Leftist Boric wins Chile's presidential election
Submitted by gjohnsit on Sun, 12/19/2021 - 5:16pm
This is HUGE!
Chilean far-right presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast conceded defeat to leftist Gabriel Boric on Sunday.Boric has 55% of the votes with 68% of polling stations reporting. Kast has 45% of the votes.
Voters on Sunday were choosing between Boric, 35, a millennial former student protest leader who has vowed to raise taxes on the "super rich" and Kast, 55, a devout Catholic and father of nine who has repeatedly defended the country's former dictator Augusto Pinochet.
I can't emphasize too much just how important this election was. It was the biggest of 2021.
It realigns the politics of Latin America. Only Brazil's election next year is more important.
Boric was the first candidate elected president after losing the first round in Chile's history.
Comments
Bravo!
Felicitaciones a Chile.
NYCVG
OMIGOD!
FINALLY! Some good....naw, GREAT news!
Kudos to the Bolivarian!
Wonder how long it will take the CIA to foment a rebellion. How long before the US calls the election bs.
I am glad you have been keeping up with this and sharing it with the site.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Actually it was a good year for the left
Ecuador: February 7:
A surprise loss to the neoliberals. A really bad start to the year.
Bolivia: March 12:
The first big win of the Left of the year.
Chile: *May 15–16—local elections and constitutional delegates, June 13 gubernatorial runoff; November 21—general election, December 19 presidential runoff:
The left won everyone of those elections, except for November 21.
Peru: April 11, June 6 presidential runoff
Surprise win for the Left.
Mexico: June 6
The Left wins despite meddling by the CIA.
Nicaragua: November 7
The left wins, not a surprise.
Honduras: November 27
Big surprise win for the Left.
The result is relatively good news as Boric is better than Kast.
But one should keep this in mind.
Boric is more Bernie Sanders than Hugo Chavez
That's still an immense improvement.
Time will tell on how he runs the government.
Will he be like Pedro Castillo of Peru or Luis Arce of Bolivia?
Works for me
I'd choose Bernie over Hugo even if I DID have that choice. I view the New Deal/Keynesianism as ACTIVELY BETTER than Marxism, because the latter is simply 'yin' to capitalism's 'yang'; breaking free of that yin-yang means calling bullshit on the whole 19th-Century religion of "economics/social science", which is pretty much exactly what Keynes did. It's all a game of make-believe.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Feh.
The actual Bernie Sanders joined today in the White House's outrage at having been played by Joe Manchin for the entire year 2021 without the LEAST FKN CLUE that they were being played EVEN THOUGH six Democrats warned them that the recently-announced death of the Build Back Better Act was going to happen. As Krystal and Saagar told everyone, the six Democrats are going to be back-benchers for a long time.
The actual Bernie Sanders was cheated of election in 2016 and, rather than rally his vast support toward a better end, decided instead to work for the election of Clinton criminality. Retiring, and quitting the real GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE that we've been playing for the past six years, would have been a better outcome. Vermont can elect another good Senator.
"Marxism," even though it was made into a civic religion (its primary drawback), at least has the advantage of being based on the writings of Karl Marx. Now, Marx, whose writings (when paired with Engels') extend to fifty fat volumes in translation, warned us early on that a life spent catering to a ruling class with control of what he called "value" (defined, simply, as that which money can buy) is no life at all, which is true. And Marx, in sum, also warned us that working people need to rise up in revolution to change this state of affairs, otherwise we still get a ruling class, we still get politicians pretending to be on our side and offering us benefits packages that shrink to zero, and we still spend our lives in slavery to "value" and those who control it.
(And here's a hint: the good Daoist does not define freedom as "yang" and slavery as "yin.")
Now, it will be seen at some later point if Gabriel Boric will be anything better than Bernie -- one can always hope that in a country with a marxist tradition like Chile Mr Boric will be getting some good advice -- don't commit suicide like Allende, find allies in the Army like Chavez did, and rally the masses being the first three pieces...
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Compared to the alternative, this was a huge victory
I believe that Boric, like Bernie, actually wants his nation to move forward. He has a left-wing agenda.
Give him a chance.
And hope that he's a more
skillful politician than Michelle Bacholet. This election, once again, is merely the opening stage. The back and forth between modest left and rightwing - Bacholet -> Pinera -> Bacholet -> Pinera with major protests during both of Pinera's terms gets old.
Here is the problem.
Human society has stuck with capitalism for too long. As a result, it is stuck with a set of problems that are too vast to be amenable to watered-down "New Deal" solutions. If the politicians are overwhelmed and sell out, this is because, lacking imagination, they find themselves so overwhelmed that they are reduced to the sort of "pleading before the Emperor" tactic that you saw in Bernie Sanders' post-dropout performance last year. (Btw, one of the reasons Bernie dropped out in 2020 was that his staffers, careerists for the most part, wanted to work for Joe Biden. Now that's overwhelmed.)
Part of the problem is that working people are being asked to sit back and let "representatives" deal with global problems. Sure, give Boric a chance -- but don't just sit back and wait for Chile to do a repeat of Allende's last days.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Let's also keep in mind
That if Latin America governments push too hard, the U.S./CIA will do a coup and sanctions, and that nation will get push backwards for decades.
They know that in Chile and everywhere else on that continent. So let's cut the new guys a bit of slack. Their working with the sword of Damocles hanging above them.
Latin American governments don't have to "push too hard"
for the CIA to intervene. Joao Goulart wasn't "pushing too hard" when the Brazilian generals overthrew him with CIA help in 1964.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Believe me, I'm not excusing Bernie's cowardice
I was speaking both in terms of people-as-figureheads-for-ideas (whether the people live up to their putative standards is another matter), and "IF I were actually given such a fantastical choice"; I wasn't trying very hard to be a theologically-accurate Taoist, either.
My most important point by far, however, is the one we agree on: Political/civic religion is the bane and damnation of all good ideas and policy.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Thank. GOODNESS.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
if he's really left he'll be a "dictator" soon enough
which reminds me, I passed some ACLU do-gooders on the street and told them it was hopeless. They tried to talk me into donating because ... I don't know why...better bribes?
Anyway, it's hopeless. As Humphrey notes, if Boric isn't what we'd like then they'll let him stay.
45% of Chilean voters chose
Pinochet 2.0. Good grief! Boric may not be Allende 2.0, but he's closer to that than any they've seen since. A very long slog for Chile, and they haven't forgotten their song.
[video:https://youtu.be/Cxwkaz43wJ0]
Solid
thanks for sharing!
The Russians/Putin
interfered in the election, so the Cee Eye A/Deep State must set things right.
s/
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I suppose that this has to be considered.
What's the plan?
Is this discovery fortuitously-timed enough for pink-wavers to weaponize it against Morgoth?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Is this a means to strong arm Boric or this is what awaits?
Don't blink Boric.
Never has there been as many left of center elected governments in Central and South America when the US is as financially and militarily strapped as it now is. Only "the west" is blind to current conditions.