I am moving a comment here to the main posting page because I think it delivers a great perspective. Nelson is a friend of mine, born in Cuba, relating what he saw happen to his country. This is exactly the kind of interaction I hoped for when I launched this forum.
From our guest:
You’ll forgive my cynicism please, but I’ve already seen this movie. 51 years ago a charismatic but inexperienced young lawyer seized power in the country of my birth and for the first two or three years rode a wave of popular mass hysteria.
No one in their right mind dared to question the new messiah’s vision of a post-capitalistic Cuba and with every stroke of the pen (and pull of the trigger) the new Latino Robin Hood took from the Yankee-controlled rich and gave to an escrow account he’d set up, surely for the benefit of the poor. His popularity seemed to transcend national boundaries and soon the Left from across the globe came to fawn at his feet. Not the least of these was the self-loathing press corps of every Western democracy grasping at each vitriolic invective that dripped from their new messiah’s lips. Fidel Christ was giving voice to the very guilt, resentment and hatred felt by the Left against their own countries of origin. But now, after all, at long last they would see SOCIAL JUSTICE!
But political power is an insidious thing and one can’t be too careful when choosing whom to surround oneself with. Competence be damned! It’s more important to surround yourself with those whom you can trust. So saying, the new leader appointed a young medical doctor – Ché Guevara – who had never balanced a personal check book in his life, as President of the National Bank of Cuba. Ché was the first Czar of the western hemisphere, soon to be joined by equally incompetent, inexperienced and ill-equipped ideologues whose sole credential was unquestioning devotion to the maximum leader.
It wasn’t long before Cuban currency, which in the pre-Castro 50’s had been at a 1:1 exchange rate with the US dollar, was on a par with toilet tissue.
National Universal Healthcare Reform was one of the very earliest orders of business for the new regime and you’d swear that someone had yelled “fire” in hospitals across Cuba, judging by the mad dash for the exits made by medical professionals. Today, a doctor in Cuba is paid the equivalent of $40 US dollars per month by the government and can be seen moonlighting as cab drivers, bar tenders and even prostitutes to feed their families. A nurse, of course, is paid less than a doctor and recently I watched on YouTube a Cuban nurse/hooker explain to her John that she had a daughter to raise and couldn’t survive on the $10 per month the government paid her for her professional services; so much for universal health care. How long do you suppose it will take American health professionals today to realize that they’ve been had and make their own dash for the border? And I don’t mean Taco Bell.
During the Reagan administration I once heard a politician exclaim that if the communists took over the Sahara Desert there would soon be a shortage of sand. Truer words were never spoken but in the case of Cuba, the closest thing to desert sand was the once-ubiquitous ocean of sugar-cane fields. No longer; today Cuba has to import sugar from Brazil and soon even from the US , their alleged enemy, in order to meet domestic needs. Out of consideration for this blogs policy of no BS I’ve hyperlinked the term “US” to an address on the web providing information about Cuba needing to import sugar.
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/cuba/sustainable/envMarket/1482.html
Go there, if you will, read that article and then explain to me how it was possible to destroy a vibrant national economy in such a way using nothing but the power of socialist stupidity. It baffles the mind.
Despite the blatantly obvious disaster which is Cuba’s socialist adventure, we have a cadre of semi-morons and pre-cretins in Congress today who delight in the alleged achievements of the glorious Cuban Revolution and would like nothing better than to bring a similar abomination of desolation upon this noble soil. God forbid it and may it never happen! But anyone familiar with the delusional ranting of the likes of Diane Watson, Maxine Waters, Bobby Rush, the Congressional Black Caucus et al, surely knows that Fidel Hussein Obama is not alone in his quest for the Marxist utopia. Throw in Michael Moore, Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte, Steven Spielberg, Naomi Campbell, the rest of Hollywood, the Tribune and most of the Mainstream Media, Bill Ayers and much of Academia, and you begin to get a picture of who forms public opinion in our nation today.
Tea Party? Yes, I like the concept and have been to a couple so far but more and more I’m concerned that it is being co-opted by the Republican Party. Though a conservative, I am deeply disappointed with the Republicans and hold them responsible at least equally with the Democrats for the condition of America today. I was even enthusiastic there for awhile regarding Sarah Palin and then she came forward to campaign for John McCain and I’ve lost respect for her altogether. We’ve got to get all these treacherous weasels out of Congress before they turn this nation into another Soviet or European Union.
They know there is going to be a very major backlash come November and also in 2012 and I’m convinced they are going to play dirty. We can see already the strategy of granting illegal aliens citizenship and now they’re also trying to make Puerto Rico the 51st state for the very same reason. However, these things are not what I call dirty. I suspect that if things aren’t looking good for the Socialists, they may try something unconstitutional and perhaps even violent by using our own military against us. Sound too dramatic? Look at the history of the Left and remember Santayana’s admonition that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Liborio
CenterDebate 