Scenes from a memory.

It's a warm day; as most are. It's our schools "sports week" and I'm doing my very best to avoid both heat and sport by making my way into the school auditorium. Later that week I'll be performing on this stage singing in a school rock band. That was pretty embarrassing and not at all what this story's about.

As I walk in my best friend of the last couple of years comes over to meet me. He's not in the band, although in the next year he would become one of the most talented young guitar players I ever knew, he's just here to hang out with me.

"Dude..." he says "You have GOT to listen to this"

Of course, we're Venezuelan and this was happening in Spanish, so I'll be translating for the story. what he actually said was more like "MA-RI-CO... Brother...escucha esta vaina"

We sit at the edge of the auditorium stage as a few other people wonder around, people we're completely oblivious to. He pulls out a DiscMan and hands me the headphones. I offer to share one as we've done before but he rejects it saying "You gotta experience this properly man". He holds the DiscMan steady to make sure it doesn't skip.

He plays track 6 of Dream Theaters "Metropolis Pt2: Scenes from a memory" to me. The song is called "Beyond this life"

(make sure you play it loud for full effect)

This was the most intense intro to a song I think I'd heard at age 13. If you stick through the 11 minutes of this song (another bewildering concept for me at the time) you'll hear crazy guitar, keyboard, bass and drum solos. Just the rhythm at times seems so complicated (if you can't be bothered to listen to all of it I suggest listening to the two minutes or so from 5:55 on). It introduced us to the whole idea of prog-rock.  It was also a kind of turning point for me and Gerardo.

For him, it meant selling up a bunch of his "Magic: the Gathering" cards, buying an electric guitar and quickly becoming masterful at playing it. I asked for a bass for my birthday that year and utterly failed at playing any Dream theater on it (it doesn't help that John Myung plays an 8 string bass). For us as friends it became a mayor bonding point. We were already jointly obsessed over "The Legend of Zelda", "Final Fantasy" and "Lord of the Rings" and other things generally nerdy that we had loved since before we'd met, but over the last year or so we had undergone a transformation together from nerds into nerdy metalheads that had been initiated by our previous discovery of Metallica.

Now Dream Theater was the obsession and we spent countless hours listening to the whole album start to finish (its a concept album with a continuous story and most of the songs blend seamlessly into one another). We stayed up all night at his house watching the live concert DVD and watching and re-watching some of the solos. Gerardo was one of a relatively small number of people in the world who pre-ordered and received the original version of "Live scenes from New York" that included an image of the New York skyline, twin towers included, on fire; before this was recalled as it was released on  9/11. A few of the copies had already gone out in the post, and he got one which he kept sealed and bought a new copy to actually listen to.  I'm going off on a tangent... point is, we loved them. It raised our appreciation of technically proficient musicians and bonded us closer to each other.

Over those years I remember a hundred conversations had with complete and utter seriousness about what our future would be. I picked up a little skill at drawing from my older brother and had it in my head that I would be a famous Marvel comics artist one day. He was modelling his guitar career around Dream Theaters John Petrucci. Having heard that the members of DT had attended Berklee college of music in Boston this was now G's dream. We discussed how we would live in Boston because I could probably do comics work from anywhere and sure it wasn't that far to go into the Marvel headquarters in New York  for meetings sometimes. We researched it; looked at the fees vs what a comics artist made and part time work salaries and thought "yeah we could do this" with the total clueless mentality about adult expenses that young teenagers have. Over the years the plan adapted as our understanding of the word improved. Now we thought we would get scholarships and I would go to a school of art in the area. Later, when we we're both expelled from school for bad grades and a politically unstable time hit Caracas in 2002 I moved to Ireland (because I was among those lucky enough to have family and a place to go abroad) the plan just adapted and molded. I would get my own place, and if he could jut raise the money for the flights, G could live with me in Ireland. There was good music programs here, sure it might not be Berklee but how fussy could two Venezuelan kids be realistically? We held on to that for years, compromising on the details but holding on to the core. We would be roommates and we would follow our dreams and we would succeed.

Of course, he couldn't really raise the absurd costs of the flights. Nor the college fees for an international student. His family struggled financially, something we were sheltered from but now became more apparent. He also didn't have a visa of course, something we would worry about and try to get him later. But again, to no avail.

His life had become static and mine continued to move forward. The viscous realities of our home's politics and crime we're ever more intrusive. His father died, his body giving way to years and years of cocaine use that he had somehow managed to keep secret from his family. The resulting fallout shocked him and, maybe as a twisted way to understand his father better, G became an addict himself for a few years. I've often thought about how circumstances beyond our control, like our families different means and the accident of birth that allowed me the right to move away from Venezuela but made it impossible for him impacted our lives. I was no more deserving of opportunity than he was. I guess that's probably true for a lot of people, but its striking when you can so clearly see the forks in the road that separate you from someone who would otherwise be so similar.

We spoke often, on the phone, online through chats etc. a couple of times I visited home and saw him often when I did. He did his best to hide it but life had not been kind. He was thin, his jobs didn't fulfill him. He spoke three languages fluidly and could read Latin, had absorbed more literature than anyone else our age that I knew. Made philosophy jokes and laughed to himself when nobody got it, but worked as a waiter and had never managed to get his high school diploma. I often told him that if he could just get his head down and play the game, get the stupid diploma, he'd find himself teaching or writing professionally before he'd know it. Easy for me to say, I didn't live in his life.

We could still talk about Fantasy, Metallica and of course Dream theater. We would try to introduce each other to new bands, games or books, usually to find the other had already found it and loved it. He could play some of the DT riffs now on his guitar nearly as well as the album. In every breath he exalted intelligence and talent, and it frustrated me like nothing else in my life that I couldn't help him achieve all that I knew he could.

