WBC Cuban Beer-Throwing Backlash Shows How Americans Are Embracing Communists | Armando Salguero

The country is upside down now, with evil being portrayed as good and good being labeled as evil.

That's why it's not surprising a tweet showing Miami Cuban exiles confronting communist Cuban government baseball team handlers during a game against the USA has gone viral.

The video shows the exiles throwing beer and verbally accosting the communist officials at Miami's loanDepot Park.

Ugly? Maybe.

A show of decorum? Definitely not.

But I know what the exiles feel. I understand what they did.

I also understand maybe you're upset by the manner the Cuban exile community treated these foreign agents. You think the communist representatives deserve respect and should be shielded from the dousing and verbal attacks they just endured.

Defending Communists Puts You On Their Side

You, in other words, want to show esteem for someone who hates the United States and all it stands for. You want to show civility to someone hostile to your very way of life.

That's your business, misguided though it is. And not the point.

The point is this confrontation, pitting free Cubans versus communist Cubans, drew a reaction on social media that was troubling.

On social media, and in parts of America where these people live, the exiles are portrayed as the bad guys. And the defense of the communist agents was quite vocal.

Check it out:

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Some Americans Simply Hate America

"Gusano," by the way, translates to worm. That's what Fidel Castro infamously called the people who fled Cuba after he took over as dictator and faithful ally of the former Soviet Union. So this Death to Capitalism person is repeating a historical Castro talking point years after his death.

The most stunning part is there were hundreds of these replies from what seems like Americans. And they're apparently Americans who hate America.

These people want to replay much of what Castro did in Cuba here in America. They hate what Cuba was before the communist revolution, which is to say a flawed country that embraced capitalism and was very much under American influence.

And they see Castro displacing right-wing leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 as a noble venture rather than what it really was: One dictator grabbing power from another.

"Despite the fact that Americans have historically held overwhelming negative views of Fidel Castro, large swaths of the American left hold romanticized and profoundly ignorant views of the Cuban revolution," Republican media strategist Giancarlo Sopo told OutKick.

"When they dismiss Cuban exiles as wealthy land owners and 'Batistanios,' they're actually underscoring their own ignorance."

A fan holds a sign following the World Baseball Classic Semifinals where Team USA defeated Team Cuba 14-2 at loanDepot park on March 19, 2023 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs/Getty Images)

Miami Cubans Portrayed As White Slave Owners

That ignorance is boundless when it portrays Cubans exiles as slave owners. Cuba stopped participating in the slave trade in 1867 and full-on outlawed slavery in 1886.

That ignorance also is boundless when it portrays exiles and their American offspring as wealthy oligarchs of some sort.

"In my case, for instance, I come from a family of educators and blue-collar workers," Sopo said. "In other words, precisely the kind of people who leftists claim to defend, yet they disparage.

"I'm proud to come from a community where we speak the truth about the Cuban tragedy."

I am part of that tragedy but I've never thought myself a victim.

My mother, who brought me to this country because she didn't want her only son growing up cutting sugar cane or conscripted into a communist army, worked two jobs for years to support me. She did this alone until my father was released from the island country and allowed to immigrate to America.

And my father, separated from his family for five years, never complained while he worked as a porter in New York and on Miami Beach. He worked so his son could do better.

Members of Team USA stand on the field prior to the 2023 World Baseball Classic Semifinal game between Team Cuba and Team USA at loanDepot Park on Sunday, March 19, 2023 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Mary DeCicco/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Americans Embracing What Immigrants Despise

The real tragedy is my parents often told me they brought me to the United States so I'd never have to deal with the scourge of communism or socialism or dictatorship. They never imagined that stain could ever blemish this great nation.

And, yet, here we are.

We have Americans actually embracing what my parents sacrificed so much to escape. There's an entire political party -- the one running the country -- embracing what so many refugees from Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, China, Vietnam, and Czechoslovakia know to be the wicked, corrupt, untenable system of government that is communism.

Too many Americans think communism or socialism are cool. Or right. Or better.

That is the real tragedy.

It's not that a few people doused representatives of a dictatorship with beer. It's that there was only one set of villains in that moment.

And a lot of Americans cannot figure out which is which.

Follow on Twitter: @ArmandoSalguero