David Byrne on Chavez

Democracy and Dictators

In 2002 a coalition of business interests, allied with the old rich and some U.S. help, attempted a coup. (From Democracy Now: Bush administration officials Elliott Abrams, who is said to have supervised the planning of the operation, and Otto Reich (ex-U.S. ambassador to Venezuela) were not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it and discussed it in some detail with the coup plotters at the White House, including Carmona, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.)
Tellingly, most of the coup folks have lighter skin than Chavez and his supporters. The coup succeeded, but was overturned, a series of amazing events that were recorded in an Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Naturally enough, the interests of the business community and the rich who backed the coup are not often those of the mass of Venezuelan people — the Reagan trickle-down theory was proved to be a lie there as well — and while various health ministries and social services were in place pre-Chavez, they were, like many of those in the U.S., largely for show and were mostly ineffective.
Pat Robertson recently suggested that the U.S. assassinate Chavez, and while Robertson is not the U.S. Government, the U.S. Government didn't make much of a fuss about denying these feelings from the North. This basically served to confirm what Chavez had been saying. He could use this as additional evidence to claim that the U.S. was against leaders who improve the lot of the people, and that the U.S. is only interested in the oil (Venezuela has a lot) and in making business alliances.
Guillermoprieto then poses the question, how will any opposition to Chavez succeed? The implication being that democracy will be snuffed out or suppressed as long as Chavez maintains his hold on power — like Castro.
Anyway, here's the conundrum. When an autocrat actually does improve the lot for the majority of people, but also stifles democratic institutions and the

press, is he or she ever justified? We up North tend to take the hard line that it's democracy or nothing. That a “democracy” that robs the people and drives the country into bankruptcy and despair (look at the U.S.) is preferable to an autocracy that lifts up the people and nation. Leave the issue of free press and Chavez' perverse obstructions to votes and referendums aside for a minute. Let's assume that there might be some middle ground, which might not be where Chavez is headed, but assume such a thing could exist. This hypothetical government might be, at least for a while, preferable to a democracy in many cases and places. At least in pragmatic terms, though obviously not ideologically for Northerners.
In fact, I would suggest that when institutions like multinationals or the church exert the kinds of influences they do that what we refer to as democracies are often nothing of the kind. The word is evoked and tossed around to gain support for various policies, most of them business related, but as far as actually encouraging democracy, that is not what happens. And while we here in the US manage pretty damn well, imposing what we call “democracy” on other places is often merely an excuse for multinationals to slip in unfettered, which is not always in that country's best interests. The flow of globalization is not equitable — not when one side has a lot more money and military might than the other. (However, as in France, the blowback from colonization or globalization always seems to happen eventually.)
So what is the difference between the fake democracy that the U.S. promotes and the rule of autocrats? Is one always good and the other always bad? Aren't they both equally dangerous and perverse? Doesn't it then depend simply on who is benefiting from a particular system? And wouldn't true democracy in many places simply be a recipe for chaos? Can a democracy decide not to be a democracy? It happens. And being essentially a dictatorship of the most powerful and influential, what happens in a democracy when the less powerful regions decide they've had enough of being bullied, as in the U.S. Civil War when the south decided economic subservience to the north was no longer acceptable?
Many of the excuses that Chavez supporters make for him, according to Guillermoprieto, remind me of things Imelda Marcos used to say. “He [Ferdinand] wears designer suits because people enjoy seeing him dress up” — “Filipinos are for beauty, they want something to aspire to” — “His opponents are more corrupt than he is.”
At any rate, for once a large part of the Venezuelan population who, for decades, centuries maybe, had no hope, not a chance, of rising up, now see a possibility. They can get enough to eat and maybe even an education. If Pat Robinson succeeds a martyr will be created, and hundreds more will sprout from Chavez grave.
But is democracy — the dictatorship of the majority in its purest sense — also natural, in the Darwinian sense? Isn't it part of our nature that the majority will always inevitably strive to overpower the weaker portions of a society? Is what we call “democracy” a mirror of cruel natural processes? Is it inevitable that the poor are exploited whenever possible, and therefore are welfare systems and projects that aim to elevate and give succor to the poor always doomed to failure? Are we as vicious and ruthless as animals often seem to be?
Well, animals are not always as heartless as it sometimes seems. They seem sometimes to have an innate realization that ruthlessness is not always in the long term best interests of the species as a whole. Somehow they seem to sense that individual interests are less important that the survival of the whole group and that the skills of the geek and freak are sometimes essential, and need to be available — so they need to be allowed to breed, too. Human beings sometimes seem to forget, or conveniently ignore this — especially if they have available to them almost unlimited means of power, bureaucracy and propaganda. The temptation to let the heady ecstasy of power get the better of you is self-evident.
Checks and balances.
Learned that phrase in high school. The 3 branches of the government and the constitutionally mandated construction of a complicated system that is supposed to prevent anything or anyone from getting too powerful or out of control. It still seems valid. Animal societies have proscribed behavior, and if you step outside of it too often or get too uppity you are ostracized. Which, for social animals like ourselves, is the worst punishment imaginable.
Anyway, when those checks and balances get dismantled — freedom of the press is one of them, separation of church and state is another — then the whole house of cards gets unstable. It seems to me that you don't need to be a democracy to have this system of safeguards in place. The people's opinions can be manipulated as easily as any lobbyist can sway a congressman — so trusting in the wisdom of the people seems no safeguard in itself. So maybe this checks and balances structure might be more exportable and saleable than what the U.S. calls democracy, and actually do what “democracy” claims to do. And maybe the U.S. should try adopting it.