Chapotraphouse

I didn't mean to imply you're just calling people liberals as an insult, I would just say they're people committing acts of liberalism vs being an actual liberal which is basically just semantics really. We've all seen the libs who will happily go "Umm acktually tankie, I'm a socialist and I hate the US too" as if simply saying a thing magically makes it true, so someone committing an act of liberalism is still supporting liberalism in that moment, even if they wouldn't identify as a liberal. Which I don't think we disagree on, I should've just phrased it better.

I think it is important to differentiate between someone who is liberal because the status quo benefits them and someone who is supporting liberalism because it's just how they were trained to think, because like you say, most western leftists are very liberal, we're trained to think magically and to prioritise idealism over materialism, "feelings over facts" and this can appear in any of us if we're not careful, like your other conversation with queermunist, Ultras end up ultimately supporting liberal ideas and even the liberal status quo despite feeling like they are as far from liberal as it is possible to get.

I think this differentiation is important because people are prideful, we don't want to admit that we're wrong about things, especially someone currently in the grip of liberal thought processes. To the point that people will double or triple down on being obviously wrong because they just don't want to admit they were wrong. Separating the person from the liberalism can help protect their ego, which makes them more amenable to change, dismissing them as a liberal won't change their mind or get them to consider anything you say and will just have them shout insults at you endlessly. Which to be fair, makes a great point for why people shouldn't agree with them in an argument, since all they have are insults and smug ego stroking and you have your "walls of text" trying to explain the situation and its complexity.

It's a case by case basis thing of course, as you know full well, sometimes people just aren't willing to consider another position.

To bring it back to the topic at hand, the two positions on Venezuela as I understand them are not equal. This is obviously biased in my favour, but I am still trying to consider their position and the idea of "what would things look like if this were true." even if I do scoff at the idea a fair bit.

Our position posits that Venezuela is being threatened by the US and rather than have their country bombed into rubble, they've elected to make concessions to the US that will hurt Venezuela, but will enable them to survive and minimize their suffering. This may end up eroding Chavismo and ultimately destroying it and the Venezuelan socialist experiment, but the government of the country has determined that some sacrifices are better than potentially losing millions of lives in a devastating war.

OR

Their position posits that Venezuela's acting President is a comprador to the US who may or may not have helped orchestrate Maduro's kidnapping in order to gather more power for herself, whether or not she did, she is now the leader of the country and acting in direct opposition to the Venezuelan people, with the goal of destroying Chavismo and the Venezuelan socialist experiment. How such a comprador managed to get so high up in a communist party is just left up to our imaginations, she's a cunning villain and hid her power level until now when she has gone full mask off. The Venezuelan people are powerless and unable to do anything to stop her, as is the rest of her party. Alternatively, the rest of the party is in on it, which means Maduro was the only thing holding Venezuela together, like how when a medieval kingdom has a good king but then his usurper is a bad king and everything falls apart. Or we could use The Lion King as an example of how this stuff happens. This does not explain how the masses of people in Venezuela tolerate these changes, or why the right wing American compradors in Venezuela are still complaining and demanding the US overthrow the government, though to be fair, they do like to complain about everything.

The alternative version of their position is that Delcy is being threatened by the US and is scared for her life, and is not a sinister scheming Vizier, but a weak coward, destroying her country on behalf of the US because she's too cowardly to stand up to them, this has the same problems as the previous one though, with the people tolerating this and the rest of her cabinet doing nothing, but it at least acknowledges the US's participation in all this.

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So who knows what's really true? Reality is subjective and anything could be possible, we could both be completely wrong and this is a scheme by the Martians to take over Earth or something.