Following a full repudiation of the election, the inauguration, and the seating of dictator Nicolás Maduro by the Organization of American States (OAS), let's just say respectable countries didn't bother to make an appearance at Maduro's inaugural.

The sorry little affair was covered in the press – Stamford Advocate has a good string of stories on it here – showing that only hellhole countries such as Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, all of which are pretty much run by leftist wannabe dictators of the same stripe as Maduro and Castro, showed up.  Nice to see them standing up and being counted.

To show up for something as globally rejected as this – seriously, showing up to support the Maduro regime that is killing Venezuela, while all the world stands and points in disgust – says a lot about the intentions of these dead-end regimes.

Maduro in 2015.  Image by Hugoshi, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Here's the gross part: from Brazil, representatives from now jailed former President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva's leftist political party showed up, too.

This kind of shows you what a bullet Brazil dodged when voters rejected these guys outright last year and voted in Brazil's new conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, who sports a 75% approval rating among Brazilians.  These guys had always been pals and supporters of the Venezuelan regime, and they went there this week to back-slap and show the flag.

No wonder they're out of power now.  In voting, Brazilians were obviously reacting to Lula's Workers Party (or by its Portuguese initials, P.T.) record of corruption, theft, and incompetence (remember the green Olympic swimming pool?) when they voted these guys out, for sure.  But the fact stands that that P.T. party had been a rock-solid supporter of the hellhole regime up north in Caracas and wanted to keep it like that.  Movie stars who sucked up to the Venezuelan regime may now be staying away because it's all so embarrassing now, but these guys still show up.  And in showing up, with only Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia to keep them company, and even the OAS condemning the clown show, it's obvious that these out-of-power, out-of-luck leftists are about as hardcore socialist as their coevals.

The good part is that that went over like a lead panda balloon over the Amazon.

Take a look at the reaction from just the left side in Brazil, as reported in the Associated Press:

Several left-leaning politicians criticized the visit.  Former presidential candidate Luciana Genro said: "Only a corroded left can support Maduro at this time."  Writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva called it "a monstrous stupidity."

How anyone could defend Maduro at a time like this, with Venezuelan refugees pouring over Brazil's borders, is impossible to fathom.  Either the PT likes what Maduro is doing in Venezuela and wants more of it for Brazil or it's got its hand out, and all Brazilians can see it.  The P.T. did, after all, lose the last election to Bolsonaro big and are on the outs, so maybe it's the latter.  What's more, there seems to be evidence that they did take money from this tropical axis of evil they're now paying tribute to by showing up.  They ought to be seen as pariahs, same as the rest of the attendees.  Losers joining the pariah club, in other words, sounds like a winner.

By contrast, tiny Paraguay showed how it's done.

They not only refused to show up for the Maduro inaugural clown show, but decided that this would be a good time to cut ties with the Maduro regime, packing up their whole embassy lock, stock, and barrel, and going home.  Their timing was exactly right.  According to the AP:

Paraguay's president says his country has broken diplomatic relations with Venezuela because it doesn't recognize the legitimacy of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's re-election.

The announcement came almost immediately after Maduro took the oath of office in Caracas.

Paraguay is a small country and a weak player on the world stage, but it did the absolute max within its capabilities this time to give it good to Maduro and undercut the legitimacy of his dictatorship.  Some kudos for that are in order, and hey, as a side bonus, Paraguay's diplomats will no longer get assaulted, kidnapped, or mugged in Caracas.

The rest of them are standing up and being counted, and what we see is a small and crummy zoo of losers, indeed.

Image credit: Hugoshi via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.