Long-time readers of this blog have been reading about the festering disaster caused by Venezuela‘s communist leadership for well over a decade.
Back when I had my own podcast, I did several shows on the closings of radio and TV stations dating back to nearly a decade, and I’ve written countless blog posts and articles here and in other websites on the failing economy, government takeovers of private industry and oil industry corruption, and on the regime’s connections to the FARC, Iran, Russia and China.
Which is why I can’t decide whether this strikes me as ridiculous or expectedly stupid:
[Rachel] Maddow tried to claim on her show Thursday night that the streets of Venezuela had exploded with protests and marches in response to recent news surrounding a subsidiary of a major Venezuelan oil company that donated half a million dollars to the Trump campaign.
Newsbusters has the transcript.
Rachel, please, we know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but get a hold of yourself: People in Venezuela have been dumpster-diving for food since Obama was President. If you care to look, the link shows they were dumpster-diving in May 2016, before Trump was the GOP nominee (which your own network reported in June 19, 2016).
Joel Hirst wrote eloquently on The Suicide of Venezuela exactly a year ago. Venezuelan bloggers, at great peril, have been writing about the country all these years. I have read and reviewed dozens of books on the subject, some by the people I link to in this post. Thousands of Twitter accounts report the multiple human rights abuses, every day.
Opposition leader Leopoldo López was arrested on Feb. 18, 2014 during a major demonstration, well over a year before Donald Trump declared himself a candidate on June of 2015. Back then I pointed out that this ain’t no velvet revolution. Rachel, you may not have heard of López, but he’s been held without a trial for over two years.
So, please, show some self-respect and inform yourself before scapegoating the latest American politician, and stop echoing the regime’s latest talking points.
And by the way, sanctions did not cause Venezuela’s economic collapse.
While you are at it, ponder this headline: Thousands march in Venezuela in honour of those killed in unrest. Again, to honor the dead, not Trump or your talking points.
The truth is, Venezuela shows what Communism is like.
Until you can figure that out, at least inform yourself.
Today’s links on Venezuela:
Venezuela Riots, Looting Claim a Dozen Lives
Eyewitness in Caracas, from Venezuela’s Mother of all Marches
Venezuela’s Tiananmen Square: Woman Stands In Front Of Armored Truck
UPDATE
Venezuela’s Socialist Hell (H/T Instapundit)
Venezuela’s previous president, Hugo Chavez, set the stage for the country’s destruction by spending Venezuela’s oil money on social programs designed to boost his popularity even as he set about wrecking the country’s assets, expropriating most valuable private companies, sometimes to turn them into bureaucracies and sometimes to give them to friends, implementing price and retail controls that ensured people wouldn’t have access to basic necessities and capital controls that caused inflation to rise, shutting down alternative voices in the media, Putin- and Erdogan-style, and winking at top-to-bottom corruption.
When global oil prices declined, the house of cards fell.
Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.
