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Current US foreign policy being bad for Venezuelans isn't mutually exclusive from Maduro's continued rule and policies being bad for Venezuelans.
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Aug 9, 2019 23:36
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| # ¿ May 1, 2024 05:46 |
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If you legally define the price at which the cost of production is covered as price-gouging, then all of a sudden the entire industry is price-gouging and it shuts down. Holding onto the claim of price gouging in that case is just grasping firmly of government propaganda that they put out to cover how absurdly they mismanaged everything. Of course, your particular style of argument seems to be extremely bad-faith, casting a thousand aspersions and yet never holding yourself to any real standard as you avoid ever making direct claims or references to facts.
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Aug 13, 2019 22:25
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There definitely seems to be a theme of Maduro trying to overpower market forces with sheer force of will that just never works out. Generally the idea of being able to centrally manage an economy more effectively than a more distributed free-market system relies on the assumption of the central management being extremely smart and effective, which is a tenuous proposition even before you start bringing in totalitarian policies.Condiv posted:i'm not making direct claims cause I'm undecided on the issue. why would i stake out a position on an issue I'm undecided on? Why are you pushing so hard against a guy making statements to the point of attacking him personally then? That's not a thing you do when you're "undecided". That's where the climate change denial thing really rings in. If you attack people for making a certain kind of statement, constantly insisting that it's faulty, at some point that's equivalent of making a statement to the contrary. I mean if you're shouting at the top of your lungs "MANY THINGS MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE AND I HAVE NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE TO ADD" why even bother talking in the first place?
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Aug 13, 2019 23:08
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It's not that the US government isn't wildly irresponsible with policies that bounce between incompetent and malicious, it's that the US is not the source of all the world's problems and most of Venezuela's problems come from within Venezuela and even if the US lays off, the same problems will remain.
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Aug 14, 2019 16:42
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Generally for big issues like this there's no good answer for what'll solve everything. Maduro and his policies are the source of both the economic suffering and the oppression of democracy that prevents the population from trying to fix things on their own without a full overthrow of the current government, and it's doubtful he'll change his mind about anything anytime soon. International pressure sounds good, but I don't think I've heard of that ever really working to shut down a regime like that. Foreign invasion would be a whole mess of its own that would make things worse before they could better, would 100% be mismanaged, and probably wouldn't fully restore democracy for decades, if ever. I do wonder with these situations where an entire regime rests on the continued rule of one guy to whom any passing of power is unacceptable, what happens when Maduro dies? As happens to all of us eventually, the unavoidable passage of power. Would the regime produce some jerk to double down on Maduro's policies, or would they relent and try seeking some kind of popular appeal instead of monarchistic continuity. There's a solution that would take 10-20 years. The way they did it back in medieval times, wait and hope the next guy does better.
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Aug 15, 2019 16:45
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Realistically, the crisis in Venezuela is going to outlive Michael Bolton's career, whether from a change in administrations or the current administration's habit of hemorrhaging staff carries on, although whatever the next person to head American policy on Venezuela will be like is hard to say.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:35
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Honestly it feels like he's in that authoritarian position where he will absolutely refuse any even temporary loss of power because that's all between him and being thrown out to the dogs. So it's very doubtful that after having used his position of power to muck with the last election (and recreate half the country's government to remove dissent) that he wouldn't use his totally unimpeded power to muck with the next election. If all he's willing to offer is his word, that's not worth much.
