Castro and/or Fukuyama - Essay Example

After reading Fidel Castro’s speech “History Will Absolve Me” and Francis Fukuyama’s essay “The End of History”, one cannot help but look at how different these two ideologies are and compare them to the American situation. Castro was all about social change for Cuba, as he believed that the status quo was extremely damaging to the country. His speech, therefore, is not only an attempt to keep himself out of jail, but it also an outline of his plans for the country. In the contemporary United States, however, this sort of thing would never be permitted to happen.

This is because the United States currently has a view that is very similar to that of Fukuyama and it will stop at nothing to ensure that revolution does not hit the country and that nothing will threaten its democracy. The United States largely believes that its style of democracy is the ideal manner in which a government should be run. It also believes that other countries should share this view, mostly because the government believes that other countries could affect the power balance in the world if they are able to govern themselves in whatever manner they choose.

The ideas of Castro were good for Cuba at that time, s the country was in turmoil and needed some structure in order to improve, but the United States quickly made Castro a villain for his ideas and created trade embargos once he came into power. The reason for this is that the American government did not want for these revolutionary ideas to reach their own people, as this could spark a revolution in the country and lead to political change. The American government is a very elitist organization, where people usually come from wealthy families and govern with sympathy for the wealth, which is the opposite of how Cuba wished to develop.

If someone like Castro was to come along in the contemporary United States, he or she would not be given the chance to succeed the way Castro was in Cuba. The American government would quickly label this person as a terrorist and to everything possible to censor the words of this person. He or she would probably be sent to a prison camp somewhere in another country and held for trial there. Castro held a great deal of influence and it was clear that his people wanted some sort of change to occur.

Sadly, there will be no dialogue of this sort in the United States, as censorship has become the best manner for the government to keep Fukuyama’s ideologies at the forefront of American politics. Whether or not Castro’s political reforms would work in the United States does not matter, but what does matter is that the country have a chance to have a dialogue about possible changes to the political system. True democracy is supposed to support free speech, but the present-day United States is repressive because of the censorship that will prevent us from hearing alternative political views in the mainstream media.