Failed Policy: Successful Semantics

Although the men who run the Cuban dictatorship have essentially destroyed the island economy and turned the nation into the great mendicant of the Caribbean, they have been successful in maintaining power long after most Communist regimes have crumbled. This is their, pardon the pun, crowning achievement. An almost equally notable success has been their triumph in the propaganda wars. Face it, it is their verbiage that has won the day.

Those in this country who have the most at stake in the freedom of their countrymen and who are in the best position to know what is transpiring on the island, since there is no such thing as a free press or freedom of speech in the island gulag, are routinely dismissed or vilified as "hard-liners," "intransigents," "dead enders," and even the "Miami Mafia" in the mainstream media. This last in particular is clearly evidence of the success of the castroite mix of propaganda, bribery, blackmail and infiltration that have won the day.

So as I stumbled across the term blockade to describe the embargo the other day, I had a thought. It is time that we get a bit more deliberate in our passionate opposition to those who wield the jackboot. As a movement we need to develop a terminology of our own and use it until it, too, wends its way to the mainstream media.

I offer my own humble contribution. Since the practical Raul has loaded his government with military types, at every opportunity I use "the ruling military junta" to denote the Havana regime. So what, if it's not completely accurate, Cuba being a more familial fiefdom. It's close enough. Americans, particularly liberals, have a knee jerk dislike of such bodies, associating them with right wing, Latin American dictatorships. Who knows? Use it enough, and it might stick. The possibilities are endless.