← The David Frum Show
The David Frum Show
Cuba Is Collapsing. Will Trump Invade?
01:08:00
CNN international correspondent Patrick Oppmann on Trump’s fixation on Cuba, the current state of the Cuban government, and what happens next. Plus: J. D. Vance’s presidential aspirations and Othello.
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Patrick Ottman
Join me, Grant Hill for a deeper
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David Frum
look at what it means to be
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Patrick Ottman
a thought leader today.
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David Frum
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Patrick Ottman
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David Frum
but anyone can get the same Premium
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Patrick Ottman
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David Frum
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Patrick Ottman
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David Frum
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Patrick Ottman
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David Frum
Hello and welcome to the David Fromme Show. David I'm David Frum, staff writer at the Atlantic. My guest this week will be Patrick Ottman, the CNN bureau chief in Havana, and we will be talking about the horrific energy and economic crisis on the island of Cuba. My literary discussion this week will be the play Othello, and I'll be offering some thoughts on how ancient plays can emancipate us from some of our modern prejudices. But before either the dialogue or the literary discussion, some opening thoughts on the news of a looming and apparent agreement, ceasefire, maybe some kind of deal between the United States and Iran. I'm not going to talk about the specifics of that deal, which remain a little murky as I record this program. I want to talk instead about one of the characters who's coming out of this war, possibly a big winner and possibly a big loser, and that is Vice President J.D. vance. Now, Vance has played the Iran war very much with an eye to his future political career. He talked more to the press than many people do in the Trump administration, or a lot of people talk a lot to the press. He has let it be known that he was a very loyal supporter of President Trump's, of course, but a big skeptic about the war. And because there's a gathering consensus that the war did not end well for the United States, this position of loyal but skeptical looks like the sweet spot for an opportunistic political actor to land. But there's a problem that he's got, which is that other people in the administration, including maybe, maybe some potential rivals, have noticed that he's in the sweet spot and are determined to move him out of the sweet spot by making him the face of the deal, that he's going to be the person who's going to have to travel to sign the deal. And he's on TV presenting and defending the deal, including some of its pretty shocking elements, like rumors or reports of a massive fund for Iranian reconstruction if certain conditions are met. And JD Vance is on TV having to defend what I think to many Americans would seem a pretty amazing outcome to this war, if that is the outcome to the war. Vance's predicament is a severe one, and I want to think about it with you together today. One of the things that has happened under this war is Trump's popularity has taken such a shock that all this earlier talk in the first year that Trump would in some unconstitutional way reach for a third term as president, violating the Constitution and the constitutional amendments that limited the terms. After the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that third term talk looks pretty tinny at this point. Trump is, with his approval in the mid to upper 30s, with cracks in his own coalition. He's not in a position to try to seek the third term. If you if he were to find some gap or loophole in the Constitution that allowed him to try, he would surely be in terrible trouble. And anyway, the Constitution is ironclad and he's not going to find his party very eager to help the author of the Iran war find some way to run three times. So in that sense, JD Vance is ahead and he has reason to feel pretty good about his position. In the order of things. Of the 50 men who have served as vice president, vance is the 50th, 15 became president. So you have to like those odds. But it's worth noting, and this takes us back to the deeper problem that Vance faces and gives us some deeper inklings about the American political Future. Of the 15 vice presidents who became president, nine succeeded because the president died in office or resigned from office. Of the other six who won office on their own, that is, who there was some kind of electoral transition after the presidency in which they had served. They became president by means of some kind of election. Three Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Van Buren served in the very different circumstances of the American party system before the Civil War. Since the Civil War, same party electoral succession has become very difficult. We've got one case since the Civil War of a vice president coming to the presidency of the same party by means of an election. And that one occasion, H.W. bush succeeding Ronald Reagan was in circumstances where, well, Reagan was just enormously popular by the when Reagan left office at the end of 1988, he had an approval rating in the low 60s, which is a dozen points better than Trump's best number in either of Trump's terms and almost 25 points above where Trump is now. Now other vice presidents have become president by means of election after a lapse. Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's vice president, ran in 1960, lost, tried again in 68, and won. Joe Biden, President Obama's vice president, was discouraged from running in 2016, ran in 2020, and won with an interval. And maybe Vance has something like that in mind. But his problem, if he wants to run in 2028, is he's dealing with this massively unpopular presidency. The secret of Trump's power has been that Trump has had this extraordinary dominance over his political party. He's an enormously popular figure within a segment of American society, but he's paid for that power over his party by weakness in the country. And that has been a persistent problem through two presidential terms. Vance doesn't even have that kind of power over the party. He's the leader of a faction within the party, the faction that is more authoritarian, more ideological, more nationalist, more chauvinist, more isolationist, that doesn't represent all Republicans, it represents some. And he's paying for that power within a faction by being mistrusted in the party. And that's why he's. If, if I'm right, that he's being shoved out there to be the face of the Iran deal, that's why someone is doing that shoving. It's a reminder that there is nothing magical about what Donald Trump has done to American society. It's not because of some deep connection that he has with the American people that he's able to do all the things he's done, both the few good, the many bad, and has been able to engage in these extraordinary acts of, of plunder and spectacle and self aggrandizement, including turning the fourth, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence into a new Me, Me, Me, Celebrate Me party. He's done it all by a grip on a party that is now cracking up and a grip that is now slackening. And those of his successors who aren't trying to repeat the same trick are going to find themselves doing it under even more adverse circumstances and with even less basis. So American politics is maybe coming back to life. There is real room for possibility in the future that we can see opening up after the failure of the Iran war. In many ways, Trump's failure in Iran opens the way to a new kind of future for America. It's a terrible price both for the Iranians and for the American people to pay to liberate themselves and to restore more normal kinds of government. But the weakness of the most likely successor to Donald Trump is a harbinger of something very different coming maybe not so far away for the American future. And now my dialogue. Patrick Ahmed. But first, a quick break. Foreign
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Patrick Ottman
I'm Carla Lally, cookbook author and host of Sweets Unwrapped, a podcast from Ferrero and Atlantic Rethink, the Atlantic's creative marketing studio. This season we're exploring how sweets add
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David Frum
meaning to our lives, mark time and create opportunities for connection. We'll travel across North America to hear
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Patrick Ottman
about the hustle of Girl Scout cookie season, get an inside scoop on concessions
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David Frum
at Yankee Stadium, and hear from families
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Patrick Ottman
about their unique holiday rituals. Listen to Sweets Unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts.
