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From an American prospective, maybe, especially when given that even big USA outlets like NYT and Washington posts have got the wrong end of sticks when it comes to NZ politics.Kiwi in America here, who voted in the last NZ election via overseas ballot. I did not follow all the election news piece by piece but as a long term NZ green supporter, I am absolutely fine with their decision.Maybe I am the more pragmatic type of green voter, but while NZ first and NZ green do have differences, in a MMP system you have to sort out your priorities and collaborate with others to gain grounds for the core issues you stand for.This is true for all smaller parties who are big enough to enter a coalition yet unlikely to form a majority by themselves. You might have uneasy bed fellows, but if you can further what your supporters voted you for, you will find a way.Also, just because you have different prospectives in general, does not mean you come to some diametrically opposing solutions for the same issue.Environmental issues and social responsibility are important to the Greens. While NZ first, is a centrist party who favours protectionism and frequently flirts with populists issue.(As much I am not a fan of NZ first , they are not alt right or fascist just because they have a complaint or two about immigration, a conclusion that the Washington Post was more than happy to dive in. )(Plus NZ Green is no Jill Stein.)As NZ is a very small country and our traditional allies are grossly overpowering , those core values of the respective parties do overlap in some ways. Protecting NZ interest often includes both environmental AND economic sides.Take overseas investment for example, NZ First would be annoyed at foreigners having disproportionate buying power, whether you are American or Chinese, especially when it comes to the dairy industry and private properties. While NZ Green would be outraged by abuse of local laws by foreign enterprises and any case of blant disregard of NZ environment, which there were no shortage of example people could find.Different reasons , maybe, but same direction for sure.As for immigration , both parties are against expansion for free movements sake and want to keep it low with highly skilled migrants as priorities. People like Matt Lauer and Peter Thiel aren't too high on the list of their prefer immigrants for both parties, but with different root prospectives.The list goes on.

It was about as much of a landslide as it was possible to be in the modern age. In fact, it was by far the most decisive victory in the past 5 contests we’ve had.What I consider the “modern” age of politics began in 2000.[1] [2]Things have changed some since this election. Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado have moved into the blue camp, for instance. Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are also moving leftwards. At the same time, the Midwest is moving rightwards. But this is about as far back in time as you can go without the electoral map looking very foreign.For comparison, let’s look at 96, 92, and 88.[3] [4] [5]A Democrat winning West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Louisiana? That sounds like science fiction at this point.Same as before, except that Georgia and Montana are blue. Now, there was possibly the effect of Ross Perot in this election, but that’s very controversial. Perot by 1996 and 2000 was definitely on the right. But in 1992, the Democrats were enough of a centrist party that Perot got votes equally from the left and right. Be that as it may, you’d never get a map like this in our elections.88 is even weirder. It was the last landslide. Basically, this can’t happen anymore. And the reason it can’t is because we live in a very different world:It’s often said that Democrats lost the Deep South over the issue of civil rights. That’s not entirely incorrect, but it’s a shortcut. The story is much more complicated and took more than a generation to play itself out. The Democratic Party for most of the 20th century was a union of the White South and the pro-labor, pro-civil-rights North. Even that is an oversimplication. Things weren’t that neat. There were plenty of pro-civil-rights liberals in the Republican Party as well. But for our purposes here, suffice it to say that the Democratic Party was a very big tent party, with room enough for Southern segregationists, labor liberals, and black voters in the north.I should mention here that Black voters started the 20th century as Republicans—this was the party that had abolished slavery and championed the Black suffrage—but slowly moved out of that party as Black voters lost the right to vote in the South and Northern black voters found that:The Democratic Party in the North was happy to push for their rights in exchange for their pro-labor votes.The Republican Party was dominated by Big Business, and had long given up its advocacy for Black rights.The push for Black civil rights, which started in the first half of the 20th century, created an ideological and geographical fault line through the Democratic Party. It opened the gate for white Southerners, who were pro-segregation and anti-civil-rights, to feel really alienated from the national Democratic Party.This is what things looked like classically. You see the strength of the Democratic Party in the states of the Old Confederacy, even in an otherwise bad election year.