Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 3:38:32 PM
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is in the news again for shutting down Venezuela's one opposition television station. Thankfully, a large number of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest their imperious and insecure dictator's attempts to crush what few remaining freedoms that country has. Chavez seems to reflect the paranoid insecurity of so many dictators. In our information abundant era, he seeks to squash any form of expression within his country which does not genuflect before his preening personality cult and glorification of "Bolivarian Socialism." Chavez is symptomatic of to many Latin American caudillos in seeking to blame all of his problems on the U.S. and the mythical apparation known as "gringo imperialism."
Chavez is following his ideological soulmates Fidel Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales in taking a regressive nostaligic march back in time to embrace unreconstructed socialism and that ideology's abundantly documented political, economic, and moral failures. Why take hard steps to really improve the lives of your countries people such as spending within your means, respecting property rights, promoting individual liberty, having low to moderate taxes, promoting job creation, and promoting free trade when you can pursue the opposite policies? It's easier to appeal to anti-American demagogues such as Iran's Amadinejad and Castro and their useful idiot allies in the U.S. like Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky, and Cindy Sheehan, than to take positive steps to really improve the lives of those in your country.
If Chavez had any brain matter, he could follow the example of pragmatic and responsible left of center Latin American leaders such as Brazil's Lula or Chile's Michelle Bachelet so he doesn't "tarnish" his soul with American capitalism. Unfortunately, Chavez is more likely to follow the examples of Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe in plunging his country into further dictatorial repression, economic decline, and corruption. The current rise in oil prices should be reaping positive economic benefits for Venezuela if they had a competent and moral leader stewarding their country. Unfortunately, Venezuela is becoming an increasingly problematic country due to Chavez's egocentric imbecilities.
Such salient observations on Chavez' true character will probably keep me from gaining admittance to Venezuela for the foreseeable future. It's to bad so many Venezuelans have let themselves get seduced by Chavez and his brand of Latino political self-victimization.