Andrew Sage

He disparaged Juan Guaido, calling him the Beto O'Rourke of Venezuela.

So I think that there's something to be said about strongmen recognizing strongmen.

And a lot of these authoritarian lessons are not limited to one side of the ideological spectrum.

Yeah, definitely.

I find that tendency on the American left, on the sort of internet left,

to be massively frustrating.

Like as someone who went there to see the revolution, who like went there to understand it and who spent masses of time with Venezuelan people in the Darien Gap, at the border in Venezuela.

Like I'm very fond of Venezuelan people and I think, yeah, our solidarity should be with them, not with some strong man state.

We saw this in Syria as well, right?

Like it is...

Heartbreaking, genuinely heartbreaking to explain to people how someone who identifies as a leftist is also denying that their children were gassed by chemical weapons in Syria, right?

This campus gray zone tendency on the American left specifically is incredibly toxic.

And anybody who seriously considers themselves to be a leftist is massively undermining any credibility they have when they associate themselves with regimes which willingly murder their own people.

And I would like to see people stop doing that.

Perhaps both of you could finish up by suggesting US coverage of this has not been great, right?

Like it tends to focus on the United States very much and Venezuela kind of appears as a monolithic entity.

Turned out Tobago rarely gets any coverage in the US media.

I did see, I think Reuters or AP had done a piece about how fishermen are reluctant to go out.

I would like to see more of that kind of reporting.

Perhaps both of you could suggest a couple of sources where people could read about this.