[6]Hoover won in 1928, confining Democrats again largely to the Old South. But then the Great Depression hit, and Democrats swept almost everything for 8 years. And even after that Roosevelt continued to be hugely popular. By 1944, this is what things looked like, after he had lost a lot of ground:[7]1948 was the first time the South had a big revolt against the national Democratic Party. In July of that year, the Democratic Party adopted a platform that included the following lines:[8]We support the right of free enterprise and the right of all persons to work together in co-operatives and other democratic associations for the purpose of carrying out any proper business operations free from any arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions.The Democratic Party is responsible for the great civil rights gains made in recent years in eliminating unfair and illegal discrimination based on race, creed or color,The Democratic Party commits itself to continuing its efforts to eradicate all racial, religious and economic discrimination.We again state our belief that racial and religious minorities must have the right to live, the right to work, the right to vote, the full and equal protection of the laws, on a basis of equality with all citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.We highly commend President Harry S. Truman for his courageous stand on the issue of civil rights.We call upon the Congress to support our President in guaranteeing these basic and fundamental American Principles: (1) the right of full and equal political participation; (2) the right to equal opportunity of employment; (3) the right of security of person; (4) and the right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation.We pledge ourselves to legislation to admit a minimum of 400,000 displaced persons found eligible for United States citizenship without discrimination as to race or religion. We condemn the undemocratic action of the Republican 80thCongress in passing an inadequate and bigoted bill for this purpose, which law imposes no-American restrictions based on race and religion upon such admissions.We urge immediate statehood for Hawaii and Alaska; immediate determination by the people of Puerto Rico as to their form of government and their ultimate status with respect to the United States; and the maximum degree of local self-government for the Virgin Islands, Guam and Samoa.We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment on equal rights for women.We favor the extension of the right of suffrage to the people of the District of Columbia.The Southern Delegates walked out and formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, commonly known as the Dixiecrats, pledged to the preservation of white supremacy and segregation. They nominated, Strom Thurmond, who at the time was the governor of South Carolina.They were hoping to either weaken Truman enough to demonstrate that Democrats needed the segregationist South to win or to deny anyone a majority of the electoral college, which would mean that the House would pick the president. There, they would throw their support to whoever pledged not to interfere with segregation.But to the surprise of almost everyone, Truman managed to win the election, though without the support of a significant portion of the South. It must have looked like a fluke at the time, but it was a harbinger of things to come.[9]The deep South returned to the Democratic fold during the Eisenhower years, but in 1960, Kennedy found that he could not take for granted the support of the South. Again, the issue was civil rights for Blacks. This time, the scheme to deny the nomination to a Democrat consisted in placing unplegded electors on the ballot. Normally, electors are pledged in advance to vote for one candidate or another. 15 such electors won election and voted for Senator Harry F. Byrd, father of the late Robert Byrd. It was not enough to stop Kennedy, but the South, or at least a portion thereof, was starting to mark its independence.[10]Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, and his Vice President, who had been a Southerner in good standing while Senate Majority Leader, used his remarkable talents to pursue civil rights for Blacks. In so doing, opened the floodgates for the White South to leave what had until then been their party and the party of their ancestors. Lyndon Johnson won a crushing victory in 1964, but it was not with the help of the South.