I'm going to say something uncomfortable.

It's mentally exhausting to see the same cycle repeat itself over and over.
Rescue videos. Photos of lines.

WhatsApp statuses cursing Maduro. Twitter threads with images of people suffering. Links to donate. More videos. More photos. More curses.

And I understand. I really do.
The Venezuelan regime is one of the most sustained machines of human destruction of our time. There's nothing to defend there.

But there's something I ask myself every time I see that torrent of content:

How many years have we been sharing the exact same thing?

Because the suffering continues. The dictatorship continues. And we continue... sharing.

I'm not saying this to attack anyone. I know that behind every WhatsApp status there's someone genuinely distraught, with family there, with legitimate anger.

I'm not indifferent to the suffering of Venezuelans. It affects me to know that it's a country in disgrace and with the worst socialist scourge in history...

But what exhausts me is the illusion of action that sharing generates.

As if a like, a repost, a status with the Venezuelan flag were going to bend the arm of a regime that has spent decades capturing institutions, exporting repression, and surviving international sanctions.

Those of us in this space know something that the rest are still learning the hard way: corrupt systems don't reform from within when they control the money.

Venezuela is not just a humanitarian tragedy. It is the longest and most documented experiment of what happens when a state completely captures a population's monetary system.

I am abroad, and the few people I know ask me how it's possible that in the midst of such a disaster, people are appearing in videos looting and robbing stores and appliance shops.

Sometimes I stay silent because I think my explanation will be lost, a waste of breath, and other times I explain that this is the product of an entire generation—we're talking about the last 20 or 25 years—of a system that only teaches and allows you to depend on a government for survival, and that this has only caused...

"TOTAL DIVISION AMONG PEOPLE"

I say this in capital letters because there, everyone is only concerned with surviving, not caring about anything or anyone else. They only think about themselves, and everyone else can go to hell...

And obviously, this was created and reinforced by the dictatorship, which has allowed them to perpetuate their power...

Liberalism has always known that individual freedom doesn't depend on the current government being good.

It depends on the individual having tools that no government can take away.

Venezuela reminds us why this matters.

"What we do with this reminder is everyone's decision"...