Hugo is upset that many of his people don't share the maximum leader's joyful embrace of socialism:
Chavez says capitalism created Venezuela's poverty, and a "new socialism of the 21st century" can end it.
"It's the search for social justice, for equality," Chavez said recently. "The capitalist model is perverse. It favors a minority and expropriates from the majority."
In his nearly seven years in power, Chavez has presided over a society increasingly divided by his politics and sometimes shaken by spasms of street violence pitting his supporters against his enemies.
It remains unclear what sort of socialism Chavez may achieve, but his latest moves provide hints — raising taxes on foreign companies pumping oil, setting up stores to sell cheap food to the needy, subsidizing farming and industrial cooperatives, and handing over some wealthy ranchers' lands to poor farmers.
"Every day it looks more like the communism of Fidel Castro," says Jesus Garrido Perez, an opposition congressman. "The economic disaster has begun."
Not so, replies Chavez. "We aren't going to copy the Cuban model, or the Chinese model, or any model," he has said. "We're building our own model."
The article says socialism will be a hard sell for Venezuela's people. Hugo will insist, I think, and won't worry about selling socialism to the people of Venezuela. I shudder to think what model he will create. It will be the same old communist aggression and poverty with some capitalist marketing slapped on it. America's Leftists will of course be eager consumers of this new and improved communism. There will be no hard sell involved in our college faculty board rooms.
And another country will descend into chaos and poverty. Cuba is Hugo's model, after all. So I think I can safely predict the results of Hugo's policies and the reaction of American Leftists.
Can the Venezuelan people and military stop this madman before it is too late?