[11]And then there was 1968, one of those years like 1848 where so many changes are happening with various flavors of success and failure in so many countries simultaneously that those of us born after the fact must forever resign ourselves to the fact that we will never be able to fully explain what the hell was going on.For our purposes, suffice it to say that Johnson didn’t run again in 68. The New Hampshire primary showed just how vulnerable he was, and just how hard it would be for him to win the renomination of his party. He was extremely unpopular by then, thanks the the debacle that was the Vietnam war. And Democrats were hopelessly divided.There were those who favored Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He was a liberal, but he had remained loyal to Johnson. This was seen by some as an unforgivable sin.There was Senator Eugene McCarthy, leader of the anti-war faction. He was the man who had nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary and thereby demonstrated that Johnson was beatable.There was Bobby Kennedy, Senator, former attorney general and brother of the already apotheosized JFK. He had at first declined to run, but thrown his hat in the race after the New Hampshire primary. He had the support of blacks and Catholics and other people nostalgic for the Kennedy presidency. He was assassinated a few months after entering the primary.There was the Southern faction, implacably opposed to the party’s leftward lurch on civil rights, but with some residual loyalty to the party of their forebears.In the end, it was Humphrey who led the party against Nixon. The White South defected and voted for George Wallace, who was running on a segregationist platform.[12]The results of Wallace’s success were not lost on political strategists. From then on it was clear that, though openly racist positions were an electoral liability, racist dog whistles that allowed a campaign to maintain plausible deniability could be very efficacious.In 1972, there was a landslide. Nixon was a very effective politician. Democrats had nominated George McGovern, whose views were very far to the left of the the median voter. The result was an electoral bloodbath.[13]I will mention in passing that many older Democrats remember this election very well. It left them with an indelible fear of nominating someone too far out of the mainstream. And when they look at politicians like Bernie Sanders, this is what they are reminded of.A result like this was possible because in most of the country, there was an acceptable mainstream outside of which voters wouldn’t go. The proportion of minds who were truly up for grabs was probably around 25–30%. This could create huge shifts within the same decade. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote in 1964. 8 years later, Nixon won 60.7% of the popular vote. We live in an era of hyper-polarization. The vast majority of people already know how they will vote in the next few elections. This wasn’t the case before about 2000.In 1976, with a white Southern evangelical at the helm, Democrats were once again able to rely on the White South.[14]It was the last this would happen. Things were changing. The parties were learning to sort themselves along ideological lines. Conservatives Democrats were moving into the Republican Party. And liberal Republicans—almost entirely Northerners—were slowly starting to vote for Democrats.This process was catalyzed by the battles over civil rights. But it was reinforced by the division over the Vietnam War and the change in sexual mores. Was it more patriotic to support or to oppose the war in Vietnam? Was it more patriotic to serve when drafted or to do one’s best to dodge the draft? Was the pill a useful tool giving women control over their bodies and allowing them to enjoy sex with the same freedom as men? Or was it rather a devilish invention that had led to rampant promiscuity and immorality? Should there be an equal rights amendment, giving women the same rights as men? Or would that open a Pandora's box that would eliminate even natural distinctions between men and women, opening the door to social anarchy? Should abortion be seen as a legal right, enshrined in the constitution? Or was it murder of the most abominable kind, in that it sacrificed the innocent at the altar of licentiousness?On all these issues, there was a self-reinforcing process where an influx of conservatives into the Republican Party would lead the liberals to feel less at home. These liberals would then flow into the Democratic Party, thereby increasing the liberal dominance of the Democratic Party, and making conservatives even more likely to leave. By 1980, there were people being called Reagan Democrats, but there were nothing new. There had also been Nixon Democrats in 72 as well.But the process I have outlined above wasn’t happening symmetrically or uniformly. More people were moving into the Republican Party than were leaving it. The ideological center of gravity of the nation had not been to the left. So when the one party became the party of liberalism, it started losing badly.