Chile and Colombia join Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina as states in which politicians fundamentally hostile to capitalism, or at any rate far from enamored of it, have rejected or are abandoning violence to assume positions of leadership by winning elections.
(And Uruguay. I forgot.)
Of course, one could say that of the United States, California, and New York City.
That can lead to good things, but it can also lead to stupid things and even just plain bad things.
More good than bad, one hopes, though.
Still, the American right wing noise machine is apt to exaggerate both the stupidity and the badness while ignoring the goodness.
Consider Venezuelan price controls.
Heck, Nixon tried price controls.
It was evidence neither of impending red revolution nor of impending economic chaos.
And habitual animosities die hard.
In Colombia, they might even queer the deal to bring the FARC in from the cold.
No doubt, just as some wish.
While they are out in the boonies living on snakes, going from shootout with the army or with right wing guerrillas to shootout, they are in no position to actually implement leftish policies.
But all of these devoted leftists competing for office and joining the electorate?
That could bring real change.
Was it only yesterday we were reading Disaster Capitalism, a book about neoliberalism on a roll?
And what was Beinart writing about the Millenials?
Update.
About that downside, just consider how little regard these folks have for diversity, freedom of expression or opinion, or democracy.
How willingly they play the Red Guards and the Thought Police.
And how frighteningly their attitudes have spread like a cancer from the radical left to the professional left to the entire class of 100%, down the line liberals and all their allied interest groups and factions.
Revel had it wrong.
People don't want to be subject to totalitarian power.
They want to exercise it.
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