 |
| Machado |
Socialist-Communism has been the camel’s nose in the South
American tent from Fidel Castro forward. But the body of the camel, as everyone
now knows, was a Stalinist political creature that made its way through South
America by the usual means: state socialism, terror, and propaganda.
The propaganda has worn very thin in Venezuela, once the
Venice of South America, now a communist-Stalinist ash heap. The country’s
current Stalin, Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela since 2013, is
holding on to power, but a vigorous populist opposition led by Maria Corina
Machado, is inching forward. Maduro has his terror and his bullets and his jail
cells, still effective methods of persuasion within South American communist
countries. But Machado, called the Iron Lady of Venezuela, has her rosary beads
and a truly revolutionary message. According to a report in The New York Times,
“On the campaign trail, she has promised to ‘bury socialism forever’ and create
a nation where ‘the criminals and the corrupt go to prison.’”
The lede to the Times story, “’Iron lady’ of Venezuela threatens an upset,”
is heartening: “She travels the country in white, her rosaries swing from her
neck. Women cry in her arms, men beg her for salvation. Her bodyguard pulled
last week by the government, she traveled the streets unprotected… shielded by
the Venezuelan flag and the arms of Jesus Christ.”
As a legislator in 2012, Machado clashed with Maduro, who told
her “Eagles don’t hunt flies,” she being the fly and he the eagle.
One of the attendees at a recent Machado rally in Guanare,
buoyed by a renewed hope and faith, told the Times reporter that her husband
and son had left the country in search of work. “’But soon they will return,’
she said, confident that Mr. González and Ms. Machado would triumph. ‘We have
faith in God,’ she added, ‘that the fly is going to trap the eagle.’”
Machado has been forbidden to run for political positions,
as have others in the country brave enough to raise their voices against Maduro.
It is the socialist communist regime in Venezuela that determines who shall run
on the opposition ticket. Machado, the Times tells us, “is not the one running
for president, but she is the driving force behind the main opposition
candidate, a little-known diplomat named Edmundo González.”
For his part, Maduro has faith in Maduro and bullets and
prison cells and intimidation. “He vowed at a recent campaign event,” the Times
tells us, “that Venezuelans would ‘fall into a bloodbath, into fratricidal war’
if he lost the election.”
Maduro almost immediately regretted his bloodbath remark,
but Venezuelans know that he and his predecessor Hugo Chávez have drained the
blood from their country. Once the fifth richest state in South America,
Venezuela is now among the poorest. Liberty has been bled dry and prosperity
has fled. A handful of communist tyrants rule the country with an iron fist. Inflation rates in Venezuela exceeded
1,000,000% by 2018, the highest in the world by 2014 under Maduro.
The people have no divisions. There is some dispute among
World War II scholars what exactly Stalin meant when he asked, “How many
divisions has the pope?”
Winston Churchill tells us in the first volume of his
magisterial work The Second World War
that Pierre Jean Marie Laval, Prime Minister of France during the German
occupation “…went on a three days’ visit to Moscow, where he was welcomed by
Stalin. There were lengthy discussions, of which a fragment may be recorded.
Stalin and Molotov were of course anxious to know above all else what was to be
the strength of the French Army on the Western Front: how many divisions? what
period of service? After this field had been explored, Laval said: ‘Can’t you
do something to encourage religion and the Catholics in Russia? It would help
me so much with the Pope.’
“’Oho! said Stalin. ‘The Pope! How many divisions has he
got?’ Laval’s answer was not reported to me; but he might certainly have
mentioned a number of legions not always visible on parade.”
Stalin’s quip was uttered well before the Yalta conference. When
the British Prime Minister told Pope Pius of Joseph Stalin’s cynical remark,
Pius replied, “When you see our son Joseph again, tell him that he will meet our
divisions in heaven.”
Socialist communism in Latin America has made a Hell of the
Heaven on Earth it had promised to its people. Military thugs are everywhere,
but so are rosary beads, iron ladies, and a deathless memory of better days.
As of this writing, the opposition is leading Maduro in the
polls by 30 percent.
Stalin is quoted in the memoirs his former secretary Boris
Bazhanov with having said with reference to a vote in the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "I consider it completely
unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily
important is this — who will count the votes, and how."
In Maduro’s Venezuela, bullets, propaganda and jail
sentences count far more than votes.
___________________
ADDENDA
The day after the above piece was posted, ballots were counted in Venezuela and – to no one’s surprise – the country’s Stalin was reelected by a slim majority of votes. Maduro once again had stolen the election fair and square. Objections to Maduro’s grand theft of what remains of Venezuela’s tattered democracy were, as expected, muted in the United States. Democrats, chiefly concerned with defending U.S. democracy from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, swallowed their tongues and are doubtless preparing to enter into fruitless negotiations with Maduro and his squad of loyal socialist-communist terrorists. Venezuela’s destructor-elect is considerably younger than present President Joe Biden or America Firster Trump. South America is, by the way, a part of America, as stipulate in the Monroe Doctrine. One does not expect much, apart from the usual platitudes, from soft-on-democracy likely Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who has shown herself to be no friend of Israeli democracy.
Comments