Instead of Twitter-Politics, let’s just do Politics, with a capital “P”
The country has gone mad. Chaos and dysfunction have become societal norms. The political establishment, both the government and the opposition, is responsible for this absurd situation, by turning politics into an exercise in irrationality, where fear, hatred and fanaticism lead the way. The weight of the responsibility has to fall on the government and state institutions due to their monopoly of violence and abundant resources. There is no-one else that has more of an obligation to act within the framework of the Constitution and the laws.
What is happening is not the mere product of accident or circumstance. I have been calling it for some time: politics has been constantly spelled with a lowercase “p”. The exercise of political reasoning has succumbed to irrationality, to basic instincts, in a gigantic manipulation operation used to dominate and control large sectors of the country, making them subordinate to the elites of power and accept circumstances or situations that even put their own safety, integrity or peace at risk. The country has been pushed back to an obscurantist, backwards period in its political and social dynamics, preparing to accept any cruel, irrational and absurd outcome.
‘Madurism’ has degraded politics; and so has the opposition. They have taken the art of peace, the empire of ideas, of new beginnings, to futile, superfluous, irresponsible lands. A dangerous political move, when the fate of an entire nation is at stake, the life or fate of an entire population under hostage with so many of its sectors in conflict, suffering tragedies on a daily basis, trying to escape or seek solutions by themselves, imposing individualism, the “save yourself if you can” attitude, or simply getting out has turned into an extended social behaviour.
Gone are the periods of the capital “P” politics of President Chávez, politics as an art, the debating of ideas, the confrontation of programs and country models. It was not easy to achieve, but it was exactly what President Chávez wanted: to democratize the full exercise of protagonist and participatory democracy; give voice and rights to all sectors of the people, to the excluded; give them a reason to fight on.
Maduro and his government have shown sufficient and continued evidence for their deep disregard towards the Constitution and the principles of political ethics. They have installed a behaviour of gangs, mafia, crime, lies, violence, intolerance and indolence, all of which has seeped through all levels of government and has spread to all institutions of the State.
A fundamental condition for taking control of the country was to put an end to Chávez’ government; his work, his legacy. They demolished and destroyed the fundamental principles and values of the Bolivarian State: work, honesty, commitment, knowledge, study, solidarity, awareness of social duty, humility, criticism and self-criticism, accountability. They have been in government for years, destroying the work of President Chávez, removing all morals, killing the self-esteem of our people, their rebellious, critical, supportive, altruistic and honest character.
They put us leaders and ministers of Chavez to one side, they loathed us: some were persecuted; others kept as prisoners; others simply sent into oblivion. Maduro warns, in that clumsy tone of his, that whoever is not on his side will “dry up”, while the prosecutor, misery spread across his face, either turns on the accusation, the persecution or imposes silence. The former colleagues of the victim remain silent and applaud, succumbing to fear like most. They shut their mouth, resorting to easy flattery for “the victory builder”; whilst the Chávez government becomes known as the “corrupt” one, as the “false positive”; because at the end of the day, “it was much easier when the oil barrels went for $100”. These are times of disrepute and fear.
The list of PDVSA workers kidnapped by the government has reached over 89, all dying in custody just like the former minister Nelson Martínez ; others beaten to death like the case of Ali Domínguez. Likewise, nearly a hundred Chavez officers from the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, former ministers such as Rodríguez Torres and Baduel are still being held in “La Tumba”. A real state of terror has been imposed within the Chavez regime, in public administration, PDVSA, the FANB, the PSUV.
The degrading of our people is complete; they have pushed and forced them to the absolute extremes of necessity, all for a box of poor quality food. Young people’s futures have been ripped away, giving up their dreams, their aspirations, being forced to leave the country, their families. The workers have been beaten, to the point that they resign themselves to losing their benefits and work rights. The PSUV militants have been “lobotomized”, annihilating any room for criticism, questioning, doubt, even simple questions; they have led them to swap Chávez for the “Maduro talk” that now prevails. The workers of PDVSA, Corpoelec, basic companies, have been hit hard, repressed, kidnapped, silenced, kept silent before the paralysis, surrender or bankruptcy of the former pillars of the economy, to the point that they choose to leave. The peasants have to face up to the violence of the landlords, the destroyed fields, the repressed peasants like the time of “ the red comet “. All the lands and herds recovered or affected by the State are in ruins. The military, the officers who were supposed to wield their swords to defend social rights, have been handed the state, oil, electric, food, and gold companies, looting; corrupting them, neutralizing them, making them accomplices, and participants of the crimes committed in the homeland.
