The six months of talks between Chavez's government and Venezuela's opposition have produced just an agreement in February to end verbal insults and political violence. And even that pact has been forgotten. The mudslinging reached a new low after an opposition general strike curbed Venezuelan oil production and cost the economy $6 billion but failed to oust Chavez.
When a protester was slain during an opposition May Day march, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel blamed the opposition and said that government adversaries were obsessed with "necrophilia." Interior Minister Gen. Lucas Rincon told cadets at a police academy graduation that opposition leaders were "brain-damaged" because of excessive expectations on fighting crime. Carlos Ortega, a labor boss granted asylum in Costa Rica after leading the general strike, said Chavez was "not well in the head." Chavez routinely assails what he calls a "fascist," "terrorist" and "coup-plotting" opposition.***
..........Had we not supported Israel, had we not backed the corrupt Saudi monarchy, had we not been buddies with Egypt, had we not been somehow complicit in Third World poverty, had we not developed blue jeans and T-shirts and rock music and premarital sex, the World Trade Center might still be standing and the Pentagon untouched. .......Below the surface of this reasoning seethes a perplexing animosity toward the United States -- not the people but the government and the economic system. Possibly it has its roots in the Great Depression, when capitalism seemed kaput and socialism so promising, and the government an adjunct of moneyed interests. At the same time, of course, governments on all levels -- federal, state and local -- were unabashedly racist.
Almost none of that still applies -- although money still talks. Yet the impulse to blame America first lingers, an atavistic reflex that jerks the knees of too many on the left and has cost the Democratic Party plenty over the years. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former Democrat, put her finger on it 19 years ago. It's about time the Democrats listened to what she had to say.***