Narcissistocracy

Thus the beloved leader of the masses decided at the very last minute to fly over to Salamanca for the Iberoamerican summit (Portugal, Spain and all of their ex American colonies, kind of a Commonwealth meeting, with King included). He let plan some doubt as to his trip but we never worried: El Surpremo blasts any summit that crosses his path but never misses any. Apparently the real hold this time was that Castro decided that it was better for him not to attend. There is talk for an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity that he has committed aplenty. Eventually our narcissist president, closer to a rock star than to a serious country manager, flew off to Spain.

Although unrelated I found this note in yesterday Tal Cual quite amusing and, as we say in French, fort à propos. The translated quote first (sorry, no links) and then a few comments for the better understanding of the unsuspecting reader.

People who are not Chavez followers, who for a reason or another had to get inside the hermetic Miraflores Palace, cannot overcome their shock as to the different changes and new designs that have taken place inside to please the president.

They thus revealed that the "Pantano de Vargas Room" has lost the portrait gallery of ex presidents from the democratic era painted by noted Venezuelan artists.

In their place there are pictures of president Hugo Chavez in different poses and in different trips. The secret on these changes was kept through these years due mainly that the private media representatives have been banned the access to the seat of the central government.

I am not familiar with Miraflores Palace, our White House, nor do I expect to become familiar with it for the years to come, but I suspect that there is a room where portraits of previous inhabitants are kept, in particular those of the democratic era who allowed Chavez to reach office. Sometimes reading some Chavez supporters overseas one would be led to think that before Chavez we were living under some sort of bloody dictatorship enjoying the subjection into misery the Venezuelan people. But the fact that Chavez is desperately trying to rewrite is that since 1958, 9 elections yielded 10 presidents reaching office through free and reasonably fair election, something that now has become a distant memory as we are on our way to an El Supremo for life.

The second fact is that if the private media had little access to Chavez since the mid 1999, this one has not subjected himself to a press conference at home since April 2002, the type of press conference that even Bush in the worst moments of the Iraq invasion could not avoid from holding. The only journalists that do manage to sneak a tough question on occasion are foreign journalists, and usually outside of Venezuela. Not that it really bothers Chavez as he bluntly refuses to either answer them or chalk it on the account of some international conspiracy against his pseudo policies. This of course would not be tolerated in their own country by people who find nothing wrong with Chavez dodging accounting for his actions.

Meanwhile, as any could have predicted, the bunkerization of Miraflores has kept apace. No interior view of where Chavez lives and hangs around is exhibited, be it Miraflores or his Airbus toy from which we only know a video snuggled out by somebody that probably got away with it by having his camera on while hanging it over his shoulder in front of unsuspecting guards. Meanwhile at the White House, even during the Iraq war and Bin Laden on the lose, visitors still can visit some of the rooms. Not to mention that guests can speak of their rides on Air Force 1.

Thus how could we be surprised at the announcement that either Chavez or the sycophants that surround him are rewriting history, at least on the walls of Miraflores Palace? Contact with reality is lost fast by people who attempt to become Cosmocrators, even if he visits the king of Spain barely two days after having excoriated once again the Spanish takeover of the Americas. Double standards, double talk, double personalities are usually associated with pathological personalities. Nothing new under the sun.