A Valentine, Chilean Beer, and This One Crazy Trick to Cure Socialism

“He’s the new regional sales manager, my immediate boss, and a tyrant.  They call him the Little Pinochet.” – Psych

Ahhh, Valentine’s Day!  You can feel the romance in the air, along with the communists.

I got off the airplane at the international airport in Chile, in Santiago.  The airport was beautiful, clean.  The view of Aconcagua, the tallest mountain outside of Asia, had been magnificent as we flew into the dawn.  When I had recently flown into Mexico City, there was a bewildering list of things NOT to do to avoid being kidnapped or killed, especially in taxi selection.  There were also numerous scraggly-bearded 18 year olds in camo uniforms on numerous corners.  “To make tourists feel good,” I was told.

In Chile?  None of that.  It appeared that the biggest danger was getting a hickey:  as we drove along the beautiful broad avenues I was struck by the sheer number of adults making out on park benches on that warm November afternoon.

Yeah.  People were getting busy, very busy.  Dozens and dozens of them.  In pairs, not like a clump of people making out.  This isn’t Weinstein’s house.  I tried, in my broken high-school-grade Spanish to ask about them.  The cab driver shrugged.  “It is a wonderful warm day.  People are happy.”  Or maybe it was “Aliens are invading and wish to floss your belly after they cover you with strudel.”  Seriously, my Spanish is that bad.

Throughout my trip, my impression was that Chile was beautiful.  Free.  Growing.  The restaurants were filled with music and laughter and fantastic food at reasonable prices.  As I got to work (this was a business trip) I went through the records of the company.  They brought in lunch – sandwiches and a great local beer called Cristal™.  The manager I had been talking with was fluent in English.  Our lunch conversation moved away from business to what Chile was like as a country.

Okay, the manager I was working with didn’t look like that.  His bikini was green.

The Internet specifically said that you should NOT bring up Augusto Pinochet as a topic.  In fact, this joke (I would cite where I found it, but it’s been years) was used as an example:

An American tourist was visiting Chile.  He asked his host, “What do you think of Pinochet?”  The host immediately blindfolded the tourist, and threw him in the back of a car.  They drove for hours.  Then the tourist was placed in a boat, and he could hear the oars of the rowboat furiously paddling.  The host pulled his blindfold off.  They were in the middle of a lake, it was in the middle of the night.  The host leaned toward the American and whispered:

“I like him.”

So, back to lunch.  I decided to ask the unaskable question.  There was a short pause.  The manager said, skipping the blindfold, the car, and the boat:  “He did what he had to do.  He saved our country.”  He didn’t look angry, he didn’t look upset at the question, heck, he even offered me another beer.

A communist told me that Pinochet made this girl so poor she has to ride a bike.

In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected with 36.2% of the vote on a socialist platform of free stuff for everyone.  By decree, he began dismantling the economy through nationalization.  In an additional stroke of genius, they “just paid for things” out of new money that they printed.  Inflation?  Nah, the wage and price controls were supposed to prevent that, so that inflation must be your imagination.  Even Wikipedia indicates that Allende was accused of a wide variety of crimes that your average Yale© Socialist™ would love to have on a job application:

• Rule by decree, you know, Allende had a pen and a phone.
• Ignoring pesky judicial decisions.
• Taking over the media or silencing those that opposed him.
• Supporting illegal takeovers of farms.
• Not letting people leave the country.

In 1973, Allende was deposed in a coup, which probably saved the country from a civil war.  Although Allende had been offered safe conduct out, he chose to commit suicide using an AK-47 that Fidel Castro gave him.  I’m pretty sure the Communist Dictator’s Etiquette Book says this is bad luck, but Fidel was a rebel who liked to break the rules.  He even executed political prisoners after Labor Day, a big no-no.

Installed in Salvador’s place was General Augusto Pinochet.  Pinochet revitalized the Chilean economy, and in the 17 years of his rule actually increased freedom over time.  In 1990 when the people voted that he shouldn’t continue as president, he stepped down.  This is slightly different than the communist leader’s model for leaving power:  death.

As far as I could find, most of the people killed for political reasons in Chile were killed soon after the coup – the total of killed and “disappeared” people was a little over 3,000 according to most sources.  I’d imagine that most of those killed were hardcore communists, including nearly 1,000 Marxist guerillas.  I’d even bet that most were Soviet sponsored.  And the helicopter rides?  Probably only 120 or so, which would have been a really slow day for Stalin or Mao.

This meme is in error, as this is clearly a Marxist chimp.  (Unless it identifies as a gorilla.) 

Do I condone the killings?  No.  But when you look at the outcome, compare Chile 17 years after Pinochet took power (when he voluntarily stepped down after an election) and Venezuela 17 years after Chavez.  Chile produced the strongest economy in South America during that time frame, even called a “miracle.”  Venezuela’s economy lagged behind South America’s, even as the world saw record high crude oil prices, which comprise 95%+ of Venezuela’s exports.  And the number of deaths caused by Venezuelan communists?  Well, the media doesn’t count them since communists mean well.  But the murder rate is through the roof in Venezuela, and 30%+ of the children experienced stunted growth due to malnutrition.  That’s okay – only 280,000 kids are at risk of starving to death, and that was estimated in 2017 when things were far better than they are today.  This communism thing has no downside.

To put it starkly:  Allende would have killed and/or starved 100-1000 times as many, had he been given time to implement his plan.

Wow.  That’s a whole bunch of prosperity you should ignore because it didn’t come from a leftist government.

The following quote is from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel, Starship Troopers. How good is this book?  So good that it was criticized noting its “unashamedly Earth-chauvinist nature.”  I assume the critic was a bug-man from the planet Klendathu, but to my eyes, that reads as praise.  I actually prefer to read books where people are the good guys, primarily because I are a people.  If only they had made a movie out of it . . . .

Regardless, a large part of the book is political philosophy, and here’s an example that speaks to our subject matter today:

“Back to these young criminals.  They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes.  The usual sentence was:  for a first offence, a warning, a scolding, often without trial.  After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation.  A boy might be arrested may times and convicted several times before he was punished — and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits.  If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation — ‘paroled’ in the jargon of the times.

“This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements.  Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called ‘juvenile delinquent’ becomes an adult criminal — and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder.”

He had singled me out again.  “Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house … and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?”

“Why … that’s the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!”

“I agree.  Or a child. Whose fault would it be?”

“Uh … why, mine, I guess.”

“Again I agree.  But I’m not guessing.”

I just wish the artist hadn’t been so subtle with the cover.  Again, too bad they never made a movie of this great book.

In life, being nice when being mean is required is a death sentence.  The band Rush even refers to it in an apt phrase in one of their songs – “kindness that can kill.”  I could get topical with news out of today’s paper about a group of politicians selling just that poison, that kindness that can kill.  It seems to get lots of votes.  Even Chavez got quite a few votes despite Venezuela lagging behind the rest of Latin America in growth because he destroyed the ability of his country to create wealth.  How?  Through firing everyone who knew anything about oil and then refusing to invest to replace the worn out parts that produced the crude oil.

The siren call of “free stuff” kept pulling people back.

Sadly true.  Hat tip to Aesop at the Raconteur Report (LINK), he originally snagged it from Bayou Renaissance Man (LINK).

Every day the news illustrates the left moving farther left in the United States.  Open calls for socialism or blatantly socialist proposals are nearly a weekly event.  Although I’d prefer to avoid the fate of either a Chavez or a Pinochet, I know which one I’d pick, since it doesn’t require a war that will tear the country apart just to be free.

Oh, wait, did someone mention free stuff?  Never mind.  I’m sure socialism will work this time.