There is a place on Earth that Hell is afraid of.
Fear
rules by day, darkness
rules the night. Often there is no power. No internet. No lights. No phones. No
school. No water. No food. People are starving. They are now eating zoo animals
and foraging in garbage trucks. And drinking from sewers. Few hospitals have
back-up generators. Prematurely born infants die with no working incubators.
Kidney dialysis patients can’t get treatment and are condemned to excruciating
deaths. There is no insulin. No chemotherapy. Doctors have fled the country. As
have millions of its citizens. More than 30% of the population. Millions more
are expected to. Survivors roam the streets like zombies, looking for things
they will not find. Stores are closed. There is no power, no inventory.
Fires
burn out of control. Terror stalks its residents, as does the secret police.
SEBIN, the national intelligence service, aided and abetted by ruthless Cuban
intelligence officers, lurks everywhere, ready to “disappear” those who dare to
criticize the Maduro government. You want free education? Come down to
Venezuela. Free money? See what it looks like when money is literally
free…because it’s not worth anything, due to 100,000 percent inflation rates. People’s
livelihoods, dreams and souls have all been lost to the Black Hole of despair.
Desperate
Venezuelans are now pillaging
cemeteries, looking to steal jewelry, trinkets, even bones from rotting
corpses…that they may be able to sell for a little cash or trade for something
worthwhile. At some cemeteries, relatives of the departed now stand guard, to
prevent the looting.
The
millions of refugees flowing out of the former “Jewel of South America” are
bringing measles, malaria, zika-- and a
host of other infectious diseases long thought to have been conquered—with
them wherever they go.
The
United States and other countries have sent millions of dollars of aid to
Venezuela. (Because capitalist societies can produce more than a subsistence
level of goods and services). Its Socialist leaders have refused it entry,
preferring to let their citizens starve rather than admit their failures. But,
hey, at least everyone (other than the few wealthy rulers) is equal in outcome.
Equally destitute, equally screwed. “We are
equally starving, comrade, no?”
I recently
read somewhere that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” I don’t know about that. But
Socialism clearly does.
Who is
in charge of the clattering train
The
axles creak, and the couplings strain
For the pace is hot, and the points
are near
And sleep hath deadened the
driver’s ear
And signals flash through the night
in vain
Death is
in charge of the clattering train
*******************************
(The
above lines were taken from a longer poem titled Death and His Brother Sleep which appeared in Volume 99 of Punch magazine published on October 4th,
1890, according to internet reports. The author is unknown).
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