One Thousand Bernie Sanders Will Never Equal One Fidel Castro!

In the capitalist heartland known as the United States, there are many experiences you regularly encounter which, were they not so brutally oppressive and traumatic, would serve as the perfect comic fodder for any story telling environment.  Certainly, at the top of this list is the periodic circuses titled elections that occur in this country.  This is especially true when the president, the highest office in the country, is voted upon. 

No matter what comes out of any serious candidate for U.S. President’s mouth, if they cannot generate a minimum of $100,000,000 million to wage their campaign, they aren’t going to seriously contend.  With the international clown routine represented by the current president, and the equally weighted clowns running against him from the Democratic Party, the unfolding circus act known as the challenge to the presidency is top form foolery in this regard.

Here, in 2020, you have someone like Bernie Sanders who poses as a progressive and socialist minded politician.  Then, you have his supporters who work overtime crafting sharp tools designed to shove his clown act down our throats as if our refusal to play along with this charade is actually the source of the problem.

Please don’t get me wrong.  To those of you who have decided to go along with all of this, whether its Sanders or one of the other clown actors, nothing being written here is designed to attempt to get you to change your mind.  Our efforts are focused on making sure those who are just as tired of this soft shoe act are receiving the necessary message that alternative thinking is still a possibility.    

In the latest chapter of clown foolery, Sanders – in a rare moment of honesty and truth – expressed recently that the Cuban Revolution, led for its first several decades by comrade Fidel Castro, waged a very effective literacy campaign once the revolution came to power in January of 1959.  As soon as Sanders uttered those words, which all of us who have bothered to read anything credible about Cuba have long already known, the forces of reaction which represent the capitalist media, the propaganda arm of multi-national capitalism, came out strong to denounce Sanders for his comments when what he said is the social equivalent of saying the sky is blue.  Objective fact; prior to the Cuban Revolution, literacy in Cuba was about 15 to 20%, meaning only one or two out of 10 people could read effectively.  After the revolution waged its literary campaign, literacy increased dramatically and today, Cuba has a literacy of rate of about 98%, meaning practically everyone in Cuba can read and write.  The U.S. cannot make this claim.  Most countries on earth cannot make this claim.  Certainly, none of Cuba’s Caribbean capitalist dominated neighbor countries can claim this as most of those countries have literary rates today that are equal to or not much better than Cuba’s rates in 1959. 

The reason we label Sanders, apparently the most progressive minded of all the Democratic Party clowns, as a fake progressive and fake socialist is because of what happened after the attacks against him to repudiate his comments started raining down against his campaign.  He of course backtracked on defending anything about Fidel Castro and he went on to parrot the same old tired anti-communist rhetoric that has been leveled against Cuba on a steady basis by the U.S. capitalist media mechanisms.  And, Sanders, like all U.S. politicians, is afraid of the reactionary anti-African, pro-capitalist, anti-Cuban Revolution European (98%) so-called “exile” Cuban community living in South Florida as well as general reactionary people in this country who are anti-Cuban Revolution.  People in this country are anti-Cuban Revolution despite reading absolutely nothing about Cuba, socialism, socialist Cuba, or knowing anything about it beyond what they are told on television or what some misguided person who may have previously lived in Cuba (or knew someone who possibly did) has told them.

If people in the U.S. spent even a nominal amount of time actually studying Cuba’s accomplishments during their revolution of the last 61st years they would know that literacy is one of many outstanding accomplishments Cuba’s socialist system has achieved.  They have eliminated mother to child HIV transmissions.  They have effectively abolished cervical cancer.  They have an educational system that even the imperialist dominated World Bank and United Nations publicly acknowledges as one of the best in the world.  They have made major strides in improving the consciousness of their people against anti-people ideas like white supremacy, patriarchy, and homophobia (much of that is aided by those reactionary racist elements who have left Cuba over the last few decades).  They have accomplished all of this while providing free health care and education to everyone, despite crippling sanctions, and terrorist attacks carried out and enforced by the U.S. against them for practically their entire revolutionary period.  During this entire time, Cuba made commitments to serve humanity and they have done that.  They are not a bragging people, but if they were, they could accurately claim that they did more than anyone else outside of Africa to sacrifice to ensure racist apartheid didn’t continue to exist and spread in Africa.  And, they had 500,000 troops fighting in Southern Africa in the 80s and 90s (Cuba’s entire population is barely 11 million people so approximately 5% of their people fought in Africa).  It was those 500,000 troops who made a major contribution towards ensuring Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990 and that Namibia became independent.  Not to mention Angola and Mozambique doing the same.  In return for their great sacrifice in Africa, Cuba received nothing except more scorn and attacks from U.S. imperialism.  Fidel Castro was the central figure in facilitating, leading, and ensuring all of this progress in and out of Cuba (in Africa).  Cubans will tell you that Fidel individually commanded Cuban military efforts in Angola and Southern Africa from his station in Havana, Cuba and his leadership within the Communist Party of Cuba, their National Assembly (legislature), and their Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDCs) is well documented.

