Friday, September 24, 2010

Venezuelan September 26th Elections Open Thread

It's election day September 26th in Venezuela. The vote will be for seats in the parliament. Previously the opposition to Hugo Chavez, boycotted the election, and ran no candidates. This time they're running with full force.

See this
.

RENEGADE EYE

13 comments:

Frank Partisan said...

It's late Sunday night, the election is over.

I watched both the government and rightist TV stations. Interesting that the rightist TV station, had a time delay of about 1 minute on live events as speeches.

As of 1am in Minnesota, results are not official.

Nevin said...

Ren,

Guardian newspaper is doing a poll... here is the link...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2010/sep/27/venezuela-hugo-chavez

I already voted... :)

Frank Partisan said...

This is a good, honest assessment of the election.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Maybe part of the problem with Venezuela is the same thing as what the problem is with Cuba. To quote Troutsky from the comments of a previous post-

"Fidel has never been an intellectual or very consistent in his analysis or system of thought. Part of the problem."

So is that what it takes to make for a successful socialist state? Does Hugo need to be an intellectual? Or should he be replaced by one?

Now we see why socialism always fails. There seems to be an alarmingly consistent lack of intellectuals within the socialist movement.

One could knock me over with a feather.

Frank Partisan said...

It would take someone smart to make Cuba capitalist:

1) No industrial base.
2) No capitalist class.

With capitalism would come dismantling the healthcare and education system.

Cuba would be Haiti.

Frank Partisan said...

I don't know any conservative intellectual.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Intellectuals poison everything they touch. They approach every problem, every situation, from the perspective of ideology. Few if any of them have ever had to live the way the average person lives, so they can neither identify or empathize with them or their lives. I'll take a person who has walked the walk over pie-in-the-sky theory any day of the week.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Wild generalisations don't serve anyone very well, an example would be to say that all anti-intellectuals are actually taking such a position because they fear learning and are insecure at their own lack of knowledge and learning and thus mis-trust those skills in someone else, projecting their deep, corrupting self-loathing onto the other.

Best to avoid them altogether I think.

SecondComingOfBast said...

I am talking about the kind of intellectual whose entire knowledge base is study and learning oriented, and who is driven by theory, but whose real-world knowledge and expertise is limited at best.

That is the case with most politicians, or any persuasion or ideology. It is particularly true of second generation politicians such as the Bushes, the Kennedys, etc. Al Gore and Evan Bayh are two other American examples. Born, raised, and educated in Washington schools, surrounded by Washington elites, etc.

If they were to be out on the road and had a flat tire in the middle of the night, and their cell phone wasn't working and they were alone on a deserted stretch of road, with no food or water, there very survival would be dependent solely on who or what might step by to assist them-or otherwise. If no one stopped by, it would not be going to far to say they would starve to death there on that spot.

What qualifies such a creature to pass laws meant to govern and regulated my life.

The same with intellectual theorists. There is a reason why people with real world expertise tend not to be impressed with pie-in-the sky dream world thinking.

Frank Partisan said...

Theory makes it so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time something happens. Theory with practice is called praxis.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Pagan:

Thanks for narrowing down your parameters from the general to the specific, I would now argue, based on your own criteria, that this kind of intellectual you speak of is a hypothetical one and thus, pointless discussing.

I would also argue that not many intellectuals would fit your brief at all.

The names you list are not intellectuals, they are politicians.

The idea also that just because someone may have read some books means that they can't change a tire, do carpentry or erect a tool shed is a wild and pointless generalisation.

It would be equally offensive to attack a mechanic for being thick with regards to geopolitical global policy on gas fields.

Each to their own, all has a value and I'm sorry but I'd rather my world leaders were clever rather than good with a spanner.

Again, this anti-intelligence approach is all very Tea Party, a great position to take in opposition but ruling needs intelligence rather than manual labour skills.

Also, the selective nature of these skills also makes the point ridiculous.

I for instance am a very good welder, my dad taught me but many carpenters are awful welders, so can we only have welders or carpenters, or what about bricklayers? Which manual skills do we rate in this bizarre selection process for political skill?

The terms real people and intellectual are too general, too wide to have any meaning, I just get the feeling they are terms to enable you to bash people who read books and those who work with their hands.

Romanticising ignorance is the way of the Tea Party and who wants to be connected with those jokers?

SecondComingOfBast said...

"The names you list are not intellectuals, they are politicians."

The point is, those names I listed are people who are ideologues, they subscribe in whole to a specific ideology, and they have no flexibility in their thinking. They are knee-jerk liberals or conservatives, with absolute zero real world knowledge or expertise. As such, they are unqualified to speak for me or to represent me. The fact that they have read books by some intellectuals whom they subscribe to does not change that fact.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Of course, anyone in their right mind would support flexible, open-minded thinking and any intellectual worth their salt would subscribe to such a creed.

Your problem it seems is not with intellectuals but with close-minded idiots.