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Aug 22, 2019 03:18
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The president does still control policy, and has been...mercurial about many of the US's standard foreign policy positions. It's hard to say how much the bureaucracy has been doing on its own of its own initiative underneath his administration. Some domestic bureaucratic institutions have even been directly sabotaged by the administration without the politicians necessarily having to restaff it or publicly change its purpose. One way or another, the administration controls what the rest of the executive branch does. And largely, the administration's foreign policy is driven by domestic forces. Conservatives started talking about Venezuela because they were desperate for ways to revive the red scare with so many politicians willing to consider socialized healthcare, but the fact that the current administration has flipped on the many of the US's formerly considered rivals meant that there was an opening, and a government that regularly talks poo poo about the US got them all hot and bothered inside. Having foreign enemies is great for distracting from the deficiencies of your domestic policies, although Trump has also been fishing for some kind of visible diplomatic victory for some reason, so it's hard to say what he can be talked into. On an actual military front, I doubt congress would authorize any actual troop deployments, although certainly if there's a civil war, it wouldn't be surprising for the US to provide weapons, as the top arms exporter on the planet. So maybe the US government can be a positive force against Maduro's regime, even though they definitely don't have the best interests of the Venezuelan people in mind. The impurity of US motivations does not in any way mean that Maduro hasn't led his country to ruin and maintained power in a ludicrous parody of democracy.
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Aug 23, 2019 20:34
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Cuba's also replete with examples of American foreign policy in action for people interested in talking about America's actions toward Venezuela.
Although I do think that sticking to US-centric interpretations of foreign crises tends to deny the agency of the foreigners in crisis. Most of Venezuela's problems come from Venezuela, and hopefully it will be the actions of Venezuelans to end the crisis.
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Aug 28, 2019 01:44
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Bob le Moche posted:Love to attribute agency to victims so they can be victim-blamed for their situation Ah, so the guy who has been in power for 6 years who had extremely close ties to the guy who was in charge for 14 years before him has nothing to do with the situation the country has found itself in, good to know. There's such an egotism to a US-centric view of the crisis, like every country only ever suffers or prospers at the behest of the US government. Internal strife can only ever be a vast conspiracy, and the US is immediately the most important factor in any crisis the moment it starts weighing in. Like I get that the current administration doesn't have good intentions, but trying to stifle most discussion with "well, all that matters is that the US should get out" isn't useful to listen to.
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Aug 28, 2019 20:06
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If the US can give North Korea aid every now and then, it can give Venezuela aid. It's not like there's some mystic curse on it. Just because the current administration does not have good intentions does not mean every administration will somehow be irrevocably tainted so aid turns into like a swarm of spiders or something. Heck, it's technically possible for the US government to change its position right now without the need to convince the administration, because technically congress is supposed to have the power to revoke sanctions on their own. Write your congressman. The same congress that has the power to withhold permission for military action. What really bugs me is how the assumption that all US interaction is inherently malicious and delegitimizes any opposition or criticism is one of Maduro's talking points, so it does sometimes feel like uncritically taking propaganda for granted. Even worse is when results of government mismanagement and protests against the government start getting attributed to CIA plots or something like that.
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Aug 30, 2019 16:22
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It's still a very long walk from an old political cartoon of a dead man to dismissing all the opposition's criticisms of Maduro as being mindless racism. Because I think that was the central point that was being pushed here that hinged on the particular existence of racism in Venezuela? It doesn't establish intensity or pervasiveness, and while the one article on a mob killing is severe, the article doesn't establish or even claim racial motivations, and it doesn't help that it links to Maduro comparing the opposition's treatment of his supporters to the holocaust, which is a statement that on its own is patently false. One mob killing in a country full of mob killings without a demonstrated racial pattern throughout any of them doesn't come anywhere close to establishing that the opposition are all racist monsters who should be ignored. In fact, the way that it avoids most criticism of the regime while tacitly implying it's all bunk makes it seem like a cheap shot rather than earnest criticism.
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Aug 31, 2019 17:01
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Dismissing one government killing a couple thousand people for protesting really taints any future criticisms.
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Sep 5, 2019 23:07
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| # ¿ May 1, 2024 05:46 |
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There are people who will either overlook or support atrocities on an ideological basis, which can range from solidarity to bloodlust to a weird ends justifying the means deal (often with arguable ends). It can be a useful barometer to check somebody's opinions on other atrocities when they're all squirelly about one set of things. IE, some people who try to dismiss Maduro's wrongdoing and also spend a lot of time poo poo-talking all opposition may be arguing in bad faith.
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Sep 9, 2019 08:38
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