Oh, gag me with a meat cleaver!

I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think that’s ridiculous. Do we not speak ill of Hitler and Stalin all the time? There are some people to whom one owes not even token posthumous respect, and the funeral of Carlos Andrés Pérez, which took place today in Miami, illustrates perfectly why that is:

Yes, that’s the OLD flag of Venezuela. The seven-star flag of the Fourth Republic, which died when Chavecito came into office in ’99. There was a big fuss when this one was scrapped in 2006, but it was to no end. Nobody uses it anymore but the most rabid of the Venezuelan oppos, who all happen to spend more time in Miami than they do in their “beloved homeland”. It’s also historically inaccurate, since the current (and correct) version has eight stars, symbolizing the eight provinces (including Guayana, which was earlier omitted) which revolted against Spanish Rule in Bolívar’s day. (Bolívar himself decreed an eight-star flag in 1817.) But it’s the perfect emblem of the murderous, faux-democratic corruption of the Fourth, so I guess it fits right in at this celebration of its crookedest figurehead’s death. It is also the perfect emblem of the opposition’s stubborn pettiness.

Even more sickening, though, is the memorial card:

The quote, from Venezuelan poet Andrés Eloy Blanco, reads: “While the bad son of the homeland grows and gets fat destroying it, the good son dies in exile, weeping for it.” Blanco wrote that for Bolívar, who did die in exile. By putting it on CAP’s memorial card as a pointed insult to Chavecito, the oppos twisted it so hard that they broke it. Need I underscore what a travesty it is to slam a sitting president (and a very patriotic, competent one) that way, especially since the bad son who fattened his wallet on corruption and death did not die in exile but on the lam, not weeping but laughing all the way to the bank?

BTW, CAP also has the dubious distinction of having been the first Venezuelan president ever to be impeached. But only for corruption. He never had to answer for mass murder.

There’s a reason why ordinary Venezuelans call their defeated old Fourth Republic ruling class sinvergüenzas–shameless people. Actually there are several, but I decided, out of “respect” for the dead, to list only two or three this time.