This is amazing and tragic. How did the US let this happen?
Do US have something to do with it? From what I followed, US helped a lot making the situation worse.
It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
71–80 of 180 posts
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships, so I'm not sure how much we can learn from your observation.
> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than fi…
> However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people".
I'm curious. Do you have a specimen in mind?
[p.s.]
> right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven
And I question this as well. The ideological basis of right-wing is precisely that the natural order of things is a rigid & hierarchical and that such hierarchies are by nature more stable.
And anywho, minus the superficial comrade this and people's soviet that, what was the difference between Stalinist Soviet Union and some right wing system with a generalisimo on top?
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#73I wonder which has the higher correlation to instability: 1 formOfGovernmentX - ie democracy, socialism, dictatorship, etc 2 On america's shit list ?
Someone(s) down-voted you, but I think you have a point. In 10 years we'll probably find out that the CIA orchestrated this whole fiasco. I mean, that's pretty much the story of, like, every thing that ever goes wrong in every country. Or near enough. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic, but yeah c'mon.
No, you're not off the mark. What's happening in Venezuela is a direct result of economic sabotage. We wanted Hugo Chavez out so bad but invasion was not an option, so we started on the other front.
All those demonstrations by the so-called opposition were not by accident. On the contrary, they were well orchestrated. The same stunt we tried to pull off in Cuba just late last year.
Fortunately for Cubans, they arrested the lead front man, who was operating under the guide of a member of a Jewish religious group.
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#74Venezuela'a foreign exchange reserves stand at less than $12 billion [1]. They pay over 15% of that this month to bond holders [2]. This makes no sense until one considers that the bond holders might be regime insiders. Venezuela is a state structured to maximise the transfer of wealth from the many to the few. Shockingly, as recently as 2004 Venezuela boasted fair elections [3]. The degree to which Venezuelans are t…
When a democracy transitions to a dictatorship in a decade how do you not hood the electorate responsible? They made the choices continually to allow this.
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Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#75Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#76Totally unrelated rant follows. I wonder how a world without main stream media would look like... Would it be a better place? So much negativity, hidden agenda, pay for play, etc. is present, that one would probably be better off staying uninformed, than reading articles with God knows what agenda.
I'm struggling to understand how a world without professional journalists (because that's what "mainstream media" means) would be better.
Given the choice of getting my reporting from either pseudonymous posters writing on random blogs, or professional journalists who write under their own name, abide by an ethics code, and are supported by a publishing organization that includes editors and fact checkers -- well, I'll rather pay for the latter in any world.
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships, so I'm not sure how much we can learn from your observation.
> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than fi…
>However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven
How is that even a logically coherent sentence...
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never implied that.
I think you did. It's hard to imagine why you'd have cited Michael Moore in the same breath as "leftist intellectual elite" otherwise. How credible would I sound talking about a right-wing intellectual elite after referencing something Ann Coulter had said? Because that's who Michael Moore is: the Ann Coulter of the left.
Because 1) the GP referred to a Michael Moore twit and 2) the leftist intellectual elite did support Chavez. I have never claimed Michael Moore belongs to the intellectual elite, much less that he somehow leads it.
Both have supported Chavez and therefore I have mentioned both "in the same breath".
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than fi…
> However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". I'm curious. Do you have a specimen in mind? [p.s.] > right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven And I question this as well. The ideological basis of right-wing is precisely that the natural order of things is a rigid & hiera…
Check out South Korea and Taiwan.
The power went fairly smoothly from a military dictatorship to a democratically elected government.
Sure the parallel isn't perfect - Taiwan and South Korea were on a war footing against communist rump states. However, the generals never claimed any particular moral high ground or rights.
Re: It’s official: Venezuela is a dictatorship
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thought, so far as it goes: In many "classless", free-market capitalistic societies (and a bunch of similar ones), society ends up approximating social class by the logarithm of the wealth of the person. In these cases "liberty and equality" really mean "lack of government interference in use of wealth", which ultimately translates to government restraint on social status to influence society for your own benefit…
Liberty and equality are at loggerheads. Liberty is the animating principle of the modern right, and equality is the animating principle of the modern left.
I'm not sure I agree.
I'd probably phrase it as the US leftwing and rightwing have different importances placed on different kinds of libterties a person can have and different notions of equality.
Gun rights, for the left, are an issue of liberty; while abortion, for the right, is a matter of equality.
Too often in American politics, we pretend that what are orthogonal axes are different choices in a dilemma. Here I think we have an instance of that: liberty and equality are related but mostly orthogonal groupings of several related concepts, the preference of which can lead to radically different notions of "equality" or "liberty".
That's what makes politics hard: the other guy wants liberty too, but he understands that in a fundamentally different way than you.