And the winner is…Hugo Chavez!
Hugo Chavez is a Machiavellian demagogue. His socialist paternalism keeps his people dependent on a nanny state and scornful of their own entrepreneural potential to enrichen themselves. He is however, deeply adored by those very people, who in 2000 elected him with a 60% electoral majority.
So passionate was their love that it crushed a coup and returned him to power. This riveting video chronicles the 2002 political drama- its intrigue, violence and propaganda. It is a perspective never revealed in a mainstream media half brainwashed by Washington and half too lazy to probe for the truth. It exposes a Bush administration as mendacious as any banana republic junta as it continues the ignoble American tradition of covert foreign interference.
It is worth reflecting now on the dogmatic precept of democracy’s benefits, and ipso facto, why its rape is the most heinous of political transgressions.
In a state of nature, every human community resolves itself into a pyramidal structure, with the mass of the citizenry as the base and the ruling elite the apex. Because human nature is to reinforce status and project power, the ruling elite invariably governs to maximise its wealth, influence and perquisites, to the detriment of the majority. Patronage, corruption and repression characterise the resulting sociopolitical architecture.
Democracy reverses this natural tendency by fashioning institutions that force the ruling class to govern for the majority’s benefit. They include a legislature to check executive power, a judiciary to impartially administer the law, a free press to embarass the ruling class into honest servitude and regular elections to ensure no clique or individual develops too strong a hold on power.
When these institutions flag in their checking and balancing role, democratically-elected governments yield to the ugly corruption of boundless power. This happens in times of external threat such as war: the press succumbs to groupthink and fawns over the leader; the legislature becomes a rubber stamp; the judiciary enjoys epiphanies that interprete the constitution in ways confering dictatorial power on the elite.
The US witnessed, among other symptoms of this syndrome, Newsweek’s cowardly capitulation in the matter of the Quran defilation melee; the rubber-stamping of the nefarious PATRIOT act by Congress; the meek acquiescence of ordinary citizens, and the execration of the Dixie Chicks for criticising their own elected government.
Every time the CIA supports an autocracy, it entrenches the misery of the many. This invariably perpetuates sociopolitical instability, economic stagnation and social repression. Unfortunately however, America’s historical credo has been the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It has supported execrable dictators including Franco, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Musharraf and of course, Osama bin Laden in reward for their loyalty. Democratically elected but unfriendly leaders like Arafat, Chavez and the current Hamas leadership in Palestine are shunned, sanctioned or actively destabilised by the CIA.
When the US supports coup plotters, dictators and future terrorists, it does not protect its interests. It merely entrenches wickedness and sows a wind it will reap in the form of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait or Bin Laden’s 9/11 atrocities. If however, it supports democracy for its own idealistic sake, whether in Venezuela or elsewhere, it spreads the greatest earthly force for the good of the greatest number.
Post by El Hakeem
http://www.amusis.com