Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 14 November 2016 — A friend, a US citizen, once told me that it does not really matter who wins the US elections. “It does not depend so much on who heads the government, because the system is what really works.” I have heard that phrase from more than one person, which prompts us to apply the phrase to the so-called communist regimes, where something similar happens, but in reverse: it doesn’t matter who is in power, because the system itself is what doesn’t work.
However, for some American society sectors, it doesn’t seem that the latter is sufficiently clear, as reflected in the photograph that heads this writing. It is just one image among many others reported by the media about the demonstrations — some with certain violent nuances — that have been taking place in several major cities throughout the United States.
At first glance, the photo may look harmless, and perhaps even a little naive: a large group of students in Austin, Texas marching in protest of the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, a few hours following the announcement of the election results, after one of the most ferocious and vulgar electoral campaigns in American history.
Nevertheless, in spite of numerous Trump-adverse survey forecasts, and against the media attacks that the campaign endured; in spite of the awful projection of his aggressive, racist, xenophobic and misogynist discourse; in spite of his inexperience in politics and the lack of support of his own party; in spite of all these things the controversial tycoon rose with devastating victory in the electoral college. Like it or not, Trump deserves recognition.
Now, sympathy aside, Trump won in good faith, without cheating and without tricks, by virtue of the same electoral system that produced Democrat Barrack Obama – who is black, for an added description — as winner on the two previous occasions without provoking marches and riots by the Ku Klux Klan or the more conservative sectors of society and of the Republican wing.
It so happens that the mere act of going to the polls implies acceptance of the rules of the game; win or lose. In any case, there will always be a new opportunity to reverse the results every four years. One may ask whether, had the Democratic candidate won, Republican voters would have considered it right to attack the system and ignore the confirmed election results.
Because what is involved in these demonstrations is precisely that: an onslaught against the system, masked after the onslaught against the much-vilified businessman. The marches in question are not really naive. Suffice it to note in the Austin photograph the prominence of the Soviet flag, with the hammer and sickle, which heads the protest of the angry youths, several of them with their faces covered. They must have a reason for the need to conceal their identities, for, whoever believes in the justice of their demands in an open, democratic and plural society should have no reason to hide.
In other cities, students have worn T-shirts or carried posters bearing the image of the famous guerrilla and Argentine assassin, “Che” Guevara, a prime example of the revolutionary violence of the radical left in this hemisphere, which is proving to be like a Hydra of a thousand heads. It would seem that we are witnessing the birth of the “New American Man.”
One might wonder, if pro-Soviet and guerrilla longings are the ideals of young marchers in the US, what comes next? Could it be that the worst and most reactionary of the left flinched in Latin America and was overthrown in Russia decades ago only to nestle shrewdly in some university niches full of these outdated children, bored of their cushy existence under the American way of life?
Obviously, youth is not enough of a condition to represent the most renewing of social thought. Here are lots of fresh faces, many of them with unmistakable Hispanic features and other ethnic and racial backgrounds, who today assume the symbols of the most retrograde of universal progression to combat the system that sheltered them, where they enjoy the opportunities that they would not have under “communist” regimes.
“He’s not my President,” their posters brandish. Well, he is the president who has been democratically elected and will govern for the next four years. It would good for them to come to terms with it. In fact, in the face of this outbreak of Marxist bad habits, Republicans will more likely have greater chances of re-election to the presidency of the country.
Perhaps these exalted young people should seek “other lands of the world that beg for their modest efforts” and pursue their dreamed dreams outside their country, just as their fathers and grandfathers did when they arrived in the USA, mistakenly thinking they were forging a better destiny for their families.
And as the sprouts want something else and not what they have at home, it would be best for these neo-communists to depart to more promising lands for their misunderstood aspirations. I propose Cuba, for example. They do not have to settle definitively; it would be sufficient for them to experience at hand the benefits of the system erected under the same breath as the hammer and sickle – though only the hammer is used now, to crush any outbreak of freedom – and where their admired Che began his pristine social experiments.
I would love to see these anti-system youths living under the firm guidance of the communist party and the governing of the never-elected, hand-picked octogenarian in the presidential armchair, the co-founder of a fiercely capitalist family clan that will rule every small detail of their destinies. Let’s overlook the sordid details related to compulsory ideological fidelity, the absolute absence of citizen liberties, the material deprivations, the living conditions in permanent survival mode and other similar trifles. These insignificant nuances should not be obstacles for those who are fulfilling their dreams.
If they don’t like the way things are done in irreversible communism, then I would love to see them launch demonstrations in front of the Havana University staircase or in any of the capital’s avenues or key Cuban cities. They should remember to carry Soviet flags and the beloved images of the emblematic guerrilla. They might even add old photographs of Castro I in his early years as a guerrilla warrior (current photographs are not convenient). Let’s see what happens, and then they will certainly experiment in their hides, in the most convincing way, what Marxist democracy is, symbolized in Che and the Soviet flag.
This might be the best way to learn how to value, in its right dimension, what they have in their own countries. Trump will certainly then look like an adorable archangel.
But let us not be too naïve. There will always be useful fools… or communist agents suitably planted. Let’s not neglect or lose sight of the signs. Sometimes the most insignificant-looking bacteria turn out to be the most harmful.
