HUGO, FAUSTA AND THE SHRINK

Hugo Chavez is in the news again, threatening to nationalize the last of Venezuela's oil industry and tightening his grip on the people of his country. Dr. Sanity takes a look at Hugo's latest machinations here.

One of the dissonant rhymes of history is at this moment taking place in Venezuela. If you listen closely, you will be able to hear the repugnant sounds of a familiar oppression in Hugo Chavez' "socialist paradise."

He is clamping down on the press; he is nationalizing all the industry; he is threatening jail to anyone who opposes him. Things are beginning to fall apart, so the solution for thugs like Chavez is to just get more control. As once was pointed out to Darth Vader in a similar context, I believe, "The more you tighten your grip, the more people will slip through your fingers."
. . . .

Like the 20th century's experiment with socialism/communism, the 21st's will only lead to even more poverty and misery. The smart ones escape while they still can (soon it will be forbidden, I'm sure).

Read the whole post. Fausta, at Fausta's Blog, agrees with Dr. Santy for the most part, and adds her own cogent observations. She sees no hope of Chavez's power base rising against him based on her knowledge of Latin American politics.

While a significant number of Venezuelans realize they have been conned, and many are wanting to leave (so much so that Doral, an area of Miami, is now Doralzuela to the locals), Hugo's core constituency, which is found among the large underclass of what by all criteria should have been a rich country, will take a very long time, if ever, to wake up to reality.

Why?

First of all, they see Hugo as "people like us". While Hugo, unlike Lula of Brazil, didn't rise from the underclass, Hugo has convinced them that he is one of them.

The prior Venezuelan administrations failed to turn oil money into a means of developing its most valuable resource, its people. And the people know it.

Chavez also knows the power of nationalistic propaganda in Latin America, which goes hand-in-hand with anti-Americanism. It goes like this:

[Insert contry's name here] is THE country, and the USA wants to take
over [Insert contry's name here]'s assets, and will invade.

In Venezuela's case there's the oil, so of course this feeds into the fallacy. That the USA borders with one of the largest, most prosperous, most resource-rich countries
with one of the most educated populations in the world, a country which has oil, and that country is so sure that the USA's not going to invade that it, for all practical purposes doesn't have an army that amounts to much, would never cross the mind of the afflicted with anti-American paranoia.

Additionally, Latin American politics, not just Venezuelan politics, have traditionally been based in the politics of envy. Marxist ideology, with its belief that "the rich are rich because they make us poor" and many variations on this theme, is the mothers' milk of this mentality.

Read her entire post here.