I don’t care how many books or doctorates a person has. But when they say something like this:

Chavez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chavez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

It tells me that this person has no clue what they’re talking about.

This Paul Craig Roberts character has no clue about Chavez and his real legacy. Chavez may have stood up to the US, and he may not have sold out to the usual economic elites, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sellout, a thief of state resources and a corrupt demagogue.

Hugo Chavez, and his family and friends, became incredibly wealthy, maybe not Arab royalty wealthy, but wealthy nonetheless from the oil revenue that they stole.

Don’t believe me? Look at their twitter feeds and you’ll see pictures of them with wads of cash, driving Porsches, Bentleys and living large in Europe and south Florida. I bet, there are more privately owned Gulfstream, Cessna and Falcon jets parked at La Carlota, the Caracas metropolitan airport, than there are are Van Nuys airport (where Hollywood stars keep their planes) or any other airport in the USA.

The vast majority of those fancy multi-million dollar jets, are owned by Chavistas. Those same ones that never sold out.

Get a clue before you start running your mouth lauding Chavez as some kind of miracle for not selling out to the people that you expected him to sell out to. Chavez sold out to the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and other people of the same ilk.

When you almost single handedly destroy the entire economic infrastructure of a country, and then give handouts to the people whose livelihoods you’ve destroyed, you’re not an economic miracle worker; you’re an enslaver. That’s the real miracle of Chavez.

For people that point to economic statistics that show a drastic reduction in poverty etc. allow me to remind you of something that Mark Twain wrote: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”