOX that I have from MSNBC "progressives" such as Bashir, Baldwin, Sharpton, Maddow, and Harris-Perry. We owe a debt of gratitude to Rupert Murdoch, who similar to another Australian, General Sir John Monash, nearly 100 years ago saved the day for the West.

Cowboy. What a weird insult. I thought the lefties were for the common working man? I guess once you get an expensive degree from an expensive university that specializes in content-free education, you can ridicule people who work for a living. I always thought of a cowboy as an honorable, hard-working, independent-minded sort who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. On second thought, I now realize that I know why lefties would find a cowboy frightening; just compare a cowboy to pajama boy . . . best to demonize the cowboy before that happens.

The racist tag is so overused it is losing its impact. When all else fails, however, the left still drags it out. It is the flare gun you fire in the air as the global warming-formed ice floe rips your ship to shreds; the one-shot derringer as a pack of giant corporation-created zombie werewolves rushes your campsite; the soundless scream in the void of space as the multi-headed GMO monster prepares to eat you; the, well . . . you get the idea. It's what's used when there's nothing else in your kit. Anybody who expresses doubts about the liberal policies that have made generations of African-Americans wards of the state is a racist. Anybody who questions the wisdom of essentially open immigration as long as an entitlement bonanza awaits those immigrants is a racist. Anybody who works hard for his or her money, and wants to keep most of it for his or her family is a racist. Anybody who thinks voting should be for citizens is a racist. Anybody who watches FOX News or is a cowboy is a racist, and on and on.

Cold war mentality. My favorite. To be called a cold warrior--brrrrrr--how horrible, not. I do not understand what is meant by that "insult." It seems a cousin of the old label "Red Scare," or "Witch Hunt," or "McCarthyism." The implication is that somehow you are deluded, delusional, wacky, insane, laughable if you have a CWM. Excuse me, my low-information lefty friends, there was a real and frightening threat from the Reds, the "Witches" were quite real. McCarthy might have had a face made for radio; maybe he was crude and rude; maybe he was not elegant and refined. As the historical record shows, however, he was right: pro-Soviet Communists had infiltrated State, the White House, and other branches of government; the Soviets were conducting an aggressive campaign of espionage inside the US, Canada, and the UK.

To have a CWM, means, therefore, to root and work for the victory of Western ideals of liberty and freedom. It means to oppose totalitarian ideologies and regimes. It means finding, for example, the Soviet Gulag, and the horrid North Korean and Cuban regimes repellent in the extreme and worthy of being opposed and, if possible, destroyed. It means celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire, and opposing efforts to undermine our system of liberty and checks-and-balances at home. It means being appalled by the resurgence of the "dead" Al Qaeda; being furious over this Obama misadministration's giving away our hard-fought victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; its sabotaging of our long-standing network of international alliances; its sell-out of our friends; its misuse and destruction of our intelligence agencies; and its deliberate sabotage of economic liberty at home.

We can safely conclude, therefore, that this misadministration certainly does not have a Cold War Mentality.

As for me, guilty as charged. I am proud to have a Cold War Mentality.

The Face of Goofy, Happy, Guilt-free Defiance

Working on something more serious and less fun, but in the meanwhile, contemplate the face of goofy, happy, guilt-free defiance.

My daughter came home late from work and school, and found Hartza awaiting her on her bed--strictly forbidden--and in no mood to take orders to make way.

Here is the defiant 90-lb criminal's face as captured by our highly sophisticated defiant criminal face capturing thing.

I will not accept your species-based discrimination.

The Limits of Progressive Cultural Relativism and "The Urgency of Now!"

Universities, if they pound one message home over any other in the "progressive" dominated fields such as anthropology, sociology, political science, and history, it is that we in the West must stop assuming our culture is superior and must accept what has been called the idea of "cultural relativism." We, for example, must respect regimes such as the ones set up by Castro, Mao, and others of that repellent ilk, and we must NEVER assume that the West has any greater knowledge about human nature than anybody else. We, in fact, must acknowledge the deep, deep flaws of the West which undermine any claims by it to moral superiority over or even equivalence to other cultures.

