> The Nation again shows its true class colors.
Not at all, betrayal would be uncritical boosterism or equally uncritical denigration. Much better to subject Young-Bruehl's exercise in delusionary Imperial benevolence to some basic fact-checking (apologies in advance for the sheer length of this post):
> Elisabeth Young-Bruehl article in The Nation online (17 August 2007,
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070827/young_bruehl>), "Reading Arendt
> in Caracas"
> Not satisfied to control the court, in 2000 Chávez got the
> unicameral Assembly to, in effect, erase its power by granting him a
> year of nonconsultative decision-making (in European history this
> kind of antidemocratic achievement is known as an enabling law,
> or Ermachtigungsgesetz).
Utter nonsense. The presidential decree power is very limited, and was used by previous Venezuelan presidents.
> Along with this regression from the political ideal--the
> Constitution--goes the possibility that economic policies, formulated
> by the government, will circumscribe political action by the
> citizens, controlling them not with overt or covert violence, as
> happens in most revolutions that start rigidifying, but with money.
Money determining politics? You mean, like the $3 billion corruptionfest otherwise known as the US electoral cycle? Nope, no analysis of US imperialism, no talks with the favela-dwellers, no recognition of just how badly most Venezuelans lived under the old regime. Beneath the talk of democracy lurks the ugly racial imaginary of the US Empire:
> But El Presidente has responded by announcing on TV--Chávez does
> not disguise his intentions--that he is going to "neutralize" the
> three main sources of opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution
> in Venezuela: the media, the church and the schools and
> universities. Closing down RCTV was step one.
"El Presidente" is an especially nasty slur. He's been democratically elected and reelected, and is trying mightily to create democratic civic structures, where masses of people can participate. Unpack the rhetoric, and it's the stereotype of how poor brown Spanish-speaking people can't possibly have a democracy without us rich white folks to instruct and advise. RCTV lost its spectrum because it aided and abetted an illegal and criminal coup, period. But it's still free to broadcast on cable TV. As for the educational system - every country has the right to regulate it.
> a political science graduate student came up to me and said in
> slow, careful English what he had heard and what he thought of it:
[text deleted]
> But I think that in Venezuela you have to worry even more stronger
> than she did because you have a president who wants to kill the
> Constitution that created him!"
No constitution created Chavez, the mass movements of the Venezuelan people created Chavez, and the constitution will evolve accordingly. But Young-Bruehl's article does get something right: the servants, the downtrodden, the poor, and the workers are clearly starting to think and act for themselves. And this is scaring hell out of the compradors and the neolibs. Today Caracas, tomorrow Washington DC!
-- DRR