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flexible and pragmatic--qualities that are fostered by democracy--and it is not doctrinaire, ideological or rigid. Doctrinaire, ideological and rigid can happen in a lot of difference systems--from far right to far left. Democracy provides important safeguards to keep the society innovative, creativie, flexible and pragmattic, and when those safeguards are corrupted--as with the need here to have a million dollars in hand even to think about running for Congress, and the takeover of our vote counting system by rightwing corporations using 'TRADE SECRET,' PRORPIETARY programming code with virtually no audit/recount controls, and the corpo/fascist monopoly of news and opinion--the society slides into the perils of "doctrinaire, ideological and rigid," as our system is doing. There is nothing more doctrinaire than a corpo/fascist spouting "free market" theology, nor more ideological than our rightwing on any topic (which is given a big trumpet by the corpo/fascist media, far beyond their actual numbers), nor more rigid than our system of corporate lobbying/campaign contribution control of our government, which has blocked all progressive change.
The Bolivarian Revolution might get doctrinaire, ideological and rigid but it is not those things now. It is a newly inspired, widespread, leftist democracy movement that is characterized by maximum citizen participation, grass roots organization, and goals of social justice, sovereignty (especially visa vis the US and our global corporate predators--including the World Bank/IMF), and cooperative economies--a truly remarkable development, both as it has manifested in ALBA (the Venezuelan-organized barter trade group) and UNASUR (the all-South American "common market"). The Bolivarian Revolution has been energizing, participatory and creative, wherever it has arisen--most notably in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador--and in its influence on Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras (where the rich oligarchy used a military coup to halt its progress), and, to some extent Chile. It is also influencing grass roots leftist movements within countries like Mexico and Peru, that currently have rightwing "free trade for the rich" governments and large US taxpayer donations to the military and the police. Both those countries may toss out their rightwing governments in the next election cycle.
One interesting innovation is in Bolivia, where the new constitution at long last acknowledge the equal rights of the indigenous (the majority in the country), and created provisions for various indigenous groups to largely govern themselves, and also protected the coca leaf (a highly nutritious traditional medicine used in teas and for chewing) and decriminalized its use. The Morales government does not tolerate cocaine trafficking and associated crime, but it is flexible enough to make the important distinction between cocaine and coca leaves. This is clearly a people-oriented policy--as are many Morales policies. The government does not engage in the stupid, fascist ideology of the "war" on drugs.
All of these new leaders have flexible economic policies--a mix of capitalism and socialism--with strong goals of use of the country's resources to help the people who live there, and social justice. The socialist goals have in no way retarded Venezuela's business climate, which saw a sizzling nearly 10% economic growth over the last five years (2003-2008), with the most growth in the private sector (not including oil), while the Chavez government managed to save $43 billion in international cash reserves. Venezuela had a head start on intelligent people running the government. They were the first, and have been the most embattled with the US, because the US imposes stupid government run by fascist criminals. All Latin American countries are still recovering from US-dictated bad government. Venezuela was in the vanguard of breaking free of those restraints, so it is doing very well.
The Chavez government has a goal of participatory democracy. They encourage it in many ways. And they and all the Bolivarians have a different sense of power--or the organization of power--than anything I've read about anywhere else, or historically. They really, truly believe that the strength of the Bolivarian Revolution is in diffuse power--power dispersed among community councils and various social groups. But Venezuela's basic government structure is similar to ours--a strong presidency, a representative legislature, etc., on national issues--and that is generally true of them all. They are trying to bend and mold the representative democracy system to the purpose of empowering the most people.
One other VERY notable characteristic of this remarkable leftist democracy movement: TRANSPARENT elections! Individual activists and civic groups and the OAS and other election monitoring groups (including the Carter Center) have done long hard work on Latin America's democratic institutions. It tells. And we really can't expect serious progressive change here until we have a well-functioning representative democracy, which means transparent vote counting--the only way to get to step 2, public financing of campaigns, and step 3, re-regulation of our public airwaves for fairness and balance in political commentary. Our representatives have become virtually deaf to us. We can't get them to throw the private (rightwing!) corporations out of our voting system. We can't get them to throw the goddamned insurance corps out of our medical care system. We are severely handicapped because our representatives do NOT represent us--and the only way to remedy that is to regain the power to elect someone who WILL represent us.
It is important to note that all of these innovative, creative, leftist governments are operating in a context of corpo/fascist media that is worse than our own! The key is TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING. Then you have the power to start reforming the media, and campaign finance, and so on. We simply don't have the power to change our system to participatory democracy. We have to start with what we have--representative democracy--and go back to fundamentals, such as counting all the votes in public view.
Participatory democracy can be, and is, used to organize causes and groups in our system, but the effectiveness of people-run movements (against the wars, or for health care, etc.) is almost entirely blockaded by the filthy corruption of our campaigns, greatly compounded by our having lost almost all transparency in the vote counting to rightwing corporations (an extremely dangerous situation).
I'd say we need to learn the NUMBER ONE LESSON of the Bolivarian Revolution: You have to be able to elect good people--and that means taking special care with how votes are counted and other election rules.. You can't have positive and progressive change without good public officials, as things are presently constituted in most countries of the world. And transparent vote counting is the first condition necessary to electing good people. We don't have that. It's gone. And most Latin American countries DO have it. That is the difference.
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