A favorite American axiom asserts if our government took charge of the Sahara Desert there would soon be a shortage of sand. While there’s more than a little truth to that, a manifestly demonstrated truth is that socialism and communism are even more efficient at destroying economies and lives. Margaret Thatcher wisely observed the trouble with socialism is you always run out of other people’s money. Communists do it faster and more violently, Cuba being a prime example:
Fast-forward to last Friday [10-18-24], when the electric grid in Cuba suffered a complete collapse. This is not an exaggeration or a metaphor. The entire island went dark—even Havana, which has been protected from the worst of the recent blackouts. It was a civilizational breakdown. The economy quite literally ground to a halt, as factories and stores were ordered closed by the government. From elementary schools to universities, the educational system was put on pause. Hospitals turned people away. For three days, Cuba, already tattered and abused, entered a special circle of hell reserved for the most mismanaged nations on earth.
In December, it happened again:
Cuba’s energy grid has collapsed, leaving millions without power, the latest in a series of failures on an island struggling from creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil.
The state-run utility company, the Cuban Electric Union, said workers were attempting to get the grid back online but local officials warned residents the difficult process of restoring power to aging Soviet-era power stations could take days.
Cuba’s top energy producer, the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, suffered an overnight failure, prompting the grid’s collapse on Wednesday [12-04-24], the company said.
It takes little imagination to understand what happens when there’s no electricity. That instantly plunges a society back to the beginning of the 1900s. No refrigeration, no elevators, no running water or sewage systems, no medical technology, no medications, no banking, nothing on which modern society depends for daily life.
More recently, Cuba has actually run out of sugar, long one of its only export crops and a primary source of income. Its sugar crops have collapsed, and Cuba is now reduced to importing sugar, which is also one of Cuba’s staple foods. Already among the world’s poor, imported sugar is now unaffordable for most Cubans:
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Graphic: X Screenshot
At the current exchange rate of 1 Cuban peso = .04177USD, 600 Cuban pesos are equivalent to 25 US dollars per pound of sugar. Meanwhile, how much does a pound of sugar cost in the U.S.? $1. It’s the miracle of socialism: in a Communist country that was formerly swimming in sugar, the product now costs 25 times as much as in the capitalist country next door. Which sums up, in a nutshell, the poverty of people living under socialism.
And if that’s not bad enough, like every other aspect of life under communism, Cuba’s housing is collapsing:
The ongoing collapse of Cuba caused by decades of disastrous communist policies has left a significant portion of the nation’s housing in a derelict state, posing a high risk to its impoverished inhabitants, who live in buildings that could collapse at any time.
Collapsing buildings are a recurring deadly problem for Cubans. The communist Castro regime, which controls housing and all other aspects of Cuban life, appears to have no interest in improving housing for its people nor in maintaining Cuba’s historic buildings, many of which are presently in a precarious state.
The Cuban government’s housing gaslighting would make Harris/Biden spokesliars like Alejandro Mayorkas look like amateurs:
According to statements issued last week by Delilah Díaz Fernández, the communist regime’s Director General of Housing, 65 percent of Cuba’s 4.07 million homes are deemed to be in “good technical condition.” The Castro regime official also admitted that out of Cuba’s 168 municipalities, 59 have not completed basic housing units, with ten of the municipalities located in Havana.
Even if anyone could take a communist’s word on anything, at least 35% of Cuba’s housing is not in “good technical condition” whatever that means. It’s safe to assume what might pass for “good” in Cuba would be wretched at best in America. What else would one expect of a nation full of American cars from the 50s held together with spit and bailing wire?
One of the more revealing tropes of socialist/communist useful idiots is their spin whenever and wherever those pseudo-systems of government—economics, really—inevitably fail: “true socialism/communism has never been tried.” Communism—socialism is communism-lite—has been tried for almost exactly 65 years in Cuba, and its failure is written in misery and blood. Circa 2025, it’s being rewritten in blood, pre-industrial revolution conditions, darkness, poverty, squalor and slow starvation.
As George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The same is true of those who refuse to recognize present reality and the lessons it teaches.
Happy New Year, comrades.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
