Hugo Chavez, who died this week, ran afoul of the Ultimate Rule of Dictatorship: Memento Mori.
Remember, you will die.
Chavez spent 14 years rigging his elections; suppressing the press; emasculating the judiciary; and haranguing his citizens on TV with marathon orations. Despite his diversion of vast sums of petrodollars into health care, Chavez was unwilling to entrust his own sickness to Chavezmacare. He hied himself to Havana, from when he lied about his condition for most of two years. And when he came home to die, he lied to the saps who made his movement.
Chavez exhibited a Kruschev-like peasant's sense of political theater, as well as the usual autocrat's faux-populism and ignorance of economics. As long as the wells pumped, money could be spent.
Hugo Chavez was around so long- and such a buffoon on the world stage- it is hard to imagine he was only 58 when he shuffled off the mortal coil. He joins, Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh in his own perpetually-on-view-glass-casket.
He had his flaws but I guess the worst of him was his failure to fellate the uber wealthy of Venezuela.
ReplyDeleteJill
"Chavez spent 14 years rigging his elections; suppressing the press; emasculating the judiciary; and haranguing his citizens on TV with marathon orations. Despite his diversion of vast sums of petrodollars into health care, Chavez was unwilling to entrust his own sickness to Chavezmacare. He hied himself to Havana, from when he lied about his condition for most of two years. And when he came home to die, he lied to the saps who made his movement."
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly the best summation of Chavez and his reign I have come across.