Myopic and chauvinistic to the bitter end, the general population of the United States is much like "SR" who writes below "So What?"

Callous, stupid, self-absorbed, he's obviously never been anywhere in the Caribbean except perhaps on that Princess Cruise Line ship he spoke of. Americans of his ilk debark in one Caribbean island after another(they're all the same right?) after stuffing their fat faces at the ship's breakfast buffet. They mob the nearest souvenir district for an hour or two, complaining about the heat, go to a McDonalds for lunch because they (ironically) are afraid of getting sick eating local fare, and soon the ugly Americans are back on board their enormous floating rabbit hutch in time for an afternoon nap and some bingo.

They come back to America with no idea of where they have been or what the places were like that they visited, their racial bigotry unchanged. (Cuba falls, we get better baseball players, right SR?).

Well, here's a news flash: While America has been cutting off its nose to spite Castro for the past 40 years, our Canadian neighbors have been in Cuba developing trade, creating business channels and working with Cubans who will rocket to the top of business and government as soon as El Maximo farts his last.

Most dumb-ass Americans think there has been nothing going on in Cuba worth thinking about. But while SR continues numbing his weak mind with baseball scores, the Germans, Dutch, French, Italians and even our "good buddies" the British and Australians, have been staking out the best business opportunities and real estate, forming lasting friendships and business alliances within Cuba, right under the nose of America.

Most frightening of all, it's not just our allies who have been in Cuba. The goddamned Chinese have been all over the place. You want to worry about something? Worry about that.

Here's my prediction: When Castro croaks, his brother Raul is going to hightail it to Switzerland to be with all the money the regime has been siphoning all these years. The Miami exiles are going to have a painful moment of truth when they figure out that the United States government has been using them as useful idiots all these years and now that they are no longer useful, they will get trampled in the gold rush.

What ever system of government replaces Communism after Castro, you can be certain that it's going to be heavily Socialist, much to the chagrin of the Miami exiles and the right-wing nuts in the U.S. News flash: Cuba doesn't need have to depend upon the U.S. for anything. They learned to live without us.

There's already some noise about how many millions the U.S. must pour into Cuba to "establish democracy." What a laugh! They can get all the money they want from the goddamn Chinese Communists, or loans from the EU, who have been doing business in Cuba ever since Fidel snookered us four decades ago.

America: The pitiful helpless giant, always leading with his chin, always a decade late, always laboring under the delusion that everybody loves and needs him. Like an idiot, he keeps sticking his finger in a live electrical socket again and again, expecting a different result each time.