Well, not really. There is a big loophole. If one of those cultures makes the mistake of attacking a bit too loudly whatever group happens to be that month's progressive poster boy . . . all bets are off!

We have as Example A, Uganda.

That African nation is a strange and wonderful place. I am no expert on Uganda, having visited it only once many years ago, but I remember the people as exceptionally good looking, generally well-disposed to the US, and many of them quite religious. The politics, in the wake of Idi Amin, were standard "Third World," i.e. issues of corruption, nepotism, ethnicity--you know, things that would NEVER happen in Washington DC. Anyhow, for a time Uganda was held up as a model for the rest of Africa, and got lots of attention from the US. Now, however, the attention they are getting is of a different sort. It seems the President of Uganda has not read the Diplomad, or at least not the post in which I noted that when dealing with President Obama one must keep up with shifts in the official dogma --the bolded words are for President Yoweri Museveni,

If you question [President Obama], you are a racist, insane, a danger to democracy, hate the poor or all of the aforementioned. If you still hold the same views that he purported to hold up to a few weeks ago, e.g., the traditional definition of marriage, and failed to "evolve" when he did, then you are a hopeless homophobe; your business should be banned and ruined, and your employees bullied. This is not unlike Orwell's 1984, "We have never been at war with Eastasia . . . " You must keep up with the changes in Dear Leader's views. He will tell you when you can favor gay marriage; when you can raise closing Guantanamo; when the war will end; when the deficit must be cut with more spending. New Think is here.

It appears that President Museveni did not get the memo, signed into law anti-gay legislation, and made "non-approved" comments about homosexuals. It also seems that President Musevini and most Ugandans hold the same view on homosexuality that prevailed in the West, especially in the Anglosphere, until just a short time ago. Remember it wasn't until just after the 2012 elections that our Dear Leader gave us permission to favor same sex marriage; before then, he had spouted the same definition of marriage as had Romney, Bush, Reagan, and the Pope. Now, of course, if you hold President Obama's pre-2012 views, well, you are scum.

One wonders what the reaction of the White House, academics, and the official media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC would have been had Musevini said he found Christianity disgusting and an artifact of imperialism. Outrage? Doubt it. Condemnation? Nah . . .  We would have been lectured on cultural relativism and the need to respect other cultures and societies and the decisions they make based on their histories . . .

"We have never been war at with Eastasia!"

That's Entertainment: Some TV, Some Books and Good-bye Piers Morgan

Let's keep this a little light.

Sitting home over the weekend, not feeling great and trying to catch up on TV shows I have missed. Did a marathon session of the episodes of "Spies of Warsaw." OK, but not as good as the Allan Furst novels. Also marathoned my way through a two or three year old British show, "The Hour." It was a pretty good yarn about an effort in the 1950s to bring the BBC news service into the modern age by putting on an "edgy" news hour once a week. The effort runs into big and little politics, as well as a cleverly told story of Cold War espionage, the Suez crisis, and the 1956 US elections. Although it falls apart a bit in the last couple of episodes, it is worth watching, the acting is excellent, and surprisingly the show is free of the glib and tiresome anti-Americanism one finds in many British shows.

I am also in the process of plowing through the American version of "House of Cards." I liked the British original, with the superb Ian Richardson, and was wary of anything dealing with Congress and starring well-known lib Kevin Spacey. I, however, was pleasantly surprised. It has its politically correct moments, of course, but provides a very well acted and scathing look at Democrat party operatives and activists, and an unrelentingly grim view of Washington, D.C. At times the writers get D.C., at times they don't; they focus on weird things that would not be scandals and miss ones that would be--and the stories built around foreign affairs are, well, quite laughable. Again, however, despite its flaws, worth watching.