My mother passed away and I found myself suddenly in Venezuela again. I couldn't reach him for days, his phone had changed, but at the funeral he was just there. "I heard today, I'm so sorry". My mom had been good to him and he was genuinely sad. His presence helped to ground me in a day where I felt the world around me change and crack. He had gone to rehab and put on a lot of weight, which compared to the thin addict from before was great. He told me how in his days of most intense withdrawal he had imagined, or perhaps hallucinated, that I was there chatting to him. That although he knew it wasn't real it helped him cope to pretend. He apologized for things he had done and said as an addict (part of his recovery process) and I forgave him without a second thought. We're in our late 20s now. I have a son and will be married soon. He's happy for me and I can tell its really real, he really wishes he could meet him. He'd be best man if he could make the trip. I say that and he thanks me, but we both know there's no way.

About 18 months later we talk again. The calls arent so frequent now but they still flow without any awkwardness as if we had just spoken the previous day. I tell him I'm starting a business, he tells me abut how he makes a bit of money by selling items in World of Warcraft online to people in the US. "Its only a few dollars but with the crazy black market exchange here I can get a lot for a few dollars" he says. It's a sign of how the Venezuelan economy has imploded and collapsed, but the people find a way. "a lot of people are doing it, pays a lot better than working in a shop". I don't give him advise or push him anymore. I can't even really comprehend the challenges of living in Caracas now, advice would feel unforgivably arrogant.

He asks if we can do a video call. We do. He's lost the weight, seems in good shape. He calls someone over.

A thin young man walks into the screen and hugs Gerardo from behind. "So yeah" he says "I'm bisexual" He introduces me to his boyfriend and it sounds like one of the more serious long term relationship he's ever had. I'm a little taken aback but I immediately tell him I think its great he found someone. We punch through the awkward moment with a couple of jokes and before long we're chatting like ever. Its still G, nothings changed, and he seems happier. We talk about Game of Thrones.

Sometime in mid 2017, a few months after the call, a friend of ours, Carlos, messaged me and asked me if I knew.

"Know what" I said.

Nobody really knew exactly, but Gerardo was missing. His mom, whom he lived with and took care off, had died. He wasn't home, his (now ex) boyfriend said he didn't know where he was.

After a couple of days a story was pieced together. From the guard at his building and what he'd seen, from what a journalist friend was able to find out and add to what another friend of a friend of someone else got from a cop. One of the most frustrating things about Venezuela is how there often isn't any system in place, no one to ask, and even when there is you can't always trust the answer. I'm sitting here over 3000 miles away calling and messaging friends trying to get a straight answer. Eventually Carlos found a cemetery record to confirm it. He was dead.

Gerardo died in a riot of sorts, stabbed (we think) in the communal cell of a police station. His mother was ill, and they couldn't afford to keep her in the hospital so they were sent home. His mother died somehow later that day and when the police were called they took Gerardo away. We have many theories as to why. The guard in the building thinks that she was in pain and, possibly, Gerardo had somehow helped her to die at her request. This seems maybe like the kind overly dramatic thing you could expect from a rumor but knowing them and their views its not impossible. Others think that she just died herself and Gerardo, who still smoked weed occasionally, was either stoned when the cops came or they simply spotted weed in the house and when they asked for a bribe he didn't have it. None of us really know exactly what happened. At some point he was arrested, and a couple of days later he was dead. None of us who knew and loved him where there, we didn't even know what was happening. Carlos had first contacted me I think two weeks or maybe three after these events had actually happened, when he had first tried to get in touch and wasn't able to.

Its hard to describe loosing someone that you feel so close to from so far away. Day to day life isn't affected since he wasn't a part of day to day life anymore. My wife had met him but didn't know him (and she met him at his worst not his best). Nobody else around me knew him at all. There was no one to really share the pain with and no one who understood. Over the following days there was a number of very long distance phone calls as I told some of our other friends living in places as distant as Argentina or Australia. Over the phone I cried and shared memories with people from a past life who I miss and probably will never see again. then we hang up the phone, and we all go back to our lives in foreign countries.

Last weekend, I traveled to London to see Dream Theater play for the first time. It's the 20th anniversary of that album I first heard in the school auditorium on a Discman that brought me and my friend closer together. I've never traveled anywhere further than a bus or train away to see a band. I took a bus, a plane and a train, spending money I really don't have and leaving my heavily pregnant wife with two kids to look after to see them. I almost didn't but she encouraged me to go and I'll always thank her for letting me have this moment. DT played the whole album back to back, and, like a total sap, in the middle of a gig where everyone had long hair and black t-shirts, I cried. He was there somehow, if only in my heart. We had that last moment together freaking out over amazing music; and then, as James LaBrie sang the words to "Finally Free", I said my goodbyes. Not only to him, but to that life. I said goodby to the apartment near Berklee that we never had, to the band we never started, to the books he didn't write and most of all the conversations we never had.

To all the afternoons listening to Dream Theater that never were, I said goodby.

Someday if things change, perhaps I will go visit his grave, or visit the old places we used to hang. Until then I remember my friend not in the places, but in the music we shared.

To any who knew him who may read this, I hope it helps.

Big hug.

"Move on, be brave
Don't weep at my grave
Because I'm no longer here
But please never let
Your memories of me disappear"

 

 

 

 

 

Refocusing the debate

There's a fundamental message that I find myself repeating over and over. If you read back along my blog here or ever discuss politics with me in real life, you'll find a recurring theme. I feel too much focus is placed on the battle between established ideologies, as defined by the words that describe them in bulk, such as "socialism" or "capitalism", "left" and "right".

