The left behind Venezuela

"What ever happened to the new left in Latin America?" asked a friend when she was over here for dinner with a visiting Peruvian.

Remember those days of the Bolivarian Revolution?  Those were some heady days when Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and the Castro brothers made all the headlines, right?

Caption at the source:
President Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, at a rally in Caracas on Feb. 3.

Chavez has been gone for a while, and his anointed successor has been carrying the torch since.  Fidel is gone, with his brother carrying the torch since.  And, of course, Morales is still there.  But, as the Economist points out:

A bigger worry than regress in Latin America is political decay—“when political systems fail to adjust to changing circumstances” because of opposition from entrenched stakeholders, as Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist, puts it. 

Political decay.  Of course, we here in the US have lost any moral high ground from which we can comment on political decay elsewhere.  But, I, who was consistently anti-trump and worried about him winning, and warned that the Berniacs will end up helping trump, have earned my privilege to comment on the decay anywhere!

Do you ever wonder though what the uber-liberals have to say about the disaster that has been the Latin American left?  Especially about Venezuela, after all the praises that they heaped on Chavez?  That left wing embrace of Chavez is why the the left is silent now.  Because, if they open their mouths about Venezuela, then they have to first acknowledge their error. 

As Bret Stephens, who I don't care much for, writes:

the Venezuelan regime was a cause of the left, cheered by people like Naomi Klein, Sean Penn and Danny Glover. Left-wing publications such as Glenn Greenwald’s “The Intercept” have gone out of their way to make excuses for the regime and treat its critics as Washington stooges. Jeremy Corbyn, who could yet be Britain’s next prime minister, memorialized the late dictator Hugo Chávez in 2013 for his “massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world.”

It is like how the left tied itself in knots after the Soviet Union came tumbling down.  Search all you want, but you will read practically nothing from those celebrities and intellectuals about contemporary Venezuela.  They have moved on to other topics that bring them fame and money.  Keep in mind that the likes of Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky are in the elite of elite when it comes to wealth that they accumulated from their writing and speaking about the favorite left causes of the day.

Stephens asks a good question:

How many more Venezuelans have to starve or drown before Western liberals do something more than merely shake their heads?

Ask your favorite Naomi Klein fan to answer that question!

From riches to rags! :(

It was once the richest country in the continent. Now, its people are fleeing. Some of its women try to make a living by doing sex work in the neighboring country.  Those who haven't fled are terribly undernourished.

No, it is not some cliched African country.  But, a country that until recently was a darling of the left.  Venezuela!

According to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela’s GDP in 2017 is 35% below 2013 levels, or 40% in per capita terms. That is a significantly sharper contraction than during the 1929-1933 Great Depression in the United States, when US GDP is estimated to have fallen 28%. It is slightly bigger than the decline in Russia (1990-1994), Cuba (1989-1993), and Albania (1989-1993)

Just awful!

Venezuela is now the world’s most indebted country. No country has a larger public external debt as a share of GDP or of exports, or faces higher debt service as a share of exports.

So, where is the fucking intellectual left that used to adore Chavez, whose policies set Venezuela down this hell hole?

The list of Western leftists who once sang the Venezuelan government’s praises is long, and Naomi Klein figures near the top.
In 2004, she signed a petition headlined, “We would vote for Hugo Chavez.” Three years later, she lauded Venezuela as a place where “citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.” In her 2007 book, “The Shock Doctrine,” she portrayed capitalism as a sort of global conspiracy that instigates financial crises and exploits poor countries in the wake of natural disasters. But Klein declared that Venezuela had been rendered immune to the “shocks” administered by free market fundamentalists thanks to Chavez’s “21^st Century Socialism,” which had created “a zone of relative economic calm and predictability.”

How about the big guy himself?  You know the one. Noam Chomsky?

Chomsky, whose anti-capitalist teachings have inspired millions of American college students, praised Chavez's "sharp poverty reduction, probably the greatest in the Americas." Chavez returned the compliment by holding up Chomsky's book during a speech at the U.N., making it a best-seller.
Is Chomsky embarrassed by that today? "No," he wrote me. He praised Chavez "in 2006. Here's the situation as of two years later." He linked to a 2008 article by a writer of Oliver Stone's movie who said, "Venezuela has seen a remarkable reduction in poverty."
I asked him, "Should you now say to the students who've learned from you, 'Socialism, in practice, often wrecks people's lives'?"
Chomsky replied, "I never described Chavez's state capitalist government as 'socialist' or even hinted at such an absurdity. It was quite remote from socialism. Private capitalism remained ... Capitalists were free to undermine the economy in all sorts of ways, like massive export of capital."
What? Capitalists "undermine the economy" by fleeing?

Chomsky has always been good with words, and knows how to use them in order to make sure he comes across as the wise sage.  Godawful!

Just because I will not forget nor forgive the 63 million who have unleashed trump and his demons on us, does not mean that I will be soft on the near mirror image on the left: the Berniacs, whose economic policies are nearly as insane with their anti-globalization and America-first rhetoric.  Which is why I will wrap up this post with this:

In the age of Trump, Brexit and a wider backlash against globalization, left-wing economic populists are enjoying a resurgence in mainstream credibility by railing against free trade and “neoliberals.” This is a scandal. For in the form of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the world has a petri dish in which to judge the sort of policies endorsed by Jones, Klein, British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, homegrown socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and countless other deluded utopians.
There, the ghastly failures of their ideas are playing out for everyone to see; a real-time rebuke, as if another were needed, to socialism. That these people are considered authorities on anything other than purchasing Birkenstocks, much less running a country, is absurd.

When you buy the socialist rhetoric, Caveat emptor, as "neoliberal" economists like to say!

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine

Anybody better than Stephen Colbert to talk with any author?