By Enrique del Risco in his blog Enrisco (my translation):
The Truncheon Utopia
All the political calculations related to Cuba these last few decades were all based on fear. Except they didn’t call it fear, they called it support, backing, or even acceptance or resignation when their “search for utopia” became an epic game of hide and seek or regurgitating the same lines to each other. And then suddenly one Sunday an entire country loses its fear (or had already begun losing it from before and we didn’t notice), destroying that image of a frozen revolution that the self-righteous world was keeping in a special drawer of curiosities.
Since July 11, the fear the universal left counted on to make itself believe they understood that island went to hell and now they can’t find a way to figure out what’s happening. With the fear gone, the world must now appeal to terror. The terror exercised by the State, which they prefer to call the “Revolution.” Or if they want to be Nietzschean, “the will of power.” That is the terror foreign observers are counting on to understand the Cuban reality now and sustain the fiction they have entertained in their consciences for so long
In other words, they hope the police truncheons will straighten out the image of that pretty revolution frozen in time which has been shattered for them by the eruption of unwashed masses armed with rage and cell phones, replacing the meek flocks which waved little flags every May Day.
Anything but accept that Cuba is dominated by a tyranny like all the others. Or accept that it always was, only that tyranny has never learned to generate wealth — apart from the persistent exercise of robbery — or to pack its bags. Anything but accept that it is time they go find their utopias elsewhere.
Utopia.
The word translates to “no place.”
Fitting.
It is hard to say what is the more devastating weapon in an attempt to destroy tyranny, the gun or information. I may opt for the latter. But guns also work. Too bad the Cuban demonstrators don’t have guns.
So here we are in America turning our backs on the flag instead of celebrating it as a symbol of freedom like people who do not have freedom in Cuba are bravely doing.
And we in the U.S. are on our way to having our guns stolen from us and information stifled. We will become Cuba because too many are not paying attention to what is going on..
Life’s little ironies.