[15]Allow me another digression here. I want to return to a topic I broached earlier. Imagine that you’re a liberal Democrat born in 1950. By 1988, you would have seen liberalism lose again and again and again at the polls. In the 6 presidential elections from 1968 to 1988, you would have seen the Democrat win only one, and barely, in a year that was favorable only because the cloud of a corrupt bargain had been hanging over Gerald Ford, for having pardoned Nixon. It would not have been an unreasonable conclusion to draw that liberalism could not win.And so, if a centrist Democrat, a governor of a Southern state, came along, with the idea that the way to return to power was to clothe liberalism into the trappings of conservatism, you might be inclined to listen. And if his policy priorities prominently featured a balanced budget and welfare reform, you might see it as the price to pay for readmission into the halls of power.Clintonism worked. Liberals didn’t get everything they wanted. But they got a lot more than they would have gotten if George H. W. Bush had been reelected.Let’s return to the maps that we started with.Bush did not lose because of Ross Perot, though his supporters have preferred this explanation since his defeat. The country was a lot more conservative than it is today, and though by today’s standards, Perot sounds more conservative, in 1992, he was pulling his support equally from left and right. In fact, in June 1992, it was Clinton that he was hurting more: THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: On the Trail; POLL GIVES PEROT A CLEAR LEAD.You cannot call the map above a landslide. Clinton had won less than 43% of the vote. But he was competitive in more parts of the country than Democrats are today.The 1996 maps was slightly different, but looks just as implausible today:Again, this is not a landslide, but both these maps could only happen in a country in which a substantial portion of the electorate was up for grabs.By 2000, states were inexorably tending redwards or bluewards. And by 2008, you had this:[16]The only other state Obama could have won was Missouri, which he lost by less than 4,000 votes. Even if he had won there, it would still not have been a landslide.Even in a year with a historically unpopular president and a cataclysmic financial crisis, McCain still won more than 45% of the popular vote. And large parts of the country were still very, very red. It’s the new normal. The whole country doesn’t move in tandem anymore.Compare the map above to 1988:The vast majority of the country moved in the same direction. And yet, if you compared the popular vote margins, you’ll see that they were pretty similar.This is what polarization looks like in its geographical manifestation. For the foreseeable future, there will be no such thing as a landslide. But, of course, history is not static. What we are noticing is that the Midwest is slowly moving redwards and the sunbelt is slowly moving bluewards. The speed of these movements is never exactly the same. So, while I am fairly certain that at some point, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina will be blue-leaning and Michigan and Wisconsin will be as red as Ohio seems to have become, there will be a cycle of elections where the transition will be complete in one direction but not the other. And during that brief period of time, you might get maps that look like this:But you still won’t see anything like the landslides of old in the elections of the 21st century.Speaking of elections, I have good news! My book was published today! You are more than welcome to elect to get a copy.Footnotes[1] 2000 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[2] 1984 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[3] 1996 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election[5] 1988 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[6] 1924 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[7] 1944 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[8] 1948 Democratic Party Platform[9] 1948 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[10] 1960 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[11] 1964 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[12] 1968 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[13] 1972 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[14] 1976 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[15] 1980 United States presidential election - Wikipedia[16] 2008 United States presidential election - Wikipedia

Here is a simplified summary of the entire affair:Venezuela has world’s biggest oil reserves.Oil reserves in Venezuela - WikipediaChavez had had nationalized these oil reserves back in 2007, taking it over from Exxon, a US corporation.Within a week, Chavez was declared a dictator by US corporate media.Then started a series of attempts to overthrow Chavez, ranging from the first blatant coup to many smaller ‘democratic’ attempts. They are a long story.When these didn’t work, economic warfare started in the form of sanctions and cooperation of internal ‘opposition’.US sanctions Venezuela on everything it can, even food and medicine, and forces its satellites (ie, numerous major European countries, ultra-right South American countries like Colombia, Brazil etc) to do so as well. This was the exact thing that was done to Iraq which caused deaths of over a million people there, leading to the UN inspectors responsible with overseeing the ‘sanctions’ to quit in protest.Former UN official says sanctions against Iraq amount to 'genocide' | Cornell ChronicleWhereas inside Venezuela, the internal elements, de facto ultra-right wing, even fascist elements of opposition which always cooperated with US, do their best to help the problems:Venezuela's Economic War: Tons of Food Found Buried UndergroundThese cause problems, and the pictures of empty supermarkets that are circulated