I love it when writers on Slate go over the top in terms of arrogance and dismissiveness. Let's put all our prejudices on display!

Anne Applebaum on anyone supporting Hugo Chavez:

"Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called 'useful idiots' once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention, and good photographs."

Well hey Anne, did it occur to you that the Venezuelan president might enjoy some legitimacy, attention, and good photographs all on his own? Could that be why he has such broad support among the workers of his own country?

Or are these perks belonging only to the masters of a corporate-controlled republic?

Must we remake the whole world in our image?

"He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration John Reed once felt—the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law."

Yes, our system is so perfect - money changes hands, laws are made or modified or thrown out, and everyone who started rich comes away richer. Meanwhile the average American, realizing the system is horribly rigged, doesn't even bother to vote. Some kinda democracy hey?

Does democracy naturally breed apathy, or is the current system only a caricature of democracy?

"For all his brilliance, Reed could not bring socialism to America. For all his wealth, fame, media access, and Hollywood power, Sean Penn cannot oust George W. Bush."

Pity that. But from your tone I infer, Anne, that an ouster of George W. Bush would be the worst catastrophe imaginable. I do not think you will much like our political climate after November, 2008.

"As for Venezuelan politics, or the Venezuelan people, they don't matter at all."

To you, no.

"The country is simply playing a role filled in the past by Russia, Cuba, and Nicaragua—a role to which it is, at the moment, uniquely suited."

Noted. You've objectified and dismissed Venezuala and its people.

"Clearly, Venezuela is easier to idealize than Iran and North Korea, the former's attitude to women being not conducive to fashion models, the latter being downright hostile to Hollywood. Venezuela is also warm, relatively close, and a country of beautiful waterfalls."

And its people are great singers and dancers with very white eyes and teeth.

"Most of all, Venezuela's leader not only dislikes the American president—so do most other heads of state—but refers to him as "the devil," a "dictator," a "madman," and a "killer."

So Chavez gets it only 75% right. Give the guy a break.

"Who cares what Chávez actually does when Sean Penn isn't looking? Ninety years after the tragedy of the Russian revolution, Venezuela has become the "kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer" for a whole new generation of fellow-travelers. As long as the oil lasts."

What a sneeringly awful human being you are here, Anne Applebaum. I hope that when the current American fad for Coulteresque and Limbaughesque posturing has run its course your work is outed as a pale imitation of theirs.

Socialism is not the great evil confronting America today. Radical conservatism is. Radical conservatism, with its ancient roots in fear, racial bigotry, irrational religious ideas, and predatory economics. The slavers were all conservatives. Hitler was a conservative. The KKK are conservative. Jim Jones was a conservative. Why does no one ever point at the elephant standing in the middle of the room?

Time to call a spade a spade, Ms. Applebaum. When you anti- and pseudo-intellectuals have lost your grip on our media, the great ideological cleansing will begin. Know-nothing proclamations and hate-filled smears like the one you just penned will have no standing in a marketplace of GOOD ideas.

At least until the completion of another great human cycle, when all the dumba---s come to power again.

- MW