A Philosopher Favors Cuba’s Annexation to the USA

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES – Alexis Jardines is a Cuban professor of philosophy who immigrated a few years ago to the United States. I met him in Havana some years before and we had some conversations, not always so pleasant.

On political matters Jardines was an uncompromising hard line and apparently still is.

In his latest article “La Cuba postcapitalista” (Post-capitalist Cuba) the philosopher “explains” why Cuba should be annexed to the US. Let’s have a look. Much of the text, maybe half, is devoted to “refute” the anti-plattistas (anti-annexationists).

He doesn’t use rational arguments, as we should expect from a thinker, but instead the weapons of a demagogic ideologue: offense, discrediting and half-truths.Alexis drops a heavy rain of insults and slander on those who do not oppose annexation. He associates them with the “revolutionaries” (pro-Castro and communist), he calls them nationalist crowds, barking dogs and undemocratic, who not accept the criteria of others (i.e. the annexationists).

He says they are outdated, medieval, anti–integrationist and totalitarians who put the brakes on freedom, thought and creativity. He further accuses them of instilling hatred, being responsible for functional illiteracy and the digital divide, and even incompetent and responsible for Cuba being on the side of the losers.

Jardines further claims that many of the anti-plattistas are actually closet annexation supporters.

He presents all this wrapped in a philosophical atmosphere peppered with bombastic and enigmatic statements such as this jewel: “Just as we cannot go against nature we cannot go against culture.”

But that’s OK, thinkers are that way, sometimes so passionate they lose the knack, which we can forgive them if they provide something interesting. So what does Alexis Jardines contribute in this article? How does a philosopher argue the convenience of Cuba being annexed to the United Sates?

I’ll try to summarize it:

The world is on track to globalization, multiculturalism, democracy and freedom. The engine for such marvels is technology, the dominant form of culture and foundation on which the Knowledge Society is built.

At the forefront of this process is the USA, “a great country that has become a new type of state: multicultural, democratic and post-national.” Where “everyone fits” because it is no longer so American or so capitalist.”

And the party is all happening only a stone’s throw away. However the recalcitrant Cuban anti-plattistas, in their provincial stubbornness, won’t let the Cinderella go to the dance and be kissed by the prince.

But their efforts are in vain because it is absolutely impossible to want to preserve the forms of the previous culture. Or, in other words, it is better that Cuba relax and enjoy because the die are already cast.

End of my synthesis.

I would say Alexis choked with the worst of Post-modernism.

If this is not pure meta-narrative, ideology and makeup to power relations, could someone explain to me what it is? Moreover, beyond the philosophical cloud, his arguments are so simple they seem taken from a cartoon strip. It’s scary to hear them spoken from the mouth of a thinker.