in US media in order to convey the perception that ‘people are starving in Venezuela’:On the ground, the reality is that the government has set up distribution centers to provide food and other supplies to people:The socialist government of Venezuela has had great success in protecting a majority of the population from the effects of US economic warfare since a long while. Hence, their high voter turnout and high support among the poorer majority of Venezueans.However, when the US sanctions hit their economy, one class of Venezuelans got shafted: the upper middle and upper classes.These constitute the rich, or new-rich, or upper middle class upper strata of Venezuelan society. And despite they all are mestizos, this class acts as if they were foreign colonizers in Venezuela like their counterparts in every other South American country.Think Mexican soap operas, if you have seen any: The depiction of the upper classes there is slightly exaggerated but those at the top indeed live, think and behave more or less as represented. They paint a rather accurate picture of alienation of such upper classes from their society and the immense inequality that exists in South American countries in between the tiny minority of elites and the majority poor.Of course, this class does not include the ultra rich only - the upper middle classes, educated professionals who ‘jump classes’ also classify within this strata, though they may not see themselves as ‘elite’ or ‘colonial’, or ‘European’.Observe the stark difference in between the photos of Maduro’s Congress members and the US backed opposition congress members in the below article:In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key to Trump's CoupGuiado’s opposition party:Maduro’s PSUV:Then, The New York Times, NPR and other mainstream outlets in the US reported on marches against the Chavez government, showing the tens of thousands of Venezuelans calling for Chavez’s removal. But when I took my BBC camera crews to march with these protesters, they were clearly from the light-skinned minority. They were also the wealthy — and they wanted you to know it. Many of the women marched in high heels, the men peacocking in business suits, proudly displayed in the uniforms of their privileged class.The Chavistas wore patriotic yellow, blue and red T-shirts, sneaks, jeans.Race was an issue as much as political philosophy. When I marched alongside the opposition demonstrators, they shouted “Chavez, Monkey!” and worse.Majority of the Venezuelans you would see on Internet, especially Quora, are from this upper class - speaking spotless english and engaging on leisurely discussion on internet on various topics, having a habit of using Twitter etc. These are not the domain of the majority poor and indigenous people in Venezuela. But the well-to-do and educated can afford such luxuries. Of course, not counting in the perfect-english-speaking Cuban emigres working in private ‘opinion shaping’ corporations from Florida, US.So this upper class constitute what people see when someone tells them ‘Just ask Venezuelans’ - there is no way for an average Westerner to be able to ask an average poor mestizo or indigenous person in Venezuela - only the upper classes are visible on internet.And this upper class was the most hit by US sanctions and economic warfare. They lost their highly profitable businesses, the entitlements, the privileges they enjoyed before Chavez and PSUV (Socialist party of Chavez, Maduro etc).But there was a problem for US establishment in respect to their regime change agenda: Though this class was disgruntled now and firmly on their side, they were a tiny minority and the classes whose lives were bettered by Chavez, were an overwhelming majority.UN statistics circa 2014 firmly state that the lives of majority Venezuelans are much, much better.For an elite small minority, things are not as good as they were before. Before Chavez and Socialists, they occupied the top rung of the society, monopolized highly paid professional positions, trades, businesses.But when they started to collaborate with US as the arm of US policy inside Venezuela, like how the engineers in Oil corporations started to cripple oil production after Chavez nationalized the oil, or how they started to cripple and profit over basic necessities as food, medicine etc, the Socialists started to replace them and this class started to lose their privileges. The US sanctions came as a second blow on top of that - crippled what other entitlement and privilege they have left, in the form of their businesses.So, there is a minority that has been hard hit by not the Socialist policies of Chavez, Maduro and socialists, but by their enthusiasm to collaborate with foreign corporate interests. And ironically, they were hurt by the very sanctions and economic warfare inflicted upon their country by those very corporate interests, represented by US establishment. So they are suffering.However…When said ‘suffering’, you have to understand that their suffering is still very different from the suffering of ordinary people:Venezuelan opposition is hungry in Venezuela and studying fashion in Paris at the same timeThese are Schrodinger’s Venezuelan opposition: When you are not