".........The world cries, and rightly so, that the demands of those marching in Kiev be heard today, and sanctions against the Ukrainian government already are being enacted. But there is an awkward silence on the subject of those who are on the march in Caracas. Perhaps that has something to do with the Western intelligentsia’s shameful embrace of Chávez and Chávezism and their subsequent ambivalence about the immediate and entirely foreseeable legacy of that embrace. Who can forget the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s praying at Chávez’s graveside as Sean Penn and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looked on? Or Representative Chaka Fattah and other Democratic grandees eagerly accepting gifts of discounted Venezuelan heating oil on behalf of their constituents? Representative José Serrano’s paean to the dictator as a man committed to “empowering the powerless”? Oliver Stone’s praise of the “great hero”? The lionizing of the authoritarian regime by Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover? Barack Obama’s physically clinging to the man who would later denounce him as a “clown”? The descent of Venezuela into autocracy and misery has been enabled in no small part by American elites and by elected members of the Democratic party specifically. There should be a reckoning for that fact. ............"
On the March in Caracas - The silence on the subject is awkward