I don't really understand the point of the embargo. I am an American.

Picking on a tiny country like Cuba serves no purpose. The elites in Cuba are not going to suffer; the normal people will.

Instead of acting like a bully, I wish our government would be more magnanimous and just drop the embargo.

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ceejayoz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't really understand the point of the embargo.

Making sure Florida's Cuban-American community keeps voting Republican.

The end result is going to be them being another China-dependent colony. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/as-the-us-starves-it-of...

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api 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a sizable Cuban-American community that hates the regimes and wants to use the USA to overthrow it, and they're a swing voting bloc in Florida which has a lot of electoral votes. That's the point.

Deciding the Cold War is over, other countries get to decide their own political affairs, and normalizing trade with Cuba would benefit Americans.

That's also a minor gripe I have with the leftists who call this imperialism. Let's say it is. And it's benefiting me how? I thought imperialism was supposed to benefit the empire doing the imperialism-ing. (At least in theory.) This is costing us tons of money and international prestige.

(Not saying I support that kind of imperialism either, just making the point that this is lose-lose.)

	▲	Tangurena2 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is a lot of spite involved in making this a "lose-lose" situation. Never underestimate the power of spite.

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davydm 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And, for an encore - stop all the other stupid shit. The rest of the world (and the US) is paying the price for little trump-tantrums, like the one against Iran. He's not a good international leader. He's not even a reasonable at-home president.

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b3ing 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They embarrassed us years ago by forcing out US capitalists exploiting them and sided with Russia during the Cold War. We won’t forgive them for 50,000 years now despite we work fine with Japan and Germany

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Psillisp 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A political tactician would call it a Wedge Issue.

A human would call it generational depravity of the powerful.

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jpadkins 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

can't have communists in the western hemisphere. They give up authoritarian communism, we will be magnanimous.

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deadbolt 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Communism must be absolutely incredible for such a small country to be such a threat to a superpower.

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kelseyfrog 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We must rhetorically cast our enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak."[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfascism

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marknutter 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would you tolerate a fascist country in your back yard?

	▲	BobaFloutist 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"Would you tolerate" is kind of interesting phrasing. It feels like there's no "one-size-fits-all" ideal level of intervention in a dysfunctional/repressive government. Sometimes if you just leave them alone, they "inevitably" liberalize, reaping the benefits. Sometimes if you just leave them alone they calcify, form coalitions, and actively interfere in Western democracies. Sometimes if you intervene a little, you can help support the people oust their rulers. Sometimes if you intervene a little, you just harm innocent civilians, and entrench the power of the regime. And so on and so forth for every possible level of intervention. Sure, some of it is going to inherently depend on the actual level of the power disparity, on any counteracting support the regime is getting from your adversaries, on the particular details of your intentions and your intervention, on the timing, etc. But sometimes it really feels like nobody knows what they're doing with foreign policy, and sometimes you get lucky and the country where you literally nuke two major cities just sort of shrugs, shakes your hand, and becomes one of your closest allies with a great deal of goodwill between citizens, and on the other hand sometimes you put boots on the ground an funnel enormous sums of money and (at least hypothetically) try to maintain positive relationships with the locals in a huge nation-building project and after decades you end up with...nothing. So, to go back to what you said, sometimes it feels like tolerating the fascist country in your backyard might be the best way to turn it into a non-fascist country. And, on the other hand, sometimes it might be the worst way. These things seem difficult.
	▲	ceejayoz 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The US has a long history of installing fascists in South America in the name of fighting communism.

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WarmWash 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The US could not care less about Cuba being communist.

They care a lot about Cuba being "open door communist bros" with the USSR, and now with China.

If China moves on Taiwan, and the US moves to defend, and then a bunch of Chinese missiles hit the East Coast, people will wonder what the government was doing letting China set up camp right on our door step.

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anigbrowl 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The irony of saying we should have the option to defend Taiwan but we can't tolerate China posing a threat in our backyard.

	▲	WarmWash 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's about as ironic as defending your goal while also trying to get the ball in the opponents goal. I suppose in some way it's ironic, but it's also the only beneficial way to play the game.

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Tangurena2 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As a nation, we're still pissed off that those uppity dark skinned people (/s) overthrew our businesses and replaced the corrupt politicians installed by our government/businesses. Generally, when other nations do that, we invade them. Repeating that pattern in Central America led to coining the phrase "banana republic" to describe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

Also, we're still pissed off at Iran for deposing (in 1979) the dictator that we installed in 1953.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Whenever America acts "funny" (or irrationally, if you prefer) and does something politically/militarily that makes no sense to the average person, the answer is almost always "white supremacy". In the past, that could be waved away by mumbling "we're fighting communism", but after the collapse of the Soviet Union & Warsaw Pact, we needed a new excuse. Sometimes "fighting terrorism" is used instead, but the T-word never gets applied to white people.

	▲	janderson215 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nice try attributing it to racism. > Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
	▲	reducesuffering 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> As a nation, we're still pissed off that those uppity dark skinned people What? This is currently purely on Cuban-Americans as a voting bloc in Florida... The recent escalation is due to Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, being Secretary of State.