The Last Communist City

City Journal ^ | Spring 2014 | MICHAEL J. TOTTEN

[RWB Patriot]

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth. The film works passably as an allegory for its director’s native South Africa, where racial apartheid was enforced for nearly 50 years, but it’s a rather cartoonish vision of the American future. Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90 miles from Florida.

[RWB Patriot]

Commies like to point at Cuba as one of the "success stories" of communism (though the amount they have to shut their brains off to do so is telling), so next time you hear one of them going on about how much better Cuba is, you might point them to this article.

Then again, if commies faced facts, they wouldn't be commies.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks. The article was very informative. I thought it was bad, but didn’t know just how bad it is down there.

[GeronL]

Leftists are crazy. Healthcare in Cuba is probably a horrid nightmare for the people who actually live there

[El Cid]

Thanks for posting the article.
Damn commies (and their 'Progressive' hanger-ons). They have a talent for changing Paradises into hell on Earth.

[drbuzzard]

Commies will never face facts because they always find someone else to blame (the US embargo, the flight of refugees, etc). Kinda like O and his inability to take responsibility for any bloody thing.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Cuban health, endorsed by Tom Harkin, (D) Iowa...

[driftless2]

I was always amused by the argument that Cuba was poor because the evil, capitalist U.S. wouldn’t trade with Cuba. You would think that would be one of last things commies would argue... that they were poor because a capitalist country wouldn’t trade with them. And even so, every other country in the world was free to trade with them. The commies and their fellow travelers in the west just couldn’t stand the truth...Cuba was poor because Cuba was communist.

[wetphoenix]

~I was always amused by the argument that Cuba was poor because the evil, capitalist U.S. wouldn’t trade with Cuba.~

The problem with sanctions and embargoes is that it’s too easy for embargoed governments to push it as a propaganda for local consumption.
They have a kind of Iron Curtain, built from the outside.
And it is easy to shift the blame.
They can even blame their own mismanagement on sanctions.

[yldstrk]

can we speed that up? Let’s assist outer space, bring back NASA

[yldstrk]

The article about how awful things are in Cuba is effing disgusting and infuriates me

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk