What Does Sean Penn Say About Venezuela Now

As the real-life tragedy of Venezuela unfolds and the country deteriorates into one of the most hellish places on Earth, the silence of some of former Socialist president Hugo Chavez's Hollywood supporters is deafening. Amid civil unrest and violence, citizens protest triple-digit inflation, rising crime, and food shortages, even General Motors has announced it is closing its operations in the country, a decision that came after its factory in Valencia, a city of almost one million people, was seized by government authorities. Once heralded as the vanguard of a new South America, Venezuela has become a failed state and rarely has an industrialized country fallen so far, so fast.

Inflation, bribery, and corruption are rampant as the country experiences shortages of foodstuffs, electricity, and basic medicines. Fresh water must be rationed, while infants and mothers die routinely in Venezuelan hospitals. The murder rate in the capital, Caracas, is 120/100,000 people, six times greater than the murder rate in Chicago.

As an original member of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela has been dependent on oil revenue for the last half century. Some of the country's problems have been occasioned by the drop in oil prices from $100/barrel in 2014 to about half that today. But as important as the drop in oil prices have been, the policies and government corruption of Chavez and his handpicked successor, the current President Nicolas Maduro, have been even more consequential.

Chavez, the icon of Latin American socialism, famously excoriated the rich and established programs intended to redistribute oil wealth to the poor. Meanwhile all that time, billions of dollars of public funds were diverted into secret Swiss bank accounts. The major beneficiaries of the Chavez regime appear to have been his family and friends. His daughter is reported to be a multibillionaire and the richest person in Venezuela. By contrast, Venezuelan doctors make an average of $2.20/day.

The 20-year Chavez version of socialism was a constant source of adulation for his supporters on the Left, who were seduced by his machismo and strident anti-Americanism. Charmed by his ideology, they ignored the corruption that particularly hurt the poor, who couldn't afford to pay the bribes. His supporters also overlooked the brutal measures to limit political dissent, the crackdown on free trade unions, censorship policies, and virulent anti-Semitism.

When Chavez died, three of his most notable American cheerleaders — Sean Penn, Michael Moore, and Oliver Stone — eulogized him with nothing but praise for his accomplishments. After Chavez's death in 2013, Penn told the Hollywood Reporter, "Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion ... Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of vice president [Nicolas] Maduro."

Filmmaker Michael Moore met Chavez at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. Posting pictures of the two of them together, Moore praised the late dictator in a tweet, "Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all."

But Chavez's most ardent cheerleader was Oliver Stone, who did not one, but two worshipful movies extolling the dictator's virtues. In the 2009 film "South of the Border," Stone waxed poetic on the political and social triumphs of Latin American socialism and specifically the wonders of the Chavez government.

Stone followed up that film with another, the 2014 "Mi Amigo Hugo," a fulsome love paean to Chavez. Stone and his retinue visit Chavez in Caracas, showing the caudillo strutting and dancing in his trademark red beret. The two men embrace constantly, except when Stone takes a break to interview Chavez toadies about the dictator's dietary and grooming habits. In retrospect, with what we know today, the movie is cringeworthy to watch.

When Chavez died, Stone could not contain his admiration, "I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place ... hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will live forever in history."

When Oliver Stone did his version of the last 75 years of American history in a ten-hour documentary he observed that a lot of people write autobiographies or memoirs when they get older. But his priority was to ask, "What did the times I lived through mean? And did I understand them?"

Today, the socialist paradise Oliver Stone was so enamored of is a miserable failure as the people of Venezuela suffer and die. If Stone understands, he has chosen to say nothing, something completely out of character. For him, socialism means never having to say you're sorry.

Cory Franklin is a retired physician and an Editorial Board contributor for the Chicago Tribune.

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What Does Sean Penn Say About Venezuela Now

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-deafening-silence-of-hollywoods-chavistas

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