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David Frum
Patrick Ottman has reported for more than a decade from one of the most closed societies on earth. He is CNN's Havana bureau chief. He moved to Havana in 2012 and has been there ever since. Lately, he's been chronicling the island's deepening energy crisis and the desperation that crisis is producing. Before that, he covered the largest anti government protest since the Revolution, the 2016 death of Fidel Castro, and the 2014 restoration of diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana. Patrick, thank you so much for joining the David Fromm show today.
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Patrick Ottman
Hello from Havana. Great to be with you.
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David Frum
Well, let me start by asking you about that. Not only is it one of the most closed societies on earth, but it's now one of the most energy pressed, economically pressed societies on earth. How do you possibly do television reporting from Cuba under today's circumstances? How do you do your job?
- [08:59]
Patrick Ottman
You know, it's never been easy and we're getting to a level where I think it's soon going to be impossible because, you know, you need to have power, you need to have gasoline in your car. I have so much more resources than just about anybody else on this island and yet if there's no gasoline, there's no gasoline. So if you can find it these days, it's maybe $9 a liter on the black market. That's 300 to fill up your car. You try getting that through your accounting department. But you're lucky if you can find it, frankly. You know, if, if someone has gasoline, you immediately buy it. Power goes out. Internet is constantly down when the, you know, Cuban government, there's only one cell phone provider in the country because that's how they, they manage to keep control. But when that cell phone provider goes down, then there's no data. So you were spending longer and longer periods where you don't have any connectivity, which is very worrying as a journalist. And then you have, you know, other periods where you just don't have any power for hours, sometimes an entire day. And it's not something you can predict, really plan your life around. So that gets tricky. I live here with my family, our four kids. We try to, you know, keep, keep them in good shape and, and it's just getting harder and harder. Of course, for the Cuban people, their life has gone really from bad to worse in just a period of a few months. And you're seeing a desperation that you didn't see before. On the flip side, people have become a lot more blunt in their criticisms of the government and feel they have nothing left to lose, which makes it a fascinating time to be here.
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David Frum
So I, I don't want to give short change at all to the sufferings of the Cuban people. And we will return to that, but I want to sort of bust the frame of the box a little bit first. Just so we understand how the information that you provide us through your amazing reporting on cnn, how it is that we are able to see and hear from you, I think that, let's start. I want to keep focus on that. How do we see and hear from you? Do you arrive with satchels full of dollar bills and that's how you get your work done? How do you get money into the country? Is there a banking system?
- [10:55]
Patrick Ottman
There's no backing system anymore, per se. And I think after the latest sanctions, which have been very targeted, have been very effective, what was left of the banking system will simply cease to exist. Because no bank anywhere in the world is really going to want to touch Cuba these days because it is such a radioactive country. So we are doing it very much the old school style of satchels, of, of money coming in. And, you know, we have a local staff here that we of course want to pay. And you just get to problems and you get together with the other journalists here and you say, how are you resolving this? And a lot of times there no solution now. So if, if you live in a country where the government decides who gets Internet and how fast it is, there's no workaround to, to that. And obviously they don't allow starlinks and things like that in this, in this country. So there's just levels of, of complexity. And you know, we've had Days where you spend an entire night just trying to send that video out that, that your show wants right away. And the Internet will collapse. The power goes down, and it's a lot of those logistical problems that you pull your hair out over. And yet, at the end of the day, you know, other than getting on a plane or a boat, there's really nothing you can do. You just have to sort of be creative and be one step ahead. I have solar panels in my house now. I have batteries. We're trying to do the same for. For my office, you know, when power goes out. We're on six flight, six flights up in our building. And so I've done those stairs too many times, which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is just a level of complexity now that I don't think anyone's ever experienced. And people who've come to Cuba say, oh, it's always been tough. You know, there's no gasoline for tourists now. We were filming the other day at a line just for tourist cars, which are a specific category. And, you know, those people are waiting a full day in a gas line because there's. There's no gas to be had. So, you know, sometimes I get a request for a story and I say, okay, but we might use up the last of our gas on this. Are you sure this is what we want to spend that on? And so it becomes kind of picking and choosing which stories you can do. They're all great stories, but, you know, if you do this one, then you might not be able to do that one. You always want to have a quarter tank of gas. If you have to get the office in the middle of night because something comes up, you know, this is a country that is facing U.S. military threats, so you have to keep making plans. You know, what's that? How is that going to unfold? What's that look like? How will you do your best job to cover it? But also knowing that. That we may be here and just may not be able to cover it as we would in another country, because you don't have different Internet providers, you don't have the banking system like you mentioned. I think we'll probably run out of gas before anything like that happens. And you can have electric car, which people do, but if there's no power, then you can't charge your electric car. Electric motorcycle, maybe when the big day comes, I might be riding a bike to work. So those are the kinds of things you try to think out and plan. But I've come to the realization at this point, there's only so much you can do. Even with all the resources that CNN has, there's only so much you can do. There's only so much planning it's going to unfold the way it's going to unfold.
