The Mountebank with AC and DC Currents in his Hair (and Head)

For the first time in my life I believe that the United States is in an even more hopeless situation than Cuba. The clock will soon expire on the Castro gerontocracy, which can neither be revived nor cloned. If it is a victory to survive the worst, then a majority of Cubans can claim that victory, even in the midst of our country's ruin and the devastation wreaked on the lives of millions of our countrymen. The pall that settled for 57 years upon our country, while not exactly lifting, has grown grayer with time, and it is now possible to discern the outlines of the future: one which may not be to our liking and which almost certainly will not satisfy all Cubans (and, I suspect, will be a great disappointment to me personally); but, regardless, a different course (curse?) with different actors and an abbreviated shelf-life.

With greater clarity and no less certainty, America's fate is also being decided in these days. Will the great American experiment, born in revolution and tried in the crucible of civil war, fail at last because a man may be elected president whose ignorance and arrogance are the mirror image of Lincoln's wisdom and humility, who can divide a nation but can never hope to unite it?

The only minority group in this country that this aptly dubbed con-man has declined to insult is the KKK. Though prodded to repudiate the Klan for the biblical three times, he would not deny it. Why does the mother of all hate groups command such great deference from him? Does his tent, self-punctured with a thousand holes, still offer a warm spot to this oldest and historically most lethal domestic terrorist organization? He is either the most stupid man ever to run for president or the most dangerous (not that one excludes the other). On his defeat depends the survival of the Republican Party, and, indeed, the two-party system in this country. His victory would be calamitous. His defeat, because it would give us Hillary Clinton as president, would be just as calamitous. With him on the ticket there is no victory possible.

Cuban-Americans can take pride in the fact that they have provided the only two viable alternatives to the impending crisis in the Republican Party. In this case, however, one is better than two because two can only contribute to the victory of this one-man Fifth Column. It is time for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz to quit the race and endorse the other Cuban-American. The one who retires will be the greater patriot and the greater man. But the other will save the American Republic from the fate that awaits it if that mountebank with AC and DC currents in his hair (and in his head) is elected president.