I appreciate your perspective on this situation, Robbie. I feel the degree to which you color your view by the filters through which you see them somewhat undermines your grasp of the full dynamics, but thank you for sharing your exposure to the Venezuelan matter.
To be perfectly honest, in your post it was one thing. The readiness to label the Maduro mis-management of Venezuela as socialism rather than incompetent totalitarian greed. And I likely wouldn't have mentioned it all except that I've seen in other posts your inclination to shade your discussion with charged terms. Semantics matter, altering the empirical value of information presented. A mind that starts with such judgement-implying terms portrays itself as less than open, discouraging frank exchange of data and perspective. Venezuela sits on the largest reserves of oil in the world. Despite price fluctuations, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Algeria, Brunei, and other heavily oil-dependent economies manage their economies vastly more smoothly. Venezuela has no excuse for not acquiring the management capability to use its oil wealth for the betterment of its people and their quality of life. I place great value on reports from those who are or have been elsewhere in the world, as your girlfriend is.
That's not a fact A fact is 6% of population are AA and they commit 60% of violent crime A stat that increased under nice guy Obama Trump is playing hardball and your racism doesn't change the facts, looking at things with blinders doesn't change the facts Ignorance will not win , only dealing with the facts will
Yes, it is a fact. When white supremacists or right-wing people commit a crime it isn't an emergency but just a bad apple. When a Latino undocumented worker kills someone that is an emergency and sign of how bad the illegal immigrants are. We are being overrun by MS13. The stats show that illegal immigrants do not commit more violent crimes than US citizens. Being a nice guy or talking tough won't change the crime rate. What will change it and has been shown to change it is higher education, employment, a more equitable justice system etc.
There are no real stats on illegal immigrants, you're pulling that outta your... The "fact" is they are living in the US illegally doing things people have applied to do for legally, exploited as a result, increasing income inequality. 14 people show up at white supremacist rallies and they are denounced by everyone, republicans and democrats. That's a culture of paranoia you are a part of, like every time a rapper dies it's an evil white man working for a corporation, but it turns out to be another gang member. An in house clean up is needed. There are STEM initiatives in place but keeping pace is still a struggle More education ... Will practicing more make Eric Gordon as good as LeBron? Your argument is based on a naive premise that conveniently ignores real time test scores. Employment relies on integration, integration relies on lower crime. Keep it simple and build from there, but if you just don't get it, don't expect legislators to feel sorry for you.
Sorry. Everything I mentioned is based on credible studies and actual statistics. Also removing and lessening the biases that exist in education will also help. Relying on studies, and actual data isn't being naive. What does any of this have to do with legislators feeling sorry for me? From where did that come? At no point did I even include anything in my posts that would involve legislators feeling sorry for me or for anyone else really.
My issue is that however Venezuela wants to choose their leadership, or contest their leadership, or manage their economy or their oil production is not something other governments get to judge as actionable. It's not the business of the US to tell financial institutions to freeze the nation's reserves or tell other nations not to export to them or to "put all options on the table" to force political change. At some point the US government decided that all it needed to do to get domestic support for some kind of unilateral action against a foreign nation is to create narrative about how "Leader X is a bad person/" There's nothing in the UN charter or any other place in international law that says it's ok to lay economic siege/invade/bomb/drone strike/fund opposition because the United States decides that its leaders are "bad people." In the specific case of sanctions, they are always said to target the leadership, but always affect the most vulnerable the worst. and plenty from organizations as disparate as the Broookings Institute, the Cato Institute, and the NY Times agree. This is why I especially find the "see people are starving in Caracas, Maduro is a bad person, let's bomb them and the the CIA involved with whomever is against the government" narrative so vulgar. When former Alfred de Zayas, a former secretary of the UN Human Rights Council, returned from a fact-finding mission to Venezuela in 2017 for the UN, his report said the US sanctions were killing people, were against international law, and could amount to "crimes against humanity." And this was long before Trump upped the ante. And lest we forget the pre-2003 sanctions in Iraq years that killed well over a half million children, while Saddam Hussein and his sons were partying on. It's hard for any reasonable person to defend that -- unless you are Madeline Albright, anyway.
