Protests in Venezuela
I saw the headline "Venezuelans Protest Chavez's New Socialist Push" and that sounded pretty juicy. Streets clogged? Massive disruption in Caracas? Not exactly. The very first sentence referred to "hundreds." The second paragraph mentioned "about 1,000."
That is a meager protest, even by U.S. standards. Earlier this summer, the same amount of people protested in Raleigh against the General Assembly. Not even a specific issue, just the GA itself. So I am less than impressed that Chávez generated hundreds of complaints. A better headline would have been "Venezuelan opposition fails to generate large protest."
Chávez's response, however, was interesting:
"This is a democracy. They call me a tyrant — tyrants govern without laws. We're making laws, and all those laws are for the benefit of the country," Chavez said.
I immediately thought that sounded exactly like George W. Bush. We're making laws for your own good, so we're democratic. But dictatorships spew out laws all the time. The mere fact of making laws means nothing--it is all about how they are made.
5 comments:
Funny, that's first thing I noticed about the headline - "Hundreds". That's it? Perception is everything.
"The mere fact of making laws means nothing--it is all about how they are made"
Yes, indeed.
(Though I would have never thought to compare Chavez with W. I'm too "inside the box"?)
But do you think that they had a reason to protest or not?
Sure, they had a reason to protest. Clearly, though, not too many felt the need.
yet
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