A distracted world at last pays attention as Venezuela flirts with outright dictatorship

President Nicolas Maduro, 54, a former bus driver, has been presiding over a creeping collapse of his country’s economic and democratic wellbeing pretty much since the day he was elected, narrowly, in 2013 following the death from cancer of Hugo Chavez, his mentor. The slow-burn nature of the crisis is one reason the world has had so much trouble keeping any focus on it. More…