This picture hails from a recent article in the theatlantic.com. The fact the Venezuela has become another socialist dystopian nightmare is obvious to any who care to look. Even a far-left writer from The Washington Post interviewed for the article can see it. It’s no surprise that WaPo columnist Francisco Toro maintains that Venezuela now has a “right-wing” look to it:
It’s really difficult to get across how badly governed the country is. If you just describe what happens, [you sound] like a shrill, far-right-wing lunatic who’s describing some kind of Fox News dystopia. But, it’s like that. [The government has] taken over virtually all of the large companies. [It has] taken over most of the mid-size manufacturing companies—everything that makes something you might want to consume.
The few [it] hasn’t taken over, you’ve created this regulatory nightmare around them where you can’t do anything and nothing works.
Nothing works. Businesses can’t produce. That sort of worked when oil prices were very high, because [under those conditions] who needs to make anything? You sell oil, you get money, and you buy stuff abroad. You just import your way out of the crisis. Oil prices fall and suddenly the basic lunacy of trying to run the country this way comes home very clearly.
People are hungry. The thing that’s been shocking [to] us here is the democratization of hunger and political insecurity. Even people who aren’t hungry are one mishap away from being hungry. When there is no food, people want a change.
Venezuelan socialists outlawed civilian firearms ownership. The government crackdown was intense, including a massive gun destruction event a few months ago eliminating thousands of homemade pistols and single-shot shotguns. The result? Black market firearms became so expensive that criminals murdered police for their guns.
Another result: hunger, chaos, tyranny. Would Maduro still be in power if the 80 percent of the people who voted for a referendum to remove him were armed? Even with single shot shotguns and .22 rifles? Maduro’s hanging on to power now because a tiny fraction of the population is protecting him with their government-issued weapons. A fact that even the WaPo scribe can’t avoid.
Mahanta: One thing I’m curious about is, how does Maduro retain enough support going forward to hang on to power? Where is his genuine source of support at this point?
Toro: People with guns. That includes the military of course, which has been given enormous privileges during the last 18 years. [It has] been put in charge of mining businesses, been part of the oil industry, and smuggling, and cocaine, and a lot of other things.
The current Venezuelan government is propped-up by the police, the army, armed paramilitaries and thousands of Cuban “advisors.” Those who believed the Venezuelan government’s rationale for civilian disarmament — to reduce crime — may now have a better understanding of gun control’s role in the imposition of government tyranny. Forearmed is forewarned.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch
Did you ever doubt it?
This is what the liberal_progressive_communist_globalist POS (D) are selling.
It can’t happen here. ‘Merica.
On its present course, and if democrats control government, in 50 years we’ll be a third world nation. For no other reason than dem’s importing immigrants to remain in power.
My only disagreement is on whether it will take as long as 50 years.
I’d argue that we’re 2/3rds of the way into 3rd world status as it is…Hillary is just going to finish the deal.
People should really pay attention to the modern history of France. They had an aging population. As pople retired, there were fewer people paying into the tax base which supported all the social programs the leftists instituted. So France opened the doors of immigration and foreigners flooded in and filled those job vacancies. In time, their numbers grew so large that they gained political clout and began demanding free everything. Free education and medical. Free vacations. Etc. Then the aging immigrant population began retiring (adding to the hoards of already retired). France had a choice; cut services and benefits, or allow more immigration. They tried the former and ended up with rioting and destruction committed by students and workers. So, they, once again, opened the doors. Today, there are areas of France where French police dare not go. The immigrant populations now control those areas and natural born French people have no say in local politics, and are losing control of national politics. France has little problem with Asian immigrants. While the country exploited the resources of Indo-China, intermarriage and business relations were accepted. Religious differences were accepted. You get one guess where the problem children originated. Here is a hint. They owe their allegiance to sharia laws, not to French laws. They allow terrorists to hide in their midst. They had spread as far as France when the Crusades drove them back. The last of them were driven out of France, Spain, Italy, Greece just months before Christopher Columbus made his first voyage.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
I’ve got my blade of grass covered.
If only they had known the truth.
Yup. Like it is today, at Standing Rock.
……Because it already did…
Because there are people with guns to stop it. Even just III% will be enough. Plenty.
What I can’t understand is why aren’t tens of thousands of former Bernie supporters moving to Venezuela to help the socialist government there grow food and restore the socialist utopia?
Kids these days!
Yep, the talk the talk but god forbid actually working, no comprenda
Bernie supporters — many of whom are writing in Sanders instead of voting for Clinton — don’t think the government should be owning companies.
