From Barack to Hugo?

With permission, I have decided to post, with slight modification to keep him anon - and email from a reader who, as you will see, has an interesting take on where we are heading as a nation - or could head.

As with other people's work, I don't endorse 100% - but as I have a, ahem, bias towards both Venezuelans and Colombians - I highly recommend it.

I felt very identified with your latest piece, "2 out of 3 ain't bad".

You see... I am a native of Venezuela, and although my family has been in this country for many years, we still maintain strong American values and traditions, since we are descendants of an American Civil War Colonel.

With this brief background of mine I just want to let you know that we're sad and worried regarding this election result. We are still suffering on a daily basis the ill choice made by many to vote for Hugo Chavez, and I am afraid I'm seeing the American people lead the way into repeating this very same catastrophic mistake. When people cast a vote just by following their emotions, failing to discern the wheat from the chaff and failing to break away from the hypnosis caused by the siren's song populists like Obama are experts in singing, then anything is possible and a Dark Age is sure to follow.

Surprisingly, ignorance is no stranger to many Americans it seems, definitely an inevitable human condition which comes to bite us in the rear regardless of which country we live in, and a true enemy of the modern world. And I believe the old say in baseball "after the error, comes a hit", applies to these situations.

When Chavez was campaigning back in 1998, he thought Castro was a communist dictator, said eradicating corruption was his goal, and even clearly distanced himself from the left. Like a chameleon, he managed to disguise his true colors to the unwary eye. And I'm not talking just native venezuelan voters, he obtained support from ignorant Clinton-administration figures like John Maisto and Madeleine Allbright. Fast forward a few years later... and we have a socialist uprising all over Latin America with no serious much less effective US counter-strategy. What's worse... Venezuela has even been funding islamic fundamentalist and other terrorist organizations such as FARC, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and ETA. Chavez has been left to play so freely that he's funding extinguished leftist movements in Central and South American (Sendero Luminoso and FMLN) and has even sent troops to openly intervene militarily in Bolivia. Now Russia and Iran have gained strategic relevance while the USA has lost influence and respect in the region.

Why am I bringing this up? Because it concerns - no, no I'll rephrase: it **creeps** me out to even wonder how life in Latin American politics will be with a State Department under the helm of Obama and a Democratic-majority congress. It was already bad with Bush as he chose to outright ignore the region, but with this new character, I fear that we will go from being ignored to being openly crushed with the approval or support of the new administration. Other aspects aren't less worrying, such as leaving Israel to their fate; giving in to terrorist demands in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Iran; failing to avoid disaster in an ever-growing muslim Africa; not to mention China... and last but not least... the rising Russians... which always enjoy having a Democrat government to play with. I'd be even more worried if I was living in the Ukraine tho'.

In the end, as you can see from my post, it's not just the US domestic matters that worry me... it's the impact that those domestic matters will have on their foreign policy. If the guy turns out to be a radical leftist and decides to force a disfavorable change upon the American people's lifestyle and values, it would be foolish to think the same won't hold true with his foreign policy, don't you think?

It would require more than a Ronald Reagan to repair the damages.

Thanks for reading, it gives me hope when I read such blogs as yours and many others... feels good to know there are good and real Americans still out there. Let's hope you never have to endure what many Venezuelans such as myself have to endure daily... sad to witness that in the long run the real damage isn't material, financial or economic...those are easily repaired; the real damage is when evil (or the Left) manages to coerce the moral base of society and the beliefs and core values of the people. That is a long term wound which may never heal.

God bless us all CDR.

I'll let you guess why he wanted me to "anonomize" his email.