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David Frum
Well, when you mentioned those resources, that raises a question. Is personal safety any kind of issue? I mean, you have access to things that so many people in Cuba do not have. There does seem to be a breakdown of some kinds of law and order on the island. Do you have to worry about any kind of organized or disorganized violence or predation against you or the people you are responsible for?
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Patrick Ottman
You hear a lot of stories now. So I recently had my car broken into. They're trying to steal the gasoline. And little do they know that I had, you know, was on fumes at that point. But they smashed the window and they couldn't quite get the, the gas tank open. And so I had to deal with this, deal with getting a Cuban police officer to my house. They didn't have gasoline either. And all, all these headaches. And one thing the rental car company told me is that they have this epidemic of crime where people break into your house, they get underneath the car, and then they drill a hole to siphon out the gasoline. That way you think, what, what an insane crime to do. And, and yet gasoline being so rare and worth what it is here, of course, people have, have nothing left to lose. It's worth it for them to do. But you also have this breakdown in society where the Cuban police just seem like they care less and less. They're making maybe $10 a month when you take the Cuban peso to the, the black market rate, and you can't live off that. So everyone's just barely squeaking by. People are not really doing their jobs anymore, but then maybe they just don't have the fuel to do their job. So the day of my car getting broken into, which is a very small event, but, but certainly was a warning bell for me, you know, we had to go find the police officer, bring him to our house, give him some coffee. I give him, you know, some cookies with his coffee. And he said, oh, it's the first thing I had to eat today. Thank you. He filled out the police report. Then we went and got the window repl. Because there was a lot full of broken cars because so many cars have become broken into. So before this was a police state, and, and the only benefit of that was no one dared to commit crimes, particularly against a foreigner. And now you hear about it on an increasingly alarming basis where, because we have something and if someone else has nothing, then they are going to be perhaps willing to try and take that. And they also, for the first time realize there's may not be any consequences. But, but even more tragically than that, you see people eating trash. Now, you didn't see that before. You see kids going through trash. Now, you didn't see that before. You see people openly begging on the street, something police wouldn't have allowed. You know, stoplights, that kind of thing you wouldn't have allowed in the past. So it is a country that is breaking down more and more each day, and you see signs of that in a way you didn't just weeks ago, each day.
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David Frum
One last question about you. Are you. Are you able to work in freedom? Are you under any kind of censorship or restriction? When we talk to people, do you feel like there might be repercussions for the people you interview if you talk to them?
- [16:49]
Patrick Ottman
There absolutely could be repercussions for the people that talk to me. I'm always so impressed and I value so much when someone speaks to me openly because I don't know if I would have that courage. And people more and more are speaking to me openly. We go out to protests and people there talk to us, people who are blaming their own government more than they blame the United States government for the situation this country is in, which is striking because of course, the US Has a. Has played a role in wrecking Cuba's economy too. But increasingly you hear people saying, but our government could have done this. Our government. Our government could have opened up the economy more, they could have liberalized more. And that's really why we are where we are. And so I always appreciate it when people are brave enough to speak to me. We don't have any censorship. We wouldn't operate in, in that kind of environment. Certainly the government in the past has kicked out foreign journalists and they could do so. In my case, they. They haven't, not yet. But that is really not a concern for me when, you know, like you, I have colleagues that are working in war zones in much tougher situations. So it is difficult here. It is concerning about what's going to happen next. You know, how much more will this country break down? We've seen in previous years, people take to the sea if they lose all hope. There's been a long history of political violence here that sort of ended with the revolution, but over times has cropped up again. But it is a country on on the breaking point. And we just don't know how that's going to manifest itself if there will be a US Military intervention, if people will just, you know, try to flee to Florida, even though it's obviously an administration in Washington that's not going to accept any refugees. But at this point, what you hear from people every day is they have nothing left to lose. Our building is the same building with the Spanish consulate. And every morning to get in the building, I have to fight my way through. It feels a little bit like Casablanca, where people are just doing anything they can to get a visa to any country that will take them because they feel that there's no future for them left here. And at this point, you know, if you're Cuban and you're sitting in your house, there's no power, your food is spoiling, and you know, if you go out and protest, the government will probably lock you up for a long time. And so the answer that most people have arrived at is it's just time to get out of here.
- [19:02]
David Frum
However, you again, now let's to shift the camera to the, to the plight of the people that you've been giving us so many wonderfully vivid, advanced glimpses of. A lot of the reporting on the American side emphasizes there's kind of a break in January of 2026 with the. With the seizure of Nicolas Maduro, oil shipments from Venezuela ceased to Cuba. And that is presented in much of the American reporting as a decisive moment. From your point of view, having been there so long, was this a going off the cliff in January, or is this more of a long, gradual slide leading up to the crisis of this year?
