The Bottom of the Pit
The Supreme Tribunal of Justice basically annulled Venezuela's Legislature. Another day, another coup d'Etat.
Late last night, while Venezuelans were sleeping off the hangover from two days of Pythonesque foreign policy and routine authoritarianism, the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal (TSJ) announced it would assume the National Assembly’s parliamentary functions so long as the popularly elected organ remains in desacato (contempt of court).
They basically annulled the Legislature.
This is it. The breaking point. No, really. It’s this moment. Seriously. Cross my heart and hope to die. Pinky promise. Believe me!
Chavismo has managed to rise to a higher level Goebellian Nirvana by overexposing the public to absurdities and a general state of butt naked, crude misery.
Who’s going to give a damn about the Rule of Law and political institutions if they have to sort through our hell-spawn bureaucracy, through impossible lines or else rooting through garbage bins to feed their kids? Who’s going to believe that “this is it, that this is the moment” after seeing a convicted murderer appointed to lead the highest instance of justice in the country and knowing that the Vice-President has been tagged as a most wanted Drug Kingpin? Who will think this is the moment when our democracy died, even if we’ve said it one thousand times before?
Constitutional fraud? What? Again? Who cares?
El pozo no tiene fondo. There is no such thing as the bottom of the pit. It’s something you hear constantly on the streets of Caracas.
But it is not true.
The pit does have a bottom.
The thing is, once you go through it, you realize that you are in another pit that has another bottom, and then another, and another.
The bottom of the pit is the threshold that defines what you consider reasonable within the reality you’re currently in. Once you cross the threshold you find yourself in another reality, where other rules apply, and with a different standard of reasonableness.
Perhaps, the trick is to never accept the new reality. Nunca acostumbrarse. Never getting used to the abuse. Never losing your capacity to be impressed and disgusted and enraged. Holding on to that feeling deep inside telling you that this. Is not. Normal. That this is unacceptable.
But that wouldn’t be human. Right?
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