Venezuela has been sliding toward a totalitarian Cuba-style dictatorship for years.  Today, the final stretch of that Rubicon has probably been crossed with Sunday's rigged referendum to scrap the opposition assembly, replace it with a constitutional assembly, and give the existing Chavista socialist government unlimited power - over the internet, over whom to arrest, over what laws to write, over who gets food rations, and many other things.  It's full Cubanization now, and it's grotesque.

In a great moral statement, Venezuela's people simply rejected the horror by refusing to participate in the farce, staying home instead.  The streets were bleak and empty of voters.  Few of Venezuela's 30 million or so people participated.  Protests were banned.  Chavista thugs shot at least ten people. Danger aside, it was primarily a statement of principle: no one votes himself into becoming a slave willingly.

What can be said about this mockery of democracy?  That faking it can go on for only so long.  Everyone knows that this referendum is a sham.  Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Switzerland, the European Commission, and the U.S. among others have already condemned it as garbage and vowed not to recognize it.

It stands in stark contrast to the oozing praise the left has dished onto this hellhole semblance of democracy, including praise for its election process – such as what came from Jimmy Carter here:

"As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world," Mr. Carter said, noting the center's extensive work monitoring elections around the globe.

That may be the real inflection point of this sorry exercise: that the fake democracy fig leaf can go on only so long in the name of forcing a nation into a Cuba-style totalitarian tyranny.  Chavista Venezuela has been riding this horse for years, justifying its totalitarian socialist moves toward total control as just democracy in action.  Well, it's not.  And it never was.

Socialism chokes to death its host just as a parasite on a plant does.  It does so because it favors situational ethics, the by-any-means-necessary philosophy to win so obvious from Bill Clinton to Nicolas Maduro.  In socialism, the ends always justify the means.  Venezuela demonstrated this so well only because it had been at it for so long, but make no mistake: this is the endgame of all socialism.  And it's insanely tragic for Venezuela, whose people are starving, whose hospitals have no medicine, whose people are fleeing for their lives.

Here are the last tattered remnants of Venezuela's farce of democracy in photos:

Some celebration of democracy.

Venezuelans are starving.

Chavista government forces enforce "democracy."

More enforcement of democracy at an apartment house.

Chavista thugs, known as colectivos, randomly shoot into crowds with impunity.

Chavista thugs shot 10 people in the Sunday referendum.  One hundred thirty have been killed in this wave of protests.

Ballot box inferno, via Panama Post.

Venezuelans flee over the Colombian border.  Colombia has authorized 150,000 temporary residence cards.  Via Panama Post.