Latin America is lost, the left rejoices waiting for the US to fall

There is a surge of populism world wide. My theory is that social media and its fake news have largely contributed to it.  But also, with religion gone and materialism partially satisfied we probably have the phenomenon of lost people who want to believe in something, anything that they think will give direction to their lives.

Becoming French

So here I am, facing my condition since April.

Latin America wakes me up

I am still here even though three months, almost, have passed since my last post (more on that later).

I could not let pass the present troubles in Latin America without a comment. I read so many idiocies on Tweeter that I needed to vent off by reminding people that what has been going on is not such a surprise. The surprise is that it comes all at once.  So here, from North to South.

SINALOA

The administration of Lopez Obrador has shown its true color when not only it was woefully unprepared to counter the very powerful drug cartels, but preferred to release the captured son of El Chapo rather than send in the army.

The Barbados Pass/Fail

It has been two months since I last wrote. My health concerns were certainly a distraction, but discussing the miasma of Venezuelan politics was certainly not encouraging.

However we reached this week a seminal point of sorts: it is the regime this time that walked away from the negotiation table. Who gains? Who lost?

The Pompeo storm

Today we had yet another example on how the failures of the opposition outmatch its successes.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo had a private conversation on Venezuela that was leaked (I personally wonder whether he wanted that to be leaked). In that conversation he said two important things: that the Venezuelan opposition was very hard to organize into some form or real unity and that it was because there were at least 40 folks that wanted the US to annoint them as the next president of Venezuela. (1)

“Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult”

“The moment Maduro leaves, everybody’s going to raise their hands and [say], ‘Take me, I’m the next president of Venezuela.’ It would be forty-plus people who believe they’re the rightful heir to Maduro.”

Fiascoes

Following Venezuela from afar is a painful exercise. All that I see are missed opportunities and grand thuggery in action. Not surprising of course when you know the actors. What is most offensive though is the reaction of these actors; as if they expected the outcome to be different than what was predictable.

I am speaking for all, not only the opposition post April 30 debacle, but also the regime failure to come up with a solution to its power holding problems, only insuring that everything will happen again. And let's not forget the international community either desperately clueless or desperately weak (or both).

Exilium

I have been absent for over a month. I did not write even though all hell broke lose in Caracas, and the ridicule of many an item should have been inspiring.

But something happened.