There’s no clearer sign a regime is going communist than in the telltale spread of mediocrity. Communists are the great levelers, the equalizers, the exponents of the lowest common denominator as an end in itself. This is why communism in theory is so attractive to tyrants, regardless of their beliefs. If everyone who can make decisions is stupid, tyranny is easy. That’s why political loyalty substitutes for objective merit as totalitarian power consolidates. The net result is Blotting Paper Bureaucrats, first described by Vladimir Voinovich in 1982. Solzenitsyn, with his physicist’s low boiling point for stupidity, also wrote of the triumph of mediocrity. As did Hannah Arendt of Nazis, coining the phrase ‘banality of evil.’

Well, it’s reached Venezuela, too. Blogger Miguel Octavio has the details here.