The threat that Cuba poses

[Tactical Progressive]

You have to see Cuba not for what it is, but for what it would be without the United States isolating it from ourselves and the rest of the world. It's this:

If Cuba had been allowed to be just another nation, dealing with the US in whatever socio-economic capacity they decided to run their own country, it would be an example of everything that is wrong with the United States.

Cuba would be America's vacation playground, as it was, more than the rest of the Caribbean put together. There wouldn't be an American that hadn't vacationed there, many frequently. It would be the tourism of Florida combined with the gambling of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, all in a Hawaii just off the east coast of our country.

The influx of American tourism and gambling dollars would be huge. There would be plane flights and luxury ferry-boats and cruises in and out year-round. Who would go to Atlantic City or even Vegas over Cuba if you had to take a plane to get there? Average Cubans would have a standard of living probably in excess of middle class America, from an entirely different economic structure. They would have beautiful modern roads, hospitals and public architecture. Think of the best of Florida. There would be money for vibrant industries in competition and cooperation with our own, trading with the biggest market in the world. The average Cuban would lead what in this country is a typical middle-class existence without the extreme polarization of 'unfettered' capitalism legally rigged to pull the fruits of labor up to the wealthy with little recourse. The wealth of a socialist-based Cuba would be much more fairly distributed throughout the population.

There would be a spread of income and wealth, because there is still capitalism there, but with Castro's essentially socialist base there wouldn't be the huge disparity of unreal wealth and abject poverty that we have so much of in this country. There would be millionaires and upper-middle class enclaves behind gated communities, but without the winner-take-all system we have here, regular working people would live fine lives, probably along the lines of nice middle-class communities you see in Florida and most of the United States. Nice homes, modern cars, wide-screen TV's, broadband internet, etc. Combined with free medical care and education, and without the fear and despair of complete poverty ready to throw you out on the street with nothing, not even medical care, should some crisis befall you. In fact, with free medical care, the likelihood of a medical crisis bankrupting you would be for the most part obviated, much like what progressive health-care proponents advocate unsuccessfully for this country.

It would be, in short, everything that the wealthy, the philosophically greedy, and the puritanically powerful don't want anyone to see as an option, in our lives, in our country.

That is the problem with Cuba. It is a problem that extends beyond just the practical appeal of a better life without all of the angst and competitive rancor that permeates our society. It goes to fundamental principles and ideologies. What would happen to the mindset that brutal work-hard-or-die capitalism is the bestest of the best system in the history of the universe? The 'it's the worst system except for all the others' snarkiness that so glibly infuses all of our politics and ideology? How well would 'capitalism uber alles' sell when just offshore, familiar to everybody, was a country that lived like we do without the bitchy survival stress and institutionalized unfairness hanging over everything? What would the debate look like when it's not broken-down Russia versus the mirage of gleaming BMW's and SUV's, but only in a laissez-faire America? It wouldn't be like any debate we've ever had in this country. There would be an entirely new perspective on everything we have made ourselves believe about our country, about concentrated-wealth capitalism and how we live our lives.

Now, before you get the mistaken impression that I'm some kind of socialist utopianizer, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm an avowed capitalist. I don't believe in socialism as a general economic organizer. I believe in capitalism with a strong safety net. Much, much stronger than we have now; maybe like a quarter or a third of GDP. I don't believe in a socialist economy with a capitalist component floating on the top quarter or third like Cuba would likely have. In that vein, there is another consideration.

I have little doubt but that the scenario above would be true. Unfortunately, that prospective reality is as disingenuous as our own infatuation with rabid capitalism. You see, Cuba is an anomaly. It's an oasis just off the coast of the most economically successful nation on earth. You can't draw too strong a correlation with a successful market player that Cuba would be, given the opportunity, with much of anything else. Mexico couldn't be Cuba, even with a socialist capitalism. Not with some two-hundred million people crowded into a country with so much barren land. Neither could Indiana, or Ohio, or Missouri. Cuba is unique in terms of its tropical climate and its geographic proximity to mainland America. You can't generalize the successful tourist vacationland that Cuba would be under a socialistic economic system, to success anywhere else under a socialistic economic system.

It wouldn't be realistic. But it would be what we would see, and that vision would keep a light shining on a completely different set of principles than those we have been constantly, historically inculcated with from before we were born.

That is what America's institutional antagonism towards Cuba is all about. That is the threat Cuba poses - a vision of social and economic success in stark defiance of all the demagoguery that this country has internalized as the only way things can and should be. It wouldn't be an honest alternative to much of anything, but it would be a highly successful socialist nation right next door.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

1. wow.!...that is some picture you painted there

[Tactical Progressive]

3. Yeah, it's a pretty picture

I'd never really thought through Cuba from what it is to what it would have been. It's an interesting exercise.

If Americans could see the possibility it would change the debate. But how do you do it? I think maybe from now on, when I get assaulted with 'there's been no successful socialist country', instead of referencing Finland or Sweeden or Canada, which are after all capitalistic countries with strong strong social economics, I'll say Cuba and try this out.

[ClintonTyree]

2. One big flaw in your assessment.................

"It would be the tourism of Florida combined with the gambling of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, all in a Hawaii just off the east coast of our country".

Castro would NEVER allow Casinos and all the corruption that they bring to creep back in to Cuba.

[Tactical Progressive]

4. I don't think he'd let them in

I think Cuba would create them and run them.

And even without the casinos, the tourism would be monumental. The casinos aren't the point.

[peacetalksforall]

5. Ya got me. I read the first couple of paragraphs and became so furious

that i told myself I couln't even write a reply.

But I finally caught on. Great presentation! Terrific way to lay it out. Great irony.

No one will ever be able to erase the atrocities of policy and the effects of the war of embargo against CUba, plus the hypocrisy of cutting off trade and tourism with a so-called 'commie' country while allowing decades of trade and tourism with bona fide communist countries. This was all due to the filthy policies of Republicans and Democrats in Washington. Though the commie reason was officially presented by these politicians and the people who pushed them and whose votes were purchased, there has never been any reason that anyone could conceive of to isolate Cuba after the fall of the Berlin Wall or even after the USSR started letting Cuba go.

Yes, had there been normal relations, there would have been a lot of little people who would have done very well. They could have joined the little people in other countries who had a chance to pull themselves up by the tourism boom of the last half of the last century. When tourism is impossible. little people scramble.

Perhaps, the great country of the United States will honor the plea of the Pope about tearing down the wall that the U.S. cruelly built between the U.S. and Cuba, as a last wish.

The number one industry in the world for decades was tourism. The Republicans took care of that. They prefer to make war the number one industry.

Viva Cuba for surviving after all these decades.

[Tactical Progressive]

6. Yes, American anti-Cuban policy should have changed long ago

I remember all too well how the pleas of the Pope came not to be heard.

And thanks. I thought with the level of interest that Cuba usually elicits here, along with a somewhat provocative thread title, there would be more interest in a different look at the situation.