Also want to catch up on HBO's "True Detective" which seems headed for the status of classic TV along the lines of "The Wire," and "Breaking Bad." Again, superb acting, writing, directing, and cinematography.

In between all this ROKU madness, I am reading two books. Between Man and Beast, by Monte Reel, tells of the impact on mid-nineteenth century scientific and religious thought and popular culture of the "discovery" of the gorilla in Africa. Good stuff.

The other book is very creepy. Death in the City of Light, by David King, tells the true story of Dr. Petiot, a notorious serial killer who operated in Paris during the German occupation. He promised his 60 or more victims, many of them desperate Jews, safe passage out of Paris to South America, but would instead rob, torture, and murder them. There have been a couple of films made on Petiot, but none captures the true weirdness of the case, and none provides a look at the French police in Paris during the occupation trying to conduct regular police work. Again, worth picking up.

While in this popular culture sort of mood, I ran into this article in the NY Times. In it we learn that CNN has decided to pull the plug on the low-rated Piers Morgan's talk show--the one he took over from Larry King. Read the article: it is surprisingly non-PC for something in the Times, with some surprisingly prescient comments, for the Times, on why Americans got fed up with Morgan going on and on about gun ownership in the US.

I don't think, however, as the article semi-implies that people tuned out Morgan because he had an accent--that hasn't hurt Swartzenegger or a zillion other foreigners on American TV and cinema--nor was it because Americans are provincial. If anything, I think Morgan is the provincial one; he just assumed he did not need to know anything about American history or culture before chirping away with lots of advice and condescension. I like and admire Britain a great deal, and am fortunate to have counted lots of British diplomats, military, businessmen, journalists, academics, students and others among my friends during my many years abroad. That said, when you run into the classic anti-American Brit--OMG!--it becomes very, as noted above, tiresome; you quickly realize that much of it is driven by ignorance and envy. Getting back to Piers, he clearly has a deep streak of anti-Americanism, and a sense of entitlement, but above all, is just not very interesting nor apparently all that smart. I tried watching his show, but found it unbearable, as he kept seeking to be the star instead of letting his guest have the limelight-- or, the limey light?  

OK, where is that remote?

Yet Another Devastating Blow to the Drug Gangs! Another Decisive Victory in the War on Drugs!

The good guys have won yet another stunning victory in the never-ending "war" on drugs. They have captured the creepy, violent, murdering chief of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. According to the press, Mexican Navy special forces, supported by the US DEA and Marshal Service, cornered and caught "El Chapo" at a luxury condo in the Mexican resort and vacation city of Mazatlan,

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. and is on the DEA's most-wanted list. His drug empire stretches throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. His cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last several years. 

His arrest followed the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the last few months and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the last week. The information leading to Guzman was gleaned from those arrested, said Michael S. Vigil, a former senior DEA official who was briefed on the operation.

This victory follows on the heels of the other great victory about which I wrote when the head of the Zetas was arrested. 

As I have said before, I am glad when these creeps are caught or otherwise neutralized. They are murdering pigs who have killed countless numbers of people all over the world. The problem, of course, is that it is our policies and laws which have built the pigpen for these swine, and which continue to provide them the nutritious slop they need to survive.

If we legalized drug use, the pigpen would begin to disappear as would the flow of slop. Once the idiots who use drugs could get them at their local Walgreens, Ralph's, Tesco, Costco, Woolworth's, Corte Ingles, etc., the "El Chapos" of the world would be out of business.  There are, of course, many details that need to be worked out in legalizing drugs, but I would rather we work on those, debate those issues, and find commonsense solutions for those issues than continue this endless and pointless and bloody "war."

To use a different animal analogy, we are akin to a man who breeds large rats in his basement. He complains about those rats moving into his living room; celebrates every time he catches or kills one; and then sends food down to the rats in the basement. Some advice: Stop feeding the rats!

