Juan Carlos : People have always loved war, coopttieimn , confrontation ,conflict , It raises their animal spirits and makes them feel strong and self proud , That explains the popularity of competitive sports , childrens love of cartoon characters that act like sadists, why almost every film or tv series or novel depends of the ennactment of conflict and struggle to sustain the narratives interest ,War need not always be overtly violent , it can take many forms , but always there is this pleasure in opposing an adversary, in having an enemy one can take pleasure in loathing and hurting either directly or vicariously . whom one can insult and threaten and dispoil of their human dignity .The ancient greeks had a funny term for this , they called it the ;agonal spirit', they gloried in it , thats what the olympics is all about ,that's what also fed the Romans love of gladiatorial games and the byzantines love of violent charriot races .Modern politics could not scape the influence of this very universal human love for histrionized conflict , people enjoy the spectacle and practice of politics as a blood sport, The difference is that in some places the Culture places limits on how bestial and brutal politics can get , Where people have a more pragmatic sense of the limits of political conflict or a more developed sense of civility and social respect for ones opponents , a greater capacity for self restraint and for appreciating the virtues of compromise and consensus . However there is always the beast wanting out , specially among those whole life conditions or rethorically hypped up passions or ignorance brutalize and poison with heady sectarian resentments.Venezuelan history is one full of civil strife and conflict , of political cannibalism, For some years democratic rulers, however flawed, managed to maintain the beast calm, then the oil prices went down and they couldnt continue the heavy price of wholesale populistic measures to keep them peaceful and happy and Venezuelan democracy became a breeding ground for the kind of movement which Chavez led . A sextupling of oil prices them made those populist policies possible again and the beast learned to love its new master , to rise fiercely to his call for a permanent undying struggle against those who had managed to scape the brutality of poverty and formed the country's better educated middle class ( now renamed bourgeois oligarchs ) . Chavez and his minions used this hatred and the deep pockets of Venezuelas oil wealth to assumme absolute power by manipulating the passions of the newly aroused beast while keeping some semblance of democratic process which 40 years of democracy had made popular and difficult to suppress without incurring in a heavy political loss of image . The democratic process when played against this dark background of conditions cannot be as transparent and umblemished as that which more developed countries practice . This also means that as the Regime views politics it is a form of War albeit with less bloodshed than is normal in a typical war !!