I know the American people. I've met a lot of them. I've met a lot more of them than any columnist has, or any talking head on TV has. And they're pretty sophisticated.
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
The legacy of the embargo will be Cuba's poverty and desperation. When the island comes out of it, they'll be even more desperate than they are now about the things they think they've missed. I think one of the unintended results of the embargo is that Cuba is quite consumerist - and I'm talking about the people, not the government or the official propaganda.
There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.
People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'
For it is a matter of daily observation that people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.