But sure, keep telling us how Democratic administrations not acting like right-wing criminal shitstain Republicans is "hypocritical", but deliberately disregarding the vast difference in foreign policy between the two parties so you can screech "America bad!" even when it does the right thing somehow isn't.
Well, not in Latin America. US political parties have some weird multi-faced value system that cares about stuff like the coordinates a victim was born.
But the OP is also bullshit for trying to criticize the country for trying to do something right for once. Even more because staging coups against a dictatorship does not have a clear moral value.
This is the right answer. And this time around Venezuelans are mad at Merudo and not America because it’s Merudo that interfered with their democratic process, not America. Hard line republican policies always fail
The US isn't a person though. It is a system that relies on imperialist domination in order to survive. Do you have evidence that the system has fundamentally changed away from that? Because that would be some pretty miraculous evidence.
Nobody is "changing". The US can make it their business to oppose left-leaning governments in South America and Maduro can be a petty dictator that clumsily faked electoral results.
Two things can be true at the same time. Not everything is a zero sum game.
Yep, the US did those things. Doesn't change the fact Maduro is a dictator who stole the election. The US is right on this one.
Try talking to actual Venezuelans about this and see what they think. My best friend is, her and her immediate family literally left the country due to his government. She's absolutely devastated, angry, and beyond scared for her family and friends still there.
Yeah, ok, but by all indications the election was, in fact rigged.
Like, not in ways that a CIA analyst needs to break down for you, but in ways that make maths teachers with a summary of the official results raise an eyebrow.
Like, not "by all indications" as in "according to the US", but according to third party left-wing governments as well. I mean, even Lula hasn't recognized the results yet, ffs.
And I know you know, because none of the memes I've seen thrown around are arguing that the results are fair and correct. They're all arguing about US interventionism or US hypocrisy. Which is infuriating, because if somebody is going to find a way to make it all about themselves is Americans.
The global left would do a lot better not getting dragged down by Chavismo's clumsy, dumb bullshit if they were less reticent at acknolwedging that a regime can be targeted by the US AND a dumb-ass dictatorship doing a terrible job of running the country at the same time. I'll vote for the leftmost candidate I get every time, but I'm not gona be the right's rhetorical punching bag for Nicolás Maduro, of all people.
Do you want to share those "eyebrow raising" numbers?
Best summary I can find stating the elections were "rigged" is the report from the Carter center which uses almost entirely qualitative data or hearsay arguments to support the claim and conveniently forgets to mention any of the surrounding context around US interventionism.
In contrast the argument for fair and open elections is well summarized in the report from the NLG delegation's report which does a good job of providing quantitative data as well as useful context to support the conclusion it was fair.
Can you provide those quantitave arguments from these "third party left-wing governments"? Because I am having a hard time finding any of them...
Like I said, Lula, despite downplaying the relevance of the discrepancies, has encouraged the sharing of the full count. Along with Mexico and Colombia they've been pushing for the full count to be released while criticising the US for jumping to recognize the opposition as winners. Spain's government, a coalition of social democrats, communists and populist leftists, has done pretty much the same thing. That seems to be the trend on left-leaning international governments at the moment.
The most popular quantitative argument, beyond the huge discrepancy with the exit polls, is that the first results offered with 80% count show oddly round numbers with a single decimal each that match dividing the count of the two larger parties to the reported results and then rounding up the vote count to the closest integer. The back of the napkin math gives you a low p-value, with a 1 in 100 million chance of the numbers showing up as round as they are. This by itself doesn't mean the result is false, but paired with the fact that the full count hasn't been released, that the results used to call it were only at 80% of the full count --unusually low for how close the whole thing is, although they have produced more complete results by now-- and that Maduro wins with a narrow majority, rather than a plurality that would add legitimacy questions I do think it's reasonable to ask for the full tally. This is Spanish nonpartisan (but left-leaning) organization maldita.es saying about as much, since US-based orgs seem to be fudnamentally disqualified around these parts. The opposition has also produced an alternate set of tallies, although nobody has verified those, to my knowledge.
So yeah, the original 80% count results look weird to a reasonable observer, quantitatively and qualitatively. As time goes on, the lack of a recount or a full set of official count documents makes the possibility of reviewing the tally or recounting less productive, as it's more likely for positions to entrench and for whatever is produced to not be given credence. Venezuela really doesn't need any help for this to be a shitshow now, regardless of what happens or what the real count is.
Again, I'm not from Venezuela and I don't have a horse in this race, but as a left-leaning person in a place where the right frequently uses Maduro's crap as a cudgel, I am not willing to endorse that guy on principle.
Oh, and I don't see much in the way of quantitative analysis on that NLG report. If anything I'm surprised by how partisan it reads, although I'm not familiar with their record for independence. In any case, I'm with Lula, AMLO, Sánchez and the rest on this, they should have released the count documentation from their supposedly fully automated system immediately.
Anyway, I'm stepping off. This place is full of propaganda on an issue that I take no pleasure in discussing. This sucks on a fundamental level, and I have no intention of playing devil's advocate on this issue, just like I don't have any intention of acting as a Maduro surrogate. I'm not here to circlejerk or to make myself more bummed out by this than I already am.
Yeah, ok, by all the reports from the actual observers on the ground the election was, in fact not rigged. Go peddle your burgerland propaganda elsewhere.
As an empire, yes. That doesn't mean we want American people to suffer (I say this as a European who also thinks European imperialist countries should suffer the same fate)