For us, there is absolutely no way to talk about Cuba’s major advances and contributions without acknowledging Fidel Castro.  I personally cringe whenever I see anyone praise Cuba without mentioning socialism and Fidel.  All of it is completely inseparable.  Fidel’s contributions to pushing humanity forward overwhelm any and everything all the U.S. presidents combined have ever even thought about doing.  This brings us to Bernie Sanders.  And, remember, we already said he is likely the most progressive of all of them, so the trap door opens and we need not even talk about the rest of them.  Sanders, the so-called progressive and socialist, doesn’t even have the strength and organization backing him to speak accurately about Cuba and Fidel without having to qualify and repudiate Fidel and the revolution in the same breath.  By backing, we mean an active movement for social justice and socialist development which would consist of millions of people who may choose to endorse Sanders, or anyone else, as a tactic, but electing some clown under capitalism would never be the primary focus of any serious movement building work.  Instead, such a movement would be focused on pushing the capitalist system farther into true progressive lanes by building capacity to shut capitalism down if we don’t get universal (free) healthcare, free education, etc.  Such a movement may use Sander’s campaign as a tactical approach, but it could never be totally focused on success through a bourgeoisie election.  Still, any campaign based on integrity can never justify any reason for not telling the truth.  And, this is why we could never respect Sanders because his inability to stand up against imperialism and tell the truth about the love that Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution have from most of the people who inhabit this planet, and his willingness to swing instantly into the same anti-communist (“we are not the same types of socialists as Fidel”), rhetoric tells us we could never respect him.  If Sanders isn’t the same type of socialist as Fidel, that confirms for us that we could never have anything to do with him and the argument that he’s better than the current clown is the same to us as arguing in favor of one rapist over another.  Non-starter argument.  Plus, there is ample evidence to confirm that Sanders has a very suspect record as a so-called progressive.  The reason he’s struggled up to the current time (that’s potentially changing because of the desperation of African people within the U.S.), with obtaining African votes is because he has never done anything to concretely challenge white supremacy.  Up until 2016, most Africans didn’t even have a clear idea who he was.  Yes, he “marched with Martin Luther King”, but a whole lot of people marched with King.  People who went on to become political reactionaries marched with King.  Police informants marched with King.  That means absolutely nothing.  Especially when Sanders has voted to support U.S. imperialist war efforts. Clearly, he may have marched with King, but he learned nothing from him.  King was the voice of integrity.  He’s dead because of his willingness to stand up against injustice, despite the personal cost, something Sanders and these other bourgeoisie politicians, and apparently most of their supporters, apparently know little about.  He’s voted for policies placed forward by the current clown in office that he claims to be against.  He voted to extradite Assata Shakur from Cuba, etc., etc., etc. 

Again, if your thing is the Democratic Party and Sanders, or any of those professional clowns, than more power to you.  Voting for any of them isn’t going to save us from the current clown if that’s your thinking.  The only thing that will save us from this ever evolving cycle of misery is the power of the organized masses of people.  Nothing else.  There is no question that 1000 Bernie Sanders rolled up into one could not match the integrity, courage, and commitment to justice that comrade Fidel Castro displayed in all of his 90 years on Earth.  Win or lose, 50 years from now if humanity is still here, no one will remember Bernie Sanders, but Fidel Castro’s contributions will be eternal.  We are forever grateful to Fidel and we will always love him for his contributions to humanity.  There is no clown show with bright lights and no comedy show pretending to be actual political debate, along with no campaign of foolery that can ever change that.