Re the stated objectives of the drug "war." Do a simple test. Ask, what medium to long-term effects will the arrest of "El Chapo" have on illicit drug availability, prices, or violence?    

Who Put These People in Power? Really? Obama Draws Another Red line?

Unlike many others around, I don't pretend to understand fully events in Ukraine. It is a country beset by many problems including a murky Constitituion, ethnic and language issues, a history of subordination to Russia--a tradition Putin does not seem eager to give up--and the usual issues of corruption and incompetence seen in countries trying to emerge from decades of dictatorship and foreign domination. It is quite a cauldron of political stew; usually the last thing those kind of boiling, overflowing pots need is meddlesome foreign cooks running around, giving advice, and siding with one chef or another. Russia, the EU, and, of course, the US all have been involved to varying degrees, and often at cross-purposes.

Our semi-Francophone Secretary of State John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry put out a salt-free, low-fat  statement on the crisis and hasn't done much more other than send his inept Assistant Secretary of European Affairs to say stupid things on the phone, have them taped, and released to the world by any one of many intelligence services with the capability to intercept phone calls, or, for that matter, by any one of about 35 million teenaged hackers with that same ability.

Seeing that Ukraine and Venezuela are now aflame, joining his other diplomatic successes in the Middle East and North Africa, Kerry has decided to focus his languorous "energy" on the greatest threat of all, "global climate change." The threat to ordinary people, apparently, does not come from poverty, tyranny, jihadis, corruption, and political megalomaniacs, no, not all: It comes from your SUV and home thermostat setting.

President Obama, resolute leader that he is, has decided to fill the power vacuum created by the absence of John "I Married a Zillionaire" Kerry. His White House has put out the following statement on Ukraine, which I reproduce in its entirety because it is such a liberal classic,

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

February 20, 2014

Statement by the Press Secretary on Ukraine

We are outraged by the images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons on their own people. We urge President Yanukovych to immediately withdraw his security forces from downtown Kyiv and to respect the right of peaceful protest, and we urge protesters to express themselves peacefully. We urge the Ukrainian military not to get involved in a conflict that can and should be resolved by political means. The use of force will not resolve the crisis -- clear steps must be taken to stop the violence and initiate meaningful dialogue that reduces tension and addresses the grievances of the Ukrainian people. The United States will work with our European allies to hold those responsible for violence accountable and to help the Ukrainian people get a unified and independent Ukraine back on the path to a better future.

Ok, then.

That pretty much should settle it. 

Maybe not. 

Note that the White House is "outraged by images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic weapons." Our leaders, apparently, sense no outrage over the actual firing of automatic weapons, but only the images of such firing. (I guess they're not outraged over the firing of semi-automatic weapons?) In progressive speak that might be called giving the Ukrainians a hint, i.e., don't allow those images to come out. Or, to be kinder to our White House, it might just be pure, simple stupidity that comes from the reliance on boilerplate phrases with no thought given to what is being said, including equating the protestors to the people shooting them--a minor quibble.

Even more important is that the US and the EU will "hold those responsible for violence accountable." Really? Who believes that? Who believes that statement and the President's comment that "there will be consequences" for those who do bad things in Ukraine by "stepping over the line"? I can't believe Obama would even dare utter "line" given his use of that word in the not-too-distant Syrian crisis (Whatever happened with that? All fixed, I guess.) Wonder when he will say he never said that, and the "line" was the world's and not his? And what consequences? No IPod with Obama's speeches?

If we had a real President, and a real foreign policy backed up by a real deterrent, these would be challenging times, but times full of opportunity for the United States and our allies. The Venezuela regime is cracking; the Castro farce is gasping for breath; Russia is being challenged in Ukraine and by the advent of fracking; the Mad Mullah Iranians' economy was on the ropes; we had stunning victories in Iraq and Afghanistan; and on and on, but the USA throws it all away.

