In What Way Is the Cuban Government Like a Lighter?
By Benjamin Noria
HAVANA TIMES – A few days ago, I heard somebody tell another person a joke on the street. The joke was: in what way is the Cuban Government like a lighter? The answer? … They both let you down you when you need them the most.
Hahahaha, it seems this person is right. Well, if we’re looking for a reason why the Cuban Government is similar to a lighter in this way, let’s first remember that it’s true that lighters sometimes don’t work when we try to flick one, so we try again, they let off a few sparks, your finger goes red and we repeat again and again and nothing. In the end, we have to ask somebody else for a light.
The same thing happens with Cuba’s Communist Government. When the Cuban people ask them to fix the housing crisis, when we ask them to fix problems with aqueducts, food, medicine shortages and many other things, no matter how much you ask, nothing happens in the end. In a nutshell, we have to ask family members in the US for things and live off handouts from other countries.
Having a lighter that always fails you when you want to smoke, for example, can make you want to give up the bad habit. So, having a Communist government that doesn’t answer when you need it the most should encourage you no longer think about Communism as the solution to human beings’ basic problems.
The Communists have always been excessive, irrational, romantic, fanatics and mad. These are the qualities that define them all over the world. The communist illusion has cost many people’s lives. They believe they are invested with some superior and divine power to mark the correct path for people’s lives.
What should you do when a lighter doesn’t want to work? Well, you take it to the repair shop. So, what should we do with the Communist Government if it isn’t working? Correct its faults.
There are two ways to change society: revolutions are one, and reforms are the other. Reforms are slower and more farsighted. Revolutions speed up change and are also violent and huge.
But if we are going to hold onto the Cuban Revolution, we need to know that the combination of participation, equality, efficiency and autonomy is the key to progress.
Please, no more experiments and improvising. It’s going to be 65 years of a collapsing Revolution. Humans were born to choose what’s best for their species and what they need to satisfy their biological and spiritual needs. A defective system that is killing a people’s optimism for life needs to be eliminated.
Cubans have become hopeless given the Government’s lack of honesty, and already more than half of the population want to leave the country and go elsewhere to try their luck and live a better life.
It was in Cuba that I saw for the first time in my life, people who earned a living on the street refilling the lighter fluid in this plastic lighters. In the Sixties here in the US, I remember similar businesses in kiosks inside grocery stores between the checkout lines and the doors. But these businesses sold brand new Zippo lighters and the lighter fluid was free with your purchase. It seems the metaphor of Cuba being like a lighter that often doesn’t work carries through to the guys on the street who sells refills. The Castro regime just keeps refilling the lighters of the Cuban people. They do just enough to stay in power. Even once you refill your lighter with fluid, it still barely works. The dictatorship refills the lighter too and likewise, life in Cuba still barely works.