Ecuador: If you have to deny you're an idiot...

Filed under: Americas

"I am not an idiot!"
Source: Prensa Latina (Cuba)

Is there any clearer way to prove one is an idiot than to insist one is not?

The idiot who proved himself just that is President Rafael Correa, the Marxist prettyboy president of Ecuador, an ally of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who makes John Edwards look like an august man of substance.

Ecuador has a long tradition of buffoons in high office, but none approach the idiocy and corruption of Correa and his cabinet. Desperate to be a dictator like his hero Hugo Chavez, he's rapidly sunk Ecuador to new lows. He's "fired" Congress to get rid of opposition lawmakers, stacked Ecuador's courts, jacked international bond markets through manipulative threats to default on on the sovereign debt that amount to 'dump and pump,' lied and cheated the World Bank, called on the world pay him $350 million not to pump oil, endorsed the confiscation of a billion dollars in assets from Oxy Petroleum, his top foreign investor, instituted baying mob rule against opponents, vowed to sic illegal immigrants on the U.S., hurled lawsuits at Colombia, sheltered FARC guerrillas, installed phony cameras on the streets of Quito as security measures to fool the public into thinking they're safe instead of making them so, and as cherry on this cowpie, had Daryl Hannah come to Ecuador to denounce another major U.S. investor, Chevron, as 'genocidal.' Oh what an investment climate he's created! Oh what a stable foundation for prosperity he's fostered! Oh what a picture of trust and responsibility he's projected.

I blasted his government over free trade in a piece I wrote for another publication and was surprised to get a furious reply from the Ecuadorean government, obviously a sign that I'd hit a nerve with these touchy devils.

But that's nothing compared to what writer Carlos Alberto Montaner got from Correa himself. Montaner, you may recall, wrote a masterpiece, 'Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot,' with with Alvaro Vargas Llosa and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, outlining every political pathology that plagues Latin America. That recently led to a sequel appropriatedly called 'The Idiot Returns' focusing on the new wave of populism hitting the region, from Hugo Chavez on down.

In the second book, Montaner & Co. included a special section on Rafael Correa as a perfect specimen of the populist idiocy that has kept Latin America poor, backward, stupid and hopeless, as the rest of the world progressed on. Correa was a textbook example of what they were talking about, so he made the text.

You'd think Correa would have been pleased to have merited a chapter in a book by such distinguished authors, or else just kept his mouth shut given the topic and his pedestaled place in it, but not so in the case of this big-headed Marxist egomaniac.

Carlos Alberto Montaner, in a hilarious essay, (in Spanish) described how he'd actually got a raging letter from Correa himself, insisting he was not, repeat, not an idiot. Hear that? Take it from him, pal, he's not stupid at all. He said so himself, spitting mad.

Memo to Rafael Correa: If, as head of state, you have to deny being stupid to the author of a book whose title is 'The Idiot Returns' where he's made you Exhibit A, it's a pretty forgone conclusion that you are even stupider than you were written about! If you had a lick of sense, and you don't, you might like to keep it all as quiet as possible.

For the rest of us, it'll probably be impossible not to buy a copy of that new book as soon as it hits Amazon just to see how it pushed the vain fool's buttons! Doggone idiot, and funny as heck, a thrashing man we truly laugh at, not with. I hope Montaner frames the damning letter from the president of Ecuador and smiles. What a bozo to get 'fan' mail from!

Hat tip: ECrisis