It would seem to me as we are now being provided
with yet another example in the making of just how it is that socialism simply
does not work anywhere it’s tried, that Bernie would have a difficult time
keeping supporters. And while I dream of
the day that those who so enthusiastically support him, as well as Hitlery,
will somehow come to see light and recognize it as being the disaster that it
most certainly is, I am not naïve enough to think that they ever will. And I
feel quite confident in saying that they most certainly will not. But it’s not only the young and
impressionable who, while watching Venezuela crash and burn, refuse to see it
for what it is.
Throughout his entire 14 year reign of terror as
leader of his country, during which time he took great pleasure in mistreating
his own people, now dead Socialist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was
continuously praised by any number of those leftist mongrels in academia,
journalism and Hollywood despite the fact that those doing the praising were
very well aware of the brutality that was taking place at the direction of this
thug. As you may recall that Sean Penn
and Oliver Stone were but a couple of the Hollywood elites who felt it
appropriate to pay homage to the man who they claimed provided the perfect
example for America to follow.
But it was also many in our state-controlled media
were also very eager to heap all manner of praise on Chavez. For instance, it was Salon writer David
Sirota who wrote a piece after Chavez’s death which was entitled “Hugo Chavez’s
economic miracle.” And in the British
publication ‘The New Statesman’, a headline as Chavez was nearing death in
January 2013 was “Hugo Chavez: Man against the world,” and its sub-headline
read “As illness ends Hugo Chavez’s rule in Venezuela, what will his legacy be?
Richard Gott argues he brought hope to a continent.” I can only assume that Mr. Gott must define
hope in much the same manner as does Barry “Almighty’.
But all of the praise that was so energetically
heaped upon Mr. Chavez while he was alive, and that has pretty much continued
even after his death, by so many who have reaped the benefits of living in a
capitalist society is now coming undone and very rapidly so. And that they could do so while knowing full
well what a disastrous economic record Chavez, as well as his successor
President Nicolas Maduro, possessed says much more about those who were doing
the praising than it does about the man they felt so comfortable praising. Because it’s not like what was going on
wasn’t there in plain sight for all to see.
These are some truly twisted individuals.
Especially after the Mexican Non-Governmental
Organization (NGO), the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal
Justice, published its annual ranking of urban crime earlier this year in
January, and found that in 2015, Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, was the
most murderous place on the planet.
Caracas has 119.87 murders per 100,000 people, making it even more
dangerous than Chicago. Other than personal concerns for safety, Venezuelans also
suffer from lacking any economic opportunity due to low oil prices as well as
from complete government mismanagement of the state-owned oil firm.
From 1998, when Chavez was first ‘elected’, up to
until the time he died in March 2013, oil output at Pdvsa, which is the
state-owned oil firm of Venezuela, had fallen 25%, from 3 million to 2.4
million barrels per day. And that would
be despite the fact that Venezuela has what’s been identified as being the
largest hoard of oil reserves on the entire planet, at more than 500 Billion
barrels. And that number would be according to Forbes’ Christopher Helman. OPEC reports that Venezuela has 24.9 percent
of proven crude oil reserves as of the end of 2014 — Saudi Arabia, meanwhile,
comes in a close second with 22.1 percent.
But when comparing GDP per capita, Venezuela’s
economic problems become devastatingly clear. Venezuela’s GDP per capita is
$12,771.6 as of 2012, while Saudi Arabia’s GDP per capita is almost double at
$24,883.2 for that same year.
Venezuela’s GDP has only gone down significantly since 2012 (since
Venezuela has not provided The World Bank with more recent data), while Saudi
Arabia’s 2014 data demonstrates only a slight dip of $24,406.5. Even the small
oil-rich Arab Gulf state of Qatar, which only has 2.1 percent of the world’s
proven crude oil reserves, boasts a 2012 and 2014 GDP per capita of $94,407.4
and $96,732.4 respectively.
It’s pretty much a given that Venezuela’s economy
will only continue to get worse since according to the country’s Vice President
for the Economy, Miguel Perez, the country will remain in a recession through
the end of next year. The country’s economy shrank by 5.7 percent in 2015
alone, the second year of what will be a long-running economic downturn. And despite the irrefutable evidence that
Venezuela finds itself in an incredible economic hole, one that is entirely of
its own making, several media types, such as Wired’s Linda Poon, continue to
peddle headlines like “Venezuela’s Economic Success Fueled Its Electricity
Crisis.”
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan workweek for government
employees was limited to four days a week and then to just two days a week in
April in order to deal with electricity shortages. Daily four-hour blackouts
across most of Venezuela is another policy that was implemented in April by the
socialist government in an attempt to deal with its self-made crisis. But economic problems aside, Venezuela has
faced a long-running political crisis. Mass
protests in February 2014 were halted through repression and fear-mongering by
government forces that arrested the U.S.-educated opposition leader Leopoldo
Lopez. Things have only managed to go
from bad to worse.
Now I thought it worth mentioning that Chavez's
daughter happens to be worth a rather impressive $4.2 billion. So it would seem
that as long as one happens to part of the ruling elite, socialism can be seen
as being beneficial! Likewise, the
Clinton's are now worth over $2 Billion while the Castro Boys are
multi-millionaires. So it appears that
life is good as long as you happen to be one of those at the top of the
socialism food chain. But if you’re one
of the poor unfortunate souls more toward the bottom then you’re essentially left
scrounging for something as basic as toilet paper and paying $200 for a
burger. What a deal! And yet Bernie is still packing them in.
It would seem then that in order to be a Democrat,
one must either be intellectually dishonest or a complete moron. And in the Democrat Party what we have are
leaders who are dishonest riding herd over followers who are essentially
morons. Because it doesn’t matter how
many times socialism fails Democrat leaders continue to say it works and their
followers continue to believe them.
Excuses include: it was not executed properly, or some capitalist
conspiracy undermined it or it just didn’t have time to work. Imbecilic followers are unwilling to take
responsibility for their failed choices and will always try to take from those
who have made better choices.
And what’s happening in Venezuela is the mirror
picture of what Sander's ideological fervent will produce in the United States.
Nationalization of the largest corporations; mandated salary controls for
working people from top to bottom; socialist indoctrination; invalidation of
the US Constitution; further weakening of Congress and its powers; military
turned into national police, composed of foreign nationals who could care less
about firing upon citizens and free benefits from all the wealth
redistribution; electrical brownouts; utility failures; economic collapse,
followed by long lines to get into food markets that have nothing to sell or
give away.
When it comes to the net result of choosing Socialism
over Capitalism, the natural outcome is always going to be the same. What you will always end up with is political
leaders determined to rape their nation of as much of its wealth as they think
they can get away with and then create for themselves foreign banks accounts to
hide all of their illegally acquired booty and then making sure that those
people who dare to stand in opposition are first made examples of and then made
to secretly vanish in the dark of night.
Ah, the utopia that yokes people to the slavery of an ideology that has
proven itself to be a failure throughout these many generations.
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