My personal idea of mental sanity, freedom and democracy
www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, February 23, 2003 By: Paul Volgyesi
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 23:38:55 +0100 From: Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: I very badly miss the country we had
Dear Editor: "I very badly miss the country we had before Chavez ... a country in which we could all smile to each other." (One of the many on the same tune)
Any zoo expert will confirm that all animals living behind steel bars are highly neurotic. My personal idea of mental sanity, freedom and democracy doesn't include living either behind steel bars or in guarded compounds as all middle-class and up has to in all of Latin America (non-exhaustive).
So against all my cells crying for Latin sun, and despite my hate of the cold, I moved to Canada thirty some years ago and bought a house with no fence toward the curb, like zillions in Canada.
My neighbors, owning the same front-fenceless houses, were workers or engineers, cops and white collars, doctors, whatever. The poor were in worse houses, but in houses, had a bad life, but didn't go hungry ... and a huge part of crime was relevant to criminology and not sociology.
Now, calling "the country we had before Chavez ... a country in which we could all smile to each other" is either a case of selective blindness, or it really vindicates those claims that Upper Venezuela considers Lower Venezuela as populated by non-humans ... a mentality which is by no means specific to Venezuela or even Latin America.
And I'm not theorizing this.
This is like a soccer team where only the coaches and referees get three meals a day. Of course, the players all smile at the owners so they can keep at least their ONE meal a day. Oh! So sorry! I forgot the TV guys who get 2 for telling us how great a game these starving guys are showing us!
Saying that freedom and democracy require the shrinking of the income span and not the current opposite trend isn't some kind of whacko ideology ... it only requires looking at how people live here and there in the world.
- Now since we've all been taught at school that we must participate in democracy, comes a guy who says: "participate" and they all start shooting at him?
If the so(or self?)-called 'meritocrats' had decided to participate, Venezuela would be on its way to look like Switzerland ... the rich would still be rich, albeit maybe less shamefully, and everybody would be smiling at each other.
Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu