[rad-green] Trump’s Imaginary World, Maduro ’s Real World

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/06/trumps-imaginary-world-maduros-real-world/

*COUNTERPUNCH          FEBRUARY 6, 2020*Trump’s Imaginary World, Maduro’s
Real World
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/06/trumps-imaginary-world-maduros-real-world/>*by
María
Páez Victor*

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

Trump gave his State of the Union to his Congress this week. He is the
president behind the curtain. But he is not the benevolent, comical,
trickster, wanna-be Wizard of the famous story, but a malevolent and armed
ogre that threatens his country and the world.

He spreads lies like magic dust into his people’s eyes conjuring up for
them an imaginary USA where all who are sick are sheltered; an America
First policy that needs no allies; an imaginary planet that does not need
climate accords or anti-nuclear accords; imaginary enemy aliens with the
face of Muslims and Latin American migrants; an imaginary Venezuela where a
vicious, corrupt gangster of his choosing is supposedly president.

How low has the USA State fallen! Republicans clapped like tamed seals a
mendacious president who conjures up false and/or misleading facts about
the state of their people and the world.

Trump never mentioned:

+ 50 million US citizens with no medical coverage

+ 46% of bankruptcies are due to medical costs

+ 40 million in poverty and 18 million in extreme poverty

+ 25% of Indigenous people live in poverty

+ Average income of white families is 7 times higher than that of the
average black family

+ 987 people in the USA were killed by police in 2017 and 23% were black

+ 69,550 migrant children were separated from parents –-perhaps forever --
and held in cages (2019) constituting a crime against humanity

+ The unprecedented decline over the past 3 years in life expectancy in the
USA.

While Republicans gave Trump one standing ovation after another, Democrats
sat silently keeping their hands to themselves. But when Trump had the
effrontery to recognise in the audience the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó,
the fake president of Venezuela and threated the real government of
Venezuela, Democrats rose to their feet to join the Republicans in
applauding a known thief and scoundrel.

Trump admitted publicly there and then that the US wants to overthrow the
legitimate government of Venezuela. He ridiculously lauded a known thief,
buddy of a notorious criminal narco-traffic gang, and a political failure,
Guaidó, pretending that he is the president of Venezuela.

The USA – supposedly defender of capitalism, and corporate property –
robbed Venezuela of its oil corporation CITGO and robbed all Venezuelan
assets in USA banks. This is the biggest looting of a country outside of
active war that has ever occurred. Trump allowed the Venezuelan embassy in
Washington to be raided and taken over by hoodlums against the Geneva
Convention. He imposed illegal economic sanctions, against the UN Charter,
that have prevented Venezuela from selling oil and buying medicines and
food in the international market. The losses to Venezuela exceed $130
billion. These are all instruments of war. These are all violations of
international law, the foundation of world peace.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, on the same day, President Nicolás Maduro was
presiding over a march of many thousands of Venezuelans commemorating the
day in 1992 when Hugo Chávez rebelled against the neoliberal government of
the day that had long looted and oppressed his nation. Nicolás Maduro is
the duly elected president of Venezuela, according to the Constitution, in
orderly elections, witnessed by international observers, and he is fully
recognized as the legitimate president by the United Nations and over 100
diplomatic missions in the country. But most importantly, he is recognized,
supported by, indeed endeared to Venezuelans who see him as their hero, as
the man who is defending the country against the vicious sanctions that
have killed at least 40,000 people (2017-18) and have caused them such
economic harm and hardship.

Guaidó is, quite rightly, reviled as the one who has petitioned powerful
governments for these sanctions. Unbelievable but true, Guaidó has asked
for military intervention with no care of what such violence means for his
own countrymen. The Venezuelan people will never forget such treason.
Guaidó has absolutely no political future in Venezuela, except in jail.

Despite what Trump may imagine, Guaidó is scorned in Venezuela not just by
government supporters, but by his once followers. He has lost all support
from the opposition itself and is hounded by them with cries of “Thief!
Thief!” wherever he shows his face. Do the US Congressmen and women not
have aides who would tell them what the Latin American press, newsreels and
videos are showing, what the situation really is? Their wilfulness to go
along with the Liar-in-Chief is astounding and disturbing.

Meanwhile, in Nicolás Maduro’s real world, Venezuela has resisted the
onslaught of illegal economic sanctions, five coup attempts, and a drone
assassination attempt on his life. In Venezuela:

+ 48,090 community councils, 3,173 communes and 15,000 cooperatives are
producing, harvesting, feeding, clothing Venezuelans

+ A 3.3 million strong civilian militia stands in defense of the nation
alongside the armed forces

+ Food distribution reaches more than 6 million families each month

+ The Government has signed 500 bilateral trade agreements with China

+ Russia has provided military and economic support

+ Iran has provided medicine, food, energy and health care support

+ More than 3 million housing units have been built for more than 10
million people

+ Economists note that the economy is expanding and that the country is a
“paradox of stability”

There is social peace in Venezuela, interrupted only by the incursions of
the Colombian paramilitary gangs sent by that lackey government to harass
the frontier. There is scarcity of many goods that cannot be imported and
the private sector shows no scruples in elevating prices to suit their
capitalistic appetites. But the public sphere, the communal sphere, the
bonds of solidarity and nationalistic pride in withstanding the most
powerful nation in the world, is very strong. There is a feeling of unity,
of no exclusions for Black, Indigenous, the handicapped, poor, youth,
women, rural workers, urban workers.

And even those who may be critics of the government’s policies stand united
with Nicolás Maduro in defending the country from the madman in Washington.

Trump does not decide who is the president of Venezuela. Only the
Venezuelan people decide.

*Sources*

http://lapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/derechos-humanos-y-democracia-en-estados-unidos-por-ministerio-de-relaciones-exteriores-de-cuba/

K. Zeese, M Flowers, Popular Resistance,
 https://popularresistance.org/guaidos-failed-foreign-tour-ends/
<https://popularresistance.org/guaidos-failed-foreign-tour-ends/>

National Health Institute

US Census Bureau, 2014

OECD

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/held-record-69550-migrant-children-custody-2019-report-191112132803440.html

Resumen Latinoamericano, 21 May 2019

Orinocotribune.com, 22 Oct. 2019

Mision Verdad, http://misionverdad.com, 26 April 2019

CEPR, Washington DC, 25 April 2019

*María Páez Victor*, Ph.D. is a Venezuelan born sociologist living in
Canada.

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