Who the blazes put these people in power? Can we blame some evil foreigners? Can I blame Canada? I need to blame Canadians or maybe Australians for something because they are both doing much better than we, and I am envious.

I fear the answer to my question .  . .

Venezuela: Slow Motion Coup Engenders Slow Motion Implosion

When serving at the OAS, I wrote and gave several speeches in Washington, and at OAS gatherings in Lima and San Pedro Sula regarding the situation in Venezuela. I referred to the Chavez take-over of Venezuela as a "slow motion coup." He used the tools of representative democracy to disassemble bit-by-bit Venezuela's admittedly already rickety IKEA-like democratic structures. As the dismantling proceeded, as I wrote over two years ago, finding little resistance from the United States, the EU, the rest of Latin America, or from Venezuela's own rather confused opposition, Chavez

sped up the process, now repressing his people quite overtly. He is imprisoning democrats such as Alejandro Peña Esclusa on trumped up terrorism charges, shutting down the media--including using exile and murder--destroying the independence of the judiciary, and making Congress irrelevant as he rules by Presidential decree. He has engaged in ever more strident anti-Israeli and anti-semitic behavior, another staple of leftist dictators. Although the Venezuelan government has stopped publishing figures, reliable reports show Caracas now has the world’s highest homicide rate, in excess of 233 homicides per 100,000. Not to worry, Chavez recently has announced a gun control program--an excuse to take even more power from the people. We should note that in gun-toting, capitalist Utah, the homicide rate is 1.3 per 100,000.

Chavez is turning Venezuela into an economic wasteland. Despite huge oil reserves and rising oil prices, Venezuela’s GDP “growth” is in negative territory. Despite those negative numbers, the corruption, and declining oil production by the nationalized oil industry, the high price of oil still gives Chavez lots of cash to use on mad imperial dreams. The supermarkets might not have any food, but he is buying modern military equipment from Russia and Iran, building an AK factory, and allowing the Iranian Mad Mullahs to set up shop in Venezuela. He backs terrorist movements, such as the FARC in Colombia, and Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. With oil money and military bluster he is buying the slavish backing of Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, several of the Caribbean island nations, and Ecuador--where another leftist loon with drug ties, Rafael Correa, is running that country into the ground both politically and economically.

Chavez is trying to buy the elections in Peru, and has set himself up as one of the arbiters of whether or not Honduras returns to the OAS. He has Brazil frightened and cowed into an indecisive, equivocating, quivering bowl of Jello, even more so than is their pathetic norm. Brazil, a superpower? Right.

With the departure of Chavez, the situation in Venezuela has gotten even worse. I wrote on the occasion of Chavez's replacement by the thuggish clown Maduro that,

since Chavez's death, Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, "has lost 62.36% of its value on the black market." Venezuela's official inflation rate now exceeds 54% while, "The implied annual inflation rate in Venezuela is actually now in the triple digits, coming in at a whopping 283%." That puts Venezuela in some very bad historical company as the country nears a hyperinflationary rate. Maduro and his backers have decided to make the situation even worse by continuing and even "doubling down" on the policies that got the country into this mess.

Some (pre-fracking) estimates have put Venezuelan oil reserves as the world's largest. Due, however, to corruption, nepotism, and mismanagement, all of which have stifled investment and driven out high quality technicians, Venezuela's nationalized oil production has gone into a slump. The Venezuelan regime, naturally, has resorted to what leftist governments do all over the world when the economic data do not correspond to their fantasy world. Reminiscent of the fake jobs data put out by the Obama misadministration just prior to the 2012 elections, the Venezuelan government lies, overstating oil production by over 420,000 barrels/day. The money from oil sales goes into unaccountable funds, and gets used for a variety of things many of which have nothing to do with reinvestment, and, as noted above, have everything to do with enriching the inner cabal and promoting lunatic economic schemes to keep that cabal in power. 

