It is said that Marie Antoinette, when she offhandedly suggested regarding the hunger of starving peasants “Let them eat cake” was not mocking the suffering of the poor but was so disconnected from reality that she assumed that it was only the famous French baguettes which were missing from the shop windows. She nevertheless became headless, result of losing that connection to her people.

If there is anybody out there who in arrogance or envy still refuses to recognize the wickedness of socialism and its extraordinarily sad and destructive end state, they must look no further than modern Venezuela. Who knew there was a group of scoundrels so wicked that they could make the totalitarian medieval French monarchs look benevolent? Not only does the Maduro dictatorship refuse to recognize his people’s hunger as he dines in opulent restaurants in exotic capitals… (“I was going to bring back the leftovers to the people, but it was so good that I ate it all!” – yes, he actually said that…); but it gets worse, so much worse.

Famine and communism go hand in hand. The Soviet famine of 1932; the Holomodor in Ukraine; the Great Leap Forward in China; the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s; the “Special Period” in Cuba (special because thousands went blind because of rickets while Fidel and his cronies thrived) – the 2018/19 Maduro Famine, (“The Maduro diet makes you hard!” – yes he said that too). The Maduro Diet is what they will call the famine when the regime is toppled and the dust settles and reasonable people start counting the dead. This is really nothing new, “According to Soviet historian J. Arch Getty, over half of the 100 million deaths attributed to Communism were due to famine.” But it doesn’t make it any less sad for Venezuelans watching their children wasting away.

However, as if that was not enough, socialism’s tremendous perversion will not be outdone by the despots of yesteryear. Yesterday Venezuela’s legitimate government attempted to drive a few sad trucks of beans into Venezuela from Colombia. To stop them, the Maduro dictatorship welded a couple of containers to the bridge and chained some low-level soldiers to them to try and get them killed and blame the interim President, the Americans, the Colombians; the weather and the sky god and whoever else they can think of. When the trucks of food finally made it through, the Maduro regime burned the food; while the millions of refugees and soldiers (who are also hungry) looked on, in confusion and shock. Let me say that again – they burned the food.

Not even Stalin or Mao… In their competition to outdo each other’s evil – the only competition the socialists seem to appreciate – Maduro has found a special low. “You want it darker; we killed the flame…” 

Now, it didn’t start like this – lest you believe the socialists show their true colors at the start. I remember the days of hubris, heck I wrote a book (as well as a few novels – magical realism with a hint of Ayn Rand because lets be honest, you can’t make this stuff up. Who knew “Atlas Shrugged” was a documentary?) about Hugo Chavez’s radical new experiment (which was somehow, even then, old and tired); when the political project still had a misguide energy and the wickedness was not yet bored and base.

When people like Sean Penn and Danny Glover and Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders talked about the exciting new dictator to the south. That was then, though it deserves mentioning lest you hear people on TV pontificating and you think to yourself, “Hmm, you look familiar. Haven’t you given interviews on Venezuela before???” In record time, the defenders have mostly scampered away – waiting till the dust settles and they can claim “Venezuela didn’t do it right” in their perpetual, tireless attempts to take our stuff and our freedom.

But we who have watched the Maduro Famine in all its ignominy, who have written about the suicide and watched the bean-smoke as food goes up in flames will never stop reminding people: This only ends one way, bonfires of human flesh beside a bread line. Except now they’re even burning the bread…

https://joelhirst.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/the-suicide-of-venezuela/

https://joelhirst.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/as-venezuela-goes-rouge/