He was awful from the start, sending political opponents to prison and transferring oil money to himself and his croneys, but he claimed to be taking from the rich to give to the poor, so the Western left lapped it all up. It took them years to realise what he was actually doing (from the start).

He could give a hell of a speech. I've listened to him make speeches where pretty much everything he said was correct from a policy standpoint. The problem was he was an incompetent administrator running a personality cult.

I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky and what has recently come out about his social time with Epstein. He would talk about how the media only allows leftist thought in public as a sort of controlled opposition. Then he turns out to be exactly what he was complaining about. One moment he's calling Steve Bannon the enemy and the next he is smiling with him and Epstein, in a photo I've heard multiple people describe as "the happiest they have ever seen him".

All this is to say: it's not enough to "say the right things". Your actions have to match.

Can’t believe that both sides of the Chomsky Foucault debate were possibly diddling children!!!

Also can’t believe that no matter who I voted for in 2016 I had to vote for someone who performed fellatio on bill clinton.

> sending political opponents to prison

sounds like a common theme… only this one involves war and prison and taking oil money for US cronies.

whole thing truly makes me skeptical of anyone’s claims that “socialism always leads to corrupt leaders while capitalism doesn’t.”

Chavez was corrupt but the people he replaced were also corrupt. Even when Venezuela was "rich", most of the people were poor and felt like they weren't benefiting from it. The US is probably going push Venezuela to that prior state, where the country is rich on paper but most people are struggling, setting up a call for another Chavez. That assumes the US can just waltz into the country and take complete control, which is probably not going to happen.

Better some people are poor than everybody is poor, which tends to be the result of putting leftists in charge.

How large is your ideal value of "some"?

Typically this translates into everybody below me on the social ladder.

The upper class Cubans in Florida want their plantations and slaves in Cuba back, is that a reasonable tradeoff so some people aren't poor?

> Better some people are poor than everybody is poor

Well, technically it's only better for the few that are not poor, for all of the others, it's the same. It's even probably worse because rich people in a country with mostly poor people tend to be very efficient with capturing most of the value produced by the others.

You always get that last golden egg out when you kill the goose.