[Marxism] Two good liberals visit bad country

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Delicious, wry, and appropriately mocking commentary,
and San Francisco 100%. Should be widely circulated.

(In San Francisco I always felt out of my league back
in the late sixties and early seventies. Of course my
only real reasons then for going was to attend anti-
war marches and the occasional educational conference
held by the Socialist Workers Party of which I was a
member at that time. These two writers well evoke the
sensibility of their home community in the kind of 
soft but incisive observations we need so much more 
of in these ponderous times. Gently but astutely here
we see the contradictions and absurdities of the Bush
administration's desperate attempts to crush Cuba here
ridiculed in a way the readers can perfectly grasp.)
======================================================

Two good liberals visit bad country
By Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson
Special To The S.F. Examiner
<http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/24/opinion/20050224_op05_anderso
n.txt>

Growing up in a politically active, left-of-left-of-center
Northern California family, we witnessed firsthand many of
the warts and glories of the progressive movement. The
left's rich pageant -- Greens, Anarcho-Syndicalists, 
Black Panthers, anti-nuke stand-up comedians, Trotskyites,
free-love bush hippies, medicinal-marijuana activists,
veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, IRA soldiers --
frequently trooped through our parents' living rooms.

By the time junior high rolled around, we (like many other
good liberal kids) were veteran demonstrators, marching
against the Vietnam war, the death penalty, and Candlestick
Park's hideous artificial turf. (OK, so the AstroTurf
riots, as they came to be known in the mainstream press,
were a three-person parade in front of the TV during a
Giants-Reds game, but, as Mao said, the longest journey
begins with the first step.)

In between paternal lectures on the October Revolution,
Eugene Debs and the Sandinistas, we practically lived like
Cubans in Castro's ongoing experiment ourselves: playing
baseball and riding around in teetering old cars that
required constant gerrymandering, while cigar smoke rose
like the specter of united workers haunting Europe, of
which Marx and Engels spoke so eloquently.

So when we learned that we could visit Cuba under the
auspices of the Universal Life Church, we jumped at the
opportunity faster than Enron at an offshore tax shelter.
Besides, traveling as men of the cloth made sense. One of
us likes to cloak the stain of his socialist past in Wilkes
Bashford's luxurious fibers, while the other prefers the
khaki pants, oxford shirt and dark sunglasses of the
international man of mystery, a costume carefully chosen to
give the impression of subterfuge and midnight assignations
with lithesome agents from murky Stalinist regimes. Beyond
our sartorial qualifications we are, moreover, pious souls
who have experienced profound spiritual revelations at the
altars of Joe Montana, Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges.
Divinity, to paraphrase Martin Luther, is where you find
it.

And what we found in Havana was a revelation. Yes, it is a
dictatorship, but so are American "allies" such as Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan. Yes, it describes itself as
communist, but so does the People's Republic of China,
which by virtue of its billions of consumers is a
marketplace too tempting for corporate America to resist.
So why does the U.S. make it virtually impossible to travel
to Cuba, and illegal to spend money there?

The obvious answer is the powerful and wealthy Cuban
ex-patriate community in Miami, many of whom had property
confiscated by Castro after the 1959 revolution, and will
not rest until their feudal rights over the old
plantations, nightclubs and casinos are restored.

Unfortunately for them, Castro seems to be outliving many
of his blood-sworn enemies, just as he's outlasted nine
different American presidencies, a 45-year American-led
embargo, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
fall of the Soviet Union, and Nehru jackets. Still,
President Bush's mini-me, Condoleezza Rice, recently called
Cuba "an outpost of oppression." (One wonders what that
makes the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, where
many foreign nationals are being held without charges. 
A living testament to the Bill of Rights?)

The second reason U.S. policy has given Castro the business
end of the diplomatic rototiller is that it's bad form for
a small, weak nation like Cuba to successfully defy
America's will. We're the big boy and they're the runt --
so why are they refusing to leave our sandbox, especially
now that the Cold War has ended and their old Soviet
sponsors have tastefully fled to the cemeteries and museums
where they belong?

But in Havana, the truth is plain. The notion that Cuba
somehow represents a clear and present danger to America
is, to quote Woody Allen, "a mockery of a travesty of a
sham." St. Louis is more hazardous to our California
lifestyle, and Texas even more so.

Yet under George W. Bush, the U.S. has tightened already
draconian restrictions on Cuban trade and travel. At the
end of 2003, the American Office of Foreign Assets Control
had four employees dedicated full-time to investigating
Osama bin Laden's finances, while nearly two dozen worked
to ferret out people violating the Cuban embargo.

But when the law is unjust, it is the true patriot who acts
in opposition. As Nietzsche said, "He who fights with
monsters should look to it that he does not become one
himself. When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also
gazes into you."

Therefore we urge you to disregard the hypocritical and
spiteful American embargo and visit Cuba. Spend money if
you have it, share laughter if you don't. You'll be treated
to beat-up '57 Caddies roaring up and down the Malecon,
like proud matadors looking for a bull. To lonely
trumpeters blowing Chucho Valdez in the blue shadows of the
colonnades. To hand-rolled Cohibas, Havana Club rum and the
spirit of Hemingway trolling the sea with other old men
full of light and courage. To once-splendid Corinthian
columns anchoring laundry lines, Pompeian frescoes and
austere facades of the drowsing cathedrals. To the cult of
Ché, beautifully worn-out avenues and enthusiastic
baseball. To dozens of museums, Latin America's most intact
colonial city center and white beaches lapped by turquoise
water.

After all, you don't have to be raised a communist to agree
with the rock 'n' roll line, "What's so funny about peace,
love and understanding?"

Author of the best-selling novel "Boonville," Robert Mailer
Anderson is a board member of San Francisco Opera and S.F.
Jazz. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and three
children. Zack Anderson is a journalist and screenwriter
who also lives in The City. The cousins write and produce
movies together.


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