Venezuelan Presidential Election 2012

[後援会]

Oh Gosh, it's in only 6 days? Well, crossing fingers for Radonski. He might not be perfect, but at least he's not a megalomaniac populist clown with authoritarian tendencies.

I really like this subject. It's good for distinguishing who is simply very left-wing and who is simply crazy.

[後援会]

Oh Gosh, it's in only 6 days? Well, crossing fingers for Radonski. He might not be perfect, but at least he's not a megalomaniac populist clown with authoritarian tendencies.

I really like this subject. It's good for distinguishing who is simply very left-wing and who is simply crazy.

Kind of like Pinochet for right-wingers, so...

As mentioned before, it's quite a different thing to support a right-wing dictator against a left-wing dictator (or vice versa) than to support any dictator over any democrat. Supporting Stalin over Hitler doesn't make you a hardline Communist. It's really a false comparison.

[後援会]

Haha, sure. To be fair, Lief does a far better job at defending Chavez than you do at defending that despicable human trash.

Well, one would have to be delusional or putting up massive BS barriers to champion Stalin, Pinochet, or Chavez as great people in their own right. I'm not going to champion someone simply because they oppose the same people I oppose, even if I think they may be the least of all their contemporary evils.

[後援会]

The New Republic Reports

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[後援会]

Chavez will be re-elected.

Almost certainly. Then he'll linger on for a few years until he dies from cancer. And then sh**t will hit the fan as Venezuela completes its transition to a failed narcostate.

You'd think a nation with one of the world's largest oil reserves could at least cling onto being a slightly preferable failed petrostate, but that sounds overly optimistic.

[後援会]

You're a Chavez supporter, Oakvale ? Didn't expect that.

Oh, no, not really, I'm being somewhat facetious - I just think some people are overreacting. Chavez is more Mayor Daley than Joseph Stalin.

That's really an unjustified insult to Mayor Daley. As much we joke about dead people votes, Daley and Chavez are incomparable.

Unless you're saying that Chavez is a 45 on the Daley to Stalin scale. Which I could buy, but being in the mid 40's on an Anyone to Stalin scale is a bad thing.

[後援会]

Um, I'll freely and gladly take this back if I'm mistaken, but aren't you a Pinochet fan?

I'm not saying that particular bit of whataboutery excuses Chavez's human rights violations, mind - I thought it was self-evident that my post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

I don't love Pinochet, but I'm fully willing to acknowledge him the least bad of several evils in the time period when he took power, though by the time he stepped down, he no longer carried that honor.

"Least bad of several evils" is not something that describes Chavez. Obviously, Pinochet isn't a model for governance, but if we look on it from a consequentialist and counterfactual angle, we can say that for all his personal failings (which are too long to be described here), Pinochet's coup had better outcomes than the alternatives, making the world somewhat better than it otherwise would have been. Chavez has been bad for both Venezuela, the United States, and the world. If an analogy is necessary - one can prefer the Soviet Union defeat Nazi Germany without being a strong supporter of Stalinist Communism.

Also, this is probably the 8th time I've had to explained this stance. Is the forum's version of "I can see Russia from my house."?

[後援会]

What the heck is up with that one part of Venezuela that decided to like Chavez more?

[後援会]

What the heck is up with that one part of Venezuela that decided to like Chavez more?

Chavez's opponent in 2006 was Zulia's governor, so a homestate effect (which was no doubt intensified by Maracaibo's traditional rivalry with Caracas) from the last election that wasn't present in this one.   

Makes a lot of sense.