If you’re younger than 45, you probably have little or no memory of the decade-long battle that took place in the 1980s over support for the Nicaraguan contras. The contras were rebels fighting against the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime led by a Marxist revolutionary named Daniel Ortega. The Reagan Administration believed it was essential to back the contras. The Democrat-controlled Congress loved Ortega and constantly tried to kill funding for any effort to support the contras.

Ultimately, the contras’ efforts bore fruit in 1990, when pressure forced Ortega to permit a free election, and he lost. For 16 years, Nicaragua was governed by a democratic regime. But in 2006, Ortega managed to work his way back to Nicaragua’s presidency, and he learned his lesson from the first go-round. There will be no free elections this time to threaten his hold on power.

We’ve told you a lot in recent months about how bad things have gotten in Venezuela, as socialist thug Nicolas Maduro uses brute force to hang onto power even as the economy completely collapses and the population struggles to lay its hands on basic daily needs. When clueless American socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tout the promise of socialism in America, those of us who know better point to what’s going on in Venezuela.

Maybe that’s why you’re not hearing much about the turmoil in Nicaragua. The media do not want to give conservatives yet one more example to point to, and many of them are probably still invested in the 1980s narrative of Ortega as a heroic man of the people.

But Nicaragua is quickly devolving into as big a dumpster fire as Venezuela, with Ortega increasingly isolated, the public in an uproar and foreigners fearing for their safety. If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the inevitable product of socialism, and no one should be surprised it’s come to this: