And yet here here we all are taking about it. Art is about inciting a response, and he’s done it. Whether we think he’s a hack or not is irrelevant - he has the world’s attention.
And that’s where my hopes vanish. A dictator-wannabe that has a track record of not respecting the peaceful transition of power in _his own_ country and has run his entire campaign on hatred for immigrants and more recently Venezuelans in particular, is going to, all of a sudden, grow a conscience and do what’s right for the Venezuelan people? Let’s call it what it is: this is about oil. I don’t have to say it, because he already did in front of the cameras. He doesn’t care what happens to Venezuela or Venezuelans.
What we’ve been living through in the last 28 years is Chavismo and yet Chavez is not around. When Chavez died in 2013 we celebrated that he was gone, and what we got after was much, _much_ worse. Now Maduro is gone, and we can celebrate it too. That said, Trump has signaled that he’s not interested in removing Chavismo: he’s keeping Delcy, Diosdado, et al, as they continue to be the brokers of power as long as he gets access to oil. This is just Chavismo aligned to American interests. Time will tell whether this is better or worse.
PS: As an aside, since I was a child growing up in 90’s Venezuela, the overall political mentality of people was that things were so bad that they couldn’t get any worse - and yet they continued to worsen. A lesson that I’ve learned is that in politics things need to be intentionally built - there is no “rock bottom”, the fact that things have been horrible doesn’t mean that they can’t get even worse. Thus my hesitation with what’s going on. There are no guarantees that this isn’t going to be a deal with the devil that leaves us in an even worse state…
Venezuelan here. It’s not that simple: Maduro was an _absolutely_ horrible dictator and yes many Venezuelans (myself included, and likely many of the 8+ million that left) are overjoyed with him being ousted, we haven’t seen any change in over two decades. And yet, it is transparently clear that the Trump admin is here not to save Venezuela, or Venezuelans… it’s here to line its pockets and that of its shareholders.
There was a very evident omission during Trump’s press conference: Any mention of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the duly elected president-elect of Venezuela (who won with a super majority last July - backed by Maria Corina Machado). Instead, Trump bad mouthed Maria Corina saying that “she does not have the support or respect of the country to run it”. They ousted Maduro, but they kept his VP (Delcy Rodriguez - which along other things is in charge of running the torture centers for political prisoners) as “she will do anything we ask her”. Trump doesn’t care about democracy or regime change - these things take time and are a long, thorny road (this wouldn’t be the US’ first rodeo). Instead they’ve chosen to keep the regime obedient with the threat of force, and instead just come in and extract as many riches as humanly possible…
Dark times ahead for Venezuela and the Venezuelan people
This post follows the general, highly academic/dogmatic, tone that I’ve seen when certain folks talk about REST. Most of the article talks about what _not_ to do, and has very little details on how to actually do it.
The idea of having client/server decoupled via a REST api that is itself discoverable, and that allows independent deployment, seems like a great advantage.
However, the article lacks even the simplest example of an api done the “wrong” vs the “right” way. Say I have a TODO api, how do I make it so that it uses HATEOAS (also who’s coming up with these acronyms…smh)?
Overall the article comes across more as academic pontification on “what not to do” instead of actionable advice.