OPINION:
A team of Turning Point USA producers took a trip to Cuba to peer behind the glitzy social media photos that show a nation of happy, happy, joy, joy citizens — and came home to America with a stiff, stern warning for Bernie Sanders’ fans and socialist wannabes that went, bluntly, like this: Don’t.
Don’t do it.
Don’t bring the socialist-slash-communism here to America.
“This is what it’s like to live without a U.S. Constitution,” said one of the team members in a 12-minute video put out by TPUSA. “My takeaway is I have never been happier to be an American. Everything that you have seen about Cuba is a lie.”
Now if only Bernie Sanders and his band of merry socialist-slash-communist followers would pay attention.
Among the eye-openers captured on video: Long gas lines — so long that people were pushing cars because they ran out of gas, while waiting. Grocery stores that are locked, until government bureaucrats give the OK to open them — after which swarms of people rush to the entrance, trying to beat the competition for that day’s essentials. Grocery shelves that have rows upon rows upon rows of, say, cans of one brand of garbanzos — but nothing in the way of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh meat or even choice. A city street that’s lined with broken, crumbling buildings — buildings that obviously had been beautiful mansion-size homes at one point. And piles of trash and garbage and more trash, overflowing into the streets.
And that’s in Havana, the nation’s largest city — albeit outside the government sanctioned tourist areas. Outside the areas the far leftists want you to see.
The TPUSA trip ended a day early, after the producers were awakened by armed guards and officers banging on their hotel door — and after they fled to the U.S. embassy, then airport.
But this is socialism, at its root.
“We started to realize Cuba sucks,” said one producer in the video.
“Communism is just a crushing of human spirit,” said another.
And one more: “You cannot tell me that socialism works.”
Quite right. History proves that, as well.
It’s only in the glossed-over, rosy-pinked, control-freaked minds of far leftists that socialism actually brings a longed-for dream. In the world of reality, however, it’s the opposite. Strip away the lies of socialism and all that’s left is a bleak, crushed, devastating society.
No matter what Sanders and his supporters try to spin.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.comor on Twitter @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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