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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

When the regime changes in the country he ends up in, will he wear out his welcome?

This is a reasonable question, but not sure the word 'regime' is warranted. If you're talking about Venezuela then that's a democratically elected government.

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I didn't mean for the word to have a negative connotation. The word "regime" is a useful as it covers both the current administration and the system itself. So it would cover both a change in the elected leadership and, say, a new form of government installed by a coup or revolution.

would you have used the same word in reference to the USA?

I would not because I (and any reasonable person would) consider the odds of a change of the form of government itself in the United States to be so remote to not be worth mentioning. In the case of Venezuela, their constitution is only 13 years old, Nicaragua's is 26 years old, and Bolivia's is only 4 years old. The systems in these countries frequently change and are likely to do so again within Snowden's lifetime.

And Spain's constitution is not even 40, yet nobody called our government a regime - not even in the 80s. It carries a connotation you're probably not willing to admit.

A regime is just the government or form of government that is in power. A democratic regime is still a regime.

the term "regime" connotes a "bad" government, "government" or "administration" connotes a "good" government. It is very Orwellian, but no mainstream paper would ever refer to the Obama regime.

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