Oh by the way, socialist Nicaragua is quickly becoming as big a dumpster fire as Venezuela

Before there was Chavista Venezuela, there was Sandinista Nicaragua. If you’re younger than 45, you probably have little or no memory of the decade-long battle that took place in the 1980s over support for the Nicaraguan contras. The contras were rebels fighting against the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime led by a Marxist revolutionary named Daniel Ortega. The Reagan Administration believed it was essential to back the contras. The Democrat-controlled Congress loved Ortega and constantly tried to kill funding for any effort to support the contras.

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Ultimately, the contras’ efforts bore fruit in 1990, when pressure forced Ortega to permit a free election, and he lost. For 16 years, Nicaragua was governed by a democratic regime. But in 2006, Ortega managed to work his way back to Nicaragua’s presidency, and he learned his lesson from the first go-round. There will be no free elections this time to threaten his hold on power. We’ve told you a lot in recent months about how bad things have gotten in Venezuela, as socialist thug Nicolas Maduro uses brute force to hang onto power even as the economy completely collapses and the population struggles to lay its hands on basic daily needs. When clueless American socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tout the promise of socialism in America, those of us who know better point to what’s going on in Venezuela. Maybe that’s why you’re not hearing much about the turmoil in Nicaragua. The media do not want to give conservatives yet one more example to point to, and many of them are probably still invested in the 1980s narrative of Ortega as a heroic man of the people. But Nicaragua is quickly devolving into as big a dumpster fire as Venezuela, with Ortega increasingly isolated, the public in an uproar and foreigners fearing for their safety. If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the inevitable product of socialism, and no one should be surprised it’s come to this:

Expats, many of whom refuse to be quoted by name for fear of government reprisals, aren’t the only worried foreigners. Tourists also have mostly stopped coming. One-third of the country’s hotels and restaurants have closed and about half, or 60,000, tourism jobs have been lost, according to the Nicaragua Chamber of Tourism. Tourism is Nicaragua’s top foreign exchange earner. The U.S. Embassy has ordered nonemergency personnel to leave and advised American tourists to avoid Nicaragua “due to crime, civil unrest, and limited health care availability.” At the Managua airport, international flights land mostly empty and take off full.

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“As soon as the violence hit, the tourists began to flee,” said Lucy Valenti, who heads the tourism chamber. “I can’t even begin to predict how bad this is going to get.” The unrest began in April, with Nicaraguans protesting social security tax hikes. But as police and paramilitaries attacked them with deadly force, the street marches swelled with outraged Nicaraguans. They are now demanding that the Ortega government call early elections. Mr. Ortega, 72, a former Marxist guerrilla who in the 1980s headed Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionary government, was voted out of the presidency in 1990. Returning to office in 2006, he has since taken control of nearly all government institutions while winning two more five-year terms. He accuses his opponents of coup plotting and rules out leaving office before his current term expires in 2022.

Ortega will never leave office voluntarily. Hanging onto power is the whole point for a despot like this. He’d have to be forced out, either under threat of death or criminal prosecution. And much of the international community will continue to run interference for him, excusing his failings by blaming Donald Trump or whatever. But Ortega’s failings are his own. His ideology is a proven failure. He has abandoned all pretense of democratic accountability. He has no answers for the suffering of the people or the collapse of the economy. This is what Ronald Reagan was trying to avoid in the 1980s. It was two years after Reagan’s death that Ortega managed to convinced the Nicaraguan people to give him another chance. That was the biggest mistake of their lives, and there’s no telling when – if ever – they will be able to stop paying for it. First they have to get rid of him, and there’s no obvious way to do that without bloodshed. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but nothing could be worse than the status quo.

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