When I am dead, I hope it is said;

Where's the outcry? Where's the American who understands the world outside our borders well enough to know whether or not anything Hugo Chavez says is even worth listening to, let alone getting upset over?

I guaran-damn-tee you that every American who does know the answer to that question (I grant that I do not; I know Venezuela is an OPEC member, but that's about all) also knows enough about politics to discount anything said in a public forum by a politician who's in the middle of riling his constituency up into enough of a frenzy to give him the broad dictatorial powers he doesn't already have and so desperately wants.

The majority of Americans don't give a rat's behind what some jumped-up little man in charge of some furrin' country says. Which is, of course, your point. :)

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Well, half of it. :)

The other is that can you *IMAGINE* the furor (likely crossing national boundaries in a heartbeat) if the reverse had happened?

I just dislike double-standards intensely. A racist pinhead is a racist pinhead, regardless of the color of their skin... otherwise, it's kind of being *gasp* racist.

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I suspect Chavez will continue to grow more strident in his rhetoric as the price of oil continues to drop.

Venezuala's oil production is dropping due to mismanagement and under investment, and international capital would be insane to invest in Venezuala based on the recent strings of nationalization. The net result is that if oil drops into the $30s he's going to really start feeling the pinch. And it is looking increasingly likely that it *will* drop in that fashion. The Saudi's seem to be pursuing a policy of trying to use lower oil prices to attack Iran, and the world demand for oil is falling (as a response to the higher prices of the last year). Oh yes, and oil inventories are at a record level.

I expect Venezuala to go the route of Cuba: declining economic fortunes due to government mismanagement.

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Agreed. I just keep waiting for *anybody* not associated with the right-wing (present fiscal-only conservatives excluded ;) ) to stand up and say "CRAZY MAN TALKING!"

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Yeah, it would be like the time Bush the Elder showed those Australians the V-for-Victory sign. Backwards. Took 'til January '89 to get past that one.

I submit it would take a particularly clueless racist to refer to a native of a foreign country, who /resides/ in that foreign country, as a wetback. :)

(I stand by the redundancy of "clueless racist". I did not give you a hard time over "racist pinhead".)

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The thing that pisses me off about the currently dropping oil prices is that we were *this close* (where "*this close*" almost certainly means "still not close enough, dammit") to convincing the American public that we can't afford to marginalize alternate energy sources, and we should accelerate investment in such before it's too damn late.

But noooo, we can't have our precious oppressive, oil-based economies threatened by energy sources that won't mortgage our futures, financially and environmentally, so those prices have to COME DOWN!

Jeez, I sound like a flippin' Democrat. Somebody ask me about gun control, 'K?

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Frankly, I think it's the distinction between the knee-jerk anti-socialist and sober minded realists who look at Chavez and see him running Venezuala towards a cliff. Most of both the left and right wing are basically knee jerkers. They don't *REALLY* understand what's going on, they just know which side they are on...

I swear, it's the blues and the greens all over again... didn't we learn this lesson in the 1500 years ago... :(

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Don't be quite so sad.

First, a lot of the oil price run up was driven by specualtion, not fundamentals. Generally inventory levels track price pretty well, and inventory levels last summer were suggesting $30 a barrel oil, it was pure bubblism that drove prices to the $70s.

Second, as the decline in oil demand shows, the high prices *did* have an effect on behavior. Since a lot of the thing which consume oil are investments that ametorize over years (like cars, power plants, etc) that demand reducion effect will propogate forward.

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I firmly support gun control. I feel that the things that governments with guns are allowed to do to people should be strictly controlled :) If there's anything we have learned from the history of the 20th century it's that governments with guns are very dangerous! Gun's don't kill people, governments kill people :)

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I think knee-jerk reactions are what we've evolved to favor, actually. When confronted with a large carnivore, survival and reproduction went to the primates who immediately decided to "run!" or "attack!", and almost never went to the primates who asked themselves, "what are the long-term consequences to the environment of my possible actions?"

Of course, now that we've pretty much solved the immediate-survival problem, the hardest part of the job is getting people to understand that we need them to step outside of the short-term. Add the fact that most political parties and special interests have figured out that they need to keep people *in* the short-term, and "sober minded realists" of every stripe are kind of screwed.

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I usedta have a bumper sticker that said, "gun control is hitting what you aim at". :)

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franktheavenger.livejournal.com

Re: backwards V: did you hear about the 'bloody hell' commercial furor a little while ago? I guess we get to pick and choose the non-American vulgarities we get to understand. ;)

Also, Jason, I of course totally agree. Should we start working to find something we disagree on, just for the hell of it? :p

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jason0x21.livejournal.com

Because there's no such thing as Latino privilege, maybe?

I man, in exchange for all the breaks I get simply by being a white dude, I can take the occasional epithet because of simply being a white dude.

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I take it then, you've never been literally spat on by someone using the term. It's good that you can let it slide off of you, but that's an internal judgement call on your part, and in no way abrogates the speaker of their actions, does it? It doesn't bother you, but in the final analysis, it was a racist comment.

Racism is racism is racism, I don't care what political side of the fence the speaker is on, they're an idiot, and should be called on it.

When someone is given free license to perform a behavior based *solely* on the color of their skin is, fundamentally, and by definition, racism, whether that behavior is using the clean bathroom, or slinging a racial epithet. Various justifications can be made for allowing for it, depending on one's point of view, but I have yet to see one that didn't boil down to hypocrisy based on either condescending patronization of an oppressed racial group, or self-righteous belief in one's own racial superiority. Which really, when you get down to it, are pretty much the same thing.

Double-standards are wrong, no matter who benefits.

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Missed the story the first time around, but it's still googleable. (I tend to be fairly news-averse; news is entertainment, and I prefer entertainment that's, well, entertaining. I look up stuff I want to know about, and figure I will hear through the grapevine about stuff that's actually relevant or interesting to me.)

I've always thought it was interesting that some Americans have semi-adopted "bloody" as a milder alternative to "fucking", but in Britain, it's apparently "bloody" that is more offensive.

(I could segue into a comparison of the relative views in the two countries on the appropriateness for children of depictions of violence vs. depictions of sex, and how those views might lead to the relative shock values of related terms, because one of the great joys in my life is hearing myself talk. But I won't, because another of the great joys in my life is spending my paycheck.)

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jason0x21.livejournal.com

I dunno, I almost got beat up at a Rodney King protest, just for being in the area, and white. That count?

I wasn't arguing that it wasn't racism, but you knew that. However, I'm drawing a distinction between racism as an epithet and racism as an institution.

When a brown guy and I get in a tussle, and hurl various epithets at each other and the cops show up, who has a greater likelyhood of being taking downtown? Even if the arresting officer is brown? Who gets the stronger sentence.

Unless the brown guy I'm tussling with is Hugo Chavez himself, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be me.

Now I'm not saying this excuses Hugo Chavez for what he said, but I am saying that, in my opinion, as a white dude, at the very least I can put up with it, and at the very most it ain't my place to make that call. I don't feel comfortable with that. Maybe I never will. Maybe when I do it means something has actually been fully overcome. Hope so.

And hey, he was Democratically elected, and he's using his current mandate to expand the powers of the executive arm of government. I don't know what Bush is complaining about.

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