If Mark Jones and Paul Rosenberg agree, then I move we say the question has been settled; I'm here to stay.
Seriously, though, the Cuban comment was literally true. I didn't know that there was internet access available. It was still meant to be a swipe at Jones's adopted Cubanism and Castro's political methods, but I really didn't know and the discussion has been interesting-- access but censorship has been attested to. Now I know what to tell people when the subject comes up in conversation. And I admit that the embargo is to blame for many of Cuba's economic problems.
My politics on Cuba are currently thus: our trade realationship with Cuba should be the same as with China. Anything else seems hypocritical. And, if Castro ran in a free election with real freedom of the press, I'd probably vote for him.
This food thing is a typical leftist method of dealing with success. There are still people who miss meals and, yes, plenty of people who would have been institutionalized back in the day still have to dig thru dumpsters for food. But hunger as a problem similar to hunger and malnutrition overseas is not the problem Mark Jones made it out to be. Suggesting that you can simply visit a ghetto and witness the unfed is simply untrue and it devalues hunger in truly impoverished nations. The combination of food stamps, family, friends, and charity feeds the hungry.
For the time being. In a couple years that probably won't be true because we'll certainly see a recession just about the time millions of people will start losing their welfare benefits due to the new draconian laws. When that happens, the safety net of family, friends, and charity will be overwhelmed and people will start going hungry again in the U.S. in large numbers.
Now ask yourself what image you want the public to have of hunger in the U.S. in the year 2002-- that we've always had great problems with hunger that can never be solved no matter how much money you throw at them or that the new welfare laws are directly responsible for millions of children growing up malnourished.
I would come away feeling properly chastised by the attacks on what I said if they came from people who come into contact with big city ghettoes on a regular basis and actually could point to types of people who are currently going hungry. If people are going hungry I want to know why.
From my time a few years ago in inner city class rooms, I can tell you what teachers have said about what inner city students write in journals about their lives. The kids aren't writing about missing meals. They write about who they're attracted to and sometimes about the problems of sex and of course a lot of real blather. And, they're afraid of their neighborhoods, which is due in about equal parts to our insane drug laws and the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system.
Fellow leftists, take credit for our accomplishments. There will always be more to be done. But in the last 40 years, we've seen great strides made on important social questions: racism, sexism, the poverty of the elderly, hunger, and even the environment. To deny that government action and commitment to movements has made a great difference is to say that it's not even worth the effort-- an ideology in too great a supply, already.
James in Philly
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