- [19:36]
Patrick Ottman
You're absolutely right that there was a long, gradual slide. I think ever since Raul Castro sort of retired, he's not involved so much with the day to day. You've had a government that's kind of been frozen and has not been willing to lead to the economic reforms. Certainly there haven't been any political reforms, but there were some economic reforms happening under Raul Castro. He allowed private businesses to expand their pur. You have more employees. You know, Cubans didn't have cell phones before all Castro Internet in their homes. You know, such basic things around the world that everyone else takes for granted. But people didn't have that here. And then you had a government that came in and, and because of the younger generation, there's really been some doubt about how much they're really running. You know, is it the Cuban military that's really running the country? Is it Cuba's President Miguel Diaz Canel. He has not made many sweeping reforms, any sweeping reforms. He doesn't seem like a very decisive leader at this point. And so things have been frozen and, and so that has been the slow, gradual decline of. They could have done so much more if they just done the reforms they promised. We'd be in a better position. But the most basic reform seemed to require years of discussion and back and forth and watering down. And then you had this really amazing moment where the US did go in, despite the Cubans guarding him. They were the last line of defense in 32 Cuban soldiers, intelligence officials were essentially massacred trying to protect a Maduro. And the U.S. seized him, took him out. Completely changed the paradigm in Venezuela in that they have a government there that seems to go along with just about everything they demand of them, but also has completely cut off Cuba. These oil shipments were the lifeblood of the economy here, kept the government going. You know, there's some experts say the Cuban government even resold some of that oil, that that was one of their main sources of income. But certainly that was the oil that kept things going here. And the Cuban government was sending thousands, if not tens of thousands of doctors to Venezuela as part of this really unusual agreement of sending, you know, medical personnel, intelligence officials, sports trainers for so much oil, you know, billions of dollars worth of oil over the years that got cut off. There's been one shipment of oil to Russian oil in the course of this year. So there have been times here, even though Cuba produces some, some of it's oil, it's not nearly enough. And we've had days, if not weeks, where you just cannot find any gas, where the power is off more than it's on. And the situation is certainly getting worse, not better. I think the psychological impact of, of that radon on Venezuela as well for Cubans and show that their soldiers were not up to the level of what the government has always told them they were. That they really couldn't contend with the U.S. and U.S. special forces, much more sophisticated weaponry and tactics. And then as well, that the leadership in Venezuela, which is still, you know, Chavista leadership, Maduro's closest allies, that they turn their back on Cuba literally overnight. And then the rest of the region, if not the rest of the world, has essentially decided to say, okay, you know, this is a government we told the Vietnamese have come here, the Russians have come here, they, they've suggested things the Cuban government could do, reforms they could do, business ventures they could do. And they just don't happen for whatever reason, there's an inertia here that is so strong, a bureaucracy here that is so strong, you know, in one of the last communist governments in the world. And the Cuban government would say, well, we've maintained control, so that shows we've done the right things. But they're losing control at this point. And there's a deep, deep level of dissatisfaction, even among people that I know who have been supporting the government, you know, out of nationalism, out of pride for being Cuban for many, many years. They look and say this government has made so many mistakes, and they essentially bet the entire country's economy on tourism that has failed. There's no tourists to be found at, at this point. And then as well, they were so dependent on Venezuelan oil, they didn't diversify into solar or wind or other energy sources, and that they really thought this very improbable agreement with Venezuela was going to last forever. And then in January, with that raid in Nicolas Maduro, poof, it was gone.
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David Frum
Weren't they also getting a lot of aid from Claudia Sheinbaum's Mexico, at least last year? Has that stopped, too?
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Patrick Ottman
They were. And, and it was a similar type agreement, not as much as Venezuela. Venezuela was disrupted with some of the sanctions on them. But Claudia Sheinbaum and before her, you know, Lopez Obrador Mexico, they are of the, that left wing of, of, of Latin American politics where they sort of look at Cuba as example still. It's really kind of a dying view. But Claudia Shine bomb was sending aid, but, you know, that was such an easy one for Marco Rubio when Mexico's economy is so dependent on the US and so that was really quite an easy one for someone who's been a lifelong opponent of the Cuban government like Marco Rubio, to, to essentially say, you know, you keep doing this of giving oil, which has not been very popular with the Mexican populace because it's hundreds of millions of dollars of oil per shipment. And so I think it almost gave her an out because she sent some food shipments. You know, there's, there's no naval blockade off Cuba right now that prevents any oil shipments from coming in. But I think a lot of governments know that they're not going to get paid for it because the Cuban government has debts around the world. But as well, it's going to invite the wrath of the Trump government, Trump administration, and they don't want to do that. So I think a lot of these governments are kind of happy to have the excuse or accepting the excuse of, you know, if we get involved in this. It's going to really infuriate the Trump administration and there'll be consequences. But on top of that, you know, it's throwing good money after bad. We're not going to get paid. This. This seems to be very much a government that, that essentially has very few resources, is bankrupt. We are seeing the few companies who are doing business here fleeing en masse every day.
- [25:32]
David Frum
I want to ask you, this is a kind of grim question, but about gradations of misery. And we're going to have to be a little clinical about this and without forgetting that there are real human beings that we're talking about here who are suffering all kinds of deprivation. But there are differences between being impoverished, being hungry, being in famine conditions. Are people getting new clothes once a year or never? Can you give us a sense of, you mentioned people, children rooting in the garbage, looking for something. Is that a pervasive phenomenon? Do most people get sufficient calories even if the food is unattractive, or is there really a calorie deficiency as well as everything else?
