OPINION
Venezuela, America's anti-universe
Hugo Chavez, a war veteran, wears civilian clothes while his US counterpart, George W Bush, who evaded a war he supported, cannot appear often enough in a military uniform. Chavez raised taxes to pay down Venezuela's debt, while Bush regards taxing billionaires as something close to unconstitutional. Quantum physicists have a name for what we see here: parallel universes. - Ian Williams
Venezuela, America's anti-universe
By Ian Williams
www.atimes.com
Quantum physicists discuss parallel universes in a matter-of-fact sort of way. In some of them, they posit that there is a reversal of basic properties, so there is a positron where we have an electron, or time flows in the opposite direction. Looking at events in Venezuela, one wonders whether political scientists and columnists should think in similar terms. Is Simon Bolivar's republic on the Spanish Main a sort of anti-universe to the United States?
During this week's referendum in the South American country, it was almost like watching through a looking glass. However, it is not a straight mirror-image - more like one of those distorting mirrors in a carnival.
While we are invited to distrust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez because he actually served in the military, even if he missed Vietnam, US presidential candidates are competing on the basis of who is the best animated GI Joe figure on offer.
Chavez, the genuine Venezuelan veteran, now wears civilian clothes, but US President George W Bush cannot appear often enough in military uniform or in front of military audiences, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention he spoke at this week. Although Bush is now running as the paragon of military virtues, he actually evaded one foreign war he supported, in Vietnam, and started another with no intention of risking his neck there, in Iraq.
Bush's chief contender for the presidency, John Kerry, is campaigning on his military service, while not mentioning, much, that he returned to oppose the war in which he had actually fought and bled. Of course his opponents, such as Swift Boat Veterans for Recovered Memory Syndrome, think that makes him less military than the guy who dodged and ran while cheerleading from home.
Some conservative commentators accused Chavez of buying votes, as if providing work, health care and education to the poorest and usually forgotten Venezuelans were a heinous crime. But you can see where they come from. One of the objections of the rich and middle-class opposition in Venezuela is that Chavez expects them to pay taxes. And not just that, he actually raised taxes to pay down the ballooning government deficit that he inherited from his predecessors who are now in opposition.
In contrast, George W Bush has almost succeeded in making it a constitutional amendment that billionaires do not pay taxes. In the United States, giving tax breaks to the already rich and padding corporate welfare rolls is, of course, perfectly democratic, as is allowing forests and national parks to be looted and mined without any benefit to most citizens.
What a telling contrast with a Latin America caudillo who is using record oil revenues to finance welfare programs. And every Bush supporter knows that while other nations' deficits are signs of slippery creeping socialism, impending anarchy and unfitness to govern, running up a deficit in Washington is just a legitimate cost of pork-barreling and military adventurism.
Having radio and television stations owned by rich proprietors who are rabidly reactionary and totally uninhibited by any regard for fairness and balance adds to the parallels, except that in the USA the anchorpeople maintain that the president can do no wrong, while in Venezuela he can do no right.
Chavez of course seized an unfair advantage by ensuring the registration of millions of dark-colored and poor citizens on the voting rolls, which is clearly a threat to democracy as we know it. This is in no way comparable to seizing the presidency with a fistful of dubious votes because your brother gerrymandered a key state up the Everglades and back with ethnic cleansing of voting rolls and selective application of balloting rules, which allows you to preach the export of democracy to the rest of the world.
Indeed, one was horrified to hear that Chavez was using his slim majority in the National Assembly to pack the Supreme Court with politically motivated justices to ensure that he won any challenges to his referendum results. It couldn't happen in the United States! We all know it is inconceivable that five Supreme Court justices all appointed by previous Republican presidents would vote to suspend the counting of the ballots in Florida because to continue doing so would "irremediably harm" the rights of one George W Bush, reputedly a Republican Party member.
But Venezuela is a banana republic, not to be measured by the standards of civilized and developed countries. How can you trust a country that was the first to abolish the death penalty, back in 1853?
It is difficult to give wholehearted support for Chavez, despite amiably independent characteristics such as calling the president of the United States an "asshole", publicly hoping he loses the next election, and (oh horror!) thinking current high oil prices are "fair", while looking to a European social-democratic model rather than a Chicago School neo-liberal one.
After all, Chavez was the leader of a military coup in times past, and he shows a populist tendency to assume that he represents the will of the people, unlike Bush, who was the beneficiary of a judicial coup in 2000, and who assumes that he represents the will of God and the people.
Chavez does show some authoritarian tendencies, although nothing perhaps so draconian as the USA Patriot (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act. And seriously, Human Rights Watch has pointed out that he is hardly running a Latin American Sweden. Guns go pop in the night and, statistically, they are more likely to pop at the opposition than vice versa.
However, it was Chavez who introduced the constitutional change that allowed a recall referendum, and he won it in the teeth of national media that were overwhelmingly overtly partisan against him. He has won elections and referenda by clear majorities. In short, he is an indisputably elected leader.
One almost wishes that John Kerry could at least as loudly and unequivocally promise social justice for the millions of Americans without health care, or access to proper education, or progressive taxation on the ultra-rich.
It might motivate them to turn out in the same numbers that the marginalized Venezuelans do, despite Fox, MSNBC and Clear Channel. Unless we assume that the average Venezuelan is just much smarter than the average American - or Chavez smarter than the average American Democratic contender.
Ian Williams' latest book Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, from Nation Books is available on Amazon.com. |