looking, she is suffering in Venezuela, hungry. When you are looking, she is actually living in an apartment in Paris, attending a fashion course.Another immigrant Venezuelan appeared on Spanish television at one point, on a discussion panel that included a Spanish communist who just returned from Cuba. When she confronted the panelist and told him how people were suffering in Venezuela because of socialism, the Spanish communist told her: “I don’t deny that there are people who are suffering in Venezuela: It is true that your class lives much worse today. But, the majority poor live much, much better”.So these opposition seems to have sufficient wealth in order to be able to live better than Europeans in Europe, doing things which many Europeans are finding very difficult in post 2008 crisis world.Of course while this example illustrates a decent segment of the situation of the upper class opposition in Venezuela, there would be those who are really suffering because they were not able to hoard enough wealth when they had the privilege, and still refusing to accept the help from their elected government.Refusing is an important keyword here - for if they actually just accept the services and aid their government is rendering, they can easily go through most of their problems - from food to medicine.For example Venezuelan government provides a health hotline service which you can call to get your prescription drugs. But it requires a health card and a social security number equivalent. Just like in every single developed country in the world.However, if you refuse to go and register for healthcare and receive your free number and your free card, naturally you cannot call the hotline and get your prescription drugs. Just like in every single developed country.Things like these are presented as ‘suffering’ in corporate western media, with the aim of delegitimizing the Venezuelan government in the eyes of western public so that they wont oppose the regime change agenda.That regime change agenda was going well for a while in between 2014–2018, when the major part of the sanctions hit Venezuela and the socialist government had to scramble to mitigate the effects.At that point, the opposition had acquired a tiny majority in the parliament. Not enough to do anything, but to create some issues for the existing government. Regime change looked like possible via democratic means. And they did create some issues for a while.But Maduro government kept working:Venezuelan Housing Program Hands Over Millionth Free HomePresident Maduro Celebrates 1.6 Millionth Home Built for the PoorAnd voila - at 2 million recently:Venezuela Builds 2 Million Affordable Homes in Just Seven YearsSo in the same period, Maduro government built and delivered ~2 million homes for the Venezuela’s poor.Naturally this was going to reflect at the polls. And therefore the US backed opposition had done a smart move and refused to participate in the election by calling elections a ‘sham’ - something which would prevent the real, minority support behind them from being exposed in the ballot box.There was no other way for them but to refuse the elections by just proactively declaring them as ‘sham’, because Venezuelan elections are pretty rock solid when it comes to accuracy:Surprisingly, Venezuela Elections are more legitimate than US electionsEach vote has 3 records of proof, and one is a paper trail. To compare, for example, majority of votes in US do not have any paper trail, they are just electronic and the central tabulating machines that collect them are hackable by even cheap laptops.Kids at hacking conference show how easily US elections could be sabotagedThough some US states started requiring paper trail for votes, majority of US states perform elections on such shaky ground. And due to the first past the post system, gerrymandering and many other devices, parties in US can get majority and dominate US congress with as little as 15% of total votes, in part to small voter turnout.Naturally, this leads to Venezuelan elections being much more legitimate than US elections due to paper trail, voter turnout, and especially the fact that over 200 international organizations watch the elections.“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”That’s what Jimmy Carter, ex US president, who monitored 90 elections worldwide including US elections through his non profit Carter Center, says. (source) Venezuelan elections are the most monitored elections in human history as well.Ref: Surprisingly, Venezuela Elections are more legitimate than US electionsAnd below is how US corporate media outlets construct the fallacies and lies about Venezuela in order to demonize its system and its administration - when Carter Center sent their report to CNN after CNN’s request, this happened:After sending in the article, a few hours later CNN asked me for sources on poverty reduction under Chavez, and cites for the polls. I easily obliged with their request and provided credible, accessible citations.They sent me back an edited version, this time with an added sentence after Carter’s statement on the Venezuelan electoral process, stating that the Carter Center had abandoned Venezuela in 2015 and was no longer observing their