- [26:11]
Patrick Ottman
The great Cuban writer Leonardo Paduro used to say, we don't get to choose what we eat. But no one goes hungry. You know, under the communist system, they sort of made the food they had available, and you would eat pork until you were so bored of it, a rice and beans, that kind of thing. None of that is available anymore. People might get one meal a day. You see people you haven't seen in a while, and they've clearly lost weight. If you take someone out for lunch, it's a Cuban friend, they'll look at the menu and say, my goodness, every dish on the menu is worth more than I make in a month if they, if they have a state job. And so, you know, if it were not for Cuban family members abroad sending back food, sending back money however they can, this island would have already collapsed. One of the great ironies of what's taken place here is that the people who fled that Fidel Castro cursed as they left, called them worms. They're the ones who are supporting not only their family members, but through the money they spend here, the government, and it's the Cuban exiles that, that want to have change. And so you've seen, you've seen kind of a campaign in Miami and other places of, you know, stop sending your relatives food and money because it'll be better to have this collapse in the short term. Well, of course, if it's your mother, your grandmother, or your kids that you're supporting, you know, people are going to continue to send whatever aid they can. But when I first started coming here 30 years ago, you know, people were poor, but they were not miserable. Now you see misery and you see increased poverty and you see people, you know, that don't have power, that don't have water. All the basic services that a government should provide are no longer provided here. There used to be a very strong ration book system where they gave you tons of sugar, tons of cooking oil, rice and beans, cigarettes sometimes, but things you could trade here. And now people don't get anything through the ration book hardly. This is a government that has collapsed in an all but name. They would take issue with that. They would say we're, we're, we're still in charge here. But the basic things that a government needs to provide, like picking up trash, they don't do anymore. There's trash all throughout the city, which used to be, you know, the Paris of, of the Caribbean. It's just drowning in trash, which of course creates flies and mosquitoes and other things. But every day I see people rooting through the trash, something you would never see before where regular people looking for something to eat. You see women holding children in the street, you know, knocking on your window. And that's something the government wouldn't have allowed before. Now they really don't have a, have a choice. So we, we have not seen kind of these massive breakdowns in times past where people take to the sea in the rafts because they have nothing left to lose and things have gotten that bad. But we have seen people go out at night and protest with pots and pans, something the government doesn't allow allow here, but at this point haven't cracked down on. You know, you hear about towns outside of Havana that might go two or three days without any power. And it in particularly in the summer months now, as we're getting into the hotter, hotter months, it's just misery and, and people go out and sleep outside and they get eaten by mosquitoes. And this is a very educated population, a very proud population, and everyone will tell you this is kind of the worst period they can ever remember experiencing in their lives.
- [29:20]
David Frum
Let me ask you a bookended pair of questions about the relationship between the government and the people. So on the one hand, the world now offers many examples, not many, but examples of communist regimes, China, Vietnam, that have opened their economy and developed and generated prosperity without sharing political power with the population that they've discovered. All the apparatus of repression can be retained even as you make the economy work better. Why did Cuba not succeed in that direction? And then the second bookend is, as the people are immiserated, do these protests. Is there any sign that they're converting into an actual political movement a demand for real change or overthrow of the government or radical change in the government and the bringing in of a new kind of political system?
- [30:03]
Patrick Ottman
So the first question, which is something the Vietnamese and the Chinese have come and apparently been their toughest critics, you know, we know everything you're doing is not going to work because we did it, and this is what you need to do. And. And you have a short window to do this. I always think about Ral Castro sort of trying to bring in Cuba for a landing, and he clearly wasn't able to, but he. He, Ral Castro would bring up all these examples of Vietnam, of how Cuba sent their experts after the war with the US to teach them how to grow coffee. And now Cuba is importing coffee from Vietnam. It doesn't make sense. They brought Vietnamese experts to teach Cubans how to grow rice. I think Cubans are more than capable of. If they had a government that was able to open up their agricultural sector and allow people to, like, import a tractor, which they can't do, or import seed, which they cannot do, they have to do all that through the government. The government doesn't have any money and, you know, the end result. So there's a lot of frustration here among supporters of the government. Look what China's done. Look what Vietnam has done. The government officials that I talked to say, well, you know, they didn't have their. The. The largest enemy right off their coast. The. There's a lot more they could have done here. And just because of inertia, bureaucracy, they didn't do. But I also think it's a matter of control in Vietnam and China. They made a conscious decision, some people, and, and we'll make it that they're loyal people, but they're going to get rich, and they will have thousands of employees. They will have a power center, and every now and then we'll have to arrest somebody for being too overtly corrupt. But, you know, we're going to allow people to get rich here. The government here is not cross that Rubicon of allowing people to be successful to this day. Now, if you're Cuban and you want to own a hotel, you can't do it in your own country. I know Cubans who do it outside of Cuba. You know, you can have a limit of only like 200 employees. I had a great quote from someone recently where they said, you know, if Steve Jobs had been born in Cuba, he would still be working in his garage. And it's true. You know, if you have these limitations on how big you can grow and you no contract you sign with the government can be enforced. And at any point the government could come and say, oh, you've gotten too big. It happens all the time and that's not what we envisioned. You're too successful. It's, it's more of a danger in this country if you're a business person to be too successful than to be unsuccessful. People are worried if their business gets too big here because they could get shut down or someone from the government says, oh, I'm going to take that over. And then they run it in the ground is what, is what inevitably happened. So there has to be this decision change in mentality at the top here where they look and say people are in private business, are not the enemy, they're actually helping us. And there's still a lot of suspicion because the people at the top here, you know, they were prepared for a world where the Soviet Union was going to win the Cold War. You know, that's what they grew up thinking was going to happen. And so they still haven't simulated the lessons of Vietnam and China that you can open up, but you have to give up some control of your economy. They say to this day, private businesses, private enterprises are going to be complementary to the Cuban economy. The heart of the Cuban economy will still be the state run enterprises, all of which are incredibly inefficient, don't work, provide terrible service. And so you wonder how that could lead to prosperous economy can't. On the protests, the government has been very effective here in making sure anybody who could possibly be an opposition leader is either tossed in jail or more often than not encouraged to leave the country or forced to leave the country. And so that is what happened. You don't really have a leadership here. I think as well, a lot of the people who are opposition figures, they look more to Miami rather than their own internal population because that's where the money might come from. It's striking that you have people going out and protesting, but they don't really have a leadership. And what they're doing right now is they're just trying to get the lights turned on in their neighborhood, water perhaps delivered to their neighborhood. People are exhausted here. They're living dayto day. No one's really thinking down the road the future. And they also know that if they start calling for political changes that's going to probably lead to exile or jail cell. But within the political system, there's absolutely no room that I can see, at least for dissent, for advocating for change. Things seem very much frozen politically. You know, if you've risen your whole life to have a job here where the power is not cut, your house, where you have food in your fridge, why would you want to change anything? You don't want to change things. You're the 1%.
