John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Marco Rubio condemns 'weirdo Salt Bae' after Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro dines at his restaurant
“Footage showed Mr Maduro dining on expensive steak at the Istanbul restaurant on a stopover travelling to China”
I am not aware of any country or organization or religious institution in the world where the high leaders are not insulated from the worst situations of their society.
That certainly includes the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Britain’s Prime Minister and the President of France and the President of the International Red Cross right down to the chief official of any agency in any jurisdiction dealing with poverty.
So what? Society always acts this way. It's just what humans do. It has nothing to do with socialism or any other “ism.”
This is an unthinking attack, using a cheap "populist" theme, from a particularly unpleasant American politician, Marco Rubio.
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Response to a comment:
Indeed, and if you really want to see some grim stuff a lot of people aren't familiar with, I can tell you where to go in the United States to find it.
Absolutely Third-World situations in every respect. Not just poverty, but bleakness and filth and decay.
Just, as one very small example that did make the news, the subject of American poverty and degradation being one generally avoided in America’s press, I think of the people of Flint, Michigan and not having decent drinking water supplied, with no urgent rush to remedy the situation even after some bad publicity.