Even the well-informed can be naive

We just refuse to see what's under our noses. Or maybe we can't - it's out of focus if it's too close.

Ted Nordhouse, VP for a PDVSA (Venezuela's state oil company) PR firm can't understand why up here we "swallow" the BS coming from Venezuela's elite.

That an out of power, out of touch, and anti-democratic elite might find the result [of the recent recall attempt] shocking is perhaps not groundbreaking news. What is a good deal more disturbing is that US and international media outlets consistently swallowed the opposition's unlikely claims of certain victory hook, line, and sinker.

VHeadline article

The reason we "swallow" this stuff is because we are cooperating with and helping to coordinate the opposition's opposition. Washington does not want a left-leaning, powerful, oil-controlling government to exist anywhere in the world. Nor does it want anything like the authentic democracy being proposed in the Bolivarian revolution of Venezuela to spread. We fund the opposition, work covertly through military plots and activity and through the CIA, provide anti-Chávez mouthpieces through politicians and their cronies, media both TV and print, diplomatic channels both past and current, and polling services. The Venezuelan elites are the ones swallowing our claims hook, line and sinker.

Ted does make a very valid point in his conclusion:

Calls for reconciliation and negotiation too will ring hollow unless all involved accept that Venezuela will not go back to the way it was before Chavez. Venezuela's poor majority, for the first time, has a real voice in Venezuelan politics and will continue to demand that the nation's substantial resource wealth be used to better their lives.

At each point in his tenure when the opposition has tried and failed to oust him, Chávez has made a plea to them to recognize the Constitution and the will of the Venezuelan people and to work with him, not against him, for the sake of the country. He has the same problem we have here in the US - there is a faction of wealthy elites who have the money and power to try to control the government (and in our case, succeed) who have no interest in the sake of the country, but only in their own sake. The danger in Venezuela is that the majority of the population wants freedom and true democracy, so the battle will likely not end where it stands now, and could well come to extreme violence at some point.

The difference here is that there is a great faction of the lower classes who actually vote for our elites to screw them over, just don't let two queers have a marriage license, and stand guard over every woman's womb. And kick some evil-doer ass.

Go figger.

We must truly be a country of ignorant bumpkins. The poor Venezuelans, on the other hand, are not.

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