And then chavismo collapsed into a scary collective insanity

Man, they don’t make ’em like Alma Guillermoprieto anymore… While his political base crumbles, Maduro inaugurates theaters, attends circus performances, wears olive-green military-style shirts with ever-broader epaulets even...

Man, they don’t make ’em like Alma Guillermoprieto anymore…

While his political base crumbles, Maduro inaugurates theaters, attends circus performances, wears olive-green military-style shirts with ever-broader epaulets even though he never served in the army, and denounces coup and assassination plots against him. […]

But perhaps the plots and coups Maduro seems obsessed with are coming not from outside his party but from within. The growing tumult and disorder is so extreme, so clearly provoked, and so destructive that one must at least consider the possibility that it is being encouraged by defeated chavista rivals now smelling wounded prey, or from those sectors of the military who have never welcomed the Cuban presence in Venezuela, or both.