I am not an expert myself on the meanings of these words. I have looked them up of course, those and others like them, and what I see in those definitions is not always a perfect match for how I had percieved them (what me and many nowadays call socialism I think better fits the definition of social democracy for example), or how I see them being used. You can hear experts talk for hours about the pros and cons of this or that, the risks in each system. The bias of any speaker almost inevitably comes through. Bias doesn't mean that what they say is wrong. Thats partly what makes it more dangerous. Its the inevitable spin we all use, consiously or otherwise. You state your case in the way that makes it most apealing. We present information not deceitfully as someone with the oposite bias might claim but simply with our own focus. emphasising what we think is imprtant, perhaps dismissing something others might think important. There's a fundamental empathy required in any real dialogue of firstly realising that both sides are likely engaging in the same level of subtle manipulation of language through uncontious bias, and in maintaining the presense of mind to know that this does not mean our oponent is sinister or ill-intentioned. Thats not to say they can't be; but there can be no dialogue if we presume that anyone who doesnt already agree is in some way corrupt, foolish, or dishonest.

We all know we live in an increasingly polarised world. When we fight our ideological battles through some quick witted meme we dont open the door to real debate. So much of the "debate" occurs in isolated bubles where political players, or just individual spreading their views, talk not to the oposing side but simply to others who already agree. A dialogue founded in self-satisfaction, in giving ourselves the feeling that we took a stand and spoke out whilst keeping ourselves safe of any true danger of confrontation or having our ideas really challenged. Every week on social media in the UK, after the two main party leaders have had their debate in parliament, the videos come thick and fast of each saying their prepared lines of attack against the other. Tellingly, each side shares only the clip showing their own leader speaking, and never the oponents reply, or their initial statement. Goes for both sides, exactly as each other. you have to go looking for the full debate, to see the actual exchange. Then, when you see it, you realise how often they utterly ignore each others words in their replies. knowing full well that they are not in fact speaking to each other, but to their own base of supporters online.

I find now, in my efforts to genuinely try to understand the view from both sides, that a great deal of us are not as diferent as we initially think. If we can lift the veil of presumptions and dogma from our debates we will find much more agreememnt than disagreement, and in those places were we still disagree we will at least find understanding and the foundations of compromise, and there a path forward.

We are one humanity. We are more than tribes.

Lets base our debates around goals and then hear each other on the solutions. We should consider each other honest and well-intentioned until proven otherwise.

I am not "a socialist" or "a capitalist". I am not "a leftist" or "right-wing". I am a person. I own a small business and want to be able to work at it to make it succeed, but I also want to see the poor and downtrodden looked after and not abandoned. I dont honestly care what Karl Marx or Adam Smith said, what they defined and explained. We can learn from history and its figures but we cant stop the buck at ideas developed 200 years ago and pretend that we havent spoted some flaws in both in the time since. That they cant perhaps learn a thing or two from each other a find a balance.

Why can't I say that I would like to see everyone have access to health-care without having to fear the cost or debt; or that there should be a basic social welfare safety net, without being called a socialist and told that I endorse goverment control over the economy and that I want them to "seize the  means of production". Why can't I say that Venezuela is being ruled by an a torturous dictatorship without someone saying I am part of the wealthy elite and out of touch with comon venezuelans, even though I am from there and have family and friends there and the people contradicting me don't. Why can't I say that I want to be able to aspire to succes and perhaps a degree of luxiourious wealth should my business ever do well enogh without someone telling me that that contradicts my views on social security? can we stop turning the world black and white and realise that complex issues need complex and well debated answer, and stop this ridiculous obcessions with 200 year old ideologies that have allready shown their failings and realise these are not the only answers we have to choose from?

Can we stop talking about left and right and istead just talk about sustainable economies, about eradicating poverty, about climate change and the spread of preventable disease. Can we do that without stringing each other up and burning each other at the stake?

We all just want to be happy. Can we just talk about how we can achieve a good baseline of that for everyone, and the potential to strive beyond in an even playing field for those who can or want to?

How is it we can send a machine to orbit a moon of Saturn and send back photos but we can't just have a polite conversation about how we should run our society...

Lets each take responsibility for creating dialogue and building bridges. For talking with people and not at them. Lets mend fences and build friendships and solve problems.

Lets refocus the debate.

 

The fighting words of Politics

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

- Lewis Carroll

 I first read "Alice through the looking glass" as a child. I always remember this quote in particular, not because I understood it at the time, but because of a vivid memory I have of my father rattling off the quote at dinner. He has something of a superhuman ability when it comes to remembering little quotes and bits of trivia. It seemed a terribly clever thing to say, as does so much in the Alice books, and as anything that is truly clever, it peaks interest instantly while taking a fair bit longer to really understand.

I had initially believed the quote to be a fairly straightforward logic question. Who defines a word? the person who says it, or the person who hears it. Lewis Carroll was a mathematician, and as such was perhaps more familiar with abstractions and working confidently with terms that are not always clearly defined. If I write an equation, then "A" doesn't need to be simply the letter of the alphabet, its whatever variable I say it is. So it seemed that he meant words are defined by the speaker.

As I've grown however I begin to suspect that perhaps Carroll's beautifully free mind realized that in a way words are themselves similarly abstract. Yes, of course, we have a dictionary to tell us precisely what something means, or at least, what it's broadly accepted meaning is at the time of the dictionary's writing. But as anyone with a passing interest in etymology can tell you the meaning of words can be fluid. Words today are derived from older words, sometimes from various languages mixed together; sometimes distorted by what may have been misuse at their time into new meanings which find stronger perch in the collective psyche than the original. The reality is that, whatever their intended definitions, words are living things that break free of restrictive meanings once out in the wild.

