Good point. I guess an underlying assumption is that Chavez will be Chavez regardless of the amount of power he has. But his minions, that's quite another thing.

Lucia
Never be afraid to wade as long as you agree with me - like you do here. :)

BTW, on this topic, it seems like the new Clint Eastwood movie "Invictus," about Nelson Mandela, is sort of about this topic - how to reconcile a nation, how to engage the enemy in a constructive way. Looking forward to seeing it.

It's raining here in balmy SE Michigan.

Quico, you are way off base.

"It's easy to mistake that for a rather shrill, impetuous stance; "

That's because it is!

Listen, I lived in Chile, and one of the things that amazed me was how the government bit its lip often when dealing with the pro-Pinochet opposition. Let's face it, Chavez may not engage in dialogue and may be completely obnoxious, but he hasn't thrown the opposition from helicopters into the sea.

Yet that is what Pinochet and his minions did. And the government had no choice but to sit down with the people supporting that in the Senate and the House, each day, and work together, and try to reach a compromise. Hell, Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei had to put up with Augusto Pinochet ... as the Head of the Army! They had to meet with him weekly and engage him, recognizing he still held power. Michelle Bachelet was Defense Minister of the same Armed Forces that tortured her and her mother and killed her father. If they can do it, is it too much to think we could engage the portions of chavismo that are willing in future dialogue?

If the Concertacion in Chile had followed your recipe, they would have held power for a couple of years until another coup swept them aside, and Chile would be a dictatorship again today.

Dialoguing with your enemies, with people who don't believe in dialogue - that is how you build democracies. Not by engaging in dialogue amongst ourselves, but by engaging in dialogue even with people who don't believe in dialogue.

However, what you did yesterday was much worse. Your whole post is about Chavez and how dialogue is impossible with him and with his movement. And yet, this wasn't about Chavez, it was about a somewhat reasonable chavista taking your word for it (true, facetiously) and you slamming the door in his face, engaging in ad-hominem attacks that, to me at least, were uncalled for.

Had Mario Silva come to take your offer for dialogue, I would have understood your skepticism, but your harsh reaction would have still been uncalled for. But with Greg W., it wasn't even justified.

Sorry, that's how I see it. Chavismo (and Chavez himself) are going to be a part of the political scene when we try and build a democracy. If it's discursive democracy we need to build, it has to include them, and him.

Seems to me you can't advocate engaging the other side while at the same time call them undemocratic. They may be undemocratic, but it's not a good ice-breaker to get the talking started.

Well, compared to what? Compared to the actual model, the PJ proposal and your proposal share a lot in common. Both try make more direct the relationship between rents and the people who own them, both try to minimize the role of the middle-man (the State).

True, it's not your exact proposal, but your proposal has a lto of problems. For one thing, paying out the people in cash transfers the volatility of the oil market right into people's pockets, and individuals (particularly poor one) are not very adept at riding out oil shocks. It's also pro-cyclical. So there are differences, yes, but not on the essential things (at least to me).

That's a good assessment of a probable reason why Chavez is like that.

This is a very interesting point. I heard a lecture from a newspaper guy a few months ago who touched on the same topic. It seems as though the more "free" the media gets, the more we tend to find the little corners of the world where everyone agrees wit us, the less we interact with the other point of view. He said that newspapers, with their emphasis on objectivity, served as a sort of "meeting ground" for communities, where the other side could be heard and argued with. Now, we have thousands of media outlets, each one preaching to the choir.

Thought about it in that sense, the Internet could be helping in the demise of democracy.

BTW, Quico, I have to agree with Greg on this one. Considering your post was about actually engaging the other side, the tone of your comment was off-putting and needlessly harsh.

And we're off...! :)