Bernie calls himself a “Democratic Socialism” and socialism is exactly about the feds owning & directing all economic activity (i.e. ‘means of production,’ i.e. ‘all human behavior’) –so if the government doesn’t own them, then what, private industry does? But just with so many restrictions & price controls & such high taxation they are effectively controlled by the government (for sake of fairness, affordability, etc). Naturally, the politicians in that government will form symbiotic relationships with certain business partners, forming a corrupt federal/corporate oligarchy that decides public policy, instead of a free market directed by us.
That’s economic Fascism, the exact shit Obama and now Hillary are championing as the solution to both energy and healthcare. Dumbass bern-outs don’t even know what their ‘ideology’ is, but think they can change the world. Useless idiots.
More like “useful idiots” as Stalin has said.
The progressive socialist is a utopian. They don’t care how many people need to be killed to achieve their perfect world.
Thank god for the founding fathers who gave us the bill of rights. That included the second amendment.
As I reminded my students, revolutions tend to consume people including their makers. Thug Hugo Chavez was the beginning of the end for Venezuela. Rest assured an equivalent document to our Bill of Rights does not exist in Venezuela.
A similar result in every country where “progressives” manage to progress to their ultimate goal of communism. Disarm the populace, give privilege and power to the “police”, military leaders, informants and bureaucrats and you end up in a progressive Paradise…..like Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, etc…..
We are on the same road courtesy of the left’s “progressives” and RINOs in congress.
But…but…USSR and Venezuela failed because their Socialism wasn’t Pure Enough. If they had more and better Socialism, it would have worked.
Just like all our gun controls have failed because they weren’t strong enough…
And FedUp wins the Intertubez for the month of November!
There are two characteristics of Progressivism that are as predictable as the sunrise:
(1) Progressivism will always fail.
(2) Progressives will say the failure happened because the country and populace did not embrace Progressivism fully enough.
Had it explained to me that all attempts at social justice (socialism) failed because the people imposing and running the system weren’t/aren’t as smart as the progressives of America. Only America has the brain power and enlightened people required to be successful at subjugating entire populations.
Actually, the insanity of it is that Socialism is very honest about how shitty and horrible its management of nations is –how could it not, the conflict of interest between the Party rulers and those who manage the factories is glaringly obvious. The way the people have historically been fooled is through the fantasy of Communism. This utopian fantasy is supposed to follow after Socialism, ushered in by the withering of the Party oligarchy (the explanation for why this would ever, ever, EVER in a million years happen peacefully in a totalitarian state is never explained), and wonderful life of small communes functioning independently and self-sufficiently without overarching governance guiding their affairs.
Basically, the core sales pitch laid bare is this; allow us to enslave you now, and work you & your children’s generations to death for a few decades, and we the oligarchy will become so enrichened by your labors that we’ll be able to pay for the transition to a life of tribal subsistence farming –but with electricity to make it a leisurely existence! “Electricity” was the bait for Soviet Russians, it’ll be free internet and the ‘promise’ of robotic/AI automation freeing us from our careers (and earning power) in exchange for a stipend in this nation. We’ll never get there of course, because there will be no need for robot slaves when humans become so willing to sacrifice for so little (just as in the USSR)
I saw a while ago a documentary titled “Faith of the Century” about Communism and the French Communist Party in particular. It was said during the documentary that “if reality and ideology clashed, it was reality that suffered“.
To embrace Communism, you mustn’t suffer from Cognitive Dissonance. You have to enjoy it instead.
A Randian theme park complete with rides and souvenir money. They are weighing cash instead of counting it. The richest person on Venezuela soil is Chaves daughter.
The police and military will slaughter scores of people like Tiana min square and it will be under reported.
Fortunately we’ll have president hillary to work all this out, she’s got all the answers.
It probably won’t be reported at all. Venezuela is not arrsting and deporting media members, because “no work-visa”, lol!
“is now arresting”, I meant to say.
That picture is of a peaceful protest…it could have been taken from any US city after a well publicized police involved shooting.
Venezuela is just an example of Latin America being Latin America. Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras . . . it’s all the same. Chavez, Maduro, Pinochet, Trujillo, Peron, and on and on and on.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Could it be trace to the Catholic influence 400 years ago?
are…. are you serious?
Most likely it traces to the lengthy duration and high rate of slavery down there. Nothing destroys a people *permanently* like slavery, and leaves them dependent forevermore on some type of ‘master’ for purpose. That’s the whole point of the Jews’ history, that they managed to maintain a semblance of a healthy independent society even during such a dark time, without succumbing to slavery. Many more societies and peoples were not so fortunate.
It’s C O M M U N I S M
They flaunt it. pres. Nicholas Maduro has placed control of the purchase of ALL CONSUMABLES under the control of his military and the people of Venezuela have to vacation in other countries to buy toilet paper.
There was a link to a news story about the “Life of Hugo Chavez” being “performed” in a ballet, but you could barely pay attention over the grumbling stomachs of the forced attendees.