The opposition has been beaten with force, with violence, with many dead in the street, political assassinations and prisoners. There are no political liberties of any kind, they are turning to exile, persecution, false positives; the prosecutor’s actions also ensuring that we “dry up”, just as Maduro has promised us Chavistas who have fought against him.
Having destroyed any contender or adversary that could face him in the street, in the field of politics, in the debate of ideas; the government has the ball in their court, the fertile ground on which to spread the seeds of manipulation and control. Enter the scene General “Tuiter”, the minister of manipulation and lies and his vast contingent of “bots” and dissociates hell-bent on convincing everyone that all us Venezuelans are assholes.
Fear does not allow us to think, the operation of manipulation is based on fear and fanaticism, which is just another expression of fear. Neither Maduro’s government, nor its leaders have arguments, explanations, reasons for the country, to explain their failure, their incompetence, their true interests, their delivery; which is why they resort to lies, cynicism, indolence and fear.
They have achieved, using money from the Venezuelan State, control over the media; either because their frontmen pay them off; or, because they resort to threats, sanctions or taking away their jobs. They have forced public officials to become “followers” of the “leaders” of Madurismo, applauding the exploits of their “boss”. Proto-fascist groups have been created within the institutions and State companies that persecute, monitor, identify those who disagrees with Maduro, the government or even merely complains about their situation.
Under the direction of Jorge Rodríguez, Tareck El Aissami and the support of Cubans like Machado and other operators, Madurism has built a real contingent of dissociates from Tuiter, permanently connected to the systems and media that are installed in all the ministries or public agencies to tweet, follow their bosses, put stickers everywhere, maintain trends or bury anyone who comes to say anything against what the government says. They all follow instructions from the Ministry of Lies and Manipulation. The government exploits human misery, betrayal, corruption and group interest of these contingents of true dissociates and “bots”, to spread the hate, the lies, confusing and deceiving the people.
Government spokesmen show their lack of ethics, their indolence. The stellar role in infamy, played by the minister of manipulation and lies, who is the face of cynicism; who lies about any event in the country, the most recent of them being the three or four national blackouts, the blackout of the electrical system: like the sabotage, the electromagnetic attack, Die Hard II, the commands capable of blowing up military facilities, snipers, even the absurd intention of linking me, as always, to another “conspiracy”. This time it’s with the Voluntad Popular party, who have dedicated the most obsessive attacks in the National Assembly to my name, carried out in order to sabotage the national electricity system.
But the government has no way of explaining how it is possible that there are so many supposed “attacks” on the electrical system. They cannot explain it because a good part of the national territory, especially in the west of the country, has suffered from permanent blackouts and electricity rationing for at least 5 years. It can not explain why all the thermoelectric plants that we deliver functioning properly to Corpoelec, PDVSA and Empresas Básicas, do not end up operating. They can not explain why Tacoa leaves Caracas in the dark. They can not explain why electric plants do not even work in hospitals, airports, water pumping stations, telecommunications. They can not explain why the government leaves the people alone to deal with it by themselves; why there is no gasoline, water, or communications; why there is so much inability and indolence.
But the same happens in PDVSA, only that the effects of the disaster in PDVSA are not felt as directly as a blackout. It feels more like the general collapse of the country, its economy, widespread poverty. But the matrix of the government infamy apparatus blames me for its own disaster; they blame Chavez for placing PDVSA at the service of the people; they imprison and persecute workers and managers; they are treated as corrupt, criminals, traitors. Here, the starring role in one of the most infamous and unbalanced governments has been played by Tareck William Saab. A sad character, tattooed with miseries, who has poured all his problems and personal imbalances into a personal “show” that, in the end, is against Chavez, against the workers and managers of the PDVSA Roja Rojita, the one who overexploited when he was governor of Anzoátegui.
