Venezuela’s Democracy Collapses

As the shortage takes hold, nobody will panic more than those at the top of the food chain -those with the most free resources at their disposal:

Reality was more complex than that: Chávez pioneered a new playbook for how to bask in global admiration even as he hollowed out democratic institutions on the sly.

Step one was his deft manipulation of elections. Chávez realized early that, as long as he kept holding and winning elections, nobody outside Venezuela would ask too many questions about what he did with his power in the interim. And so he mastered the paradoxical art of destroying democracy one election at a time.

Venezuelans have gone to the polls 19 times since 1999, and chavismo has won 17 of those votes. The regime has won by stacking the election authorities with malleable pro-government officials, by enmeshing its supporters in a web of lavishly petro-financed patronage and by intimidating and marginalizing its opponents. It worked for more than a decade — until it didn’t work anymore.

After every election, another little piece of the constitution would be chipped away: Courts and oversight bodies were stacked high with supporters, checks and balances stripped, basic freedoms eroded.

r is produced by free resources, ease, and lack of threat. You can see it within the GOPe and the Cuckservative elites today. George Bush had a smile a mile wide as he handed the reins to Obama. That ease has infected most of the politicians who run the government – few of whom were diehard K-strategists when they decided to enter politics in the first place.

When the shortage comes, nobody will have more panic at the thought of being thrown amongst the masses than them. That panic will make anything possible. Never underestimate what is possible, or assume that some ominous event couldn’t happen here. From the Constitution, to the law, to simple decency, none of it will make any difference if a politician is in fear of losing his cushy position.

If anything, our politicians are more r-ified than many overseas, and thus will be even more panicked, and even more capable of atrocities than many you will see overseas today. Never assume anything is impossible.