Alternative title: Cult-of-personality dictatorship to collapse after death of personality. Whoever could have guessed that this would happen?
In short, Venezuela is headed for a hard fall, and the current shift in leadership will be — as one local observer put it — like switching bus drivers on a bus hurtling downhill without breaks and a broken steering wheel. The problem’s not just the driver, it’s the entire bus too.
Via Instapundit. I really do wish that international Marxist regimes that have managed to survive this long would just admit that it’s because they’ve largely become monarchist or feudal states. They should give up and embrace the concept of kingship and aristocracy – or, in the case of the Chinese, finding a good, plausible-sounding reason to bring back a Son Of Heaven. Then the PRC can all put jade buttons on their Mao caps and actually run the bureaucracies in a more long-term fashion… sorry, where was I?
Ah, right, Chavez. Damned if I know what Venezuela’s going to do, here. Except probably have a civil war. Try not to burn down the oil wells, guys: you’ll want them later.
Moe Lane
PS: …What? You think that the USA will actually intervene? Under this President? Under the circumstances, I don’t think that I’m really justified in giving them anything except the most practical sort of advice…
The beauty of long-term, especially multi-generational oppressive communism, Moe, is that you don’t have to contend with those pesky concepts like noblesse oblige that crop up in actual monarchies.
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For those at the top, it’s all the benefits, far lower cost.
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As for Venezuela, any civil war will be messy and multi-sided.
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It’d be nice if the Brasilians and the rest of the South American nations could get along well enough to do their own continental-intervention, but .. I don’t see it. The language barrier makes it tougher than it really needs to be.
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Mew
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p.s. Why couldn’t Pedro Álvares Cabral have gotten lost?
Geting lost is how anybody ever found the Americas in the first place. “Why couldn’t Cabral have followed directions” is more like it. 🙂
Brasil has been in a muscle flexing mood lately, hasn’t it? Economically, anyhow, they seem to be developing their own Southern Monroe Doctrine to counterbalance the US, and if things get too bad I don’t see why they would then shirk from “humanitarian” intervention ala Libya. More likely is that Colombia will find it a good excuse to bring the final hammer down on the Chavez-supported FARC factions.
Given the track record of intervention so far under this admin, it would be better for all if we stay out.
Right. If O would probably want to prop up Chavez’s successor in the name of “stability” anyway.