Unabashed

Fidel Castro’s written another article lambasting US policy, this time for conceptualizing a conversion to biofuels from fossil fuels. In it, he claims the United States will be responsible for three billion deaths due to starvation.

It’s easy enough to analyze the biofuel concept from the US point of view: our gov’t is tired of being reliant upon the Middle East for the health of its economy, and tired of funding a group of global malcontents with trillions of dollars to wage war on anyone whose lifestyle they disagree with. From Castro’s perspective, it makes perfect sense to assume the all-powerful US, overflowing with fat citizens and cash, is going to be responsible for the starvation of billions of people. America has always been the land of plenty while Cuba has struggled simply to survive. For Fidel, America is brimming with food, overrun with it, has so much of it they’re shoving it into their cars to keep them moving.

Castro, of course, is a Marxist. If America, too, was a Marxist state, it would not be the land of plenty, it would be the land of share and share alike. But then so would the rest of the world. And then, in Fidel’s mind, no one would be starving because the one-world government would ensure that the plenty of America was properly dispersed to the world’s needy mouths. And Fidel, of course, is blinded by his ego. He presumes the Marxist concept can work, even though it has proven time and time again that it cannot. I’m not saying America or the free trade system is perfect, I’m just saying Marxism is flawed from the word go. Sure, it sounds good, and the principles Fidel studied at University all made for great inspiration. But if the dissemination of foodstuff is bureaucratized, if all the corn in America is crated up for dispersal throughout the world, what would happen then?

• In Castro’s mind: the masses would be fed.
• In reality: half the food would rot, waiting for the right to be dispersed, subjected to official procedure in which a certain governor/statesman/magistrate would require something in return for his being so generous as to allow his people the benefit of what was in his possession. In waiting to ensure the people know it was he who provided for them in their time of need, even though in reality it was he who denied it to them and let it rot. This is Marxism in application. The old saying, tried and true and overused, has never been more apropos: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
• The portion that didn’t rot and met with government officials who operated by the letter of the law, who promptly filed the paperwork to have the food disseminated and took his own portion for himself, would be distributed from centralized locations, where the public would come to receive their ration, standing in line. Better hope you like the flavor of the week, cause that’s all that’s on the menu.

It’s very easy for Fidel to blame America for his failures. America has always been his scapegoat. When Russia collapsed Fidel was left without sponsorship, and once again he arrogantly denied the obvious: Communism is a failure. Socialism might sound great in principle, but in application it cannot work, because humanity is flawed. Socialism is a great idea, sure, and the free-trade system sounds awful in comparison, ensuring the haves have and the have nots don’t get any. But in application, it works the other way around, doesn’t it?

The other giant life rule is, and we all live by it: If you want to play in the game, you’ve got to play by the rules. Castro never played by the rules. He made his own rules and led his country down the toilet. Could America have saved Cuba? Likely, yes. We’re in love with beaches, coffee, sugar, rum and cigars and we would gladly pay for all of them, in massive quantities, from Cuba, if only Fidel would play the game. Sorry, Mr. Castro, for participation in society you get a big, fat ZERO. You’ve failed your people, even though you’ve got them believing it’s America’s fault through your incessant slur campaign, raging now for sixty years. Everything that’s wrong with the world is the fault of America, everyone who is killed was killed by America, and if anyone in the world dies of starvation, it will be because America used corn for fuel.

Is biofuel the answer to America’s fossil-fuel dependency? Possibly. Willie Nelson thinks so. As for corn, well, Fidel’s not entirely wrong on all counts; America does have an excess of corn. In the past it was that excess which resulted in the creation of high-fructose corn syrup, a particularly devilish toxin that’s a primary ingredient in almost everything that tastes good. HFCS replaced sugar in EVERYTHING that sugar was previously in. You want to know why America is getting fat, check your labels for HFCS; you’ll find it in Coke, Sprite, Mt Dew, even 7-Up whose commercials report their drink ‘all natural.’ So, am I in favor of biofuel? You bet I am. It would be my sincere wish that we:

a) Stop making HFCS and use the excess corn instead for biofuel and
b) That we end the trade embargo and start buying sugar from Cuba.

I know these things aren’t going to happen. It’s not that they’re impossible, it’s just that the political machine’s wheels are greased by these specific mechanics. The embargo won’t end until Fidel’s in the grave. HFCS should have been banned years ago, but that’s another article. But biofuel–is it possible? Sustainable? Clean? Green? It could be.

written by Matt Mitchell