Left blames Venezuelan misery on sanctions, but it was already a miserable place long before US sanctions

Monica Showalter:

It's been a couple of weeks now, but the Left has finally come together with a "narrative" to explain why socialist Venezuela is so miserable.

In a word: Gringos. Gringo did it.

Take a look at what's coming out of the supposedly respectable mainstream magazines from the left such as The Nation and The New Republic.

There's this one, saying both sides are at fault here, and sanctions are the worst, so let's all get along now.

There's this one, claiming that sanctions themselves are the cause of Venezuela's misery and are hypocritical to boot, given the imperfections of Latin America's other leaders and democracies, a piece loaded with lies laid thick, with the writer, Mark Weisbrot, going back full force to his old Marx Brainrot persona.

There's this one, claiming that Venezuelans don't want any U.S. help.

There's also this one claiming Venezuelans wouldn't dream of changing their vile socialist government; they just love it too much — from Ken Silverstein, who's also been accused by reputable Venezuelans of links to Fusion GPS.

Can you see a "narrative" being built? In one sense, it's how the Left is trying to deal with the embarrassment of socialist Venezuela for themselves.

But it's also false. Are they really saying that the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and its corrupt socialist dictatorship is the root-and-branch cause of why there's no food in the stores, the water runs black, the hospital patients are dying, the power is unreliable, the people are reduced to drinking from sewers and eating zoo animals, the hyperinflation is out of control, the criminals are proliferating, and any claims to democracy in the socialist paradise are an absolute joke?

U.S. sanctions are directed solely at crooks, the crooks making Venezuela the way it is, the people stealing money and hiding it in foreign banks, using it to hold Pablo Escobar money-flinging parties, along with shopping trips to Miami and trips to Disneyworld. That's why there's no money in the country — and not just from simple stealing, but from the socialist policies that put them on the top, ensuring that they are the only ones who are "allowed" to steal.

And stealing is exactly what's happening.

Deutsche Welle has some impressive reporting on how Chavistas have been stealing money from the country in a piece titled "How millions of 'dirty dollars' were laundered out of Venezuela." It's an easy-to-understand reading of a topic that normally is an eye-glazer.
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The left never takes responsibility for the misery their policies inflict.  Cuba has also blamed the sanctions ignoring the fact that it can trade with the rest of the world if it had anything worth trading for.  Venezuela squandered the oil assets it stole from others and lacked the ability to run them efficiently.  By stealing assets from companies with the expertise they had a short term run at doling out money before running out of it.  There are no goods in the stores because the idiot socialist attempted to repeal the laws of supply and demand by setting prices below the cost of producing and delivering the goods.  They created inflation that made their currency worthless.