Venezuelan Adulators Become Epidemic

Adulators often appear in countries where total political power is in the hands of a strongman. Longing for approval from the master, adulators will do or say whatever it takes. This has happened in Venezuelan history since Boves and Guzman Blanco walked our geography. The people objects of adulation do not have to be particularly distinguished, as long as they have power. They can be louts like the Monagas brothers or Cipriano Castro or Juan Vicente Gomez or Marcos Perez Jimenez, but this poses no problem for the invertebrate members of the adulatory army. At this moment in our history we are witnessing the emergence of an abundant generation of adulators, swarming around the presidency of Hugo Chávez. Adulators cannot exist unless the powerful want or need them. The emergence of adulators at any given moment in national history responds to the needs of the person in power. The increasing political power of Hugo Chávez and his need for flattery is producing increasing examples of fawning. One, of course, is the drive to nominate Mr. Chávez for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a movement promoted by some sycophantic websites and by high-evel bureaucrats of the regime, such as the Venezuelan Consul in Boston, Mr. Martin Pacheco. New examples appear almost daily.

"If someone were to ask me what is the most general symptom of this spiritual anemia, I would surely reply: indifference to both truth and falsehood. Today, propaganda proves whatever it wants to, and people more or less passively accept whatever it suggests. Of course, this indifference hides a weariness, something like a disgust with the faculty of judgment. But the faculty of judgment cannot be exercised without a certain interior pledge. Anyone who judges, pledges himself. Modern man does not pledge himself any more, because he no longer has anything to pledge. Called upon to side with truth or falsehood, good or evil, Christian man pledged his soul at the same time, that is to say he risked his salvation. Metaphysical faith was in him an inexhaustible source of energy. Modern man is still capable of judging, since he is still capable of reasoning. But his judgment doesn't function anymore than a motor functions without fuel, no part of the motor is missing, but there is no gas in the tank."

"To many people, this indifference to truth and falsehood seems more comic than tragic. I find it tragic. It implies a frightful detachment, not only of the mind but of the entire person, even of the physical part of the person. Anyone who is indifferently open to truth or falsehood is ripe for any kind of tyranny. The passion for truth goes along with the passion for liberty. It is not for nothing that freedom of thought has always been regarded as the most precious of all the freedoms, the one upon which all others depend. I am not speaking here only of the freedom to express one's thoughts. For years, millions and millions of people in the world have not only allowed their freedom of thought to be torn away by force; they have voluntarily abandoned it, and will again, as in Russia. They consider this sacrifice laudable. Or rather, it isn't any sacrifice for them, but a habit which simplifies man terribly. The killers for the totalitarian regimes are recruited from among these terribly simplified men." --Georges Bernanos

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