elections. The statement seemed to disqualify Carter’s 2012 applause of Venezuela’s elections, basically implying that while Carter may have said that then, now was a different story and the Carter Center wanted nothing to do with it. I told CNN there was no way I would include a statement discrediting Carter’s 2012 affirmation of the Venezuelan electoral process as the best in the world. If they wanted context, I could write that the Carter Center no longer operates in Venezuela because the system there is flawless and no longer needs external observation. I didn’t hear back from them for over 24 hours.As you can understand, there is no legitimate way to try to overthrow a government which is legitimately elected with support of the majority, so US just keeps calling elections in Venezuela illegitimate. Just like the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.Not participating in the last elections totally eradicated any chances of the US backed opposition of taking over Venezuela peacefully. Naturally they started to resort to ‘different’ methods, ranging from the recent assassination attempt against Maduro to outright employing ultra right nationalists to create some kind of civil war.All attempts failed. Hence US first prodded the fascist governments they fostered in the recent years (Brazil, Columbia etc) to attack Venezuela.That also didn’t produce any results. Because when the first talk of ‘freedom fighters’ was uttered by US back during his time, Chavez went and bought ~300,000 AK-47s and trained a citizen’s militia. Which totally eliminated any potential scenario like the one in Syria.A wise move, since US moves in the region point to a greater destabilization plan of creating ‘failed states’ all across Caribbean after Iraq/Libya model, judging from the reports and speeches from US military-industry complex think-thanks and prominent figures.Can Venezuela and its neighbours survive the coming war?Thus, Chavez had blocked the first leg of this operation by creating his people’s militia.So, with nothing worth doing to overthrow legitimate Venezuelan government, US establishment just went ahead and declared the illegitimate, unelected, ultra-right opposition leader as president, prompting their satellites to do so, possibly with the hopes of creating some kind of civil war, even though it is unlikely.The unelected ‘president’ immediately published an economic program, which includes selling Venezuelan oil, privatizing everything, and ending all social programs ranging from education to housing. The usual neoliberal sociopathy that happened in every single country which got US backed regimes in the past few years - Argentina, Brazil etc.They don’t even wait for taking over the country to destroy self sufficiency of Venezuela’s poor. They utilize ‘opposition’ elements, basically paramilitaries to attack and destroy any initiative poor people prosper themselves or do it with government’s help:Venezuela’s crisis: A view from the communesWithin hours of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó calling for street mobilisations to back his attempted military coup against President Nicolás Maduro on April 30, Guaidó’s supporters had looted and set fire to the headquarters of the Indio Caricuao Commune in south-west Caracas.The building was used for local residents’ meetings and housed a commune-run textile enterprise, which funds projects in the community.Atenea Jiménez, from the National Network of Comuneros (commune activists) said: “Once again attacks on the communes by fascist sectors have begun.”She also noted however that comuneros “are facing persecution by sections of the government”, in reference to the March 23 arrest and 71-day long detention of 10 comuneros who occupied a state-owned rice processing plant in Portuguesa state. The occupation denounced the fact that private management who were hired to run it refused to work with local producers.“Why is this occurring? Because the commune is the only space that disputes power … it is one of the few, genuine, self-convened spaces for building direct democracy,” she said.No tolerance for any control of poor people over the economy or their own fate. No tolerance for any kind of organization that may challenge private interests.These tell us clearly what’s behind this regime change attempt in Venezuela, and what’s at stake. Definitely not ‘democracy’, or Venezuelan people.……..So what’s happening in Venezuela is not complicated:It is an attempt by US to keep South America as its colonial backyard, by relying on a small minority upper class that identifies as ‘European’ and despises mestizo, indigenous peoples of their countries as ‘lower class’, in order for US corporations to not only rape resources and people of Venezuela like how they are raping Americans at home, but also for creating a means for propaganda for their corporate media to declare that ‘Socialism fails’, in order to avert the rising tide of social democrat people’s movement in US in the face of immense inequality and poverty.Socialism fails every time… But for some reason, every time it fails, it needs a lot of help from the US in the form of sanctions, economic warfare, ‘freedom fighters’, and even outright bombing and invasions…