> What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations. > Sanctions on Venezuela? Again, Venezuela took t

> What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations. > Sanctions on Venezuela? Again, Venezuela took the unacceptable step of nationalizing their oil assets. But is this not saying that the real issue with Cuba is [actual] communism? This requires no conspiracy, it is the root of publicly-cited reasons for US policy towards the island. I think the reason these statements have the allure of revelation despite not being so is an unresolved dissonance in the American civic religion. Capitalism and property have displaced most other rights of the liberal pantheon, old and new. Merely to discover the once unremarkable fact that capitalism in inherently unjust, and that neither property nor free enterprise are actually its synonyms, is lamentably revelatory. I suppose the deliberate destruction of any rational, shared understanding of what communism actually entails, enacted by demagogues attacking Democratic politicians and policy, has also helped break the prior clarity of these embargoes' official justification.