1. Why do we still pay any attention whatsoever to the Washington Post? Future generations will wonder how many trees were felled so that this rag could inflict upon us the ramblings of Diehl, Krauthammer, Robert Samuelson and so on.

2. One of the professional hats I wear requires me to teach Argentinean history. So, for years I’ve been wondering about the parallels between Chavez and Peron. I could go on and on about the mistakes Peron made, I could also go on and on about the mistakes Chavez has made, but that is besides the point. What matters is that in Argentina, Peron awoke the masses politically and gave them the experience of a government that, with lots of flaws, granted, was willing to take on some interests to deliver significant improvements in living standards for them. Then, when he fell, his successors made the fateful mistake of trying to erase that page of history, trying to suppress the popular awakening that Peron meant. The result? A 20 year-long governance crisis that, after lots of coups, dictatorships and economic disasters led to… the return of Peron.

I keep fearing that the Venezuelan elites of the IV Republic, if and when they come back, will make the same mistake. I doubt they will try to come to terms with the new political landscape of popular mobilization that Chavez would leave behind and will, instead, try to suppress it, violently if needed.

Does that mean that I’m a Chavista? No. But I’m an anti-anti-chavista. I disagree with many things the Venezuelan government has done (while, yes, I APPROVE of others). The thing is not to demonize what is, after all, yet another flawed president (all of them are). The thing is to recognize that the political process in Venezuela is much more nuanced than what the opposition would have us believe and that, failing to recognize that is just setting the stage for a set of mistakes of historical proportions.