Can Maduro really be that oblivious and tone-deaf?

[DetlefK]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/28/the-naked-protestor-exposing-venezuela-s-dictator

A thin young man, totally naked, clambers onto the hood of an armored vehicle from what’s called the National Bolivarian Police force. “Don’t throw any more bombs, brother, por favor!” he begs. But in Venezuela, the forces of the government have no patience with such protests or such pleas. They answer the man with rubber bullets at point blank range, stones, and a terse, unequivocal order from one police officer shouting: “Get down!” When he is moving away, he is blasted in the back with scatter-shot from a riot gun that leaves pox-like lesions across his body.

Of such incidents memes are born. And as Venezuela continues what looks like a death spiral for the regime of Nicolás Maduro, but also an agony for the country amid vast privations and vast demonstrations, the image of that thin young man’s naked body peppered with wounds has spread on social media more quickly and more pervasively than the tear gas that has been choking thousands of protestors in the streets of Caracas throughout the month of April.

...

The story of the naked young man on the armored vehicle closed its first chapter with an unfortunate joke on national television, told by President Maduro himself: “There is no limit to how ridiculous they are,” said the head of state. “What a terrible, ugly thing, a horror movie. What can we do but laugh?”

All that is left, then, is to ask what exactly the president is laughing at: The hunger? The repression? The injuries? The fatalities? Or maybe, like the emperor without clothes in the fairy tale, he doesn’t understand that his people are laughing at him, having lost all respect.



-----------

Yes, it's terrible and ugly thing, right out of a horror-movie.
A nation so desperate that protests are the new normal.
A protester so desperate that he strips naked as a message of trying to come across as a fellow human being to your police-force.
A naked, helpless messenger of peace gets brutalized by your police-forces.

There are two reasons we laugh:
* We laugh when we feel safe.
* We laugh when we are disturbed and desperate and try to reassure ourselves that we are safe despite being not.

I doubt that Maduro knows why he is laughing.