Sunday, December 23, 2012

Christmas letter to readers

I will be busier next following days and I may not be able to post a Christmas post on the 24. But also it is time for me to come out from an October 7 post as to the future of this blog. As anything in Venezuela, the clean cut scenario of a Chavez victory did not come quite true. Then I wrote that I had no interest in spending more years writing to the world why Chavez was bad and that the blog would not close but evolve into something else, something I care enough to write about, involving Venezuela up to a point.

Then again, under PTSSS on October 8 I wrote that I would try to follow the state elections but after that all bets were open. I did not cover much but I did cover it. Thus my contract with the devoted readers that followed until today has been fulfilled. Yet....

Chavez is more dead than alive and this does affect the premises of the contract. For all practical purposes it should not: if anything I am even more disenchanted today by the people I belong to. The chavista world still allowed to get itself manipulated by Chavez diseases and already forgot about all his promises for October 7 which show no sign whatsoever to be fulfilled, the only thing mattering is how many vertebrae Chavez did lose in surgery.  The opposition missed a golden chance to build some countenancing parapet and woke up worse than ever as too many of its voter thought it was a good idea to abstain, or simply could not be bothered to compromise their vacation of shopping schedule. Things were made worse as the opposition simply used the once defeated message of October 7, showing an incapacity to respond, to evolve, to create. And proving once again that homo sapiens is the only animal to trip twice on the same stone.In short the Venezuelan electorate cares only about the now, the how much is in it for me, regardless of what happens outside the window. Those include more than 50% voters from both sides combined. And it is a conservative number.

I am obliged, of course, to cover the eventual denouement of Chavez and I may be forced to cover the oncoming elections even though at this point I am predicting yet another defeat for the opposition and a Maduro presidency, the more so if the election is held at the latest in March. After it may be not so clear.

Once some provisional conclusion is reached I will move this blog in its next phase, as announced last October.  Let's say that the transition period is going to be longer than expected.

One thing I will start doing these holidays is putting order in the blog. The first text posted was written on December 1 even though in the blog it is dated January 6 2003. Thus the blog is now 10 years and nearing the 4,000 mark faster than expected, the more so if Chavez croaks.

This means that I need to go back in time and select a couple of hundred telling posts. I think that I will open a new blog where I will put them with an introductory paragraph for hindsight and whatnot. Editing will be kept to the strict minimum since I think it is important,  at least to me, to see how I evolved as a blogger.  My changes in outlook are part of the story because they will reflect how many people changed during this past decade. My big regret here is that the first 7 years of comments were lost when the platform changed though I do have a file from where I may be able to dig some. I would have loved very much to include your perspective all along but it may not be possible though it will be an opportunity for you to comment anew, on hindsight. By the way, I have changed the comment policy again as I am slowing down. Now it is open posting for the first 24 hours and then moderation.

Possibly that new blog will be the blog and this one will become an archive for the times in case anyone is ever interested than the idiotic media. After all, when this blog started all found Chavez still quite charming and only few blogs were dedicated to wake up public opinion. We succeeded outside of Venezuela but here....

Thus as of this post my activity will go down as long as Chavez is as he is. I am preparing only two posts until January: an obit of Chavez, whether he dies being irrelevant, and a short review of the 16 D vote. I really do not think it is worth any analysis, I think it is totally irrelevant in the current situation to write stuff like "PJ got more votes than X here but less there". I am just updating my now recurring Caugagüita graph and add some telling observations if I have the stamina to peruse the CNE page.


And with this I wish you a Happy Christmas.

19 comments:

  1. Milonga3:45 PM

    Merry Xmas, Dano. And may we all have a better year in 2013. I am one of the few people in this earth that consider 13 a lucky number. Let's hope anyway... As a 10-year-old reader of yours, I don´t care what you do with your blog, I´ll follow you wherever you go. By the way, please explain all this masses being prayed for Chávez all over the world (heard of Moscow and New York today) - we had one here in Montevideo headed by a priest dressed in red and our atheist/marxist/anarchist president praying (to whom I wonder??) in the first aisle. Too much hypocrisy if I may say and little memory of how a healthy Chávez used to act. But then, one must remind ourselves that the Foro de San Pablo was founded by the Liberation Theology movement. Okay, but I am wandering off the subject which was wishing you Happy Holidays!

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    Replies
    1. I also like 13 :)

      How come hypocrisy from the left is OK but from the right it is not? Whatever reason one may advance it still remains that hypocrisy from the left is ALWAYS more disgusting..... As if the left could use the excuse of "caring" to justify whatever.....

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    2. Charly5:02 PM

      Daniel, first and foremost, Season's Greetings.

