Far Out
Not three months ago, in reading through the responses to one of those occasional, naively-hopeful, instantly-pounced-on, ultimately-misguided Guardian pieces I like to write, I was amazed when one of the bolshies in the comments section actually took me to task for calling Chávez “far left”.
Huh? I always thought calling the guy “far left” was a bit like calling the sky “blue”…so I was tickled the other day to realize that Chávez thinks so, too: after all, isn’t “far left” as natural an English translation as you can find for “extrema izquierda”?
And it’s hard to shake the feeling that Chávez – a self-described Marxist who has never read Das Capital – had not the slightest inkling that he was calling for a stance that Lenin, of all people, called “an infantile disorder”. Tee-hee.
* Incidentally, I understand Gringericans – for reasons never explained by science – like to celebrate Thanksgiving on the wrong date. For those of you who’ve made that, erm, questionable lifestyle choice: happy t-day, y’all.
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