Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 12:22am

Pope’s Ideology Increasingly Unpopular in South America

 

The Pope constantly warns against ideology, and yet he is the most ideological of popes,  His ideology is that of the contemporary Left on most issues, including immigration, ecology and economics.  He rarely critiques Leftist governments, while he regularly does so governments perceived as right of center.  There are signs that his ideology is wearing out its welcome in South America.  From Yascha Mounk writing in The Atlantic:

To secure his reelection in the first round of the elections, on October 20, he needed to either win a majority of the vote, or lead his closest challenger by at least 10 percent. As the night wore on, and the state’s official electoral commission updated results in real time, it became more and more clear that he would fall far short of that goal.

That’s when the vote tally suddenly froze. For 24 hours, the website of Bolivia’s electoral commission offered no more updates. Then the official result was finally announced: Morales had supposedly won 47.1 percent to Carlos Mesa’s 35.5 percent, winning the election outright.

The strong circumstantial evidence of vote tampering succeeded in inspiring what years of more subtle attacks on democratic institutions had failed to do: Millions of Bolivians went out into the streets to demand a fair election. They were threatened and beaten by pro-government gangs. Yet the public mood steadily swung against Morales. Parts of Bolivia’s police and military made clear that they would no longer be willing to do his violent bidding.

When an independent observer mission from the Organization of American States published its audit of the election yesterday, the game was finally up. After the OAS announced that there had been “clear manipulations” of the vote in a scathing report, Morales agreed to new elections. A few hours later, as scores of his own allies started to abandon the sinking ship, he resigned from office. Though the future of Bolivian democracy still remains radically uncertain, this is a momentous turning point: one of the first times in recent memory that an authoritarian populist has been forced to vacate his office, because his own compatriots would not stand for his abuses.

Morales’s departure from office marks both a sea change in Latin American politics and a stinging rebuke to the naïveté of parts of the Western left. Even though there had always been strong evidence of their anti-democratic leanings, new socialist leaders such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia were widely celebrated throughout the first decade of the 21st century as the future face of Latin America.

Now virtually nothing remains of their erstwhile appeal. Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have made Venezuela deeply authoritarian and shockingly poor. Meanwhile, the Bolivian people have come out in great numbers to stop Morales from violently crushing their protests. As one of the most famous slogans of the Latin American left holds, El pueblo unido jamás será vencido: The people united will never be defeated.

From east to west, and south to north, the dream of Latin America’s so-called pink wave has turned into a nightmare. And the many scholars, writers, and politicians who have for years sung the praises of aspiring dictators like Maduro and Morales should not be easily forgiven for sacrificing the rights of distant people on the altar of their rigid ideology.

Go here to read the rest.  I expect this to impact the Pope little.  Like most true ideologues, the Pope has a tendency to ignore reality when it doesn’t comport with his beliefs.

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Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 5:36am

So what’s Jorge Bergoglio going to do with the commie crucifix now? Lemme guess – this is all a capitalist American CIA plot by white racist gringos to the north.

father of seven
father of seven
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 6:06am

Two leftist thugs down, one to go. In a just world, Bergoglio would be tarred and feathered.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 6:08am

This will have no effect on the Pontiff at all. First off, the South American nations really don’t care for each other very much. Second, Argentina is about to, if it hasn’t already, swing back to the Peronusm that wrecked it after WWII. As this Pope has done almost nothing about the abuse cases in Latin America, I doubt he cares.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 6:09am

Father of seven….it isn’t just Maduro that has to go, it’s the thugs who run Cuba, too.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 8:23am

Interesting quote from our current Pope;

“Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”

No absolutes?
Religion of relativism?

Encouraging folks to move to what [they] think is good?

Hummm.
Many think pedophilia is good.
Do we want to encourage them in their quest for good?

trackback
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 2:51pm

[…] OUT: FRANCIS’S IDEOLOGY INCREASINGLY UNPOPULAR IN SOUTH […]

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 3:36pm

LQC: Maybe somebody should steal it and throw it in the Tiber.
Just a thought.

Mark
Mark
Tuesday, November 12, AD 2019 8:39pm

The pope’s comrade in arms is gone and hiding in Mexico.
Good riddance. Throw the hammer and sickle crucifix into the Tiber where it belongs.

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