IT could be said that one of the gravest dangers facing humanity is the U.S. elections. Every day brings greater worries in terms of what could happen as a result of this vote.

In fact we live our lives from election to election, and although we don’t have the right to vote in the United States, it does matter to us who governs that country.

The Cuban case is particularly illustrative of this tendency. Every time they fall short of a certain number of votes in Florida or some candidate plans to pass the collection plate in Miami, Cuba becomes a worldwide threat. Now Cuba is supposedly responsible for the tremendous social conflicts that are ravaging Latin America and Fidel Castro is to blame for destabilizing Latin American democracies; as Roger Noriega, deputy Secretary for State for Western Hemisphere Affairs put it, is "playing with fire."

What are the motives of this apparently extemporaneous verbal offensive? First, to the recently held Americas Summit in Monterrey – at the time of writing it had not concluded – where, behind the scenes, the customary condemnation of Cuba at the UN Human Rights Commission will have been negotiated. The tactics include demonizing Cuba so that certain governments can justify their own vote and pressure others, such as Argentina, that have already expressed an intention of abstaining from the criticism.

Second, the measure is directed against Venezuela. Nowadays Cuba is not just Cuba alone. Cuba serves as an example to justify pressurizing other nations. The neoliberal democratic game has produced unwanted results for the United States. As a consequence of the economic crisis provoked by the system, some of those governments that maintained it in Latin America have collapsed and others are on the brink of doing so.

The popular forces have entered a state of constant mobilization and governments under the same rules of the game imposed by the United States. As it is not possible to condemn the "democratic origin" of those governments, their alleged links with Cuba serve to stigmatize them. They started off well, but they’ve gone astray because of the malevolent influence of the Cubans. However crude it may seem, this is the discourse of the U.S. administration.

No one on the continent has won more elections than Hugo Chávez. Besides this, thanks to popular support, he survived a coup d’état that was supported by the United States and the sabotage of Venezuela’s national oil industry, also effected with the complicity of the United States despite the danger to its own sources of supply.

Chávez coexists with media channels that spend their time conspiring against him, with judges who protect his enemies, with military coup leaders and impresarios who are undermining the economy, but it is he who is not democratic because, purely and simply, he’s a friend of Fidel Castro.

The truth is that this is nothing new. I recall that every time any U.S. president negotiated an agreement with the Soviets, in order to save his "tough guy" image, he felt a need to say or do something against Cuba. However, although the current administration is not the first to tell lies, it should be acknowledged that there are few that have lied as much as this one. I do not believe that even Nixon himself – a monument to official lies in the United States – would have dared to say the things that these folk say without blushing.

Many people suggest that the best thing is to ignore them.

They argue that it’s merely a consolation prize for the "patriots" in Miami to whom, prior to every election, they make a promise to invade Cuba. The story is a certainty, but no one can predict the final result when playing at demagogy. The demagogue is a monkey with a shotgun, the one who blows the brains out of the other creatures in the cage and bites the child that throws him peanuts. He may even blow his own brains out which, in the case of the monkey, would be a tragedy.

Aside from its rabid statements, the administration’s latest "gifts" to the fundamentalists in Miami include the cancellation of the six-monthly migratory talks, the only occasions on which the U.S. and Cuban authorities sat down together to discuss bilateral problems. Those meetings had the value of reminding us of the civilized action that succeeded in resolving the 1994 migration crisis. Of course, the reason for which then-President Clinton promoted the migratory agreements at that time was not to help Cuba, but to solve a tremendous problem for the United States. If this is the technique 11 months before the elections, we should ask ourselves what is next in store.

It would seem that the policy of the George W. Bush administration is to solve problems by creating others that are far greater, especially if someone tells him that it will produce votes. I have reached the conclusion that his performance cannot be evaluated via the traditional variables of the U.S. system. The polarization that has been created in that society is so great that there is no sense in trying to convince anyone otherwise, thus the natural dikes of the system, established on the basis of searching for a consensus between the plutocracy and the majority sectors of the middle classes, are continuing to crumble.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to recommend to the United States that it should forget democracy under this premise and establish a monarchy, or whatever, that includes the current president. It has been demonstrated that kings and queens do not have to be intelligent, cultured, and far less sensitive or honest; they are inoffensive because they guarantee diversion, and in this lies the merit of the proposal. If they take note of what we’re saying, they could do away with the torment of every election for us and could live more peacefully themselves.