Want to know the difference between a degenerate capitalist system and a degenerate socialist system? One fights tooth and claw over marked down Big Screens while the other commits fratricide over the staples that sustain human life. The former queue up one or two days a year for a bonanza while the latter do so as an everyday necessity. One is a metaphor for avarice, while the other stands for misery.

The best example of the Cuban socialist sickness is the economic compensation of cabbies and doctors, since the former can make in one day what it takes the latter an entire month. The cabbie is a vacuum for hard foreign currency while the typical doctor must manage the life and death of low priority human beings. Know this relationship, and the extrapolations thereof, and you will know every valid axiom secreted within the materialist heart of the collective.

But Cuba shall have no respite from its travail, as long as the island’s balance of forces tip heavily to the advantage of its tyrants. Moreover, as long as the fawning West gives its crooked blessing to shattered utopias for the honor of vacationing in a quaint little burgh of classic cars and inexpensive currency prostitutes, all set in ideological stone, Cuba will remain business as usual. Meet the new Boss; Same as the old Boss.

Glenn Fairman writes from Highland, Ca. He can be contacted at arete5000@dslextreme.com and at www.stubbornthings.org.