I watched Venezuela descend into socialist chaos before my family escaped I see America going down the same road

Growing up in Venezuela, I watched the socialist strongman Hugo Chávez use the politics of resentment to turn a rich country to ruins.He promised an oil-funded utopia, but we got hunger, blackouts and a murderous dictatorship.I know what happens when legitimate economic frustration becomes moral condemnation — and when citizens are encouraged to blame their problems on a single group that is supposedly taking something from them.It is why I’m increasingly alarmed as I see the same socialist ideas of popular resentment becoming increasingly popular in America today.A recent survey found that 53% of young adults have a favorable view of socialism — and 38% view communism positively. It’s hard to fathom this reality given that this ideology caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century. Meanwhile, capitalism has lifted a billion people out of poverty in the 21st century alone.

But only 45% of young adults in America view it favorably.How could this be?I know what they say.I used to say it too.

They claim that democratic socialism isn’t the same kind of socialism that devastated my homeland — or Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, China, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and so on.Venezuela wasn’t really ever socialist, so they say, and the reason Cuba is poor is because of US sanctions. They’re wrong.Venezuelans didn’t vote in 1998 to become Cuba, or even a socialist country —  and we, too, dismissed warnings from Cubans who told us Chávez was not the moderate democrat (and capitalist) he presented himself to be.Chávez didn’t use the word “socialism” in his first six years in office.

When he ran for office in 1998, his rhetoric was tame compared to the anti-capitalist ideas spouted by today’s DSA. But he grew increasingly radical and eventually called his movement “socialism of the 21st century,” as he pledged to make Venezuela more like Cuba.He expropriated companies and pulled a TV station off the ai...