On Hugo Chavez: I GIVE UP!

I give up participating in any debate, for or against, the current President of Venezuela:

Any article I read portraying him in a negative light is a purposely mistranslated, biased piece of pro-corporate, pro-imperialist propaganda.

Any article I read portraying him in a positive light is a direct product of Chavez's own boot-licking, numbers-inflating government-controlled media.

Also, I've learned that Hugo's not as bad as Bush, but he's also worse than Castro, and under him, Venezuela will either ascend to a glorious new age of prosperity and freedom and/or descend into a socialist totalitarian police-state. I certainly should rather/would never want to live there if I had a choice.

I give up. Honestly. I no longer have no opinions for or against him. I have no wish to support or denounce his government. I don't give a fig what George Bush or Juan Carlos I or Bill O'Reilly or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks about him, one way or the other. I certainly don't want to read some lengthy documentation you found floating around on cyberspace and be educated on why the imminent threat of my/his government in Venezuela is something I should really be worried about.

Forget it. You've all won. You've succeeded in pushing me past the point of caring.

I'll stick to debating issues concerning the country I'm the most familiar with, thank you very much.

On every country, and how it's run. He's not committing genocide, as far as we know. He's not attacking his neighbors. We don't have to love him, but we don't really have a right to - ahem - dictate their business.

him the antithesis of bushit and not just "better than bush".

I really don't care about his person, I just hope the best for the people of Venezuela. That's the only thing that matters.

good and evil

Some things he does are good

Some things are downright despotic

and some things are neither

and we have no right to instill another government in his place...

I wasn't previously aware that I, Bicoastal, had an effect on the people of Venezuela at all.

When they realize what a stupid thing they've done, which country do you think they'll come whining and crying to? That's right...WE will be called upon to free these imbeciles, or at the very least, to give them tons in foreign aid after he destroys their country as our own little dictator is doing here.

Either way, the US taxpayer is screwed, and THAT'S why I care.

When was the last time the American military-industrial complex was ASKED to invade a sovereign country by it's citizens to "set them free"?

I think the last time that happened was France in 1944 - and they don't have any oil, so today's corporatocracy wouldn't be interested.

It works both ways, see?

If they have a right to complain about US, then we can complain about them, too.

And this person has given up.

I personally would love an unbiased source for info that doesn't take a stand for against. But that seems pretty hard to find as well. Some say venezuelananalysis.com is okay though.

...simply because he supports left-wing economic policies (most of which I agree with BTW, before I start getting called a corporate apologist). I shudder to think how many DUers would support a modern day Huey Long style demagogue. Some people here seem to be just as much sheep to blind ideology as the Freepers, or the Marxists.

in posting this message across multiple OPs...

over critical thinking. :think:

:rofl:

If so, one could make the case that you have a moral duty to form a well-informed and accurate opinion about Hugo Chavez, and act on it.

If, like most of us, you don't, then good luck to you, and there are certainly more productive ways you can use your time - I quite personally enjoy arguing with people about politics even though I have no influence on them, but there's no reason why you should.

...is that it's often difficult to come to your own conclusions when you're dealing with many different divergent sources that may be compromised by bias. We have that problem in America, but since we actually LIVE here, the gulf between perception and fact isn't nearly as great. If one source says that Venezuela under Chavez is better than ever before, and the other says Venezuela under Chavez is a police state, who am I to say which one is right? I don't live there. Like another poster said, there's been no reports of an armed conflict or genocide there yet...

I think a little isolationism would do our country a bit of good, especially after Bush's presidency. Some of the world's most succesful and stable countries today have remained neutral in international affairs for years...

We get EXACTLY the same sort of bipolar coverage of EVERYTHING in the US main stream media.

There is not an objective voice out there, save perhaps the Christian Science Monitor, who at least tries.

...and the more perceptive of us can see the storm clouds when they're telling us it's sunny.

A much, much larger majority of us have no honest idea about Chavez's Venezuela.

See my post 2 above.