- [34:28]
David Frum
Why do the police and the security services obey if they're not being paid or not being paid in any way that allows them to buy anything?
- [34:34]
Patrick Ottman
Before they would, they would have advantages. They would get a box of chicken usually comes from the US they might get a little gasoline now, but all those little sort of side things they got that made them better, that often their neighbors are rapidly vanishing. And so I think maybe there's some loyalty, maybe there's fear that if I'm the first to speak out, what will happen to me. But, you know, I think, you know, the day we see sort of a police officer take off his uniform, throw it down in anger, then, then that's it for them. You know, they still have a very effective apparatus. It goes from on high in terms of making sure the military is, is loyal to that. The cop on the street corner is loyal. But what we're seeing on, on, on the neighborhood level, because I live in a neighborhood with Cuban neighbors, is there's more and more crime taking place and the police aren't doing anything about that. They're only really reacting with those protests in something that will get the government's attention. It's almost like the government has sort of given up on, on crime. And, you know, thankfully their guns aren't widespread here. There isn't at this point a widespread drug problem or organized crime. But what you just have is kind of a relentless petty crime. And, and people have learned one, they have the desperation to drive them to do it, but also they've learned that there are no consequences. So that is one of the things that absolutely concerns me, you know, as someone who has gas in my tank or, or, or money in my pocket, you know, am I going to be a target? And I, I certainly now, you know, look, when you go out at night and the power could be off and all of Havana, you know, gives you pause about kind of where you go and what you do. And you, you, you certainly take much more care now. It's, it's always been one of the safest cities in Latin America and you can Feel that changing on a day to day basis.
- [36:24]
David Frum
All right, let's, let's shift now to the US Cuba relationship. A tense relationship, a lot of, a lot of accusations back and forth. Do you feel that some kind of direct US Intervention is imminent? Is the United States looking for a slow squeeze under Trump and Secretary of State Rubio or are they imagining some kind of Venezuelan solution where they do a deal with some elements of the regime to bring the, without changing the nature of the regime to bring it more into an American orbit?
- [36:53]
Patrick Ottman
This is the question that I spend all my day thinking about that everyone I get together with for a meal or drink or cigar, whatever, talks about. It's the one conversation everyone is having on Cuba at all different levels of society. Certainly the Trump administration is threatened to do what you said, the military solution. And it's hard to see how that just wouldn't lead to an outright collapse of the government, if not society here. Even if they just started striking military bases, military targets, they're not many at this point, but it would be incredibly disrupting. And I don't think you can discount anything at this point. Donald Trump has said, well, what if I just put an aircraft carrier off the coast and everyone saw this aircraft carrier, what would the reaction be? The Cuban government is certainly planning for this. Ever since the Biggs invasion, they've spent decades selling people. An invasion is coming. People stop believing in it till now. They're taking preparations. They called the war of the entire populace. Sort of a Vietnam style resistance where they arm everybody and they're putting people through military training. Every week they release videos of kind of the latest provincial action. You look at some of the weapons they're using, they are older than either of us. They are, you know, early, early days of the Cuban revolution, weapons that came from the Soviet Union. There was one video where they're pulling an anti aircraft weapon with oxen. So, you know, it is not a pretty picture when you match the military might of the United States up against what, what remains of, of the Cuban military, which used to be one of the strongest in the region, but has fallen on hard times like anything else here. And I think there's just a general apathy. Whereas before, you know, Fidel Castro was this young leader who was so inspirational. There's no figure like that today. More and more, you hear people say, let's just get it over with. If we're going to happen, let it happen tomorrow so the suffering can end and we can begin to rebuild this country. And Cuban exiles could come back and reinvest and people would see some change and last in their lifetimes. I think what's more likely is the slow squeeze which you mentioned. Just wait for them to completely run out of power, cause mass protests to take place, if that's still possible. Because of course, you know, as long as the military and the police are loyal to the government, protests really don't have, seem to have a chance here. But I think if you got to a point where the power's off and just stayed off and we're getting very close to that point, the power's off in most of the island most of the time now. So if you got to a point where these aging Soviet era power plants just died or they had no fuel to power them anymore, then that could be the moment where the Trump administration, you know, obviously trying to please the, the Cuban American vote that has been so supportive of Donald Trump and, and help Marco Ruby become the first Cuban American Secretary of State. You know, someone who, you know, this is his issue. His entire life he has been of the fiercest opponents to the communist government here. And, and so you talk to people in Miami and whether they're right or wrong, they think this is the moment. This is as close as they've ever come to, to bringing down the government. And they would not be satisfied with a Venezuela type solution that leaves somebody in power who, who's a, you know, former regime official or, or would sort of keep a similar type government in power here. They want Eastern Europe full collapse. I think everyone could end up getting disappointed here because how do you do that without putting troops on the ground? I, I think it would be very, very difficult. At the end of the day, the, the power structure that's here, it's, it's the only people, they're the only people that still know how to run this country, make things work. They can restore order if they need to. So I think that would be the, the sanest way out of what otherwise could be. The collapse of a country is finding somebody in the government who, like Del C. Rodriguez, is more willing to make deals. At this point, the negotiations have not gone anywhere. The government has been very resistant to the idea of, you don't get to tell us who leads our country, what our internal policies are going to be. They think they can outweigh the, outlast the Trump administration, and they've done it up until now with every other administration that's come before them. So they, they think we'll arm our people, we'll get ready for an invasion. And we'll call Trump's bluff. But they may be making a historic error here.
