Donald Trump’s victory came as a bitter surprise on election day. After spending 24 hours in denial, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it coming. His harsh critique of the system, the promise for change, the provocative comments against his opponents and the media. The promises to help the working class, and his boundless media presence on Twitter as well as all the attention different publications were giving him. It wasn’t the first time I had seen populism run for president. In fact, I had seen it exactly as described multiple times before, in Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez.
With a revolutionary promise, Chavez’ rhetoric focused on offering the lower class an alternative to the system he said had failed them for so many years. With this speech, a controlled “democracy” that today looks more like a dictatorship, and economic support from the country’s vast oil reserves, Chavez was able to maintain power until his death in 2013. Meanwhile he was driving the country — my home — into total ruin.
His presidency remained in a populist campaign mode for 15 years, and I was a firsthand witness of it. However, blinded by my own subjective reason and the belief that democracy could never commit such mistake, and in the midst of a city that decries Trump and made it seem like no one in the world could support him, I forgot that sometimes the wrong person does get a hold of power.
I was no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I was less a fan of Trump. For me, he posed too much of a risk. Clinton might not have been the perfect candidate, but she at least was a sound one. She had a good political background, coherent ideas and good intentions. Ultimately, she did not ring bells of my past like Trump did.
The first similarity between Donald Trump´s and Hugo Chavez’s I noticed was their lack of political experience. A parallel between the two might seem odd because Chavez is a left wing socialist that dreads everything Trump is. A capitalist or “Yankee” is what Chavez would have called him if he were still alive.
But similar to the American businessman and president elect, the Venezuelan leader had never held a political position prior to his presidency. Up until his first election in 1998, Chavez had been a soldier, serving the Venezuelan military for years. His ruling philosophy was far from that of a traditional politician. In a win or lose mindset, like that of a soldier, there was no space for compromising with the enemy. It took no longer than a year for him to rid the country of political opposition.
Similarly, the complexities of a country do not relate to the mechanisms of a private business. It is the first time in American history that a man that has never served public office has gained control of the White House. According to NBC and Wall Street Journal Polls, 42 percent of American voters felt “very uncomfortable” with Trump’s political inexperience. They rightfully do so; politics yearns for social harmony while a company is in the pursuit of profit. It’s a different ball game. The head of a company is given total ruling power over the business, while the diversity of ruling social actors is increasingly bigger in a country.
Chavez magnified his campaign by derogating the bipartisan system that had made up Venezuelan politics for 40 years. He blamed the country’s problems on the the capitalist elite, and posed himself as the perfect antidote or “change” the country had been waiting for. He fixed hate in the hearts and minds of his supporters, dividing the country along the way.
In the same manner, Trump scrutinized the current establishment, and gained impetus from criticizing what he called a “rigged” system lobbied and controlled by global corporations.
The president-elect´s slogan “Make America Great Again” summarizes his nationalist rhetoric. His campaign was characterized by protectionism against companies that produce elsewhere, and his hostility against immigrants.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan leader decried imperialism. He devoted himself and the country to Simon Bolivar, South American leader of independence from Spanish rule, going as far as to changing the country’s name to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This, to maximize nationalist sentiment.
Regardless, Chavez showed no sign of bettering the country’s economic situation. On the contrary, he imposed price and trade controls and nationalized companies that drove Venezuelan economy into the ground. Just in the last four years Venezuelan economy has had a inflation and currency devaluation of over 1,000 percent, and accumulated GDP contraction of over 15 percent, said Luis Vicente Leon, one of the country’s most prominent economic analyst and President of Datanalisis.
Both candidates are undoubtedly products of the media, two men of great audacity, who carried strong messages that called people’s attention.
Chavez first appeared in the Venezuelan political landscape in 1992, taking responsibility for a failed coup that put him behind bars for two years. Before being taken into custody, the soldier appeared on national TV with a strong message that catapulted him into the future. After becoming president, Chavez started his own TV show called “Hello President” which broadcasted for hours every Sunday night. The longest one went on for eight hours and seven minutes. Additionally, he carried hour long “cadenas” which were mandatory to broadcasts on all channels and radio stations in the country. According to The New York Times, by 2012 he had added up to 1,642 hours of radio appearances.
I remember being annoyed by incoherent conversations of Chavez with himself. They took longer than my 45-minute car rides to school. The only alternative to listening to such barbarities was to turn the radio off, because every channel in the country was also broadcasting what he said.
Over time, I learned to deal with the rage and indignity that listening to barbarous lies and stupidity gave me. Over 10 years of coping with Chavez’ TV presence trained me to be able to sit through this year’s´presidential debates and bear Trump´s media presence. Whether he was speaking nonsense about Obama´s birth certificate, or making offensive claims about Mexicans and Latinos, most of what came out of Trump’s mouth, and how it came out, reminded me of my country´s late president. He was provoking the audience and saying what his supporters wanted to hear, regardless of his own faith in his own words. Their ultimate goal was to be entertaining, captured and loved by the camera
I am not saying the United States will end up like Venezuela. Apart from being a populist, Chavez was a Marxist and a Socialist, and it is his lack of smart management that had led the country to where it is today. Additionally, the U.S. has institutions and decentralized power, something Venezuela does not. But I am certainly not the first person to ask myself, “Is this the right and fit person to govern the U.S.?”
Today, I find myself doubting the perfect democracy that I had always looked up to. But this does nothing but show that democracy has its flaws and isn’t always perfect. Chavez was president until his death in 2013. He was democratically elected every time. Populism has a way of infiltrating democracy and deceiving it.
For years, I fell into the mistake of taking my opinion as the only rightful one. I rejected the possibility that a majority could ever prefer such a candidate. It wasn’t until I accepted it as a reality that not only was I able to understand the situation, but was I able to take action that was truly meaningful through campaigns and dialogues rather than hate.
Here are some ways to start.