Frustrating? yes, of course. We have words supposedly to understand each other. Ideally when one is spoken we should all instinctively know precisely what was intended by it. But as we all know this is not the case, else we shouldn't need such a word as "Miss-understanding"

I moved during my teenage years from a country that speaks Spanish, which had until then been my primary language, to one that speaks English. I spoke pretty good English already at the time. I had learned it in part from my dad (who is Irish), in (very small part) from TV and school. Mostly, having spent one year as a child with my family living in Scotland, I simply absorbed it that year in school. 

However my English was not the English that the people around me spoke when I moved here, not quite. I remember my aunt and cousins laughing at me when I said "one would think", rather than the colloquial, if technically incorrect "you would think" or "You'd think". They said it sounded terribly posh. I learned quickly not to say that anymore. Through that and other experiences I learned quickly to become en-tuned not just to what it is I want to say, and how it should be correctly said, but also to mind what it is that's likely to be heard. I understood then that I only controlled part of the meaning in my speech, and that attempting to force others to apply my meaning to hat they heard is a loosing game. Much easier for me to adapt to what they will understand. It is my concern as the speaker to do all I can to be understood, and so I should try to predict any cultural break and account for it. I'm the fish out of water at the end of the day, I'm the one who wanted to befriend the locals who have a totally different culture than me. it's me who has to sink or swim.

In political discourse too, language is often evolving. more-over I believe the process is sped up. Politicians attempt to use words and their loaded cultural meanings to their personal advantage. I notice with distressing frequency as messages are flung out with words attached that are at times misunderstood and all too often intentionally twisted by those opposed. Example: "Black Lives Matter" is not intended to mean that they matter MORE than other lives, but that in the face of injustice towards blacks it can seem as if they don't matter at all, hence people feel it needs to be said that they do matter. I find that so obvious that that's how that message is intended to be read. But others will fight around the idea that its racist because they think it gives more value to black lives thank others. Politicians who want to win over such voters might intentionally pretend to also misunderstand the message. Some are less clear, with no one truly valid meaning. Brexit just means the UK leaves the EU, but depending on your view it can be about Xenophobia or about Sovereignty or about a buch of other stuff. Don't think for one second that politicians, on both sides, haven't attempted to use irrational fears and the loaded sub text of words to manipulate the debate.

My motivation in writing this is in particular however is around the Venezuelan crisis. lets break down two sentences here into some contentious words:

"The elected President of Venezuela, Socialist Nicolas Maduro"
"US-Backed ,self-appointed interim President Juan Guaido" 

These sentences say pretty straight forward things, but both are massively loaded with sub-text. Both are also, in a very strict sense, true. However if I write these without further explanation, and they are read by someone who doesn't fully understand the context, I know full well the meaning I can expect them to take from them. Venezuelans chose Maduro, the US is meddling and trying to set up a replacement. Those sentences don't say that, but I know what many people will read into it. It would be somewhat negligent of me to wash my hands of the unintended message by simply claiming that it isn't what I wrote.

Maduro was elected, but those elections were condemned. Not only by the opposition, as many articles simply say, but by much of the international community and all non-government internal observers. All prominent opposition figures were barred from running, so he won elections that were fought practically unopposed, not to mention all the other problems I wont bother listing now. Saying the opposition condemned them isn't really good enough. You might expect the opposition to condemn them, maybe they're just sore losers. Certainly if Maduro lost completely legal and transparent elections I would expect him to condemn them. Saying that alone leaves it down to who you trust.

Juan Guaido did, in the end, declare himself president. He stood there and said "I swear to take on the responsibilities of president" and there was nobody opposite him saying "do you swear" first. I think, personally, that was something of a PR mistake, it would have made better theater to find someone legitimate sounding enough to do it; but in the end it would have been the same. He did so after much deliberation inside the national assembly, It was not a decision he came to alone. He had the assembly's backing. the whole thing was planned. The Constitution, written under Chavez, gives him the power to do so if the president is deemed illegitimate or the presidency vacant. The assembly declared it so, and so legally it was his job to declare himself president. legally speaking, he didn't really have a choice, and you might correctly say that the assembly declared him president. If you just say "Self-declared" and "he claims he has the right under the constitution" it kind of sounds like he just got up that day and went "you know what, I'm gonna be president". If any random guy had done that they wouldn't have 50 countries saying they are indeed the legitimate president. regardless of whatever shady interests, it just wouldn't look right, it wouldn't play. So at a certain point not just calling him President, or Interim President, or not adding that entire explanation to every instance of calling him "Self-declared" falls towards not "Un-biased" but rather biased against. Calling him "US-Backed" at every opportunity is also true, he is backed by the US, AND 40+ other countries. You could just as easily say EU backed, or Canada backed. When you say US backed you can't pretend not to know that much of your audience is reading "Trump-backed" and coming to a bunch of conclusions. It makes him look like a US puppet, so it's an insult hidden as a factual statement. This is meaning that likely isn't intended, but those who write and report should be concerned about how they're understood.

Of course this doesn't just happen in the Venezuelan debate. I have near daily arguments with people over the use of the word Socialism. Everyone thinks they know exactly what it means. Of course, it has a dictionary definition, but it also as a lot of history of people using it in different contexts and in different ways in different countries. Many Venezuelans now repudiate the word after the experience there, yet at the same time Sanders and his like are gathering unprecedented support using it in the US, as are others across the world. Never mind how they each define it, they go into the shouting match assuming theirs is the only valid interpretation and think "god what fools they" as the other side simply doesn't get what they're saying. One side thinking they're talking about protecting a free market and the other thinking they're talking about protecting the poor and vulnerable, both so righteously sure of the clear sense in what they say, and in a way both, in my view, ARE right. As with so much in politics, they're having two different arguments, not with each other but with a loaded word they refuse to acknowledge has a life beyond what they believe. I believe when we break loose of the strict definitions and open our minds to hearing what people actually mean we find we have much more in common than we thought. 

