For fans of contrast and intriguing, ironic juxtaposition, consider the public pronouncements of the Castro brothers the last fortnight.
First, Cuban President Raul Castro took disillusionment and disingenuousness to a new low. Even for one who has co-conspired to institutionalize societal spin. Two weeks ago in announcing some token changes in the Cuban economic model, he said this: “With experience accumulated in more than 55 years of revolutionary struggle, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing too badly, nor that desperation or frustration have been our companions along the way.” He really did.
You don’t have to be a Diaz-Balart to perceive the sophistry of Raulization.
There’s a reason that only Cuba and North Korea remain among the Marxist-Leninist hard core. Everyone else has acknowledged that command economies and governmental control over the means of production have not, well, worked. The you-pretend-to-work, we’ll-pretend-to-pay-you system is ultimately not sustainable. A government-run economy that still proscribes private ownership and marginalizes incentives is antithetical to certain facets of, well, human nature. It’s an unforgiving, global economy out there. Ask Mikhail Gorbachev.
Imagine, ration cards after a half century. Having to depend on a subsidizing patron–from Nikita Khrushchev to Hugo Chavez. Needing to reference priority-challenged Pyongyang to feel any sense of progress. How, well, revolting.
Then last Saturday former President Fidel Castro, 84, made his first official government appearance in front of parliament since his surgery four years ago. He only spoke for 11 minutes, so he had to cut right to the rhetorical chase. He warned of planetary Armageddon precipitated by U.S. nuclear strikes against Iran or North Korea. But he also voiced cautious optimism in the prudent decision-making capacity of President Barak Obama, “…(the) one man (who) will make the decision alone…”) to avert ultimate devastation.
Ironic. If memory serves, Fidel Castro wasn’t particularly judicious during that nuclear episode back in 1962. He certainly wasn’t keen to see the missiles of October shipped back to the USSR, nor in favor of his island being less of a Cold War, nuclear trip-wire.
Maybe one of the brothers has learned something other than that using charisma and blaming all wrongs on Uncle Scapegoat is a pretty good strategy for longevity.