Che - The Movie
Out of context: Reply #41
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- rafalski0
Thank you for such attentively crafted rebuttal, caput58, but the comparisons you gave don't make your point stronger.
Having a monitored internet we have is as bad as not having any and yet being subject to even more surveillance in Cuba?
Is not being able to to go to an unsafe country (sounds like common sense) as bad as not being able to leave yours at all?
Come on..I don't care what the system is called. What I care for is freedom. Freedom to choose. Todays' western world is no paradise. But you do have options, including opting out. In communism you don't. Freedom comes at the price of responsibility for your mistakes - this is what people don't want and they want the state to take care of them. I still choose freedom over that.
As opposed to majority of people I discuss here with, I have lived in communism. I was 15 when it failed. I like to think I helped it fail, I threw rocks at commie police as a kid..
I have very clear memories of that period. It was a shithole that is hard to describe. It was Kafka'esquely muddy and slimey. It was just as grey as the west pictured it. We were slaves with no option out. In order to be granted a passport (only valid for a single visit, you had to return it immediately upon return) you had to be nice to the police, in many cases sign loyalty letter they could blackmail you with later on.
The worst thing about communism was what it did to people. Corruption, as I wrote about Cuba - was a norm. So was stealing from the system. When everything's everyone's, it's nobody's. This mentality is still there - this is the worst. It spoiled generations.There is corruption in the west of course - but it doesn't affect regular people, only those in power. In communism everyone bribes. I saw bribes handed as a kid on a daily basis, more than once. It was nothing big, just a normal thing.
I speak on Cuba, because I went there to see it myself. My sad conclusion is it is exactly the same type of shithole I grew up in, only the setting and the music are much nicer - so are cigars. The saddest part is you can see in its ruins, it was one of the most beautiful places on Earth before the revolution.
I didn't stay in hotels, only at people's houses. I talked to people. They were curious about post-communist countries as well, so we had a lot to talk about. I saw behaviours that would be hard to explain to someone who hasn't lived in communism. Why are salespeople so rude? I know. I just know, I lived in this. It was all the same, down to omnipresent propaganda posters glorifying the Communist Party and so on.
I saw store vendors blatantly cheat their employer (La Revolucion) and pocket money from sales (I recognized the techniques instantly). I saw groups of people, some in their official uniforms get organized to rob the state as part of their lazy daily routine (funny stories if you don't have to live there). I saw a peanut vendor on the street bribe a police officer, so he doesn't notice the vendor (selling peanuts on your own is illegal). All this in the short time I spent there just walking around and travelling.
I didn't see a happy adult person, even if they were dancing on the street. I did see happy kids, little ones.
Teenagers on local buses.. this was the hard part. They looked at me with the same eyes I had looked at random (rare, though) foreigners when I was a kid. I used to be the same teenager. I knew the feeling they expressed. It wasn't envy exactly.. it was a very sad feeling foreigners come from a different world you're not allowed to access, where being able to travel the world is part of normalcy.I never said western world lifestyle was the perfect solution, it is quite fucked up. But proposing communism instead is going out of the fire right into a frying pan.
Every American has an option to leave the country and a way to earn enough for the ticket. Cubans don't. This alone is a world of difference.