Trump Sí, Cuba No

Donald Trump has reversed yet another Obama policy - thus time, Obama's audacious effort at improving relations with Cuba.  Trump has decided to restrict business deals with the the Cuban Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, which handles a great deal of the Cuban economy, and also individual tourist travel to Cuba from the United States.  This means no American investment in Cuba, which hurts the Cuban people Trump says he's trying to free from their repressive government, and not the repressive government in question.  It also means fewer tourist dollars spent in Cuba; Americans can still travel there, but in pre-arranged tour groups that are virtually impossible to sign on to.  

Cuban rum and cigars can still be brought back to the United States - assuming you have the chance to purchase any - and diplomatic relations established by Obama will not be cut.  So what if there's no ambassador there?

The people who oppose this freeze Trump has put on thawing U.S.-Cuba relations are just about everyone on the planet, especially Cuban-Americans under fifty not named Marco Rubio.  But older Cuban-American residents in Miami and right-wing Republicans are clearly pleased, including, I'm sure, Steve Bannon, because Trump kept his promises.  After all ,the governorship of Florida and a U.S. Senate seat from Florida are up in 2018.  

The joke is that Trump placed new restrictions on travel to and business with Cuba because he doesn't have any real estate deals there, but there's a more sinister reason for why he's doing this.   He's doing it because he gets to undo yet another Obama initiative.  The Paris agreement, health care, now this - it's all part of the Republican agenda to not just reverse Obama's policies but to eradicate any proof that Obama's Presidency even existed.  It's like the trick used by Joseph Stalin in the old Soviet Union, that of eradicating any proof that a political enemy even walked the face of this earth because of his crime against the state.  Barack Obama's existence is being eradicated for the high crime of being President while . . . black.  

Obama has mostly stayed out of the limelight because he, like George Walker Bush before him, believes he owes his successor his silence.  Ironically, Trump is silencing the echoes of Obama's Presidency.  The CIA is probably plotting not to kill Cuban leader Raul Castro but to convince him that the improvement of U.S-Cuba relations with a black American President was all a dream . . . all . . . a . . . dream.

Cigar?