- [41:27]
David Frum
Cuba has historically used emigration to the United States both as a safety valve for the regime and also as a kind of weapon, like in the mariel boatlift of 1980, where the United States wanted a few thousand people released and the Cubans allowed hundreds of thousands of people to come. Overwhelming the city of Miami is. The Trump administration has closed that safety valve and in fact, sent people back. What have been the implications for Cuban society and for Florida of the end of that immigration pathway?
- [41:55]
Patrick Ottman
And I've covered some of those deportation flights, which, despite the tensions, are still taking place. Of course, there's many more Cubans that are, could be deported than the government here is willing to accept. But you do speak to people, and sometimes they're people who had families in the US or married to US Citizens. And then like, like so many other cases we've heard in other countries, they get picked up and, and days later, they're back here in a country they hadn't been to in years. And, and really the, the, the lowest economic point in anyone's memory. So that's very disrupting. Cubans, of course, in, in South Florida got used to this idea that we're, we're not, we're not migrants, we're refugees, we're exiles, and we had this special status. You know, this could come back to hurt Trump in Florida because it's been shocking for, for Cubans both here and there to see deportations, to see the end of these policies allowed them to come. Basically, anyone who wanted to come to the US From Cuba could, and that's no longer the case. But what you've heard Cuban American leadership tell their constituents is this is an administration, the Trump administration that is going to go farther, has already gone farther. I mean, they've indicted Raul Castro than any other administration in the past has. And our ultimate goal has to be the, the complete upheaval of communism taking back our country. And so it's worth it. And, and it's worth it for us. You know, if this is part of the strategy, then, then it's worth it. And I think as well, people were seeing a different class of, of Cuban come in recent years, and they would get residency in the US and immediately come back here and, and send more money here, come here on vacations. They were not the traditional exiles and said, I will never return until the casters are gone. And so I think that generational shift really struck the harder line. People, you know, in a way that they said, you know, these are not really our allies. They have, they have a different view of, of the government. They can't imagine a Cuba without the government. And so people would leave and then they would immediately come back and sort of set up businesses here, invest in the island, which is, of course, they would say is the right as Cubans. But the hardline elements in Miami, which is, at the end of the day, where the political power is, where the money is, they are looking at this and saying, we are as close as we ever have been in the economic opportunities and in a free Cuba would be tremendous in terms of tourism, in terms of infrastructure. And. But to get that, it can't be kind of this half step towards economic freedom. We need a full economic opening. And of course, it's been such a mixed message from Washington. But the one consistent thing you've heard from Trump is the economy has to open. Cuban exiles need to be able to come back and invest freely and not have this kind of treatment. The Cuban government gives any foreign investor, but particularly Cuban American investors, which is, you have to partner with us. It's kind of a 50, 50 proposition. We can take it away from you whenever we want. We can change the rules on you in the middle of the middle of the game. At any point, you know, we can take back the property because you don't really own it. You know, there needs to be full property ownership, is what the Trump administration says. They need to open up the economy, particularly to Cuban Americans coming back. They need to have some sort of special status, and that the government's stranglehold in the economy here needs to end. And that's something the government so far has really resisted. The, the counter proposals have fallen far short of what the Trump administration, in particular, Marco Rubio, who knows the system here inside and out, are demanding. And so that's where negotiations really have not been successful because the Trump administration, you know, is basically negotiating with a gun to their head here. And the government here is, is saying, you know, you could, you can pull the trigger, but we're not going to blink. We're, you know, this, the, the thing they yell after every speech here is patriar, muerte, fatherland or death. And, and a lot of people still claim to mean that, that they're willing to die for their government. You know, hopefully it won't come to that, but you wonder if it does. You know, like in Venezuela, to. Do people. Do people have, have. Have a change of opinion once the bombs start falling? I don't Know, you know, they've had a long, long time here. People are very indoctrinated, but they also love their country and they don't want to go back to sort of being a plaything of the U.S. you know, all the suffering and sacrifice has had to be for something. And, and just to kowtow and bow to the US would kind of be an ignominious end to the revolution. That is still, you know, ral caster is 95, but he still seems to be the one who's making calling the shots here as the ultimate authority. And for someone like him at the end of his life to betray his brother's revolution and political movement, it doesn't seem to be in the cards.
