The good news is that Venezuela has solved the obesity problem and could, conceivably, cite that feat as a triumph of socialism over free market capitalism. The Bad News is that the once prosperous country has done so in the same manner as Dachau and Andersonville Prison, but starving their people close to death. According to the Blaze, a new study suggests that 75 percent of the population have lost an average 19 pounds over the past year. That is what happens when literally no food is available to eat.
The world has not seen this kind of famine since Ethiopia in the 1980s or Biafra in the early 1970s.
In past famines, the world banded together and sent shipments of food on a massive scale to feed the starving people until they could be back on their feet. Rock musicians would perform relief concerts and politicians would proclaim the world’s duty to save the starving children. Those same kids would show up crying on cable news with the distended bellies of malnutrition,
One reason that a relief effort has not yet been mounted for Venezuela is that it would have to shoot its way into the country. What relief supplies make it to that unhappy South American government is seized by the government and handed out to cronies and supporters. Venezuelans are too weak and malnourished to revolt against this slow motion genocide, which must suit the mad cap socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro quite well.
Political control through starvation is a well-known practice by socialist governments. North Korea does the same thing as did the Soviet Union in its early days. Hungry people may, at some point, become desperate enough to take to the streets and fight with the police and army, the theory being that death by bullets is to be preferred to death by hunger.
But the Venezuelans are not quite at that point yet. Nor is the international community disposed to form an expeditionary force to overthrow the Maduro tyranny and bring food to help the people from the brink of mass starvation. Instead we are seeing the end game of socialism, the death of a nation with barely a whimper.
