Friday, May 07, 2004

Comparative Democracy

I am reminded of a comment on one of Billmon's threads regarding the Abu Ghraib situation. Someone asked WTF is it with this refrain that our soldiers' actions in that prison were nowhere near as bad as Saddam Hussein's? Is that the benchmark against which we now judge ourselves?

I have no good segue, but...

There's a pretty fair (and short) article about democracy in Venezuela here. The conclusion, I think could, be just as easily applied to many democratic nations, including our own.

That leaves us with a situation in which even if Chavez were to win the coming elections handsomely, with the endorsement of the Carter Centre and the OAS...the negative media campaign, the coup mongering and the sabotaging of the economy would continue. This is not about votes, about legitimately elected leaders nor is it about democracy, it is about power and those who refuse to relinquish what they once had.


And that, I believe is what we will be left with even if we were to remove the Bush administration. I don't see these people who control great wealth and great world-wide power going away quietly satisfied with the enormous personal gains they've amassed to date.

And so, I really can't think of a solution outside the total annihilation of mankind, which would be no solution at all, except as it might serve to delay the death of the planet itself. At least I am quite certain that no solution to our current situation would be a permanent one, and the nature of the political beast, precisely because of the nature of the human being perhaps, destines us to a perpetual struggle for justice and democracy.

How fun is that?

Perhaps there is a small glimmer of hope in the idea of evolution. But not in our lifetimes.


Previous posts on Venezuela
More information on Venezuela

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