This Wednesday, Hugo Chavez embarks on another term as Venezuela’s cartoonish Commie leader, in a celebration assured to be so awash in trademark Hugo red it will look like the Hallmark Valentine aisle invaded Caracas.

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Rumor has it that the term is supposed to be only six years long, but that’s just wishful thinking: Chavez went into December elections having proposed a referendum that could extend his term until 2021 or longer.

Since Chavez declared victory over challenger Manuel Rosales with the same tired rhetoric — “Destiny has been written. That new era has begun. We have shown that Venezuela is red! ... No one should fear socialism. ... Socialism is human. Socialism is love. Down with imperialism! We need a new world!” — he’s been snowballing toward his new world order. And his message to everyone has been clear: Sit down, shut up, and hang on for the Socialist ride!

“We’re moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution,” Chavez said Monday, lauding Marx and Lenin and announcing plans to nationalize electrical and telecommunications companies, strip the Central Bank of its autonomy, and get greater presidential decree powers from his National Assembly buddies. “We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We’re heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it.”

And for heaven’s sake, quit broadcasting things that make him look bad. As Chavez stated in his year-end withdrawal of the license for the oldest commercial TV station in Venezuela, “There will be no license renewal for this putschist TV station called Radio Caracas Television.”

“Here, we will not tolerate any news media that is in the service of those who make coups against the people, against the nation, against national independence and against the dignity of the republic,” Chavez also said on Dec. 28.

Moreover, the station says that their license agreement didn’t expire until 2021, whereas the Venezuela government claims their time is up this spring. When Jose Miguel Insulza, head of the Organization of American States, last week denounced the move as a “form of censorship against the freedom of expression,” the Chavez administration lashed out at the OAS for meddling. On Monday, Chavez called Insulza an “idiot” for daring to question him.

In preparation for a full-scale assault of the Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez has also been changing the key players surrounding him. In true Fidel-Raul tradition, Chavez appointed his brother education minister. The eldest of six brothers in the Chavez family, Adan Chavez is a proud Marxist who candidly spoke about Venezuela’s direction in an April 2005 interview (when he was serving as Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba) with Trotskyist author Alan Woods:

In the same way that we have reclaimed the ideas of Bolivar, Rodriguez and Zamora, I think that we must reclaim the genuine ideas of Marxism, applying them correctly to our society. ... (Hugo Chavez) used to consider the option of the so-called ‘Third Way’ — a way between capitalism and socialism. We examined that and, as the president said, we have realized that for the Bolivarian revolution there is no third way possible, we must choose the way of socialism.

Can you imagine what kiddies’ textbooks are going to look like with Hugo’s bro in charge?

That hasn’t been the only governmental shakeup. Without explanation — but with a helping of sappy Field of Dreams sentiment to gloss over the layoff — Hugo Chavez fired Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel a week before inauguration day. “The decision to replace Jose Vicente Rangel has not been easy for me. He is a great pitcher and I feel a great affection for him. I respect him as if he were my father,” Chavez bloviated — on a government TV station still allowed on the air — about the veteran politician, who is regarded as an old-guard communist and backer of Chavez’s Bolivarian fantasy.

Replacing Rangel as Venezuelan vice president will be Jorge Rodriguez, who conveniently led the electoral commission during the 2004 recall referendum against Chavez.

Chavez also used the occasion of a prison riot as an excuse to fire Interior and Justice Minister Jesse Chacon, replacing him with loyalist Pedro Carreño, who, according to El Universal, has been one of Chavez’s right-hand men since his 1998 campaign.

There is one reason for the shuffles: As Chavez shifts into the next phase of his Bolivarian Revolution, he’s likely to meet greater resistance from those not anxious to see Cuba the Sequel unfold before their eyes. He needs only two qualities from his revamped inner circle: unquestioning loyalty and radicalism.

Along with the power shifts, Chavez is not surprisingly eyeing power consolidation. That is, taking all of the political parties (about two dozen) that support him and creating one mass block of Chavistas — the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

“For this new era that is beginning we need a political instrument at the service of the people and the revolution, at the service of socialism,” Chavez told a Caracas audience on December 15. He claimed the party’s leaders would “rise from the rank and file,” excluding the unworthy: “You know the people in the communities, we must not allow thieves, corrupt people, drunkards in.” The BBC also reported last month that a proposal to change the name of the country is in the works, tacking the prefix “Socialist and” onto “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

In the meantime, Venezuelans will be inundated only with what Chavez wants them to hear. “So it’s better that you go and prepare your suitcase and look around for what you’re going to do in March,” Chavez barked, in a comment directed at Radio Caracas TV head Marcel Granier, while announcing the station’s license denial.

“It is an attack against freedom of expression because the government has categorically said that this TV station has expressed political ideas opposing the Chavez regime,” Miami-based paper Diario Las Americas wrote of the Radio Caracas TV license withdrawal in a weekend editorial. “If there was democracy in Venezuela, opposition would not be a crime.”

And this is where Venezuela finds itself — unfortunately living up to the predictions of longtime Chavez critic Cardinal Rosalio Castillo, who last year fired off his most urgent criticism of the regime:

A government democratically elected seven years ago has lost its democratic way and shows signs of dictatorship, where all powers are in the hands of one person who exercises them in an arbitrary and despotic way, not for the purposes of bringing about the greater common good of the nation, but rather for a twisted and archaic political project: that of implanting in Venezuela a disastrous regime like the one Fidel Castro has imposed on Cuba, at the cost of so many human lives and the progress of his nation. ... If the Venezuelan people fail to grasp the seriousness of the situation and fail to categorically speak out in favor of democracy and freedom, we will find ourselves subjected to a Marxist-style dictatorship.

That time is now just a hop, skip, and a swearing-in away.

Happy inauguration, Hugo. Farewell, free market. Farewell, free press. Farewell, free expression. Hello, unabashed totalitarianism! 

 — Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at GOP Vixen.