Requiem For A Scumbag

Hugo Chavez was proof that leftists learn nothing from the past. Every socialist would-be dictator, like him, operates on the premise that this time, they're employing "true" Marxism; this time, it'll work for sure. Of course, he ended up being just another petty despot. What a shame.

As a brief recap of his unfortunate life, Chavez, a former military man, started a revolutionary movement in the '80s, was briefly imprisoned following a failed coup in the early '90s, then released, and then swept to power in the 1998 presidential elections, after capitalizing on disenchantment with the prior regime after an economic downturn. (All he needed was a German accent and a funny mustache to complete the comparison.) Indeed, El Hugo was praised by the U.N. (go figure) and other authorities for his fiscally conservative lifestyle and his famously populist agenda, which included massive public relief efforts, a crackdown on business corruption, nationalization of oil companies, and lots of other stick-it-to-the-Man policies. Such actions, these international bodies have proclaimed, cut Venezuela's poverty rate by half and significantly improved the standard of living.

What a guy. Only problem--all of that is bull@#$%.

Whenever you hear statistics praising Chavez' development of a social democracy (and you will, if you're following the news), keep in mind those statistics are grossly manipulated by Venezuelan government agencies. Unemployment, for example, is only counted in terms of people working less than one hour per month, so that the real rate is three or four times higher than the official figure (which itself is nothing to write home about--in 2010 it was about eight percent. You do the math.)

This mendacity hides the truly basketcase economy Chavez presided over in his final years. The real picture includes the closing of over 4,000 businesses during the 2000s, an annual inflation rate regularly topping 50%, a significant decline of GDP compared to its neighbors' growing economies, and a crumbling infrastructure that sees frequent electricity brownouts and water shortages. Ironically--but predictably--the main burden falls on the poor, who regularly experience scarcities of food, utilities, and medical care. Crime in the capital city of Caracas is off the charts, and the drop in investment that comes with bashing business interests isn't exactly helping the jobless problem, either.

Clearly, Chavez' government hasn't done much for the "social" part of "social democracy." And I'm sure I don't need to tell you how it's lived up to the other half of that equation. (Which I will.) It was no unusual thing for the Venezuelan president to "suggest" during his weekly broadcasts that certain political enemies should be imprisoned--which, of course, they then were--under atrocious conditions which have frequently drawn the protest of human rights groups. And the government's "to be rich is to be bad" slogan has led to the arbitrary takeover and break-up of various private firms and the groundless convictions of bankers and other "enemies of the people." When one of these last was paroled, Chavez gave the offending judge a 30-year sentence. Has any purported friend-of-the-little-man violated the rule of law as frequently and blatantly as Chavez has?



Hey, how did that get in here? That's not funny.

I could go on. There's more, much more--Chavez' personal lavish spending, the alleged corruption of family members, his use of Cuban special forces to quell dissent, and a conspiracy-theorist paranoia so extreme even Sean Penn was taken aback--but this is bad enough, isn't it? And yet, when word of his death came this week, hacks like Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, and Oliver Stone immediately lauded him as a friend to democracy and social justice. To put that in perspective, let me leave you with this, courtesy of HumanEvents.com:

Practically alone, farmer and biologist Franklin Brito launched a hunger strike last year to protest the government's 2005 invasion and plundering of his property in Bolivar state, which was later expropriated without a just compensatory payment....When authorities failed to return clear title to his property, Franklin Brito resumed his strike, only to be taken forcefully to the Military Hospital, where attempts were made to declare him insane. Since being hospitalized in December [2009], Mr. Brito has defied efforts to force-feed him and fought to resume his hunger strike. The government finally allowed the Red Cross to visit him and he has since resumed drinking water. His condition remains grave.

That's what those hacks are defending.