{"id":39640,"date":"2017-08-04T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39640"},"modified":"2017-08-03T11:45:21","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T15:45:21","slug":"short-memories-and-willing-self-deception-over-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/04\/short-memories-and-willing-self-deception-over-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Short memories and willing self-deception over Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, James Kirchick<\/a> took the pundits to task for their adulation of Venezuela’s government as it plunged deliberately into a humanitarian disaster:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Shaded relief map of Venezuela, 1993 (via Wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in a referendum designed to rewrite the country\u2019s constitution and confer on him dictatorial powers. The sham vote, boycotted by the opposition, was but the latest stage in the \u201cBolivarian Revolution\u201d launched by Maduro\u2019s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez. First elected in 1998 on a wave of popular goodwill, Chavez\u2019s legacy is one of utter devastation.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chavismo\u2019s vast social welfare schemes (initially buoyed by high oil prices), cronyism and corruption, a country that once boasted massive budget surpluses is today the world\u2019s most indebted. Contraction in per capita GDP is so severe that \u201cVenezuela\u2019s economic catastrophe dwarfs any in the history of the U.S., Western Europe or the rest of Latin America\u201d according to Ricardo Hausmann, former chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank. Transparency International lists Venezuela as the only country in the Americas among the world\u2019s 10 most corrupt.<\/p>\n

Socialist economic policies \u2014 price controls, factory nationalizations, government takeovers of food distribution and the like \u2014 have real human costs. Eighty percent of Venezuelan bakeries don\u2019t have flour. Eleven percent of children under 5 are malnourished, infant mortality has increased by 30% and maternal mortality is up 66%. The Maduro regime has met protests against its misrule with violence. More than 100 people have died in anti-government demonstrations and thousands have been arrested. Loyal police officers are rewarded with rolls of toilet paper.<\/p>\n

The list of Western leftists who once sang the Venezuelan government\u2019s praises is long, and Naomi Klein figures near the top.<\/p>\n

In 2004, she signed a petition headlined, \u201cWe would vote for Hugo Chavez.\u201d Three years later, she lauded Venezuela as a place where \u201ccitizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.\u201d In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine<\/em>, 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 \u201cshocks\u201d administered by free market fundamentalists thanks to Chavez\u2019s \u201c21st Century Socialism,\u201d which had created \u201ca zone of relative economic calm and predictability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chavez\u2019s untimely death from cancer in 2013 saw an outpouring of grief from the global left. The caudillo \u201cdemonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity,\u201d wrote British journalist Owen Jones. \u201cI mourn a great hero to the majority of his people,\u201d said Oliver Stone, who would go on to replace Chavez with Vladimir Putin as the object of his twisted affection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Los Angeles Times, James Kirchick took the pundits to task for their adulation of Venezuela’s government as it plunged deliberately into a humanitarian disaster: On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in a referendum designed to rewrite the country\u2019s constitution and confer on him dictatorial powers. The sham vote, boycotted by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,25,28,53],"tags":[363,188,807,720,76,398],"class_list":["post-39640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-economics","category-media","category-politics","tag-corruption","tag-electionwatch","tag-expropriation","tag-protest","tag-socialism","tag-venezuela"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ajm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39642,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39640\/revisions\/39642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}