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RE: John Oliver Got it Right about Venezuela's Crisis
The difficulty is the legacy of 'Dollar Diplomacy'. Many of us in the United States doubt the motives for intervention in Latin America because of history. And so we need first person accounts like this to persuade us of the truth, as lived by Venezuelans today.
I have resteemed your post. I think direct communication like this is the best way for people to learn the truth. I try on Steemit to support people from Venezuela because I know they are struggling.
I wish you and everyone in your country better times.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I went to grad school in the States, lived there for 7 years, my two daughters were born there. I have a great deal of appreciation for America as a complex system capable of good and bad things, but also of mechanisms to make the bad things get visible and allow people to try to right the wrongs.
I know the history of the USA and I know how shame has stained in every step of the way, from indian genocide to witch hunting, to lynching, to presidents assassinations, to invasions; but interspersed in those events there have been people and ideas that has contributed to making the world a better place and it is up to each of us to live up to the expectations created by the idea of democracy and the government of the people.
I know that Trump is a big minus in this equation. He does not even try to hide whatever hidden or conflicting interests. He has screwed up in many places and will keep doing it for as long as he stays in office. It will be up to the new venezuelan government that emerges out of this mess and its people to allow the USA to just help us get up and move on or keep us under oppresion, just of a different kind.
There's a reason I majored in history as an undergraduate: I wanted to know the truth of things. What I discovered was that truth is elusive. You are there, making decisions based on what you understand. How can I challenge that? I hope you're right. I know desperate times demand desperate measures. I hope the measure you welcome will lift the economy and the people and that democracy will be restored, eventually.
Be well in these troubled times. Good luck to you and your family
Absolutely. There is no such a thing as Truth. I learned that too.
I'm fully aware we are choosing the best of two evils here. But I also learned from cultural studies that often times we give too much credit and power to the oppresors, the dominant ideology and tend to asume that nothing can exist outside it, that there cannot be a reaction or counter culture, that we are "always already interpellated by ideology".
I want to think that there are alternatives and that the powerful are all powerful only if we are all submissive. The chavismo got an outrageous amount of power all these years. They even changed our culture and traditions in many ways, they tried to indoctrinate from K.
And yet, you ask any kids at school and they will not hide their disgust for the president and this government that has put them in total deprivation of things they know other kids around the world have access to.
I also hope to get out of this mess safe and sound. I want to think that my chuldren will have something to aspire to. The way we are living now, there is no tomorrow for our kids. My 16-year-old will finished HS in june and there are no universitiesfor her to attend. Zero, unless you count the ones created by the government, without campuses, without their own faculty, only aimed at indoctrinating.
I know the USA may screw this chance big time. It's all about deals. They have deals with Turkey, and Turkey supports Maduro. They are also compromised with the russians and the chinese. It can get really messy and the truth, the truth will always elude us.