Venezuelan protest overrun by government forces.

[happyslug]

99. One of the comments about the "sides" in Venezuela is it is both class and race driven

And that is from people who OPPOSE Chavez. You may not like it, but it is a factor in the dispute within Venezuela. The lower classes, to which most (but not all) of the non-white are in support Chavez and his successors. The upper classes, those of the top 40% of income earners tend to be the opposition. AS you go up in Venezuelan economic classes, the whiter it becomes, as you go down the less white is becomes.

Now, in the last election the present President won just over 50% of the vote, which means he not only received MOST of the non-white vote (which is only 40% of the population) but at least 20-30% of the white vote (Whites make up 60% of the population, 20% of 60% is 12% of the total population, thus the Present President had to get all of the non-white vote and 20% of the white vote to win. Getting 100% of any vote is near to impossible, even 10% of African American vote GOP in the US today, thus the winner had to get more then 20% of the white vote to compensate for the number of non-white who did not vote for him).

The above is just an observation on how voters tend to vote. I would not be surprised that most of the upper class people know no one, other then servants and employees who years ago learned to keep their month shut if they wanted to keep their jobs, who voted for Chavez or his successor. Thus, in their mind, the present President had to cheat to get elected for no one they talk to admit to voting for him.

Venezuela is a classic class war going on, with the opposition refusing to do anything that the lower classes see as being in their best interests. Thus the opposition is always just short of a majority (and if they did proposed things that help the lower classes, many of their present supporters will desert them for someone who refuses to do so, thus they are caught in a bind).

The US is supporting those people who talk to them on a regular basis, their fellow members of the upper middle class (to actually talk to the poor, people may have to actually speak Spanish and worse the Spanish as spoken in the streets of Venezuela, not the classic Seville Spanish as taught in most High Schools and Collages and is spoken to Americans by Venezuelans who learned such classic Seville Spanish in their High School and Collages) .

Thus, class and race are a factor in the dispute in Venezuela, something most reporters do NOT want to address (it is also a factor in Egypt and even the Ukraine, in the Ukraine, you have many upper middle class people wanting to go with the EU, even at the cost of losing most of their industry. The working class, who tends to be working in those industries in the Eastern Part of the Ukraine, tend want to join Russia for that is where most of their business is with and they see the alignment with the EU as a direct attack on them, something the Ukraine has refused to do till recently).

Yes, I brought up race, for it is related to Class. Race and Class are the two subjects banned from discussion today. Almost anything else can be discussed, militarism, sexism, race independent of class, sexual preferences etc, but not class and not race and class. Race AND Class are one subject no one wants to discuss, and class itself is even more verboten.