Venezuela faces critical shortages of even basic consumer goods, such as toilet paper. Its retail sector is adopting the look I saw long ago in Guyana as a result of similar economic policies: stores look like they sell shelves. For political reasons, the government insists on maintaining an artificially low bolviar-dollar exchange rate of about 6.2 bolivars to the US dollar. The black market rate, in other words, the real exchange rate, is easily ten times that. The government strictly controls who can buy dollars at the cheap rate, forcing most businesses onto the black market. Combine that with government price controls, out of control government spending, and the fact that Venezuela depends on imported consumer and other manufactured goods, and, well, you don't need a PhD in economics to see what will result: shortages and inflation. Even big multinationals have had to suspend operations in Venezuela because they cannot get dollars to buy critical components.

I went on to note that,

The response of Maduro to the mess he inherited from Chavez and to the declining economic fortunes of Venezuela? More of the same but on steroids.  <. . . .> Maduro simply does not have the pull that his predecessor had, and does not inspire the same sort of fanatical loyalty. He needs to show the Chavez base that he can deliver the goods--literally. He, therefore, has taken Chavez's war against free enterprise, liberty and democracy to another level < . . . > [H]e has begun ordering troops into popular electronic stores and forcing the owners, often opponents of the regime, to sell their imported goods at cut-rate prices, in other words, at the prices the goods would have if the merchants could buy dollars at the official rate. Maduro has gotten the Chavista dominated legislature to give him economic dictatorial powers.  

It, of course, took no great powers of observation and analysis to see what would come in Venezuela, what all this economic and political madness would produce. You can Google and pull up the press stories, not as many as this deserves, or go to the always excellent Faustas Blog and get a pretty clear idea of what is happening. Increasingly the people of Venezuela are saying "Enough!" and are taking to the only venue still open to them, at least partially so, the streets and squares of the country.

The now undeniable crisis in Venezuela--Maduro can spin it however he wants, nobody is buying his story anymore--is immensely serious and will have ramifications throughout the region. We are going to see the start of the disintegration of the ALBA network, an alliance of countries bought off by Venezuela's money and Chavez's undeniable leadership skills, and major social upheavals in those countries as the madness of leftist economics finds that it can deny economic realities only for so long. We are seeing the development of an "arc of instability" in the region that will seriously affect much of the Caribbean, including Cuba, as well as Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil, and will have lesser but not negligible effects on Paraguay and Peru. Those countries such as Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Chile which kept their minds and eyes clear, and their economic policies sensible and adult will be much less affected and, in fact, will provide the economic hope for the region.

A question for us, of course, is where is the United States? Nowhere. While our incompetent Secretary of State dashes about trying to convince Assad to give up power, and the Palestinians to stop being Palestinians, and the Iranians to stop being Iranians, and to convince us that "global climate change" is the gravest threat to our security, our neighborhood is on fire. Events are now transpiring in friendly and hostile Latin American countries with little or no regard or concern for the views of Washington. For the first time in some 150 years, the United States government (not so the private sector) is essentially irrelevant to much if not most of Latin America. In essence, we have no official views of any consequence re Latin America coming out of the White House, no functioning Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at State, and no active and calming US Southern Command at the Pentagon.

The immediate future for Venezuela is grim. The repression is growing in intensity with one of the most prominent opposition leaders, Leopoldo Lopez, now in custody and facing trumped up charges. How the regime, the opposition, and the international community handle the Lopez arrest and trial could prove decisive in determining the fate of the madurismo variant of chavismo.

The consequences of the slow motion coup appear to be a slow motion implosion; that implosion, of course, could well gather force and speed, akin, say, to a collapsing star, particularly if the rebellion spreads into the ranks of the poor. With luck, and if the military keep their heads, the end result, in the medium to long term might prove positive. In addition, if we Americans of the United States variety can get rid of our own Maduro Mini-me, our government might again become a force for stability and democratic rule in the region.