Would you like some Left-Wing Rage with that Compound Ignorance?

Recently I was on the receiving end of a fairly impressive left wing tirade coming from none other than my children’s father. I think what started this onslaught of liberal rage was a quite innocent comment from me about the habit of people to be horrified by seemingly paternalistic US foreign policy, when nations like Australia are the first to keep our military spending artificially low because the US is our big buddy in the playground sandbox. Only to start hollering the minute they start acting like the world’s policeman. Perhaps naively, I wasn’t prepared for the hour and a half long fit of insanity that followed, and which segued from a sermon on the virtues (virtues?!) of Fidel Castro and ended, somehow, with a spittle-soaked apoplectic tantrum about how US led embargoes are killing women and children in North Korea. Which led me to conclude with something along the lines of “Wait, what?! How did we end up here?” This is all without even saying the word “Palestine”.

Apart from leading me to reflect on the entity that is liberal rage and the compound ignorance that tends to accompany it, I also realized that the most sure fire way to be on the receiving end of it is to mention the word “embargo”. Many people have issues over which they are sensitive, and which it is easy to wind them up about. I can trigger one of my colleagues into a half hour tantrum just by saying something stupid about sport, and I personally am a bit sensitive about Deep Space Nine versus Voyager. (Janeway is a dog and is only slightly ameliorated in her offensiveness by the hotness of Seven of Nine, and all Bajorans are annoying. I won’t discuss this further.)

However, most moderate conservatives feel unprepared for the unfettered screamies that are lurking not far below the surface of our more leftward leaning friends and associates. Nothing serves to whip up a liberal-minded frenzy more than an embargo. Strangely, though, these same people who bleat on about the women and children, fail to realize that there is really only three things you can do against an aggressor nation ruled by crazies: You can invade it, you can ignore it and let them do what they want, including invading you, or you can blockade or embargo their arses off. I don’t know about you, but when you couch your options in terms like this, option number three starts sounding pretty reasonable.

A recent Washington Post article summed up defence options in a similar way in reference to the Israeli blockade of Palestine. The author noted that you can either have forward defence (fight elsewhere), active defence (fight on your own soil) or passive defence (blockades and embargoes). After that, you’ve got, well…nothing.

Don’t try and tell someone in the middle of a good head of left-wing rage that trade embargoes don’t generally stop people from eating, either. “But they don’t have any money for food because the embargo has made them poor!” they will scream (yes, he really did scream this at me in reference to North Korea). Never for a moment considering that maybe people in North Korea are poor because they are a Communist nation ruled by someone with a gift for mismanagement, who was last seen putting his own diplomats in front of a firing squad. Or, in other words, collective farming seems to be bad for the weather.

I was also told that because the US (at least until they finally go broke and are replaced by India or Cameroon) is the world’s greatest super power, ergo they must be the world’s nastiest nation. Which doesn’t make all that much sense, really. Let me put it this way, it could be a lot worse. Often, the worst the USA is going to do to you is build a Star Bucks next to your house, air trashy television shows and invite you to partake of a lifestyle that will make you fat. Imagine if Germany ran the world, this is a culture, remember, that doesn’t allow for people to publically display drying laundry on a weekend. (Although if Japan ran the world we would see alot more of these….)

As if this wasn’t enough of a rude shock, I was soon to realize that I had somehow shacked up with an apologist for Castro. I’m personally getting a bit tired of all this Fidel worship to be honest, and if I see another Che Guevara T Shirt I might re-accessorize someone with extreme prejudice.

According to the man who fathered my children, Fidel is brilliant and the only reason it could possibly suck to be Cuban is because of the US led trade embargo. Bear in mind that on one level I have a grudging admiration for el Jefe just for being a wily old goat who put a good one over on the US during the whole “freedom flotilla” days in 1980, whereby Castro managed to empty most of the truly reprehensible criminals out of his prisons and into the US. (Cue Scarface success montage). However, as an erstwhile south Floridian who knows a café con leche from pastelitos de guayaba and had a Grandad who was still cranky at Castro several decades later for stabbing the US in the back, I would like to set a few things straight on this issue.

A the risk of oversimplifying, I’ll break it down for y’all like this: The only reason we have an independent Cuba to start with is because the US told Spain as much after the Spanish-American war. I believe what they said was “B1tch, we want Guam and Peurto Rico. Oh, and make Cuba an independent nation state.” Or something to that effect, whilst retaining the right to meddle in Cuban affairs should the need arise. And before everyone turns their noses up at this paternalistic behavior, it was the late 1800’s and its not like we haven’t done it, too. Australia may not technically administrate Papua New Guinea anymore, but when we tell them to jump, they tend to say “Ha mas?” (How much).

Anyhoo, without boring everyone with the details of democratic elections versus military coups, by the time Batista was rightly or wrongly ruling the nation, Cuba had a pretty good standard of living, with a large middle class and some of the highest workers wages in the world. Then enter the Cuban revolution. A little known factoid is that Castro was actually funded by the US initially, contrary to popular belief that Batista was their guy. Additionally, he wasn’t the only freedom fighter knocking around in Cuba during the revolution. The eventual upshot though, as everyone knows, is that he won the day, in the process killing off the rival freedom fighters that helped him win, and the next thing anyone knew he was in bed with the Russians and Che was busy tooling around in Africa. The rest, as they say, is history, although not before Castro appropriated everyone’s property, successfully silenced any “dissidents” and at least 10 percent of the population had fled the country. From here, we can skip the Cuban missile crisis (watch the movie or something) and go straight to the bit about modern day Cubans having one of the world’s lowest rates of computer access and almost non-existent internet priviledges. The horror.

The only other little known factoid that might be worth pointing out here, is that the US embargo of Cuba has really only been in place for so long due to continued pressure from the anti-Castro Cuban electorate in south Florida. Annoy this demographic and you can lose the whole state in an election, and they want to keep that embargo.

So what was the reaction to my well-reasoned and edu-ma-cated response? I got called a redneck, that’s what. Which is something that I’m going to make Mr. Paua regret he said if the world is ever taken over by zombies, that’s for sure.

Now, as a reward for hanging in there throughout my peripatetic wanderings through modern history and international relations, I have a photo of a scantily clad female for you. My editor here at the Daily Bayonet told me to keep a lid on musings about male musculature, but that feminine underwear is acceptable. That sounded like a dare, so here is a photo of, umm….me. And just remember, you wouldn’t be able to look at this in Cuba.

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