The Evil (D) here want us to have the same thing. AND REGARDLESS OF THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION, WE WILL STILL HAVE A SH_T-TON OF EVIL (D) VOTERS HERE THAT HAVE TO BE COUNTERACTED.
Speaking of all this, Cracked just posted an interesting article…
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2403-6-reasons-why-new-civil-war-possible-terrifying.html
I don’t think the journalist was saying it looks right wing; rather all the WARNINGS the right wing has about socialism are apparently true in Venezuela- a “fox news look” doesn’t mean glorious free market trading, because Fox doesn’t typically present happy or utopian news- it usually presents news in a depressing or scary way. So “fox news dystopia” means all the things Fox News is afraid of are present.
The journalist is saying that what is happening in Venezuela is what “right wing” prognosticators have predicted for Socialism all along. He says it reluctantly.
Reality has a right-wing bias.
**This**
Did anybody report whether the people who are armed, like military and cops, whether *they* are hungry? I’m betting not.
I lived in Venezuela for three years. First the Chavista government made the importation of firearms REALLY expensive. Glocks were going for about $1,800 USD. Then the Chavistas REVOKED all of the gun carry permits. Since all of the lawfully owned firearms were REGISTERED the Chavistas knew where to find them. They then OUTLAWED possession. Don’t be fooled REGISTRATION=CONFISCATION. People are hunting stray cats and dogs for food on the streets of Caracas. Venezuela the Marxist Utopia is what most sane people call HELL.
What do you expect to happen to a country that suffered defeat, humiliation, trade wars started by GWB, or Trump, or some right-wing autocrat. Venezuela has been in chains of slavery for over 300 years (or some block of time) controlled and orchestrated by those rich, evil whoevers in the US.
Yep.. To blame a person, or a country, for the hell they’ve chosen to create would be mean, and hurt their self-esteem.
Progressive societies and governments will always collapse because of these three fundamental, immutable characteristics of human nature:
(1) Human beings will not work if someone gives them food and housing without working for it … which steadily increases under a Progressive government.
(2) Human beings will only work hard when freedom and huge financial gain is possible … which steadily decreases under a Progressive government.
(3) The overwhelming majority of government employees produce very poor (and often even negative) results for a variety of reasons … which steadily increases under a progressive government.
Now add the fact that Progressive governments steadily increase taxes to provide all that “free” food and housing. Between diminishing production, poor government employee performance, and diminishing money available for the economy (because of increasing taxes as well as increased unemployment), such a society is guaranteed to collapse. The only question is how long it takes.
Of course Progressives never see this nor admit it since they operate on altruism, fantasy, and emotion.
Time for some practical foreign aid: drop a couple million ARs with 500 rounds each in all the villages and small towns.
When Venezuela explodes it will be “must watch television”!!
Thank goodness I found Gun Watch. Now I can read 80% of TTAG’s content one to two days in advance.
Sounds like North Korea. The insiders are fat and happy. Everyone else starves. Venezuela isn’t as successful as NK in hiding it.
Venezuela is so fucked it’s not funny. A few years back I was working for a flow meter company that makes everything from the flow meters for cancer drugs to the big ones for fracking, oil and natural gas flow.
We sold a ton of them to Venezuela’s oil industry on a payment plan. We stopped business with them 100% until all debts are paid when we found out that, after nationalization, they were sending out workers to cut them up with oxy torches and sell the parts for scrap.
Now, you have to understand these things are all stainless/hastelloy/electronics. Stainless and hastelloy lose their properties when heated past a certain point in an oxygen-present environment and that temperature is greatly exceeded by an oxy torch. Units worth $800K+ were being reduced to scrap that couldn’t be sold. They literally flat out destroyed the units that they could have sold “used” for probably $600K a pop (my company had no competition other than one company out of China that sold/sells total shit). So those Venezuelan retards turned a six figure unit into worthless junk.
When we found out what they were doing, ties were severed until our balance sheet was even. As far as I know that never happened. The whole thing made me sad because I built those meters. They were a wonder to behold and extremely expensive. Progtards gonna progtard I guess.
“So those Venezuelan retards turned a six figure unit into worthless junk. ”
As did the “Palestinians” when Israel abandon Gaza.
My family fled the wonders of Socialism in 1961. Cuba was the same. America will be too since we continue down the present path. It is a numbers game the moment the population reaches 51% of takers versus producers. The game is over and I believe we have reached that part.
Have fun building concrete walls around your homes with broken glass cemented in place and it is topped by barbed/razor wire.
If this is what progressives have to offer we should gather them up and air drop them into Venezuela where they should be comfy. Maybe they can straighten out that country. Were good without them.