Words are wild things, we need to use them carefully, and never simply assume that both sides are using the same dictionary. In today's hyper polarized society we need more than ever to make efforts to understand what others mean and not place our own presumptions upon them. many more of us would agree than we realize, I'm convinced of it. 


So, "Which is to be the master?". Words don't have a single master Humpty. you just have to get used to that.

Left vs Right is a trap... and we've all fallen for it

How much of your self image is tied up with your political views? Have you ever felt a sense of group belonging for agreeing, or disagreeing with a political story?

Are you part of the Left? Surely not the <gasp> Communist wannabes? Neo-Marxist, liberal Hollywood elites backed by mainstream media feeding you rose-tinted visions of a world without poverty where everyone gets a government handout for sitting at home scratching themselves. You know that's how the economy will collapse, right?

So you're on the Right then? You must be rich I guess, since only somebody born with a silver spoon in their mouth would willingly turn a blind eye to the world's inequalities, swallowing all the lies of the mainstream media who never cover the real stories, like all the government tax cuts and hand-outs to the rich. You just want to take and take and let everyone else rot along the way. You do know that's not sustainable, right? The people deserve a fair shake, we should totally nationalise all the means of production, otherwise you know the economy will collapse, right?

If you spend any time engaged in political discourse, particularly on-line, you're probably familiar with being spoken to in one of those two ways. You may also be guilty of speaking to someone else in something like the other way. We can all see that politics in our current era is becoming, every day, more tribal and divided. Gone are the days when we could sweep it all under the rug by asking others to just not talk about politics. It all seems too important now to just ignore it and let the world run itself in the background. Whether or not it is actually more important than in the past is up for debate; but many more of us are actually paying attention now, and as a society we are more politically engaged. This should be a good thing, but instead of truly discussing problems often all we do is brand our opponents, de-humanising them and locking ourselves in bubbles of self-affirming information. The truth is that most of us are at least a little guilty of exacerbating the problem, a problem that is in part rooted in our tendency to personally identify ourselves and others with political buzzwords. Most notably "left" and "right" wing.

Conservative, liberal, oligarch, fascist, socialist, communist...

Don't get me wrong, these words do have meanings, often too many meanings that people don't always agree on. We can be pedantic and quote a dictionary or bring up the very first historical root but the truth is both language and political movements evolve, sometimes splintering into many different directions that still use some of the same identifying words. Do you like earning money, and want to earn as much as possible for doing as little as possible? You might think that's just common sense, we all want the freedom over our time to decide what we would like to be doing, and the financial freedom to do whatever we choose to do in that time. But does that mean we're all capitalists? Does that mean we're not allowed to support government social services like free healthcare? If I think the rich should pay more tax does that mean I think the government should be allowed to expropriate any business it wants?

As a Venezuelan person I have some experience with the use and abuse of political language. We’ve seen what lies beyond the brink when two sides can't communicate at all for too long. Yes the problems in venezuela are manyfold and complex and most of us can see now, when you might say it's too late, that many of the decisions that were made over the past 20 years (and earlier), primarily for populist reasons, led us to where we are. Some saw the grim possibilities from the start, and more and more saw them as time went on, but our inability to breach the gap with those who saw things differently was more than anything what lowered the defences and allowed the current situation to take hold. The chief crime of Chavismo for me has always been the split in our society that its leaders willfully encouraged and thrived on, where in the end one side could only see greed and corruption and the other could only see ignorant uneducated masses. Politicians across the world seem to have taken note of how effective that strategy was.

It’s a strategy that puts us at odds with each other, and sometimes even at odds with ourselves. Anger at the other group encourages a zealous loyalty for our own, and unthinking loyalty is dangerous.

And we are all doing it.

Our sense of "group belonging" has been shown to be a large factor in our political views, which will most often align in large part with many of our family or friends or our community even if they don't align with the larger world. It can lead to contradictions or actions against what would seem like our self interest. Regardless of your views on Trump it seems telling to me that a billionaire tycoon giving tax breaks to the rich is seen so favourably by literally millions of lower class, effectively poor Americans. Many excuses come to the defence, many attempts to divert attention or focus elsewhere, all fuelled by loyalty to whatever initially sold each individual on Trump, or on the GOP in general, or against Democrats. Hundreds of tit-for-tat battles pointing out each mistake by the opposite party, however long ago in justification for whatever is happening now. What you have to stop and wonder is: why? why are they loyal? and if we're most of us honest why are we loyal to whatever political brand we've decided to join? are we buying into a complex package deal based on agreeing on one issue we're passionate about? The UK isn't much better; did millions vote for Brexit because of fear of immigration, buying in the process an economic and diplomatic mess no one truly understood at the time? Are we making apologies for Corbyn's inability to condemn people like Fidel Castro or Nicolas Maduro because we like the sound of some of his policies?

We can still support some ideas while campaigning for our group to change others. We can still hold our leaders to higher standards in their own behaviour. We can’t be afraid that every criticism is a betrayal that only helps out their political opposites gain power. To even think that is to give in to the politics of fear.

The mass "group think" on both sides has been steadily increasing, Intensified by the confirmation-bias driven algorithms of social media taking us at exponential speed down one track and away from each other. The larger mass of blind support drowns out small dissent in the ranks on both sides and is helping to radicalise both camps; dissent which is essential to perfecting and course-correcting any movement. Even if we don't agree with the criticism, we should welcome it; listen to it and debate it. If we stamp it out aggressively we discourage it in the future when it may someday be key to saving a movement from itself.

