Cuba, 'The Squad' Lurching Right, & John Lewis' Steep Fall From Heroism
Que me pongan en la lista...
“Simple and plain, give me the lane/I'll throw it down your throat like Barkley.”
The Late John Lewis - From Revolutionary to Prison Guard
Lots of glowing public statements were released last week commemorating the year anniversary of Rep. John Lewis’ death. In his youth Lewis was a Civil Rights leader who ran afoul of authority and the law, causing “good trouble.”
As an older man Lewis moved from activism to the halls of power and became a dutiful soldier for the same oppressive systems he protested in his youth. After fighting against the Jim Crow American apartheid system in his youth, John Lewis took power and became one of the most important supporters of the creation of our New Jim Crow carceral system when he voted for the racist 1994 Crime Bill that has sent generations of Black men into literal slavery inside our prisons since then.
Rep. John Lewis died in 2020, but his integrity died decades ago back in 1994 when he decided to help create our modern American Jim Crow system.
Liberal Democrats continue to call for what amounts to war with both Russia and China. Relax, you guys.
You think you want a two-front economic/cold or even hot war with Russia and China?
I’d be a bit more convinced of our dying empire’s ability to do so if Cuba hadn’t been kicking our ass for over 60-straight years.
#SOSUSA
Of course, liberals are now also calling for the United States to ramp up its longstanding war against Cuba.
A couple centuries after the United States illegally invaded Cuba and took a piece of the island nation (which we now use as a torture prison) on Guantanamo Bay, long after the Cuban Revolution threw off its American-puppet dictator in the late 1950’s, and after six decades of illegal economic warfare on the Cuban people through our trade embargo, liberal Democrats are responding to the documented psy-ops mission going on right now in Cuba by calling for the United States to once again militarily invade the country.
I’m not even going to bother making the obvious moral argument against this empire using its military to invade yet another country and murder more of its people. I will say, however, say that our hubris is pretty hilarious at this point.
Over the past sixty years the United States has committed literally thousands of documented acts of terrorism against Cuba as well as attempted to murder its Presidents hundreds of times, while also devoting millions of on the books dollars each year to try to get the Cuban people to overthrow their government. All of these efforts have failed, often comically so.
Perhaps even more notably over the past half-century, United States had choked off food, trade, and goods to and from Cuba with our illegal trade embargo. Despite this, the Cuban people have seen their income, and overall quality of life go up during their so-called Revolutionary government, providing free education all the way through university, and free healthcare for all its people, as American income and quality of life has gone down in the same period.
My socialism is about imperial land-grabs and being to the right of Hillary Clinton on healthcare
One of the liberal Democrats who has recently expressed support for calls for even more US intervention (such a benign term for murder and sovereignty destruction, no?) in Cuba is self-described democratic socialist Rep. Ilhan Omar. This comes at the same time that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said she wants to see a good plan for invading Haiti in the future and has given typically mealy-mouthed empire-defending fluffy answers regarding Cuba.
Apparently The Squad’s brand of socialism and progressivism includes support for U.S. imperialism.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Pramila Jayapal has been out and about loudly bragging about President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress’ plan to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60.
For those not keeping score, that is far from The Squad’s earlier demand of Medicare for all, and also much more conservative than even Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign centerpiece of lowering it to 55. Evidently The Squad’s brand of progressivism and socialism means they’re working for a healthcare system less inclusive than what Hillary Clinton campaigned on in 2016.
How’s pushing the Democratic Party to the left going, you guys?
More Cuba musings
The United States government, our corporations and organized crime syndicates, controlled Cuba as an effective business colony with a puppet dictator. Then, the Cuban Revolution took that control away from us.
That demonstrated that, at a time where many colonized peoples were revolting all across the world, even tiny nations just 90 miles away from the globe’s hegemonic power were capable of wresting their own sovereignty and resources back from colonial powers and corporations.
The U.S. couldn’t allow that humiliation to go unpunished. So, when Fidel Castro went to the United States to form an alliance and partnership, our government rejected him.
Then and only then did Castro go to the USSR for assistance.
All the US has ever done it its 60 years of terrorizing Cuba is strengthen Cuba’s dictatorship and strangle its people. This is the American way.
Joe Biden and the United States can be allowed to criticize Cuba’s own authoritarianism when we close the torture prison that we operate on their island.
I know this is radical but…I think that U.S. relations with Cuba should be at least as normalized as they are with The Taliban.
Florida has made it illegal to demonstrate on the street. Several jurisdictions have made it legal for people to hit protestors with their cars.
The United States once again became the nation with the most new cases of covid-19, last week.
California police are shooting people protesting in favor of Trans rights with rubber bullets and beanbags at point-blank range in order to protect anti-Trans rights protestors. This is, of course, within a larger context of the United States having the largest prison population in the world, running ethnic concentration camps, and running the largest domestic spying operation in human history.
With all of that in mind, I’m wondering if it would it be possible for Cuba to send their troops here to save us from our government?
ps. If they could also send some of the legendary doctors over as well, we’d appreciate it.