Key word: the polls. The polls= the people. The people= the spoiled little brats I'm describing. Mob rule at its worst.
1. How you mention some of the things Chavez has done, I have come to understand that you only know the issues superficially. I've lived with the issues for the past 7 years. For example, how can it be anything but Chavez' intentions if he says that he wants to stay in power til' 2023? If anything, to say something like this would be negative to his case. In 1998, he did make that change in the Constitution. But it wasn't HIS Constitution. That constitution had been planned from a decade before Chavez came to power. And let's talk about Chavez' strong opposition to U.S. influence. Now that IS a scare tactic. Chavez is making the people think that the U.S. is planning to invade. A couple of days ago, a military exercise was planned in La Guaira in order to "counter the invasion". Ha! Counter the invasion... what invasion? Chavez has compared Bush to Satan before. Now what kind of president is he? As Sidus Preclarum says, people don't know whether Chavez is a democrat socialist, or a populist demagogue, but I think that the people who are bright enough are beginning to understand that he's the latter. Just look at the Daily Show... Even Jon Stewart is beginning to think that Chavez is nothing but a clown. And he is just that.
2. And I agree that the opposition offers no viable alternative, but it offers a less violent one. Today, violence in Venezuela is not matching, but SURPASSING that of Colombia (it's true...
according to statistics). Chavez is arming the populace. He has imported hundreds of thousands of AKs from Russia as well as hand guns and short arms from Spain. He has expressed his views before: "We need to arm every single Venezuela so that we can counter the imperialist American invasion." And what is this gonna do? Defend the country? Or... in 10-30 years... arm the country so that a civil war can happen. A civil war WILL happen if he continues these programs. It's inevitable. To ignore his statements and his politics on the issue, while you embrace some of the other "happy flowery" ones... tell me, is it objective to ignore some data while embracing other?
3. Left-center is not the way to go in first world countries. Far right is the way to go in third world countries. We've seen most of the world under the leftist wrap for well over three decades, and to what avail? There have been literally no changes, the poverty margins are exactly the same, and the infrastructures of most third world countries, both in Latin America and in Africa, have changed with the information age, but have progressed so slowly as to not excert any considerable gain. Left-center IS NOT the way to go in the third world. It's the way NOT to go. Whether it's a cause of American intervention, or whether the system collapses once patronization takes over, left-center has proved once and again that it cannot sustain a third world economy.
What you described in 3.) is exactly why the Venezuelan people have been spoiled the last 70 years. "That is stupid. Venezuela is a capitalist country, but with strong social programs that help people get jobs, feed their families, etc. Education teaches men "to fish" and Chavez is trying to help achieve that." You sound like a sloganeer of the Chavez political party machine. No, Chavez is not trying to teach people how "to fish" by doing these things. These social programs are not new in Venezuela. They have been ongoing since Carlos Andres Perez took over in 1973. They don't work. Even if they are established well, they don't work. How do you teach a third world country to work for their food? Not by giving them the food, and that's what these programs do. They essentially are billion dollar projects that do nothing but waste time, effort, and money on a population that will throw that right back into the toilet. They don't understand what we understand. They don't understand that hard work = good lifestyle, or that education = higher salary. They are bred to think that they deserve something from the state, and when the state refrains from giving them that thing they deserve, they rebel.
Such was the case in 1990 when Carlos Andres Perez FINALLY created a strong capitalist bloc of influence in Venezuelan politics and removed most of the ongoing social programs. His theory was that by instituting an all-out capitalist program, the people would eventually adapt to these changes and start working for their food. It worked. The economy thrived. But the people were unhappy. Why? Because they were forced to work for their food. They weren't given their food anymore. And who was on the list of the rebels who sought to displace Carlos Andres Perez? Hugo Chavez. And of course, there are other reasons why the coup happened, but this is one of the major reasons why "el Caracazo" occured. Imagine having hundreds of thousands of people rise up, go down from the barrios, and start doing nothing but looting the city's commercial centers of its market. That's what happened. The Venezuelan people were unhappy that they were finally being taught the hard way, and they rebelled, went down into the city, and looted the entire city as if in a way to say: "The state did not give us our weekly bread today, so we're gonna grab it ourselves." That is the true issue in Venezuela society today. It's not Chavez, it's not the opposition, it's the Venezuelan people's spoilt nature. And Chavez is fostering that. His programs are wasting more billions and the people are not learning.
My ratings:
Chavez= C-
The Venezuelan People= F
Grading The Presidents/PMs: The Americas
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Originally Posted by Total Warrior X
