Carl Gustav Jung, the father of analytical psychology, attributed hypocrisy to individuals who are unconscious of “the shadow-side” of their nature. From this idea arose a simple argument: If people better understood their natures, they might love their neighbors more uprightly. For, as Jung says, “…we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.” Yet, of all its incarnations, the hypocrisy of “pure evil” seems worst. A few simple characteristics define it: perpetrators engender evil intentionally and wield it astutely; they inflict wanton destruction on others to their own benefit; they are inherently evil; and, their victims are innocent, wholesome. Many psychologists, however, decry this hypocrisy a myth; most evil emanates from the existences of everyday people. Nevertheless, the above mentioned qualities of “pure evil” are real, and they, too, do exist. When they crop up, they warrant investigation. Marco Rubio—Cuban-American and conservative politico—addressed the public midday Wednesday, December 17, 2014. He exposed the deeply hypocritical sentiments that rest in the everyday political existences of himself and other political Luddites of his ilk. The species of his hypocrisy? Pure evil. Rubio ignorantly railed against the normalization of US-Cuban relations: “The White House has conceded everything, and gained little.” He went on to complain about the Cuban government’s missing commitment to ensuring freedoms of the press, of speech, and of elections. He fulminated that no binding commitment was made for truly opening the Internet, the establishment of political parties, or stimulating democracy. However predictable Rubio’s address may have been, his comments carelessly teetered on the brink of absurdity. He cloaked his rant with a thin veneer of polish and quiet anger. Still, his act was not a testament to his commitment to the Cuban people and their freedoms, but to his own self-importance as a political phantom. Rather than defrosting ties with Cuba and normalizing relations with the island nation that Yankee imperium has shamelessly terrorized and heavily sanctioned for too long, Rubio made it obvious that he preferred the unneighborly ramifications of America’s backwards embargo to progress, painting himself anew in the light of asinine recalcitrance. To discern Rubio’s hypocrisy made manifest in his speech, and the “pure evil” therein, is, sadly, easy enough. First, Rubio’s speech underscored that many conservative American politicians, and like-minded Americans desire to assail Cuba with an economic stranglehold that can only be categorized as overt terrorism. Thus, Rubio consigned himself to the position of “poster child” for all those who would continue to engender this evil embargo intentionally (and in so doing, heavily mortgaged his political future). Second, as the voice of politicians like Rubio eclipse with the dismal flowing tide of anti-Castro sentiment that once inculcated an uninformed American public, so also the platform on which anti-Castro/pro-embargo politicians like Rubio are perennially elected will crumble under the weight of its own bloated unimportance. Thus, that Rubio would see the morally corrupt embargo on Cuba continued ad infinitum effectively shows that he would, without shame, stump on the US-sponsored misery of Cubans until, like a tantrum-bound child, he get his way in full. Rubio and his kind would inflict that misery to their own benefit forever; and yet, his victims—the Cuban people—are ultimately blameless in the whole thing. Even if Rubio himself is not “inherently evil,” what his political speech evinced that he wants certainly is. “This entire policy shift announced today,” Rubio argued, “is based on an illusion, on a lie—the lie and the illusion that more commerce and access to money and goods will translate to political freedom for the Cuban people.” Blind with hypocrisy, Rubio creates a straw man out of the very thing he would see cripple his “beloved” Cuba forever. To claim that unfurling US-Cuban relations and subsequent economic developments portend no extension of political freedoms to Cubans is not an informed attack on the Obama regime’s actions, but a dagger stabbed deftly into the heart of the embargo’s very raison d'être! The hypocritical confusion visited upon Rubio did not stop with his admission to miscomprehending the embargo. “All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes, to perpetuate itself in power,” he said. One might well ask how Rubio can claim himself a champion of Cuban freedoms if he would sooner see them hijacked by the embargo of his own government’s making. To claim that Raúl Castro’s administration controls every aspect of Cuban life without so much as broaching the vile and undemocratic US embargo is not even a successful attempt at a red herring; it is plainly ludicrous. Rubio preached how change “will only lead to greater wealth and influence for this repressive regime—especially the military, which controls most, if not all, of the Cuban economy, and controls all of its oppressed people.” What about Rubio’s own government, the one he serves and in which he is entirely complicit? The US relies on worldwide arms exports and drone assassinations to secure its hegemony of terrorism. In fact, the American share in the international arms market approaches 80 percent. Rubio’s own government continues to inflict heavy burdens on other countries with a capitalist system so as to supply them with arms. America’s mass manufacture of arms is owed not only to coercive political motives; it is an irremovable pillar of the American economy. The US has gained from selling arms to countries that it politically and economically represses with its capitalist system. But to harangue Cuba for military control without addressing the military-industrial complex’s endeavors of the American government does not lend Rubio’s plea any credibility apropos maintaining the embargo. Some of Rubio’s final words were the saddest of all. He claimed these changes “will lead to legitimacy for a government that shamelessly, continuously, abuses human rights; but it will not lead to assistance for those whose rights are being abused.” How, exactly, has America’s half-a-century long economic chokehold on Cuba bolstered human rights there? How is the normalizing of relations not a step in approaching assistance for those who need it most? Rubio called these developments “another concession to a tyranny” rather than “a defense of every universal and inalienable right that our country was founded on and stands for.” But, how exactly does continuing the embargo and maintaining a supercilious, egotistically aloof distance from Cuba sound an “American” defense of its values abroad? Rubio averred, in sum, that “these changes…will significantly set back the hopes of freedom and democracy for the Cuban people.” To dismiss the revolutionary successes, though, to outright deny the bravery, the endurance, the incredible struggle, and epic human perseverance of the Cuban people in the face of one of history’s greatest instances of adversity reeks of disrespect and unawareness. Ultimately, it gives voice to the pure evil of Rubio’s anti-Cuban hypocrisy.



Mateo Pimentel is an Axis of Logic columnist, living on the US-Mexico border.



Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist Mateo Pimentel



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