In a recent PragerU.com video, available for viewing at Brighteon.com, Debbie D'Souza, a Venezuelan native and the wife of prominent conservative leader Dinesh D'Souza, explains how Venezuela ended up in the mess it's currently in.
What was once a thriving democratic nation is now "a failed state," she says, "a hollowed-out shell of its former self." That's because, once the government took over, all of the wealth that was accumulated as a result of free enterprise was stolen and pissed away by the tyrannical state implemented by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
"Services like power and water are sporadic," D'Souza says about the current state of Venezuela. "The most basic consumer goods, from bread to toilet paper, are in chronically short supply."
"Crime has skyrocketed. Freedom of the press is almost non-existent. Democracy has been replaced by a virtual dictatorship. The country is, I'm sorry to say – my beloved Venezuela, a place in which my family has deep roots – I can tell you what happened to it in one word: socialism."
Hugo Chavez used the exact same rhetoric as today's Democrats to turn Venezuala socialist and ultimately destroy it
Interestingly enough, when Hugo Chavez was first running for president in Venezuela back in 1999, he promised many of the same things that Democrats here in the United States promise. Chavez's campaign slogan was even the exact same as Barack Obama's, except in Spanish.
"His theme was, "Esperanza y Cambio," or 'Hope and Change'" in English, explains D'Souza.
"'Venezuela is a nation of great wealth,' Chavez said, 'but it's being stolen from its citizens by the evil capitalists and evil corporations. This wrong would be righted,' he assured the voters if they elected him. And they did, to their everlasting regret," she adds.
Fidel Castro was Chavez's mentor, and Obama couldn't wait to visit Cuba in 2016
Chavez's mentor was actually Fidel Castro, the former dictator of Cuba that Obama himself paid tribute to during his 2016 visit to the island nation. Like Obama, Castro loved to hear himself talk, and would sometimes gives speeches that lasted seven hours or more.
Chavez also did the same thing Obama did, seizing entire industries and turning them into government-owned entities.
"The government, he assured everyone, would run these businesses better than private enterprise, and the profits would be shared by the people," D'Souza says. "With great fanfare, he tore up contracts with multi-national oil and gas companies, and demanded that they pay much higher royalties. When they refused, he told them to leave, and they did."
Hollywood supported Chavez, of course, as many celebrities went to visit the country to pay homage to his socialistic endeavors – at least until the sham began its precipitous slide into total collapse. Nearly 2,000,000 people ended up leaving the country during its rapid downfall, and now it's "a pariah, shunned by the world and isolated."
"It's so bad that many international airlines refuse to fly there," says D'Souza. "People stand in lines for hours just to get food. Sometimes they walk away empty-handed."
Not much has changed in the years since, save for a new president who's carrying on the country's disastrous socialist legacy. Opposition leaders and journalists are still being jailed for telling the truth – a situation that's similar to what's going on with leftist Big Tech companies here in the states that are actively censorship conservative content online.
"Socialism always works in the beginning, so people are fooled in the beginning. It's easy for governments to confiscate money – but eventually there's no more money to confiscate," warns D'Souza. "Venezuela is a cautionary tale."
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