Mmhmm, you don’t think that’s just a little dishonest? I mean, it’s not possible that perhaps it was a joke, but YOU just didn’t find it funny, is it?
No, it was a joke but the premise was, if not dishonest, fundamentally divorced from reason or reality. Obama is no more a Marxist than Weirddave.
This word . . . I do not think it means what you think it means.
Funny that you would try to refute my point by mentioning one incident. Meanwhile private companies by the score in Venezuela are being taken over by the government, and Chavez is setting up entire new political organizations (like the Communal Councils) that would be further centers of his power and would bypass municipal and state level governments where he might not have total control.
But you don’t have much of an answer to that, do you? Just excuses for Chavez and Castro both.
I’m not really sure why this thread has continued beyond this and xtisme’s posts - there really isn’t anything to argue against this conclusion. Chavez’s popularity and his domestic agenda have stalled. He tried to have term limits removed and give himself greater powers a few months ago, and he failed. What’s his motivation to make nice with Obama exactly?
Oh, that? Well, what do you expect? Chavez was elected president, twice, as a socialist – well, a “Bolivarian Revolutionary.” All of that is simply keeping his campaign promises. What remains to be seen is whether the new system will develop into a personal dictatorship like Castro’s or something more democratic. Socialists are concerned about that too, BTW; see here and here.
These “Communal Councils,” BTW, are not instruments of presidential control; quite the reverse.
Unlike Castro, Chavez at any rate has not destroyed the wealthy class as a class, nor expropriated its property without compensation. The Venezuelan rich remain rich, and some are actually doing very well out of the new environment, better than they were before. All they’ve really lost is their historic monopoly on political power.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve actually been to Venezuela, so from what I saw there I won’t defend the political and economic system that prevailed there in the recent past.
But trading one monopoly on political power for another isn’t political progress - just as it wasn’t political progress in Cuba for an authoritarian like Batista to be deposed in favor of a totalitarian regime that controlled the entire society.
And his nationalization of the oil industry has certainly been a beacon to us all, a shining example of the power and might of socialism and the great things it can achieve for the workers and peasants, etc etc, blah blah blah! Was nice of him to leave the wealthy some of their own wealth I suppose though…and graciously allow them to stay in the country (and keep their lives too!). Very generous, to be sure.
At any rate, I think this OP is done.
-XT
Just a nitpick - the Venezuelan oil industry has been nationalized for more than thirty years.
That doesn’t mean that Chavez hasn’t been monkeying around with it - both to solidify his control of the company and also to use oil as a revenue producer and foreign policy cudgel and carrot both. But the initial nationalization is decades old.
He only recently nationalized the last privately owned oil fields IIRC…though you are right, it’s not exactly a new trend.
-XT
Dictators control media and education, yes – but (unless they’re too bone-stupid or batshit-crazy to adopt rational tactics) they take advantage of existing popular prejudices. Anti-Americanism is an obvious one to use in either Cuba or Venezuela.
On the topic of dictators, I think it’s a very large mistake to make that populations governed by dictators generally hate their dictators, or that anyone who actually supports his dictator does so because he was brainwashed. Democratic practice is not a natural situation.
About Chavez, I think he probably marginally prefers Obama over McCain (as might be the case for a lot of America’s enemies) but he’ll know that voicing this preference is only going to antagonize some of Obama’s potential supporters and might serve as ammunition for the Republican campaign, so he’ll keep his mouth shut.
Kind of a chicken and egg question, if you ask me. Previous Venezuelan leaders ramped up anti-American sentiment when it was politically advantageous for them to gain power, and they hardly tamped it down once they got it. And certainly Chavez is following this trend as well - he’s not only exploiting anti-Americanism but creating more of it.
None of this excuses various things we have done wrong in Latin America over the centuries, but we shouldn’t ignore how much of this is manufactured and manipulated.
Nor is it what’s happening in Venezuela. The opposition parties remain competitive. Chavez lost a major referendum last year and did not set aside or falsify the results as a dictator would have done.
Correct, of course, and we should remember that there is a significant amount of foreign anti-Americanism that is not caused by Bush and won’t go away once Bush leaves office. Chavez (and Castro and Kim and the other tin-pot dictators) need a Great Satan. In a world with one superpower, guess who is the only candidate?
Regards,
Shodan
Right. Please note what I said in my earlier posts - I said that Chavez was heading down that path. I did not say he was a full-fledged totalitarian yet - though I will state that he is at least authoritarian and would probably go for the whole pie if he thought he could succeed.
The constitutional changes he sought would have greatly enhanced his power and marginalized other parties and institutions - and please note that he has renewed his push for them.
These changes included measures to abolish presidential term limits, would have marginalized state and local autonomy through councils dependent on the presidency, would have allowed the state to expropriate landholdings even without a court approval, would have made the central bank an institution controlled by the president, would have permitted an unlimited presidential declaration of a state of emergency (and remember that Chavez has used this declaration to crackdown on opposition in the past), and would have permitted state funding of political organizations - thus allowing his party to become an arm of the state and a controller of state benefits and entitlements.
Does any of this seem particularly democratic to you? Particularly pluralistic? I’d love to know. And just because he accepted the results (extremely grudgingly) doesn’t mean that his antidemocratic intent wasn’t shown by proposing this referendum in the first place.
Democracy doesn’t come from winning elections - it comes from losing them and being willing to step down peacefully. That is a quality Chavez hasn’t shown.
There is a lot to be said for uniting one’s country against a great enemy. Fomenting hatred of the US helps margionalize Chavez’s challengers.
Note how much more divided US politics are since we have lacked a USSR to unite in hatred of.
Note how it seemed in 2001-2002 that Islamic extremism would step into the USSR’s shoes in that regard. That didn’t last – it’s too diffuse a threat, and obviously not an existential threat to the U.S. Chavez won’t do for a Big Enemy either. And the Bush Admin’s efforts to lump everyone who for various reasons doesn’t like us into an “Axis of Evil” has just proved an international embarrassment – while at the same time taking on aspects of self-fulfilling prophecy. Chavez, at any rate, has tried to forge ties with every anti-U.S. regime but North Korea. Who else, and under what other circumstances, would think of seeking an alliance with Belarus?!
When I first heard Chavez’s claims that the U.S. wanted to bomb Venezuela, my first thought was, “Why would we want to blow up our premiere shortstop supplier?”