Populism is not a reserve of the Right or the Left. Neither is corruption or authoritarianism. No political leader's motives should be trusted beyond doubt; constant scrutiny is their cross to bear that we should not hesitate to lay on them. Most of society's ills are not going to be solved by any one-size-fits all approach. Nor in many cases will it be solved by a "neither this nor that" centrist approach. The centre ground should be where political discourse meets, but not one that simply appeases both sides and achieves nothing. Certain aspects of society may require a cold business-like approach, and others a kinder social approach. As long as all of it is in the interest of the betterment of society as a whole. We should judge each case as it comes, and hear all sides before voting on a solution. That may be how a parliament is supposed to work, but party-line voting means the argument is mostly between the two front benches. With them always keeping an eye to the next election, views even there at the front lines are now mostly pushed against the "popular" extremes. True discourse, where one side might actually concede points to the other and try to reach good-natured agreement or compromise, is simply lost as collateral damage.

More and more those who succeed in politics are the ones willing to feed the fear and rhetoric. Beyond any policy consideration, our chief concern with any leader should be their respect for democracy and the separation of powers, not to mention their willingness to debate and defend their ideas in a dignified and civilized way.

Politics responds to its audience; just like any industry that requires public consumption to survive, in the end it will adapt to sell the product that is most in demand. We must, all of us on all sides, demand better. The issues will not be successfully addressed, society cannot truly evolve, until it moves away from fear and dehumanization to enlist a better class of debate.

The goal should not be defeat and domination over the other, but agreement. I know this is not always possible; but in the modern age of politics it is no longer even ostensibly the goal. There will always be people with extreme unwavering views. It is them who should pushed to the fringe, not the rest of us who move to the edges to join them.

Open letter to Jeremy Corbyn on Venezuela from a supporter.

Good day Mr Corbyn,

My name is Michael O'Callaghan, and I'm a UK citizen. I live in Northern Ireland and recently voted on the parliamentary elections (I voted for the SDLP and would have voted Labour if you ran candidates here). I believe, passionately, about many of the proposals in your party's manifesto and believe that social justice and a dignified standard of living can be achieved for all without killing the economy.

I guess those things make me, on some level, a socialist.

I was born and raised in Caracas (my father is from Belfast, my mother from Venezuela). For a long time, I couldn't stomach the word socialism. For me and for many Venezuelans that word had been hijacked by Chavismo. It was synonymous not only with the idea of social justice but also with populism, cronyism, corruption and authoritarianism.

It was only in recent days that the world as a whole has woken up to that; after the shocking and blatant fraud of the Constituent Assembly. But for many of us watching and living it more closely a more subtle authoritarianism has been going on for years. When Chávez used to mock, insult and bully his critics rather than answer direct questions about rising crime rates and how his policies, while perhaps well intentioned, were creating huge distortions in the economy and huge inflation, even before the drop in oil price; when he used to expropriate private companies on a whim and then run them to the ground or demand that farmers keep prices low while offering no subsidies for their costs, and so killing all of the country's productive capacity for anything except oil, then turning PDVSA into an employment agency for government loyalists; When he used a list of signatures of people who wanted to recall him in a witch hunt that saw many of those people lose their jobs and be persecuted; or when he blatantly broke electoral rules using tons of state money for campaigns and turning government ministries into branches of his party; or when he armed pro-government community groups and turned them into paramilitaries that would try to scare people away from voting booths in opposition areas and force people to vote in pro-government ones.

For all his alleged charm, Chávez was a bully to those who opposed him. He did his best to discredit media that disagreed with him and drown the news he didn't like with his own propaganda-filled speeches, frequently interrupting live TV with no warning. Trump's cries of fake news and conspiracies against him are worrisome warning markers for those of us who lived through Chávez.

It was people like you and Bernie Sanders that made me believe, as you did with many young people, that socialism didn't need to look like that. That the options are not just hard capitalism and hard communism. I have since spent a fair bit of energy arguing that point with many Venezuelans who would turn to the far Right out of disgust for their experience with the far Left.

The world's rational Left needs strong leaders guided by principles who have respect for democratic institutions. Leaders who can discredit claims that socialism must lead to dictatorship or to communism.

I have felt, in recent months, that you could be a leader like that. But to do that you must make clear not only what you are, but also what you are not.

It should not be difficult to condemn Nicolas Maduro. You can know a democrat by how he behaves when he loses. You can know an aspiring dictator not by his economic policy but by how he tackles his opponents. You cannot put a few frustrated and sometimes violent youthful demonstrators (amongst millions of peaceful ones) on the same level with members of the National Guard turning weapons on unarmed civilians. Of course we all condemn violence on all sides, but the sides are not equal. You are asking those who are being brutalized by security forces to share in the blame; and that is simply not right. 

You also say that you support an independent judiciary and respect for constitutional law, but seem to turn a blind eye to the Maduro government's blatant disregard for these principles, which have been widely condemned not only in Venezuela but by respected organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as regional groupings including the OAS and Mercosur.

You are seen by many as a man above traditional politics who is willing to give clear answers rather than always deflect. I'm telling you, as someone who feels invested in your program for the future, it would be better simply to say that while you may have supported Maduro in the past, believing that Chavismo would do good, it has now become clear that power is their primary goal. Admitting that you were fooled by them is only admitting to something that millions fell prey to but are now waking up from. But to shy away from condemnation now is to put your commitment to human rights and democracy in doubt.

I implore you to do the right thing, and put out a new, stronger statement on the Labour party's stance on the situation in Venezuela.

As a great man once said, we are responsible not only for what we say, but for what we do not say.

Thank you for your time.

Michael O'Callaghan.

Why can't Venezuelans just wait for normal elections?

By Michael O'Callaghan Cañizares.

