Venezuela falling apart even faster than usual

[Adam]

I'd be pissed too if I hadn't been able to buy toilet paper for a couple of years.

Socialism at its finest!

Army sent in to Venezuelan cities as unrest prompts coup warning

Venezuelan troops fanned out across the capital, Caracas, and other major cities on Thursday after President Nicolás Maduro ordered a military clampdown against deadly unrest that he warned was part of a "fascist" coup plot.

Piles of burning rubbish sat smoking along Caracas' main avenue as troops moved to secure the city following an outbreak of street violence that left three dead on Wednesday. Armed soldiers surrounded government buildings and diverted traffic, while riot troops guarded entrances to the shuttered subway system as residents picked their way through broken glass.

Mr Maduro ordered the arrest of a top opposition leader and a former military chief as he claimed "fascist" forces financed from the United States were plotting against his government. He claimed the civil unrest was part of a plan by "far right" opponents "to bring us to a dog fight, set our people at war, one against another".

"There will be no coup d'etat in Venezuela, you can rest assured," he vowed, warning that anyone who perpetrated acts of violence or protested without permission would be arrested.

On Wednesday, the visceral political and class hatreds that have riven Venezuelan society were on full display.

Three people were shot dead and dozens injured when long-brewing anger over the country's deepening economic and security woes erupted into violence during rival protests by government supporters and opponents.

More from some Latin American paper and the San Francisco Chronicle.


So the Venezuelans, still convinced of how wonderful socialism has been treating them, put in a paranoid megalomaniac to replace the paranoid megalomaniac who up and died on them. Expecting better results, they are now upset that the new paranoid megalomaniac that they have elected and worship can't manage to change the laws of economics to make them have toilet paper or flour, though he is really good at confiscating electronics and toys from shop-keepers and selling them at the shopkeeper's loss. That sure does feeeeeeeeeellllllll good, even if it doesn't put food on the table. That "parasitic bourgeois pig" got what he had coming!


I'm guessing that they'll probably never learn. It's well-past time to just stop dealing with them economically until they can get a mindset that doesn't belong to a kindergartener.

Of course, that requires having a President who has the mindset (and intelligence) of a kindergartener, too, so that's not happening for another three years.

[Adam]

Meanwhile, in Venezuela....

Overshadowed by the Ukrainian situation is Venezuela's own situation, which is interestingly parallel.

These guys are trying to document some of it. This goes into some more detail about just what's going on there.


In Venezuela, the government is shooting people in the streets, though at least so far it doesn't appear to be in the same numbers as in Kiev. The opposition leader in Venezuela has been jailed for "inciting violence."

In both cases, the choices before the people aren't great: they're protesting against a horribly dysfunctional government, and the choice is for a marginally less dysfunctional government. In the case of the Ukraine, joining up with the EU gives them the legitimacy of being in the European community instead of relegated to "former Soviet state," so that's a marginal improvement, but the EU is a laughably dysfunctional government all by itself. Better than than being a Russian satellite, and hopefully with at least somewhat of a reduction in corruption, but hardly the dawning of a new day. In Venezuela, the socialist system is, unsurprisingly, in a complete shambles. People there have not been able to buy toilet paper for months because socialism simply does not work. The opposition leader is a Harvard-educated native who is promising ... actually not a lot. He's not promising to abandon socialism as the repeatedly-failed socioeconomic experiment that it is. He's basically promising less corruption, which is fine, but that's not going to help much when the government still confiscates everything in some shopkeeper's store and sells it at a tremendous loss because that shopkeeper has been declared to be a "bourgeois parasite." Venezuela will still be a socialist country even if López is somehow successful in his bid to overturn the present government, and therefore it will continue to spiral in the economic toilet bowl for the foreseeable future.

It's a bit of a shame, because I would like nothing better than for the people of both countries to become successful economic engines in the world economy. Unfortunately, even if the opposition in both cases is successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams, they're going to go from bad to slightly less bad. Too bad.