Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Dear John Oliver: Please Stop Misinforming Your Audience On Venezuela" video.

  1. It's interesting to compare the dependency on oil argument to another case. Like, oh, say, Saudi Arabia, who only just recently announced that it would sell a small part of its state-run oil industry and use that money to diversify its economy. Venezuela's been trying to do that for much longer, and without the US as an ally. And that last word is really the crux of it. When Saudi Arabia depends on oil, that's just shrewd business. When Venezuela does it, it's the failure of evil socialism. When Saudi Arabia commits human rights abuses, we send them fighter jets. When Venezuela has a humanitarian crisis, we threaten to send fighter jets.
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  2. Oliver and the other news parody shows try to walk a fine line between comedy and delivering information and critique. I don't think the "it's just comedy" defense works any better than when Internet asshats use the "it's only memes" line. Surely it's comedy, but the format, presentation, and delivery all suggest that it is more than "just" comedy. Oliver does the long form segments to give a deeper dive into a subject, and when he neglects to do something like mention that the guys Maduro had imprisoned and barred from the election were the same guys who orchestrated a US-backed right wing, corporatist, military coup against the democratically elected government, he's doing his audience a massive disservice. https://youtu.be/_fV-C1Ag5sI?t=33m59s
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  3. Venezuela's government had its problems. I'm sure its decline had nothing to do with the repeated attempts to launch right-wing, pro-corporate, military coups. No, no. Look. It was well understood by the progenitors of modern capitalist democracy that their system could not survive if it were encircled by hostile feudal states who would take advantage of every opportunity to quell the inflammation of divergent beliefs. The same has also been understood to apply to socialism and communism, going back at least to the Paris Commune. Also consider that Venezuela's economy was dependent on oil—the apparent reason for its fragility. And there's some truth to that, but also a lot of missing context and double standards. For instance, Saudi Arabia is also dependent on oil, and it is guilty of major human rights abuses, both against its own people and other nations, but Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States, and so in addition to being under our aegis, being granted weapons, having markets open to it, it's also free from the exact same squealing criticism people are leveling at Venezuela. Are the people at Mondragon waiting in bread lines and eating rats? I seem to remember the people in America doing that after its period of greatest capitalistic freedom. I also seem to remember that it was sensible social policies coupled with restrictions on the excesses of capital that helped restore Americans to a decent standard of living. In America we don't have bread lines, but we do have tons of people on food stamps, on housing subsidy, people who can't afford their medicine. The only thing that keeps these people afloat is not capitalism,; it's social policy, which is different from socialism.
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  4. You just can't understand the sophisticated critique of ideology imbedded in the Maduro eating a banana gag.
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  5. Jon Stewart still strikes me as the better of the bunch. However, he was pretty fond of that "silent moderates" schtick. So.
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  6. I remember the moment it happened. John Oliver said he wasn't going to cover Trump. A principled move. Not long later he covered Trump incessantly.
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  7. Nick G. Saudi Arabia runs on oil. When are we invading it, supporting coups, or declaring the failure of monarchy?
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  8. Do you talk to everyone that way?
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  9. Do yourself a favor and get off the Internet for a while. That much anger over a comment is not healthy. Seriously. Have a good life.
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  10. That whole Internet tough guy, logic lord thing is exactly how a grown up would behave, you're right. As for the snowflake remark, I'm not the one who blew up—oh, I'm sorry, was "amused" over nothing. Totally how well-adjusted adults act—totally. And I'll save you the trouble, I already know you have a six figure salary and bang supermodels and have degrees in physics, engineering, and history. You're an ubermensch, not some lonely fucker who lashes out on the Internet while desperately trying to convince people that he's not mediocre. Go back to watching Hitch Slap videos or whatever it is people like you do.
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  11. Well, yeah.
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