A post on the BBC recently describing protests in Venezuela correctly mentions that one of the Opposition's primary requests to ease the current situation is to call for "early elections". Are Venezuelans seeking to oust a democratically elected government before its term? Is this an elaborate grab for power by one political entity against its rival? Can't the Opposition just wait until the scheduled elections in late 2018? Why will they not sit down for dialogue with the government as has been offered to them?

To understand why those don't feel like acceptable options, you have to first realise that:

This is NOT just Right vs Left.

Whatever your personal views on capitalism or socialism may be, and whatever definition of these you consider true, the political conflict in Venezuela has evolved considerably past the standard differences that political parties all over the world have regarding management of their economy. The Opposition in Venezuela is composed of political parties with very different orientations, including some that are explicitly socialist. The thread that unites them is being against the Chavista government.

Try to envision how bad a government would need to be in your country before every current political party would unite and dilute their individual identity, plus agree to a single shared candidate, just to improve their chances of bringing it down. Imagine the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP and other parties in the UK, or even the Democrats and Republicans in the US, shaking hands and burying the hatchet. It would be a cold day in hell.

With the world’s highest criminal mortality rate, scarcity of basic foods, toiletries and medicine, and 700% inflation (depending on who you ask, some put it much higher) Venezuelans right now feel like they are on the brink of Armageddon. Standard political differences are the sorts of problems most Venezuelans wish they had. There are a huge number of symptoms and surrounding issues, but fundamentally normal political debate is now beside the point. When one party controls all but one branch of government plus the military, and declares the actions of the only non-affiliated branch illegal and void, then they have left no fair way to have that debate; hence solutions to the country’s myriad problems cannot be found or acted upon in the usual way, which is why:

Waiting means allowing the crisis to get worse:

As I've said, this is not your average Right vs Left debate. The Venezuelan government consistently plays down the damage to its economy and blames it completely on outside factors. When you refuse to admit you've made a mistake, then you can't rectify it.

This is one of the conundrums facing the Chavista regime. After so long in power, to admit that the problem has anything to do with mismanagement or policy (or corruption) means to admit that they caused it. Since their objective, which in the early days may charitably have been said to improve the lot of the average Venezuelan, has deteriorated to such an extent that clinging to power is now their only priority, they have to keep as many of their followers as possible believing in the revolution and thus cannot change the message. In practical terms this means they are doing absolutely nothing about the problem, and it is getting a lot worse as time goes on. Deaths due to lack of access to medicine are rising steadily, as is malnutrition and child mortality (the Health Minister was sacked just a few days ago basically because she admitted this). And yet they still refuse international aid. A change in government would not realistically be able to turn that around immediately, but there is urgency in simply stopping things from deteriorating further.

To make matters worse, even if there was any kind of sincere attempt at correcting the economy, they are clearly not the ones to do it. The Venezuelan Finance Minister has said he simply does not believe in inflation, and that it's all the fault of greedy corporations and some sort of (again) external conspiracy. I don't mean he doesn't believe that just about Venezuela, I mean he doesn't believe in inflation at all as a concept ... Period. So expecting them to correct the damage they have done is like expecting someone to engineer a plane even though they don't believe in gravity or aerodynamics.

Venezuelans have already waited a long time:

Chavismo has been in power in Venezuela for 18 years. I remember clearly being a kid and my dad listening on the radio to the results of the first election Chávez won (which incidentally he won by a large margin including many middle-class votes). My dad and a good few others knew that regardless of all his talk of representing the people, you could never believe in a man who's first grab at power was through a military uprising; gaining office via an election was for Chávez only Plan B. He changed the Constitution to extend the presidential term and allow indefinite re-election of the President (that’s a whole story in itself but will have to wait for another time). He spoke often of his respect for democracy and the will of the people but he redefined who he meant by “The People” to only ever include his own supporters; anyone else was an oligarch and an enemy, and probably a traitor.

“But he was democratically elected” you say, and democratically re-elected. True, and after his death Nicolás Maduro also won an election. But what you may have failed to notice about elections in Venezuela in the latter years were the widespread cases of voters being picked up at their homes, bussed in and coerced into voting for the government, flagrant use of public money for campaigning in favour of the PSUV (the Chavista party), barefaced violation of electoral laws regarding propaganda, people in public-sector jobs being threatened (and risking being thrown out of work simply for missing a pro-government rally), pro-government armed motorcycle gangs (colectivos) terrorising Opposition areas and scaring people away from voting stations, and a whole list of other abuses.

All we heard was that the votes themselves were valid and there was no actual fraud. But no fraud doesn't mean fair and free elections. And even with all that, Maduro only managed a small lead over the main Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles (200,000 or so votes total or about 1.6%). Even these tactics were not enough in the 2015 parliamentary elections, where the Opposition destroyed the government majority finally demonstrating beyond doubt that the PSUV no longer had public support.

Thus began the transition into full blown authoritarianism as the PSUV realised they no longer had the people in thrall. The PSUV reacted by pressuring all Supreme Court judges whose term of office was due to end during the new National Assembly’s term resign so the outgoing Assembly could pack the Court with loyalists before the handing over control. This Court has then proceeded to invalidate the election of several new representatives on a trumped-up pretext so as to reduce the Opposition majority to below the crucial two-thirds threshold that would among other things enable impeachment of public officials, and to block every move the Assembly has made since being elected until eventually deciding they couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of replying to each move and simply invalidated the national assembly altogether. The outcry this provoked both nationally and internationally caused Maduro to order them to partially roll back this move, in the clearest possible demonstration of the subservience of the supposedly independent Court to the Executive. They no longer even pay the elected Opposition representatives their salaries.

