I heard that last weekend at South By Southwest, the younguns booed Howard Schultz when he linked socialism with Venezuela. The general consensus is that they weren’t booing the carnage in Venezuela so much as the suggestion that they ideology they love might result in such calamity.

So they probably don’t want to hear about this:

As Venezuela’s five-day power blackout left homes without water, Lilibeth Tejedor found herself looking for it on Monday in the last place she would have imagined – a drain pipe feeding into a river carrying sewage through the capital, Caracas.

Tejedor, 28, joined dozens of people who had flocked to the Guaire river, which snakes along the bottom of a sharp ravine alongside Caracas’ main highway, to fill up a four-gallon (15 liter) plastic container.

Unlike the fetid liquid flowing through the Guaire river, the water emerging from the pipe was at least clear. Those who gathered to collect it said the water had been released by local authorities from reservoirs.

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They added, however, that it was being carried through unsanitary pipes and should only be used to flush toilets or scrub floors.

“I’ve never even seen this before. It’s horrible, horrible,” said Tejedor, preparing to carry the container on a small hand cart back to her home in the neighborhood of San Agustin.

Don’t forget, the best of the revolucion is yet to come.

This is not complicated so let’s not complicate it. Let’s just put the pieces together directly:

Will this be the moment when American leftists finally realize what socialism does? Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use You're logged in to Facebook. Click here to log out. 13% (2 Votes) 87% (13 Votes)

Socialism claims that society is better when the government controls the means of production, sets the prices, sets the wages, manages the natural resources and takes wealth from the citizenry to ensure proper operations of everything from the welfare state to public works. That was the Chavista proposition that won over the populace in Venezuela.

The increasingly popular corollary to this in America is “democratic socialism,” which basically means all the same stuff but is predicated on the voters freely choosing it.

So let’s review how well this has worked in Venezuela, where the voters freely chose the socialist regime of Hugo Chavez, which is now under the control of his hapless lackey Nicolas Maduro:

Inflation has left the nation’s money worthless.

Price controls have taken away any potential reward for producing goods, so there is a shortage of most essential goods.

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Public works have broken down, as evidenced by the now five-day-long blackout that has, among other things, led people to see water in sewage pipes.

Crime is out of control. One of the few ways you can make money in Venezuela is by kidnapping people and holding them for ransom. If you’re the relative of ballplayer you might as well just turn yourself over to the kidnappers because they’re going to get you eventually.

The public health system has completely collapsed, to the point that people are fleeing the country and taking a myriad of diseases with them.

Speaking of which, in the past three years, Venezuela has lost fully 10 percent of its entire population as people flee to neighboring nations, who are struggling to handle the influx but are doing their best because they know how bad things have gotten under Maduro’s socialist misrule.

Oh, about that “democratic” thing: Maduro essentially handed himself a new six-year term by putitng on a rigged, sham election last fall. When the National Assembly, which actually is freely elected, objected to the sham, Maduro sicced the military on anyone who tried to take away his power.

So. What exactly is the difference between the socialism in Venezuela and the socialism proposed in the U.S. by the likes of Bernie, AOC and the SXSW crowd? The only difference is that the one has already run its course, while the other remains in the fever-pitched dreams of fools who for some reason still want to try it.

One consistent psychosis of socialists everywhere is that they all think, even though socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried, they will be the first to make it work. So far the failure rate to this theory is 100 percent. The left always lectures us about paying attention to data, so that’s a data point they might want to pay attention to.