Quote of the Day
I’m going to say this once, and I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable.
If you have never lived in Venezuela
If you did not grow up there
If you did not watch your country collapse in real time
If you did not stand in food lines
If you did not watch your parents lose everything they built
If you did not have to leave your home with nothingThen shut the fuck up.
You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.
And you don’t get to lecture anyone about what’s happening there.I’m Venezuelan.
I lived there most of my life until my early twenties.
I watched my country go from a functioning democracy to full blown socialism right in front of my eyes.This is not politics to me.
This is trauma.Before socialism, Venezuela was not perfect, but it worked.
There was trade.
There was money coming in.
There was investment from the US.
There were jobs.
There was food.
There was medicine.My family had five businesses.
We had our home
We had investments.
We had a future.Then the government started nationalizing everything.
Private companies were taken.
Foreign investors were pushed out.
Imports were blocked.
Price controls destroyed production.
Corruption exploded.And everything died.
Not slowly.
Violently.People didn’t suddenly become poor because of “capitalism” or “the US” or whatever bullshit slogan people like to repeat online.
They became poor because socialism destroyed incentives, destroyed production, destroyed trust, and destroyed hope.
People today in Venezuela are not debating ideology.
They are trying to survive.They are trying to find food.
Trying to find medication.
Trying to keep their families alive.So when I see people in the West posting from comfortable homes, full fridges, stable currencies, and safe streets talking about “imperialism” or “US bad” or “Trump this or that”
No.
It’s not complicated.
You’re just ignorant.China is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Russia is not rebuilding Venezuela.
Cartels are not rebuilding Venezuela.They are stealing.
They are extracting.
They are draining what’s left.If the US comes in and reinvests
If refineries get rebuilt
If infrastructure gets restored
If imports open back up
If food, water, and medicine become accessible again
If people can work and earn with dignityThen yes.
Let them take all the oil they want.Because at least something gets built instead of destroyed.
This is something to celebrate.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because for the first time in a long time, there is hope.Hope that families can eat.
Hope that people don’t have to flee their country.
Hope that Venezuela can function again.If you’ve never lived through a country collapsing
If you’ve never watched socialism destroy everything around you
If you’ve never had to leave your home because staying meant starvationThen again
Shut the fuck up.This isn’t theory.
This isn’t politics.
This is lived experience.Stephen Subero
Posted on Facebook, January 4, 2026
More food for thought on the topic.
Mr. Huffman:
I was still subscribing to the Wall Street Journal back in 2005 (before it became just another completely leftist rag) and was clipping some of the articles regarding the confiscation (aka “nationalization”) of the infrastructure of the country. Oil fields, refineries, production systems. Farms and grocery stores. Pretty much everything they could put their hands on, and watching it be “redistributed to the people”, which is collectivist-speak for “handing it out to Hugo Chavez’s cronies”. I still occasionally go back and look at these once in a while and laugh while crying…Venezuelans are all sad about the results, but it was what they voted for, just like NY-effin-C has done.
One of the more interesting fallouts was that when PdVSA confiscated the oil wells and the associated secondary and tertiary production systems, they alienated all of the foreign and domestic oil field workers who had labored for years to create and operate these sophisticated recovery systems. The end result was that almost all of them simply left the country never to return. Their skills, knowledge, and experience were so valuable that they were snatched up by other oil companies. Many of them ended up in Canada working on the oil shale recovery systems there.
Now the output of the oil fields under the corruptocrats of PdVSA has mysteriously collapsed, due no doubt to the efforts of the wreckers and hoarders. Naturally, according to them, it has nothing to do with the complete and total lack of actual competence left within the company. The collectivists always blame everyone but themselves for the problems that they have created.
It’s always the same story. And as Blackwing said. It always gets “voted” in.
Then you have to shoot your way out.
Thank you Stephen. I’m sorry for all you and your family have gone through. I would like to believe that what Venezuela has and is going through will somehow resonate with Americans enough for them to wake up.
But alas, I fear Yuri was more correct than we can imagine. What we have on our side is that the “collectivos” (communist motorcycle gangs that rob, rape, and murder whomever speaks out against the regime.) in this country will get gunned down like rabid dogs.
Thanks Joe!
Stephen’s testimony should be on every nightly news casts across the entire world.
And the fact that it isn’t shows how deep the rot of communism truly is.
“If you have never lived in Venezuela…
…Then shut the fuck up.
You do not have an opinion.
Your opinion does not matter.”
Well that’s just stupid. That’s the same logic held by people who claim men shouldn’t pass laws that affect women because they don’t have the lived experience to understand their needs. Or straight people making laws that affect gay people for the same reason.
Sure, there are details I don’t have, having not lived in Venezuela (or as a female, or as a gay person). That doesn’t mean we can’t study the events and speak to them based on our observations, or take actions based on that understanding.
And then this: “If the US comes in and reinvests”
Talk about somebody who isn’t paying attention…we have no interest in taking the oil out of the ground in Venezuela. It’s far more useful to the financial markets as leverage:
https://x.com/CDMorlock/status/2008366268462874726?s=20
“What actually happened in Iraq was not oil extraction, but financial looting. The U.S. state shoveled pork-barrel money into the MIC, especially firms like Halliburton, through no-bid logistics, security, and “reconstruction” contracts. Iraqi oil production, which hovered around 3.5 million barrels per day in the late 1980s, collapsed to a few hundred thousand barrels per day during parts of the 1990s and early 2000s. Even after the U.S. exit in 2011, it took another decade for Iraq to claw its way back to those production levels and only then through Chinese state-led industrial investment, not American capital.”
So no, I will not shut the fuck up.