Today I was invited to a Christmas gathering/celebration/party, whatever you wish to call it. This is a very unique thing to be happening to me in a country where the majority of people don't have enough money to buy food. And in spite of the fact that it took place, it was evident that things had changed by the poor attendance to the party, and by the fact that people were not extremely merry and many left early. Nonetheless, the few of us who attended it had a good time eating a lot of food and speaking about the country. These people are coworkers of mine at a school of photography, and some even taught me lessons in photography. Most of them are also older than me and male, which puts me in a disadvantage when discussing things. They eventually got to discussing political systems, and I intervened in said discussion to mention that socialism is the same no matter what form it takes.
That is when most of the men banded together to tell me that democratic socialism is not the same as communism, and that "no real socialism has taken place in Venezuela."
These are people who have lived through the same 20 years of socialist terror in Venezuela that I've lived. One of them is even a Jewish survivor of the Nazis, and is incapable of seeing the similarities.
This is one of the reasons why Venezuela is in the sinkhole it is nowadays. Its very people are incapable of seeing the truth even if you illuminated it with a torch the size of a stadium.
