Comment by estearum
8 days ago
> If Maduro is gone, it's a good thing.
Agree with your overall sentiment but this is just a ridiculous position to hold at this point. History is absolutely full of horrible people being toppled just for more horrible people to take their place. There is literally no evidence whatsoever of a plan for post-Maduro Venezuela. At all!
They're either acting completely clueless for the cameras for some unknown reason, or this is very likely going to go really badly.
Venezuela has already been going really badly, by nearly any quantitative metric of "how going". This is a country that - a couple decades ago - was a rare success story of democracy and prosperity in Latin America.
I think the Venezuelans will work it out, despite Trump's ineptitude.
I see this sentiment around here a lot and I just have to laugh.
Things going badly does not mean — even at all — that things cannot go much much worse.
Libya was bad and got worse
Syria was bad and got worse
Afghanistan was bad and got worse
Sudan was bad and got worse
In fact, nearly every really bad situation was already bad, and then it got worse.
I can appreciate that but taken to its conclusion it's a recipe for paralysis and complacency. It always could be worse, so let's just let sit here and let shit happen?
Unlike all those places you mention, Venezuela has a democratic tradition which was only recently derailed. This isn't some middle eastern theocratic monarchy. It's "get back on track" not "find new tracks where none existed before".
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