Compare And Contrast: Obama And Chavez

…Although circumstances between Mr. Chavez’s Venezuela and the U.S. differ, Mr. Chavez took his (their) fight to the people of Venezuela and he repeatedly and consistently won majorities of the vote in free and fair elections. The received wisdom in the U.S., a pathetic lie no doubt, is that deference to the wishes of the plutocrats is the prerequisite to fighting in the interests of ‘the people.’ The rank oblivion evidenced in the passions of purportedly thoughtful people in favor of Mr. Obama (‘New’ Democrats—Mr. Obama is but a placeholder) in the recent election supports this capitulation in the quasi-religious hope that if we give the plutocrats everything they ask for they might be nice to us in return.

What is in fact taking place is economic pillage with the full cooperation and facilitation of Mr. Obama and his administration. From banker bailouts to stolen homes, incarceration for profit, student loan penury, wars for oil, profit extracting sick-care and social insurance cuts, class war was launched and is being fought from above. And the non-conflictual economic theories of classical and neo-liberals have rendered cooperation the mechanism of self-subjugation. Against far greater odds Hugo Chavez fought back the forces of global capital, plutocracy and their servants in the oil mafia (CIA) to improve the lot of Venezuela’s poor. What he showed is the straightest path to achieving social justice is to fight for it.

The recurrent theory expressed by people who by now should know better is that Mr. Obama must ‘be made’ to do the right thing. What Hugo Chavez demonstrated is that an actual leader has a political-economic core which only evidence that ideas and policies aren’t working as intended in[re]forms and changes. The irony here is that to anyone paying attention, Mr. Obama also has just such a core and it is neo-liberal. Unless his supporters believe him to be incapable of seeing whether or not his policies are working, their continuation suggests they are working just as he intended them to. The difference then is that Mr. Chavez said what he believed and Mr. Obama said what he thought would win elections. Mr. Obama’s policies have consistently deviated from his explanations of them and always in the direction of supporting the ruling class against broader social well being…