A Knife To The Throat
I am reading Bananas, by Peter Chapman, How the United Fruit Company shaped the world. It is a chilling tale of colonization. The colonial power was the United States in the late 1800s, the William McKinley administration, followed by Teddy Roosevelt. How we tend to view our history through rose-colored glasses, giving others and ourselves a benefit of the doubt that is undeserved.
No wonder that Cuba remains adamantly socialist. The Cuban government is rightfully leery of any deal offered by the United States. Servitude, impoverishment is the price that has been paid by the people’s of Central America in their relationship with our government and with American companies.
With the story of Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras in mind, I hope that the democrats do not concede to the President the funds to build his wall along our southern border with Mexico, no matter what is offered in return. A wall has no rational justification and it is wrong, corrosive of our democratic process to accede to blackmail.
A knife to the throat, a gun to one’s head is always an “argument” that will be used over and over when it succeeds the first time.
