Renegade Eye versus Sonia Belle

There has been a great deal of discussion lately over on Sonia Belle and Renegade Eye that has at times erupted into a verbal brawl. The topic of such heated debate? Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela.

I am not necessarily pro-Chavez, but I fail to see the cause for such agony from the right. Legitimate concern is one thing, but to hear some of these people tell it, this is a sign of the approaching Apocalypse.

So, which one of the Four Horsemen is Hugo Chavez? The more Biblically minded ones would probably answer with a straight face, “Oh, he’s the third one, the one that rides a black horse and carries a set of scales.”

Here’s a clue, guys, just in case you haven’t caught on-that’s a reference to olive oil, not sweet crude.

You might also want to dig a little bit into your history, where you will see that in every case, countries that moved to communism were not exactly your shining examples of free-market capitalism and abundance of opportunity.

They were capitalist nations, for the most part, but what they all had in common was one unfortunate fact. They were oligarchies, or plutocracies, or aristocracies, where roughly one percent of the population controlled well over ninety percent of the wealth. The remaining percentage of the population got the chump change. They were pressed, oppressed, repressed, and depressed, until they finally pressed back.

There has never been a truly democratic nation, with an inclusive atmosphere for opportunity for economic advancement, with fairness and the rule of law, which went communist.

No, Western Europe and it’s socialist economic policies don’t count, for the simple reason that the United States has enabled this by taking care of their defensive needs, thereby freeing the economies of Western Europe to engage in such interesting social experiments as socialized medicine and other cradle to the grave entitlements.

Nor do the allegedly socialist policies and entitlements of the United States qualify as “communist”. Some have made the point that such policies are leading the way toward communism, but if the US or for that matter Western Europe ever does phase into this brand of jack-boot socialism, it will be a first in world history.

Again, it has never happened before.

What could happen, however, are such profound adaptations of “libertarian” economic policies and a total scrapping of any kind of oversight or regulation of big business or corporate interests in any form, that the US might eventually wake up one day to find itself the exact type of nation where a Chavez or a Castro is easily incubated.

Such examples are seemingly endless of nations that became serfdoms in all but name. All of them were comprised of a small but powerful minority of people that enslaved the masses of their populations. This is the case now in Mexico, which is ruled by a small group of white families who are generally the descendants of the old Spanish conquistadors.

The vast remainder of the population of Mexico, made up of Indians and Mestizos, and other mixed race groups, doubtless considered sub-human by the ruling overlords, find themselves out in the economic cold, reduced to crime if they ever want more than subsistence level life. For the most part, they cannot leave Mexico fast enough to suit them, or to suit the ruling elites there, which the US props up, practically subsidizing them with loans and trade agreements that benefit them to the detriment of American workers and their own population.

As it stands now, Mexico could easily become a communist nation, just as Venezuela, which had the same kind of society pre-Chavez.

That is the same kind of society the anti-Chavez crowd seems to wants here in America, if you believe their rhetoric about ending all regulations and oversight of business, and about how we should otherwise “allow the market forces to work”.

Think it could not happen here? Think again. It happens every time a corporation strong-arms a politician for ever more tax breaks, while insisting the middle class pay for the wars that are for the most part to their immediate benefit, and are in a good many cases outright promoted by them.

It happens every time an American company funnels it’s assets to offshore accounts with the tacit assistance and culpability of the very politicians whose job description is laughably the protection of the interests of ALL Americans.

It happens every time they move their operations to foreign countries where they can access workers at slave wages-or when they threaten to do so.

It happen every time they deny workers benefits, and even oppose minimum wages increases, the very things that actually built the American middle class along with the greatest economic engine in the history of the world.

Yet, no matter how often they are granted these concessions, under the illusion that “a rising tide lifts all boats”, the working people never seem to benefit. They don’t get a fucking boat. They are lucky to get a life jacket. Nevertheless, the market forces guru continue to dish out the same tired rhetoric.

Just a few more years and things will get better for everybody. Maybe in another five years. Or ten. Or twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. Or fifty. Or sixty. We have more research and development we have to conduct. We have more advertising we have to purchase. We have to remain competitive, otherwise one of those “other guys” will beat us out. Just let us make a few more billion so our investors will be happy, and we will eventually do right by you. If you get sick, or a family member dies, believe us, we are sympathetic. We will even send a basket of fruit to your home. Please don’t be greedy. We have children to send to Harvard, and to buy the best medical care and insurance for. Be reasonable. Think of our families, who we must be sure is worthy of carrying on the family tradition. We have to make sure they are smart enough to reign over you. Lead the country, we mean.

That would be the most likely immediate fate of the United States of America. Our version of Chavez would not come about until later, if he ever did. By then, the laissez-faire market advocates would be long dead and gone of course, after living a life of comfort and in some cases wealthy excess at the expense of the great-unwashed multitudes of serfs. That is the most self-serving thing about their position.

They by all rights should be around to see through their decapitated heads, for the last ten seconds or so of consciousness, the site of the crowds cheering at the site of their bulging eyes and bloody hacked necks. It would only be fair.

Unfortunately, life, like servitude under any system, is seldom fair.