<p>How many times do you think Roger Waters has been to Venezuela? Wanna bet never, except <em>maybe</em> one time in the 1970s, rushing from the band’s private jet landing at Caracas’s Maiquetia Airport to the concert hall and then right back to the plane again? (I don’t think this article really merits a full study of Pink Floyd’s tour history from four decades ago, but I’m pretty sure I’m not far off-base.)</p>
<p>And do you think Waters has recently spoken with the likes of Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Bernie Sanders or Oliver Stone, who all supported the Socialist madness that Hugo Chavez and his subsequent ilk have instituted to bring the country to its knees? (You don’t hear these guys talking much about Venezuela these days, do you?)</p>
<p>More important, has Waters spoken with the average Venezuelan, who on every average day, has to suffer with hunger, poverty, slave wages, fear of crime, political persecution, violence, human rights abuses, lack of medical care and medicines, separated families (due to emigration), empty supermarket shelves, high prices, and no running water, electricity, transportation services and cooking gas?</p>
<p>You see, according to Waters, none of this is happening in Venezuela. It’s all lying, right-wing, U.S. imperialist propaganda to justify “taking over” Venezuela.</p>
<p>To properly explain it to us, he took to the airwaves this week to criticize Virgin Airways founder and brilliant entrepreneur Richard Branson for his planned Friday concert in neighboring Colombia, to raise funds for humanitarian relief for Venezuelans, specifically foodstuffs, medicines, and hygiene products. Waters says that Branson bought the U.S. lie, and that his upcoming concert “has nothing to do with the needs of Venezuelans, nothing to do with democracy, nothing to do with freedom, and nothing to do with aid.”</p>
<p>In other words, he is right, and everyone else is wrong. How does Waters know all this? Because, as he claims, “I have some friends in Caracas.” (His exact words, I swear.) Can you believe this?</p>
<p>Well, I myself have been to Venezuela dozens of times. I have dozens of family members and friends still living there, others who died prematurely, and <em>all </em>have suffered, so I can intelligently assure you that it’s Waters who has it all wrong.</p>
<p>But I can’t figure out how or why. No one can be <em>that </em>stupid, can they? Or does he simply have another agenda, a Socialist one, and he doesn’t care how many people have to die to make his point? (Nazi evil we all understand, but does he cross into stupidity evil territory?) Or is it simply an anti-U.S. thing, as his past support for convicted Wikileaks traitor Chelsea Manning clearly showed?</p>
<p>Waters even went so far as to say that Venezuela’s May 2018 “elections,” which saw current usurper/dictator Nicolas Maduro get the “most votes,” as legitimate. Even though all credible opposition members were either in jail, banned from running, under house arrest, or forced into exile.</p>
<p>The central character in Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1868 book <em>The Idiot</em> projected a young man whose apparent ignorance, goodness and open-hearted simplicity made others unaware of his true, inner intelligence, so most just considered him an idiot.</p>
<p>In Waters’ case, he <em>is </em>just an idiot.</p>