The Failure of Hope

Hope in nothing is not hope. Four years ago Americans founded their hopes on nothing and got nothing. We can only hope that they have learned one lesson since then: failure has no color. Or, rather, it comes in all colors and all combinations thereof.

You can't whitewash failure with rhetoric; you can't hang curtains of hubris around it; and you can't stamp a new expiration date on it. Failure is final.

One must be shameless beyond the common type, indeed, shameless beyond any previous conception of what shameless means, to betray the hopes of millions and yet expect them to sanction that betrayal and embrace that failure.

The only thing that would be even more shameless is a people that surrenders its future because it cannot or will not learn from its past.

We Cubans, of course, are the resident experts on that subject.

One would think that if nothing else we would be an object lesson to the world. But no; our failure, as much ours as imposed upon us, is denied by the same people that do not acknowledge Barack Obama's. They regard Fidel Castro as a boon unto our country and all nations, and we must pay with our grim realities for their fond illusions.

If Barack Obama is re-elected president today, the same fate awaits this country: to be a byword for failure without even the pity that failure amounting to national suicide should inspire.