All this is supported by a plethora of programs, comic intellectuals, animators of trade, proto-fascist programs, palangristas, the road to Narnia, a cemetery of alternative media, and the silence of those who were supposed to be always together, next to the people, and today they remain silent whilst sat in their seat, their embassy or whatever their position of comfort. It is the drama of an opportunist, accommodating left, that for years lost its grip, that were always suspicious of Chávez, they were always hypercritical of Comandante Chávez , to his supposed “messianism”; and today they are furious Maduristas. It is the drama of leaders and parties that proclaim themselves as revolutionaries, but ended up in the queue of the worst government in our history; the most unpopular and reactionary, the government who has given up the oil, the gold, the sovereignty of the fatherland.
The opposition, on the other hand, has given up its exercise of politics to “influencers”, as they are called in the “Tuiter” world. Any deranged person full of hate, resentment or with a desire for revenge, calls for war, demands invasion, the entry of foreign troops, but of course, they will see it from Miami. They will not send their children to die in that invasion. Irresponsible people.
Sometimes the direction of the opposition is in the hands of new actors who occupy the void left by politicians: journalists, owners of portals, businessmen eager to loot, comedians, sad ex-artists emaciated by hatred, and a long list of people with problems of all kinds that only promise hatred, intolerance and revenge.
Opposition parties, corrupted by Madurismo, whose leaders are of the proactive kind are the cloaca of politics; but they understand each other perfectly within Madurism, where they are pardoned from everything, their movements guaranteed, with quotas of power given to them, not to mention huge piles of cash. Some even use the National Assembly to speak on behalf of Maduro, in favor of the government, against Chavez. Others may have a price, awarded to the highest bidder.
Important sectors of the opposition coexist with Madurism in this kind of permanent chaos. And others; they have yielded the conduct of their affairs, they surrender to the orders of foreign politicians and interests that are the ones who give the money and the support. In the end, everything becomes an immense business in which our country gets put up for auction.
This political mind loss is one of the fundamental causes why everything is blocked and dysfunctional in our country. The factors in conflict are not capable of getting an escape for the Venezuelan people. Hatred, fear and fanaticism do not let them think properly. They do not allow them to articulate an adequate strategy, locked up as they are in their own web of lies, in their false plot to continue devouring the country.
Meanwhile, the real country, not the one on “Tuiter”, not the one in Narnia, not the one that paints us with a deliberate cynical smile from the minister of manipulation and lies; but the real country that the citizens suffer living in, the ones who have the blackouts, the ones that remain stuck in the subway carriage which is supposedly “in normal operation”; the ones who have left the country, the ones who have left families, the ones who have lost a sick person; the workers who wander among the ruins of the former PDVSA Roja Rojita; the soldiers who cannot eat, who see the bosses running the gold companies, the contraband; the ones who are imprisoned, the ones who do not get food. The people of Venezuela, they are there waiting patiently, trying not to complain; but, at the same time desperate, just as in the snake’s egg, just as in the eyes of the buried ones, at any moment will explode and start seeking some kind of justice.
Either we return some kind of order, or our country will be taken by the demon of violence. We are in the middle of a dangerous dance heading towards the brink of death’s raging fire. It is incredible and at the same time unfair to our people, the fact that the political sectors, the patriots, the leaders of the different sectors of the country, the once critical voices, which must function as markers of political thought, remain silent, buried under the blackmail of fear, the game of hatred or have given up their spaces to fanaticism and manipulation. On the contrary, now is when the value of the political leaders are imposed, the voice that guides in the middle of the chaos, of the tumult, with values, courage, ideas, nothing else mattering. We have made it clear, it’s not about getting rid of Maduro and putting any old guy in. This is about a Patriotic Civic-Military Government Junta, representing the entire country, where the patriotic members of the military step forward, take Maduro out of power, end ing this destructive nightmare, fully restoring the validity of the Bolivarian Constitution, the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people and letting us begin, starting from the abyss where we are, the reconstruction of the Homeland, its institutions, its functioning and reconquer the future that has taken us away, which, after all, is the most important reason to keep fighting.