Socialist utopia in Nicaragua running out of other people's money and violence ensues

Monica Showalter:

Daniel Ortega, the rabid, "freely elected" dictator of Nicaragua, and a guy who's been at it for so long that even the great Ronald Reagan knew about him and loathed him, has been having some problems in the Cuba-style hellhole he created in the name of "social justice."

The socialist thug has been siccing his goons to shoot protesters dead in the streets after a few of the youthful ones got the ball rolling with protests against his long, corrupt rule.  Get a load of how bad it was, according to the BBC:

Some students said they had been beaten and tortured by police while in custody.  The claims could not be independently verified.

Images on social media showed some, visibly distressed and with their heads shaved, as they were released.

At least 25 people are reported to have died in days of violent protests.

The unrest started last Wednesday when hundreds of people, mainly pensioners, took to the streets of the capital, Managua, to protest against changes to the country's social security system.

Protesters and some journalists covering the demonstration were set upon by men wearing motorcycle helmets who beat them with metal pipes and electric cables.

Obviously, this is a regime with big problems holding on.  It can't let protests burn themselves out, as is typically done in Latin America, because it sees them as a mortal threat.  So the regime slaughters a few dozen to discourage the others.

The likely most discussed reason will be that it has lost its patron, Venezuela, as a supplier of cheap oil and corrupt opportunities for the elites to line their pockets.  Less likely to be discussed is that socialism is an inherently unsustainable system premised on free stuff and some animals being more equal than others, sucking the life out of the legitimate economy.

Like all socialist regimes, Nicaragua never had a viable economic model.  It was always dependent on some sugar daddy, whether in Moscow or in oil-rich Caracas, to pay its bills.  Venezuela's socialist oil supply eventually ran out.

With the oil and the money attached to it gone, the protests have started and are certain to get bolder as the social-justice nightmare fails to adapt a sustainable economic model.  Lately, Venezuela has seen the same thing, less from its starving people than from scorn among its neighbors.  Just as Reagan branded Ortega the skunk at the garden party of democracy, so Peruvians have branded Venezuela's dictator, Nicolás Maduro, the pig at the garden party of democracy.

The free stuff is gone, but the socialist government control remains.

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The country has also lost protected status for its immigrants to the US after the Trump administration took over.  Socialism is a failure.  It takes great arrogance combined with ignorance to try to impose socialism on a country.  Those who see countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua as a model should be forced to live there until they change their minds.