      I read the following:"The opposition missed a golden chance to build some countenancing parapet and woke up worse than ever as too many of its voter thought it was a good idea to abstain, or simply could not be bothered to compromise their vacation of shopping schedule". The reality is more complex. A lot of oppo loath Chavez and his gang for obvious reasons, yet are not in tune with the MUD and even loath the MUD for being the spineless jellyfish they were before and following Oct 7. They represent the opposition as conceived by JVR. During the whole campaign, Chavez crowd gatherings were one disaster after another and on the last day in Caracas 18,000 buses from the interior and an outright disaster, only half the area filled with people, far less than HCR managed to get. Yet the dude wins big time. Does Chavez and the MUD think all Venezuelan are a bunch of morons? Well those who stayed home take exception to that, believe me I personally have got one at home who I had to kick out of the house in order to vote in the regionals. This lot represents a third way who will not compromise with Chavismo and ready for the pick. Will the right personality arise to do so? Merry Christmas.

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  2. Dr. Faustus5:29 PM

    "..I am predicting yet another defeat for the opposition and a Maduro presidency,.."

    Not if the upcoming opposition's campaign is both aggressive and tells the truth. The truth here is very simple. It is a certainty that there will be a currency devaluation in Venezuela within the next 4 months. It's unavoidable. The opposition's campaign should singularily focus on that fact, which will affect every Venezuelan rich or poor. Stress that point. Everyone. Make it into a campaign poster, "Will you (the PSUV) or will you not devalue the Bolivar?" Yes or No. Powerfull stuff. It should then be stressed that with a running 25% inflation rate, every Venezuelan is paying for government malfeasance. Were Maduro to actually win such a contest, the predicted devaluation will shock the populace. They were told the truth. They knew what was coming.

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  3. Anonymous7:44 PM

    Have you watched "Weekend at Barney's"? It wouldn't surprise anyone if - even after dead - his followers still will "preserve" him alive. Assumming that El Supremo perishes, Chavistas will struggle to keep the secret from leaking and, only when a tricky solution is found, they will unveil his fate.

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  4. 1979 Boat People10:59 PM

    To Daniel and The Readers Of this blog,

    Have Happy and Safe Holidays.

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  5. Daniel,

    I am traveling til the end of the week, but want to wish you the best of Holidays !!

    firepigette

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  6. Joyeux Noël, Daniel!

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  7. Daniel, Feliz Navidad my dear!!!! Abrazos.

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  8. Island Canuck12:58 AM

    merry Christmas Daniel

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  9. Anonymous2:48 PM

    Daniel, I've read your blog for several years. You guys have had Chavez, we here in the U.S. have Obama, or is his real name Barry Soetoro? How the majority of the people, in either country, can elect these people makes you wonder what's in the food they eat or the stuff they drink. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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    1. Please keep your comparisons of Chavez with Obama to yourself and your kind. Clearly, you have absolutely no idea of the magnitude of differences which you minimize in your attempts to compare. I find it offensive, if not stupid.

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    2. Anonymous7:33 PM

      Does anyone actually care what you think or feel? You give yourself way too much importance.

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    3. brave anonymous

      if i am willing to concede that syd may have gone slightly overboard it remains that at this stage of the game bringing up such stuff as soetoro is actually puerile. even in venezuela we do not focus on chavez last name and look only at his actions. if obama is a muslim terrorist it may not be because his step father is/was muslim. there are "christian" born americans that have turned to islam on their own and joined suspicious groups. and there are muslim americans that play a major role in the fight against islamic fundamentalism.

      if you want to say that obama is bad, really bad, you do not need to resort to soetoronessisms.

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  10. Daniel I, and many others appreciate all the work you put into your literary efforts. Feliz Navidad.

    Porque un niño nos es nacido, hijo nos es dado, y el principado sobre su hombro; y se llamará su nombre Admirable, Consejero, Dios Fuerte, Padre Eterno, Príncipe de Paz.

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  11. Anonymous6:21 PM

    Daniel, Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year for you and your family. I echo Anonymous's sentiments regarding things here in the US. We now have more takers than producers, we have people who settle for the scraps Obama and the rest of our congress and senate throw out to the masses to buy their votes and secure their power. We are headed down the same road where Greece is now, but we have no one in government that can fix the problem as long as the people feed of the public teat. I was hoping that Venezuela would be free of Chavez and it would be somewhere to go when the crap hits the fan here, which it will. Sadly the world is running out of free places to go to.

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  12. Anonymous7:41 PM

    feliz navidad barqui

    ReplyDelete
  13. Mercedes10:44 PM

    Daniel,
    Feliz Navidad y lo mejor del mundo para el 2013. Salud, amor y muchos éxitos. No nos dejes porque te he dicho que no puedo dormirme sin leerte y después me da insomnio por haberte leido.
    Mercedes Atencio

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  14. Feliz Navidad Daniel!!!

    ReplyDelete

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