I’ve long been an advocate for a change in U.S. diplomatic posture towards Cuba…

and certainly for the ending of the asinine trade embargo of the last five decades.

Even though said embargo has had the unintended benefit of creating a country that is quite unlike any other on this planet.

I’ve not yet had the privilege of going there myself. I want to…desperately.

And I’ve heard things…good things.

So, finally we have a President who’s (sometimes) willing to step up and make change happen where it’s needed…

despite every attempt by Congress to keep him from doing it.

He gave us universal health care. Not perfect, mind you, but definitely an improvement over nothing.

He took action to help cure the “state of limbo” that 11 million folks suffer under, who’ve lived, worked, raised families and basically acted like U.S. citizens for a long time, with one problem…

they aren’t and never can hope to be…U.S. citizens…

until now.

He’s taken action against Global Warming, when the last President only hemmed and hawed, along with the majority of his right-wing constituents, about whether he “believed in it.”

And now this…

A place where, up until now, Americans could only visit under threat of incarceration.

And why is that?

Because of the utterly awful regime of one Fidel Castro.

However, let me offer you the enhanced perspective of a ride in my time capsule…

in which we turn the dial back to around 1952, when a dude named Fulgencio Batista took over Cuba in a military coup.

Batista was loved by corporate America and even by a small minority of wealthy Cubans, but not so much by the rest.

For an idea of why U.S. politicians and corporations loved Batista, consider the words of John F. Kennedy…

At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands, almost all the cattle ranches, 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions, 80 percent of the utilities, practically all the oil industry, and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports.

Another group loved Batista as well, and the dictator definitely returned that affection…

the mafia.

You see, they loved Batista because of the gambling and prostitution that the dictator allowed into Havana and took for himself a big corrupt chunk of the action.

But the poor peasants working the U.S. corporate controlled sugar cane fields harbored little love for the dictator.

So, a band of leftists, led by a lawyer rabble-rouser named Fidel Castro, unsuccessfully tried to mount an attack against the Batista regime on July 26, 1953.

Batista made the mistake of allowing Castro to live to try again…

and try he did.

One of the first things Castro did was to take back some of the stuff mentioned by Kennedy above and give it back to the folks who had worked the land.

It was called agrarian reform and it was all the rage amongst many “communist” Latin American leaders.

Of course, those sweeping changes didn’t sit well with many wealthy Cubans, who fled the island in exile to Miami, Florida…

and there they live to this day.

In fact, the parents of Senator Marco Rubio were, arguably, part of that exile.

And that I guess explains why Rubio is so up in arms about Obama’s action.

Castro was faced with leading a tiny island nation with one huge and powerful enemy just 90 miles away…

So what’d he do?

He ran directly into the arms of Russia at the height of the Cold War.

Cuba quickly earned the reputation of America’s arch backyard nemesis. The Cuban Missile Crisis only heightened that perception.

But now the Cold War is over. Castro’s Cuba has been anything but perfect, especially from a human rights perspective, but they’ve been cleaning up their act very nicely lately.

Obama’s action was welcomed by virtually all Cubans on the island, even Raul Castro himself…

but not so much by the Little Havana contingent in Miami, Florida. They still have quite the bone to pick with Castro.

Nevertheless, this action is good for the people of Cuba. It might turn their nation into another playground for the U.S. rich and famous, but apart from that, it should work out fairly well for them.

It will also be a boon for many in the U.S. with their eyes on Cuba from a business opportunity perspective. I, for one, am eyeing the tourist potential and have already registered the domain, www.cubatravelunlimited.com.

So, why all the ruffling on the right about action that was long overdue from a common sense perspective?

Well, because, for one, an Obama legacy is beginning to take shape despite their dire efforts not to allow that to happen…

and because it offends their ideological sensibilities for this once Cold War backyard foe to now be greeted into the community of civilized nations…

and because many are still fuming about Castro once taking away their stuff.

I wrote a post recently about the right’s tendency towards ideological isolation and this is another not-so-shinning example of that.

Recent news reports about some of the things that went on in the former administration, like “rectal-feedings” and the like, clearly demonstrate that.

Thankfully, we finally have a President who doesn’t suffer so much from those.