Same Old

The New Republic offers a report from the Democratic convention in Boston, but for some reason the writer pretends it is May Day in Cuba and Fidel Castro is the speaker:

Castro does eventually wrap up, and the crowd spills into the streets. As I watch people packing onto rickety old buses, I am struck by how much the May Day routine typifies today's Cuba: conditions everyone complains about, politics falling on tired ears, police infiltrating everything, and, of course, the same enduring legend keeping it all in one piece. I won't be surprised if Castro begins next year's May Day speech with the same slow sentence. The Cubans will wave their paper flags and go home to sleep off the hearty dose of politics so they can get back to getting by.

You can tell it's really the U.S. she's talking about, because unlike Cubans we have to struggle without job or retirement security, dependable health insurance, free higher education, etc.