tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post214165052108862213..comments2023-10-24T17:21:16.565+02:00Comments on Sounds in the Hickory Wind: Willy Toledo: We Have Them Over Here, TooThe Hickory Windhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02099970252405596982noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-57240031498325127522010-03-07T22:51:24.647+01:002010-03-07T22:51:24.647+01:00In response to your last sentence, I am sure thous...In response to your last sentence, I am sure thousands of people "escape" from most countries each year, explaining their actions with negative comments on those countries. They are (by self-selection) biased. And again by self-selection, we take note of those whose views echo our own, and consider views which differ from our own as of little account.Vincenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-74894208208428760782010-03-07T13:55:45.276+01:002010-03-07T13:55:45.276+01:00I know where I'd rather live.
The trouble wit...I know where I'd rather live.<br /><br />The trouble with poverty is that it is only spiritually uplifting for those who have chosen to renounce worldly goods. For those who have it forced upon them it leads directly to misery, hunger, social disorder, poor health and early death. When it is deliberately contrived, as it is in Cuba, and reinforced by the suppression of ideas and of any attempt to alleviate one's own poverty, it is purely evil because the effect it has on the lives of the people is wholly destructive.<br /><br />There is no reason for Cuban to be so poor. Before the revolution it was one of the more successful countries of Latin America, and in the colonial period there was considerable wealth. There was also massive inequality and exploitation, of course, and I'm not presenting it as a model, but the resources are there, if they could be properly used. As it is, the government has to force the young to work virtually as slaves on the plantations to get anything at all out of the sugar and tobacco crops.<br /><br />The Cuban exiles you meet in Spain tend to be professional people or athletes, who were given permission to travel and never went back. The stories they tell are similar to those of the desperate working classes who risk their lives to reach Florida. They do not have fond memories of the supposed paradise* they have left behind.<br /><br />U.S. politics is undoubtedly corrupt, and some aspects of its national identity myth are rather nauseating (both of which are true of many countries, if not all of them, especially the first point) but they have had almost full employment since WWII, there is no real poverty except in some areas of major cities, they can live, work ands travel where they wish, their taxes are very low, they are free to make their own fortunes and their own mistakes, and their lives are almost entirely unaffected by the vanity and posturings of the politicians and other members of the soi-disant elite, who talk mostly among themselves.<br /><br />When thousands of people each year abandon their homeland and their family, and risk their lives for the chance to be somewhere- anywhere- else, it suggests that the place they are escaping from is no paradise, but a man-made hellhole.The Hickory Windhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02099970252405596982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-61033501643641218852010-03-06T21:55:21.693+01:002010-03-06T21:55:21.693+01:00I confess to not being very well informed about Cu...I confess to not being very well informed about Cuba but I consider it a paradise compared with the US. Economically backward, yes, but that is not a minus point in my set of values. I shudder at US paranoia and its propaganda of freedom and democracy which I would find much more false and oppressive than the government of Cuba.<br /><br />I am a British Conservative voter, which I know people would think inconsistent with the above views. Oh well.Vincenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com