Venzeuela: The right way to live

see the post immediately preceeding.

In Hugo Chavez's Venezeuela they have finally completed the project of Western Civilization. They have at long last brought to the front of society the values of individualism, the pursuit of beauty, truth, and the value of the simple human soul and the perfect human form. Did they all read Aristotle and just think about it? No, no silly egghead, they have apotheosized crazy-ass 1980s "Dynasty" behavior. It's like Donald Trump got a whole country to class-up and he went a classed the hell out of it. Socialist Democracy with incredible oil resources placed ideally between the Andes and the Caribbean? Check. Complete wealth disparity and creepy Fritz Lang geographically inflected divisional imagery between the "upper" and "lower" classes making the terms literal? Check. Value of creepy beauty-industry celebraty machine? Oh, my friend, I chuckle because it is so high.

Read.
Read and bask in the glory of how kinda fiflthy it makes you feel.

The beauty of this hard to ascertain. But there is definitely something elegant and perfect here that just screams to be elucidated, drawn out and expressed. There is something in this piece that encapsulates, dare I say embodies, the post modern condition.

The manic desire for perfection translated from Puritan northern climes to Venezuela of all places is something sublime. Juxtaposed with the meaning of its own past, the poor, and the real potential for political violence, the rich put on fashion shows and groom beauty queens.

The way that even in the nominally socialist country there would be only one meritocratic institution, being hot, is something that literally embodies the triumph of form over substance.

Beautiful women and oil become one. A single thing: export. Not merely the commoditization of a person, but the image industry holding supreme, tenuously grasping the sides of hill outside a Third World capital. A twisted, J-Lo-ized, Brave New World.

You can hear the club beats (assuredly phat club beats), and smell the cheap cigarettes and the expensive booze. Everybody has product in their hair…oh, yes, look in the mirror…there you have had product in your hair the whole time. Heavily modified women and men whose every hair has been painstakingly removed move through the crowd, make up the crowd. You can spot the rich ones, they are less attractive, they jostle through the crowd, entitled and filled with the knowledge that this is all for them. They’ve put on a bacchanal and brought in ringers. Men surrounded by two or three women each taller than them, giving sidelong glances to each other that say: “back off.” The women that is.

You can practically see a bearded-Zeus figure shake his head wearily and say, "Oh Man, what folly consumes you!"

Man, I guess if it's gonna burn you might as well throw a party and make sure somebody's a-fiddlin'.