Basically all this means that:

Waiting doesn't guarantee there will ever be an election:

Regional mayoral elections are already several months overdue; the first elections since Chavismo’s defeat in the National Assembly. So it is clear Nicolas Maduro's regime is nervous of losing even more ground to the Opposition as all independent polls now indicate support for them is at a historic low .

Their assurances that Presidential elections will be held on time in late 2018 is simply a ploy to buy more time, as were previous feints towards dialogue in late 2016, after which the government simply didn't bother to uphold any of its agreed commitments. The regime’s move away from standard democracy is made even more clear in their call for a new constitution to be written by a constituent assembly, 50% of the members of which is to be drawn from pro-government unions and other interest groups "recognised" (read "cherry picked") by the government, thus guaranteeing that any change they propose will pass. Who is to say that the 2018 presidential elections won’t be the victim of some constitutional change, another term extension or the like?

The Venezuelan people are sick and tired of playing in a rigged game, so waiting is no longer an option. All that is left now is to apply whatever pressure they can and see where it gets them. Is there an actual plan? No one who might know is saying. Right now Venezuela is like the hostage who demands you either kill me or let me go. The problem is that the kidnapper may well think the latter will lead to his doom, so he has nothing to lose by choosing the former.

What happens now nobody knows, but there is no turning back.

Why Socialists worldwide should condemn the Venezuelan government.

By Michael O'Callaghan Cañizares

Opinion-

On the 5th of March 2013 while walking home from work in Derry (N.Ireland) through the town centre I saw a small gathering of around 15-20 people. Two of them held up a very large Cuban flag, and as the rest listened, a third spoke into a microphone.

I stood for a moment trying to understand what was going on. The man speaking on the microphone spoke of remembering a fallen hero, a great leader who had pushed his country forward and freed his people from the shackles of poverty.

All became clear in the end, when he closed off by saying "Rest in peace Hugo Chávez".

That moment was as ridiculous to me as if they had all suddenly taken out banana cream pies and thrown them at each other. A Cuban flag to remember Chávez? How offensive, how stupid, and how fitting.

I walked away saying nothing, something I have often regretted. I was born and raised in Venezuela; I left, as did thousands of others because there was simply no future for me there. It is my home, but I may never go back. My sons will very possibly never see it for themselves and if they do it will be the shattered broken remains, hopefully healing remains of what used to be there. For all of Chávez' talk and all his promises he crippled our country into a spiral of mismanagement and corruption that will leave its mark for generations. He destroyed every aspect of our economy and for a time masked the extent of the damage with oil wealth, appeasing his followers with social programs and keeping himself and his closest allies rich well beyond the means of any honest politician. Now after his death the mask has come off under Nicolás Maduro. But we should not forget who did the damage, whose policy and memory Maduro is faithfully following. Now they cling to power by twisting the rules of law to suit them, oppressing through violence and censorship.

The people who mourned Chávez’ death and for so long defended his regime and that of his successor Nicolás Maduro often did so out of loyalty to a word: Socialism. But one thing I have learned is that words can mean very different things in different places. For example a Republican in Ireland is often thought of as someone who supports the idea of an all Ireland republic, the ideals of the political parties in Northern Ireland who mark themselves Republican are often very distantly removed from those of the GOP, for whom the word Republican is used in the US. Most people wouldn’t be confused by this.

I have found myself in a number of debates with people from my home country in defence of the word Socialism. I believe in some elements of socialism; the socialism of many European countries, the socialism of the moderate left. I want free health care, tuition free universities, a good welfare system to catch people when they fall and help them back up. I want government to care about its people more than about keeping the 1% rich and I believe that even if someone is by choice a total lazy waste of space they deserve, as a human right, to be provided access to basic standards of living. I believe in doing that within a system that also allows people the room and grants them the support to do well and achieve as much as they can, within a system that understands the realities of economics and can achieve those social programs in a way that is sustainable.

So often I have met people who agree on all those points but are disgusted by the word because in Venezuela it was stolen by Chavismo and made to mean for many the same as Authoritarianism, Cronyism, Fascism.

Similarly in Europe I meet people who agree and who despise those negative terms but who support Chavismo because it identifies as Socialist.

Words have power. We learn their meaning not just from a dictionary but also from our long experiences with them. We get to know them, and like them or dislike them as if they were people. We assume everyone’s definition of the word is or at least should be the same but they are simply not. Is Bernie Sanders the same as Chávez? No, obviously not. But a great many who agree with him won’t support him because he used the same word: Socialism.

Language and the use of these words and others must inevitably form part of any intelligent debate when discussing an issue so clouded in propaganda from all sides. For years the Venezuelan government's blatant and intentional misuse of powerful words completely shaped international debate on the basis of people assuming they knew what those words meant. For so long the Venezuelan opposition was described by most UK news media as the "Right wing opposition" or in certain cases even the "Far-right opposition". The Venezuelan opposition is composed of every political orientation that is anything other than far left and authoritarian, including several which explicitly define themselves as socialist (e.g. the MAS or “Movimiento Al Socialismo”). Those definitions of right wing and far right are the words the regime used to scare its supporters away from the opposition; and the international media swallowed it up and propagated it for them. They used the distaste many liberals or people on the left have against the idea of American imperialism or interventionism and made themselves the victims of that. They used everyone’s fear of the word fascist to demonise their enemies, when by definition they are the fascists. Many did not question their use of the words, they just swallowed it. Against a largely uneducated mass these words unchallenged were simply absorbed. Words have power. They can be misused and we must be critical when listening.

This is an important reason why those who believe themselves socialist or leftist need to quickly disavow and distance themselves from any regime that helps to corrupt the meaning of the word. Defending rational socialism doesn’t just mean fighting the far right, it means fighting the internal corrosion of regimes such as these.The Venezuelan government is not socialist.

It is Chavista and that word is theirs to define, and to corrupt.