... he's like every person on the planet. A mix of good and bad. :)

Which one weighs heaviest? Hard to say, there is plenty of evidence of both.

You don't have to be for or against Chavez. You simply have to reject the image of the United States as a positive force in the world. It's not. We are a bloody handed empire, and one of the tools this empire uses against people everywhere are campaigns of disinformation and outright lies.

Look at how we got into Iraq... The lies were so shallow as to be absurd -- that Iraq was building Weapons of Mass Destruction, that Iraq took part in the attacks of September Eleventh -- but this nation of "patriots," who somehow still believe the United States is a force for overwhelming good, swallowed up the lies up and supported a criminal administration intent only upon controlling the oil resources of another nation.

Chavez could be an angel pure of heart, yet Fox News and CNN would still portray him as a devil. That Chavez is a skillful politician and an opponent of U.S. imperialism does not change the equation at all. His nation has oil and other natural resources that the U.S. empire seeks to control.

"You simply have to reject the image of the United States as a positive force in the world."

Not true. Like Chavez, we're not completely bad or good. In fact, if you know world history, we're not any better or worse than any other massive state that has dominated world affairs from time to time. It doesn't excuse our poor behavior, but it doesn't completely cancel out the positives--and there are positives.

Nevertheless, this is a textbook empire with textbook problems.

an issue of contention anyway? bush and the fascasti are literally setting up a police state (which could descend into nazification re death/concentration camps etc...i mean, who is saying 'no'?)
the rightwing scheme we are seeing in the west was based upon this idea: while Clinton and Gore and Kerry etc are killers, they kill under cover of necessity/law or happenstance- they don't kill just to score with the chicks. Bush and the bushpigs kill expressly for those reasons. And the people detect the difference in the 2 approaches to what's happening. Clinton/Kerry/Gore etc will exert themselved not to kill bush and the pigs, whereas bush would giggle at the sight of 3 democrat heads delivered him on plates.....while Chavez might be worthy of concern, in light of the desperation the busheviks are putting their followers/aiders/abetters/ mediawhores in is creating a dynamic where bloodshed might be the rightwing criminals' only choice. Until bush is gone, we hardly can afford to worry about Venezuela (esp. as the pigmedia is trying to get us all afraid of the situation there, scared and wanting action...)

...simply because it's hard to read.

You start a thread to announce that you don't care?

That makes sense.

Perhaps if both sides were to talk about Chavez's Venezuela in shades of grey instead of black and white...

Perhaps if any media source wasn't immediately denounced as a mouthpiece for one faction or the other...

Perhaps if some of the liberals on DU were at least a little more conservative in their rhetoric, hyperbole, and propensity for name-calling...

Yeah, it ain't going to happen. You're right--it doesn't make sense.

I'm confused.

You said you didn't care.

????????

Either go with the flow and believe it or give up in frustration trying to fight it.

Goebbel's Ghost resting easy today.

That was the whole point.

for your own adventure.

It's been like pulling teeth to get good information on Venezuela for weeks. And, you are complaining because other people aren't working hard enough for your consumption? Okay.

No my point is that I feel I can't trust anything printed about Venezuela right now. There are way too many agendas at play to understand what's truly going on there.

You say you have "good information"? How can I possibly know if it is or isn't at this junction? Yes. It's a cynical attitude, but continuous partisan mudslinging breeds cynicism...

I suppose that in order to be faithful to my OP, I should end my participation on this thread. Good luck to the Hugo supporters, good luck to the Hugo detractors. I'll catch up again when this all plays out.

the good from the junk. And the only way to know is to use your experience, to cross check and to consider the sourcing. It's work.

in Venezuela, you would research it yourself. There is a wealth of information on the web.

Weigh the pros and cons yourself and come to your own conclusions.

This is an important moment in South American political history, no matter what one thinks about Hugo Chavez.
Many of us live in Latin America, or have in the past. We know how momentous this day is, and know the historical context.
The constitution and Venezuelan democracy will outlive Chavez, in all probability, if other forces do not interfere.