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Extrajudicial killings and assassination attempts rarely help democracy. Quite the contrary they are the perfect environment for strongmen to grab and consolida

Extrajudicial killings and assassination attempts rarely help democracy. Quite the contrary they are the perfect environment for strongmen to grab and consolidate power. Look at the Erdogan coup, the burning of the Reichstag, the Arab revolutions that turned violent, the rise of ISIS in destabilized areas, the violent history of postcolonial Africa and so on. What makes Maduro possible is a political system that even has a strong popular component. If you remove the exponent, that system will produce another even stronger strongman, poised to "defend" the country.

grizzles 8y ago
I think you are overestimating the predictive power of the cited historical events. Whether or not killing Maduro would bring back democracy is irrelevant, the bottom line is if people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin were removed from power earlier in their lines it's reasonable to imagine that tens of millions fewer people would have suffered and died. Maduro hasn't quite reached the level of those despots yet but his removal from power would certainly be a good thing for Venezuela. I've seen pictures of babies starving to death. The guy has turned the entire country into a concentration camp through his ineptitude. Case in point: The Communist Party of China has ruled the mainland uninterrupted since 1954. Look at the phenomenal progress that's been made since Mao's death in 1976. There's no democracy in China, but different leadership has made a huge difference. There are no more famines in China.
- bumholio 8y ago
  > if people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin were removed from power earlier It's a bit ironic that you criticize the predictive power of my examples, then go full time machine to kill known mass murderers before they had the chance to do their deeds. There is little doubt that killing Hitler would have changed the course of history for the better - as much as alternate historical timelines make any sense in a discussion. The problem we are trying to solve, however, is not "how to use a time machine"; it is preventing future dictatorship without full hindsight of who will turn out to be the dictator. The year is 1933 and a new, 44 year old Chancellor is using political violence as a pretext to suspend democracy. As it would later turn out in this story, democracy matters quite a lot.
  - grizzles 8y ago
    Wikipedia puts the dates of the holocaust at: 1941–1945; according to a broader definition, 1933–1945 You don't need a time machine. It's a documented fact that people around the world knew by 1942, and some well before then. It's hard to slaughter millions of people without other people finding out about it. > The problem we are trying to solve, however, is not "how > to use a time machine"; it is preventing future > dictatorship without full hindsight of who will turn out > to be the dictator. Nope, I'm just saying that Maduro's gotta go. If you can't figure out that he's a dictator that's on you.
    - bumholio 8y ago
      So were Saddam and Gaddafi. Their elimination directly led to tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths and ongoing civil wars. Again, a simplistic world view can lead to trying to solve the wrong problem. Venezuela is still at the 'restoring democracy by any peaceful means' stage.
      - grizzles 8y ago
        You don't need to start a war to drone one guy.

grizzles 8y ago

I think you are overestimating the predictive power of the cited historical events. Whether or not killing Maduro would bring back democracy is irrelevant, the bottom line is if people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin were removed from power earlier in their lines it's reasonable to imagine that tens of millions fewer people would have suffered and died. Maduro hasn't quite reached the level of those despots yet but his removal from power would certainly be a good thing for Venezuela. I've seen pictures of babies starving to death. The guy has turned the entire country into a concentration camp through his ineptitude. Case in point: The Communist Party of China has ruled the mainland uninterrupted since 1954. Look at the phenomenal progress that's been made since Mao's death in 1976. There's no democracy in China, but different leadership has made a huge difference. There are no more famines in China.

bumholio 8y ago
> if people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin were removed from power earlier It's a bit ironic that you criticize the predictive power of my examples, then go full time machine to kill known mass murderers before they had the chance to do their deeds. There is little doubt that killing Hitler would have changed the course of history for the better - as much as alternate historical timelines make any sense in a discussion. The problem we are trying to solve, however, is not "how to use a time machine"; it is preventing future dictatorship without full hindsight of who will turn out to be the dictator. The year is 1933 and a new, 44 year old Chancellor is using political violence as a pretext to suspend democracy. As it would later turn out in this story, democracy matters quite a lot.
- grizzles 8y ago
  Wikipedia puts the dates of the holocaust at: 1941–1945; according to a broader definition, 1933–1945 You don't need a time machine. It's a documented fact that people around the world knew by 1942, and some well before then. It's hard to slaughter millions of people without other people finding out about it. > The problem we are trying to solve, however, is not "how > to use a time machine"; it is preventing future > dictatorship without full hindsight of who will turn out > to be the dictator. Nope, I'm just saying that Maduro's gotta go. If you can't figure out that he's a dictator that's on you.
  - bumholio 8y ago
    So were Saddam and Gaddafi. Their elimination directly led to tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths and ongoing civil wars. Again, a simplistic world view can lead to trying to solve the wrong problem. Venezuela is still at the 'restoring democracy by any peaceful means' stage.
    - grizzles 8y ago
      You don't need to start a war to drone one guy.