As a caraqueño by birth and a son of Venezuela and the United States, I'd like to make a plea for greater fluency on the part of American observers of the situation in my homeland.
Please don't pronounce the surname of the dictator Hugo Chávez as if it were written "Shávez." It's enough to make a person shudder.
Spanish and French have different rules of pronunciation. Chez Emmanuel Macron one can indeed pronounce the "ch" letter combination like the "sh" in "shush." It's downright chic.
In Spanish, though, the "ch" in Chávez gets the hard CHocolate CHip treatment. It's not that difficult, really. After all, Americans manage to refrain from pronouncing "Chile" as if it began with "Sh". "Sheeleh" hurts the ears. Trust me, so does "Shávez."
I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't spent a few hours listening to Anne Applebaum mispronounce Hugo Chávez's name scores of times in her audiobook reading of her otherwise superb "Autocracy, Inc." She's by no means the only offender with a public platform.
I think there’s a deeper failure here than socialism. I think there has to be a deep commitment to respecting election outcomes. The people have the right to elect socialists, and then to judge them harshly for their failures.
The bigger issue is that in many cultures, the commitment to respecting electoral outcomes is skin deep, regardless of the political ideology, and incompetence can never be punished.
Socialism is essentially looting of businesses and citizens. Humanity will never learn this lesson and instead we are forced to watch it repeat itself over and over and over and over. Maybe reality is actual hell.
And when businesses and citizens have been looted to the point where there's not a single céntimo left to grab, socialism turns to organized crime on a national and international scale. It can happen even when enterprises and the public are still solvent.
I think there’s a deeper failure here than socialism. I think there has to be a deep commitment to respecting election outcomes. The people have the right to elect socialists, and then to judge them harshly for their failures.
The bigger issue is that in many cultures, the commitment to respecting electoral outcomes is skin deep, regardless of the political ideology, and incompetence can never be punished.
As a caraqueño by birth and a son of Venezuela and the United States, I'd like to make a plea for greater fluency on the part of American observers of the situation in my homeland.
Please don't pronounce the surname of the dictator Hugo Chávez as if it were written "Shávez." It's enough to make a person shudder.
Spanish and French have different rules of pronunciation. Chez Emmanuel Macron one can indeed pronounce the "ch" letter combination like the "sh" in "shush." It's downright chic.
In Spanish, though, the "ch" in Chávez gets the hard CHocolate CHip treatment. It's not that difficult, really. After all, Americans manage to refrain from pronouncing "Chile" as if it began with "Sh". "Sheeleh" hurts the ears. Trust me, so does "Shávez."
I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't spent a few hours listening to Anne Applebaum mispronounce Hugo Chávez's name scores of times in her audiobook reading of her otherwise superb "Autocracy, Inc." She's by no means the only offender with a public platform.
Por favor.
I think there’s a deeper failure here than socialism. I think there has to be a deep commitment to respecting election outcomes. The people have the right to elect socialists, and then to judge them harshly for their failures.
The bigger issue is that in many cultures, the commitment to respecting electoral outcomes is skin deep, regardless of the political ideology, and incompetence can never be punished.
Socialism is essentially looting of businesses and citizens. Humanity will never learn this lesson and instead we are forced to watch it repeat itself over and over and over and over. Maybe reality is actual hell.
And when businesses and citizens have been looted to the point where there's not a single céntimo left to grab, socialism turns to organized crime on a national and international scale. It can happen even when enterprises and the public are still solvent.
Indeed. Essentially, it is organized crime.
I think there’s a deeper failure here than socialism. I think there has to be a deep commitment to respecting election outcomes. The people have the right to elect socialists, and then to judge them harshly for their failures.
The bigger issue is that in many cultures, the commitment to respecting electoral outcomes is skin deep, regardless of the political ideology, and incompetence can never be punished.
If post-Soviet non-Baltic non-Caucasus states other than Ukraine are any indication, Maduro will claim his victory.