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Skeptic Ian Williams questions an earlier president.

Chavez Beating about the Bush...

by Ian Williams 

Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com   Order his new book from Amazon.com, Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past.   See his Bio.  See his columns listed below.   IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com 

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          UNITED NATIONS -- 18 August 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com /   Quantum physicists discuss parallel universes in a matter of fact sort of way. In some of them, they posit that there is a reversal of basic properties, so there is a positron where we have an electron, or time flows in the opposite direction.

Looking at events in Venezuela , I began to think that political scientists and columnists should think in similar terms. Is Bolivar’s republic on the Spanish Main a sort of anti-universe to the United States ?

During this week’s referendum, it was almost like watching through a looking glass. However, it is not a straight reversal – more like one of those distorting mirrors in a Carnival.

While we are invited to distrust Hugo Chavez because he actually served in the military, even if he missed Vietnam , American presidential candidates are competing on the basis of who is the best animated GI figure on offer.

Chavez, the genuine Venezuelan veteran, now wears civilian clothes, but President Bush cannot appear often enough in military uniform or in front of military audiences, like the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention he spoke at this week.

Although he dodged the war of his generation, went missing during his domestic National Guard Service, and is now running as paragon of the military virtues, he actually evaded one foreign war he supported, in Vietnam , and started another with no intention of risking his neck there in Iraq .

His chief contender John Kerry is campaigning on his military service, while not mentioning, much, that he returned to oppose the war in which he had actually fought and bled.

If you believe to the “Swift Boat Veterans for recovered memory syndrome,” that makes less military than the guy who dodged the war while cheerleading from the safety of home.

And he is running at a disadvantage because that makes him less military than the guy who dodged and ran.

Some conservative commentators accused Chavez of buying votes, as if providing work, healthcare and education to the poorest and usually forgotten Venezuelans was a heinous crime.

But you can see where they come from. One of the objections of the rich and middle class opposition in Venezuela is that Chavez expects them to pay taxes.

And not just that, he actually raised taxes to pay down the ballooning government deficit that he inherited from his predecessors who are now in opposition.

In contrast, George W. Bush has almost succeeded in making it a constitutional amendment that American billionaires do not pay taxes.

In the United States, giving tax breaks to the already rich and padding corporate welfare rolls is, of course perfectly democratic, as is allowing forests and national parks to be looted and mined without any benefit to most citizens.

What a telling contrast with a Latin America caudillo who is using record oil revenues to finance welfare programs.

And every Bush supporter knows that while other nations’ deficits are signs of slippery creeping socialism, impending anarchy and of unfitness to govern, running up a deficit in Washington is just a legitimate cost of pork-barreling and military adventurism.

Having radio and TV stations owned by rich proprietors who are rabidly reactionary and totally uninhibited by any regard for fairness and balance adds to the parallels, except in the USA anchor-people shamelessly maintain that the President can do no wrong, while in Venezuela he can do no right.  

Chavez of course seized an unfair advantage by ensuring the registration of millions of dark colored and poor citizens on the voting rolls, which is clearly a threat to democracy as we know it.

This is in no way comparable to seizing the Presidency with a fistful of dubious votes because your brother gerrymandered a key state up the Everglades and back with ethnic cleansing of voting rolls and selective application of balloting rules.

That sort of behavior allows you to preach the export of democracy to the rest of the world.

Indeed, one was horrified to hear that Chavez was using his slim majority in the National Assembly to pack the Supreme Court with politically motivated Judges to ensure that he won any challenges to his referendum results.

It couldn’t happen here! We all know it is inconceivable that five Supreme Court Justices all appointed by previous Republican Presidents would vote to suspend the counting of the ballots in Florida because to continue doing so would “irremediably harm” the rights of one George W. Bush, reputedly a Republican Party member.

But Venezuela is a banana republic, not to be measured by the standards of civilized and developed countries. 

How can you trust a country that was the first to abolish the death penalty, back in 1853?

It is difficult to give whole-hearted support for Chavez, despite amiably independent characteristics like calling the President of the U.S. an “a*shole,” publicly hoping he loses the next election, and (oh horror!) thinking current high oil prices are “fair,” while looking to a European social democratic model rather than an Chicago School neo-Liberal one.

After all, he was the leader of a military coup in times past, and he shows a populist tendency to assume that he represents the will of the people, unlike Bush who was the beneficiary of a judicial coup in 2000, and who assumes that he represents the will of God and the people.

He does show some authoritarian tendencies, although nothing perhaps so draconian as the PATRIOT Act.

And seriously, Human Rights Watch have pointed out that he is hardly running a Latin American Sweden. Guns go pop in the night, and statistically, they are more likely to pop at the opposition than vice versa.

However,  it was Chavez who introduced the constitutional change that allowed a recall referendum, and he won it in the teeth of a media that was overwhelmingly overtly partisan against him. He has won elections and referenda by clear majorities. In short, he is an indisputably elected leader.

One almost wishes that John Kerry could at least as loudly and unequivocally promise social justice for the millions of Americans without healthcare, or access to proper education, or progressive taxation on the ultra rich.

It may motivate them to turn out in the same numbers that the marginalized Venezuelans do, despite Fox, MSNBC and Clear Channel.  Unless we assume that the average Venezuelan is just much smarter than the average American – or Chavez smarter than the average American Democratic contender.  

     Email Ian Williams:  IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com

  Just Released: 

Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past  

by Ian Williams

Order Now from Amazon.com       http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560256273/wwwmaximsnewc-20/103-2632401-6943852?creative=125577&camp=2321&link_code=as1

Ian Williams' Weekly Columns in MaximsNews.com

Chavez Beating about the Bush...  18 August 2004

The War Records of Bush and Kerry...  12 August 2004

Where is Osama Bin Laden?  6 August 2004

Sudan, To Intervene – or not to Intervene?  27 July 2004

Mr. Sharon, Tear Down This Wall!  16 July 2004

William Safire – Warped, on Speed, or Just Running Mad Again?  13 July 2004

Bosnian U.N. Defender Locked Up  7 July 2004

The U.N., the U.S. & the I.C.C.  30 June 2004

The New York Times, William Safire and the United Nations  23 June 2004

Hastily Contrived, Verbose, and Fudged: Security Council Resolution 1546  16 June 2004

Is the U.S. Clever Enough to Rule the World?  9 June 2004

Humor the Beast: the U.S. and the ICC  2 June 2004

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?  20 May 2004

The Solution to the Iraqi Knot  12 May 2004     

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