Why is it that Chavez's government can't seem to learn?
I think it's worth pondering the way revolutionary dogmatism, conditioned by an automatic assumption that all criticism is animated by a hidden agenda, feeds into intolerance of dissent, leaving the revolution impervious to outside input. When you are are 100% certain you are right, you can only infer that anyone who disagrees with you does so out of tainted motives.
It's a short step from that to concluding that only traitors dissent. And when you dismiss all dissent as treason, you leave yourself unable to absorb any information that comes from outside a restricted circle of ideological correctness.
Dogmatism leads to intolerance, and intolerance to political catatonia.
