^^^ This. ^^^
They voted for it, let they enjoy the socialism they chose, right to its frightful end.

If they manage the necessary regime change, the new leader's first act will be to invite some outside company to get the oil fields producing again. Which is what they should do, but I hope that company is on guard against another confiscation once it has succeeded.

Sounds like the oministration the last 8 years.

Yep, plus disappearing the opposition, and late-night murder in their beds.
Next come the gulags, if they haven't been built already, and calling in the tanks on the protesters.

Wonder what George Sorros has to say about this. As I understand he is heavy into off shore oil in Venezuela. Perhaps he is getting what he asked for and assumed the US would continue to import oil. Drill baby drill in the US and say good by to Venezuela. oil.

Didn't their oil operation collapse internally (to the point of halting all production) even before Chavez died? I would be surprised if they revived it while Maduro is still in power.

I knew one college kid whose family had the resources to send him to California for his education. While he was here, and still may be for all I know, Chavez took power. His ancestral farmlands and all their equipment was seized by Chavez, he was prevent from returning home, and his father was denied travel to the US for surgery. Its been some years since we've spoken. I don't know whats become of him.

"'Escaped' is the appropriate word. "
[Sarcasm]Where did they escape to?[/Sarcasm] Some people say the US is just as bad. Of course that's complete nonsense. I agree with you that escape is the right word. US is a utopian land of opportunity compared to what Venezuela is.

I knew someone from Venezuela 10 years ago. He told me how bad it was, how their election had been unfair, and how the country was heading toward the ruin it's experiencing now. I didn't think it would happen, but his exactly nightmare prediction is coming true.

Read the Declaration of Independence. The American revolution was based on actions by King George that were less invasive to liberty than actions of the federal government for the past 30 years.
It is not surprising that one who approves of the actions of the La Clintonostra would not be able to see the similarities between the statists in DC and the statists in Venezuela.
You don't belong here, CG, since you feel Ayn Rand's work is "hyperbolic nonsense."

To denounce those who recognize and experience the actions of politicians as tyrannical in this country is an insult to us. You seem to lack understanding that government actions against us are real, not an academic exercise in emotional word games.

There is plenty of anti-intellectual rhetoric accusing people of being "Hitler" incarnate, etc. But most of us recognize that we and others have been and are being hurt by dictatorial politicians like Obama, etc. His health care controls, land use controls, regulatory strangling of industries such as coal, and National Monument decrees are only a few of examples of his legacy -- and they would have been progressively much worse much sooner under Clinton. We don't call politicians we "don't like" tyrants, we "don't like" them because of what they are, what they are doing to us, and what they threaten as they increase their power.

Ayn Rand was similarly denounced for calling the Kennedy administration the "Fascist New Frontier". She identified the overt principles driving government policy, emphasizing the nature of the Kennedy Democrat mentality because they were hurting people (such as threatening to jail businessmen under arbitrary rules), and promised much worse when more fully. She saw the consequences -- then and in the future -- of philosophy on people in the real world. She did not say that John was a full Adolph and it didn't insult the victims of the German National Socialists. It's about principles and their specific consequences in action, not "word inflation".

Today the statism in this country is much worse and the progressives are even more open about their egalitarian nihilism and collectivist demands as they ratchet up the controls. Everyone is harmed by this right now, but the intensity of the destructive impacts are not uniform. A successful liberal engineer enjoying a high standard of living with a safe job within one still thriving segment of the economy typically knows nothing about what it is like to personally experience corrupt government elsewhere in the country -- or what it is like to be personally targeted by unaccountable government bureaucrats making up their own rules under non-objective law: such as persecution for years by tax agency officials out to "get" someone, asset forfeiture seizures, politically correct demands on small businesses like even bakeries, regulatory harassment of farmers or loggers, or viro land agencies like the National Park Service seizing control of rural private property.

These aren't just abuses. They are sustained, entrenched abuse with no recourse and no end in sight. That is tyranny, not just "a shame". It's no wonder people are so frustrated and angry, with insult added to injury by condescending 'elitists' looking down on us denouncing us as nothing but rhetorical extremists. "Venezuela" is not a reason to sink into depression and abandon your career in the name of "shrugging" if these things aren't hitting you now, and neither was the even worse Soviet Union when Ayn Rand was writing, but don't minimize and trivialize what is being done to us just because it isn't (yet) the Soviet Union or Venezuela.