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Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro currently finds itself under siege by a Washington-funded and supported opposition comprised of an entrenched oligarchy that has never once resiled from its hatred of the country's poor and indigenous masses. This is the true locus of the ire in which the Bolivarian revolution is held, a revolution that was authored by the now departed Hugo Chavez on the back of popular support in the late 1990s, designed to redistribute the country's oil wealth for the benefit of those whose very existence is an affront to the nation's economic and hitherto political elite.
In point of fact, the grotesque verbal broadsides Trump unleashed concerning human rights and democracy when it comes to Caracas merely conceals and elides a truth that dare not speak its name -- namely that Washington wants its country back.
When it comes to the list of nations and governments against which Trump vented his ire in his UN speech -- North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, and by implication Russia and China -- the inescapable fact is that for all their differences they share a refusal to submit to the writ of Washington. This is their "crime" in the eyes of an administration whose grip on reality becomes evermore tenuous by the day.
At a certain point, while watching Trump's first ever appearance at the UN General Assembly, the sage words of Che Guevara intruded as in a warning from history: "It is the very nature of imperialism to turn humans into beasts."
Yes, the time for satire has passed.
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