- [46:46]
David Frum
The reporting in the United States about Cuba or the commentary often suggests that there is tremendous resentment in Cuba of the exiles and an unwillingness to see them return and reinvest and maybe try to reclaim things that used to belong to them. And underneath this, and this point is sometimes hinted at, sometimes made more specifically, Cuba was for a long time a slave society. It was a slave society for a generation longer even than the United States remained a slave society. And while the Cuban revolutionary elite is very European in origin, just look at the Castro brothers. That one way to describe what happened in Cuba was the people who got out and came to Florida and did well tended to be either descendants of the slave owners or in some ways working for the slave system. And the people got trapped behind. And who are now the impoverished mass of the remaining Cuban population are the descendants of the slave population or those who intermarried with the slave population. And there's this racial angle that creates enormous resentment, fear, tension, anger, hate between the descendants of the exiles and the descendants of those who remain behind. What do you think of that line of commentary? How much truth is it? Or are people so desperate now they would welcome anything that came back and offered them a way to a better life?
- [47:59]
Patrick Ottman
I think people are more desperate than they've ever been in their lives. And I always say that the smartest thing any invading army could do here would be to distribute food and not drop bombs, because that is something the government is unable to do. But backing up. You're absolutely right. The people who left in the first years of the revolution or were lighter skinned, they came to the US and did very, very well in a way migrants usually don't do. But these were very educated people. They're doctors. They were. They were people who owned banks in Cuba. Some of them left with resources, other people left with the clothes on the backs. Like my, my, my mother in law is Cuban. You know, they left with, they had their suitcases, but they did very well because their father was an architect and, and was able to teach in the US but that was one of the selling points that Fidel Castro had is, you know, for the poor people, for the people who were descendants of slaves, you know, you had nothing. Many times you lived in rural communities that didn't have electricity. And you know, we've educated you, we give you electricity, we've given you social mobility. But that's a distant memory of that at this point. I think for, for most people. And yes, you do talk to people in their sort of 70s and 80s and they have some memory. But certainly, you know, you watch any old movie with a Cuban and they're just shocked by how better things looked then, how there was no trash on the streets, how the streets weren't broken, how buildings weren't collapsing, how this was one of the richest societies in Latin America. And yes, you had a huge disparity in income. But now, you know, you have a 1% here that are in the government or connected to the government, and you have a 99% here approaching levels of poverty that, that are just as bad perhaps as we saw before the revolution. And so I think right now, if you're hungry and you have no power in your house, and perhaps you have no water in your house, which is a very big problem here. You're not blaming on the US because these are, these are issues that have been such a long time coming. And the Cuban government does blame everything on the embargo. And they certainly have a case that a lot of the problems here are a result of that, but not all of the problems. And I think one of their heirs has always been to blame everything on the embargo. And I think people have kind of gotten fed up with that excuse. And you can't constantly point to what life was, how terrible life was like before the revolution, because even the leadership or even supporters of the revolution were old enough to remember it. They, they know that there are things here that were better than. But I think what the biggest thing is, has been, is you have so many people that have left in recent years, Some, Some people say 20% of the population. And they are connected, of course to the Internet. And more importantly, people are connected here to the Internet in a way they haven't been. And they're shocked when Cubans leave and they go to Mexico, which is a country they've always been told is a poor country and they see how much better things are there or they go to Brazil or they go to Spain. You know, of course so many people here have Spanish descendants because Spain, you know, was the economic basket case. And people were coming here because it was a richer country up until the revolution. And so they go to these countries and they, they can show the relatives here what life was like in these countries where they've only ever heard bad things about these countries and they see that's not the case. And I think people here kind of feel like they've been lied to by the government for, for so long they don't believe anything anymore. That's, that's a problem when you lose credibility. No one, you don't believe anything that you're told anymore, whether it's true or not. And people are online. I know people are supporters of the government and the first thing they do is read Excel websites every day about Cuba because they don't feel the government tells them the truth about anything anymore. And so this, you know, all media on this island is state run media. The message is, you know, the same across. There's no real debate, there's no, no coming out and saying anything different than what the government tells them to do. And you know, people joke about all, all the things to do with the newspaper here other than read it, whether it's toilet paper or wrap fish in it or you know, we, we make, you know, I just had one of my kids birthdays and we made a papier mache pinata out of a lot of my old copies of grandma that we keep at the office, but no one really reads it anymore. And so they're getting their information from outside of Cuba which tends to focus on how mismanaged the government is, how completely sort of frozen in time they are. But I think the main thing is people see a relative who like them was struggling and they believe, and Cubans are very creative, hard working people and they do very well outside of Cuba. And so then the question is, well, why can't they have that same success inside of Cuba? And I think the answer again and again, you know, is to blame the government for the severe, severe restrictions they put on their own people that for whatever reason they, you know, only are now beginning to talk about lifting. But this is something they could have done a long time ago that would have really helped lift so many people out of poverty and they've just been so reluctant to do.
- [53:07]
David Frum
Last question. Or it's a double barreled one. How long do you intend to spend in Cuba yourself? How much more of your career do you intend to devote to the island? And do you imagine that when that time comes that the regime will still be there or that Cuba will be something different?
- [53:22]
Patrick Ottman
I would like to see a change here because during the Obama years where the US opened up, Cuba didn't open up as much, but at least it took away. The excuse of the embargo is to blame for everything. And you saw a very short lived Cuban spring where businesses were opened up, people were particularly artists doing politically charged things that the government didn't know how to react to. You had Cubans moving back here with some of the, know how they picked up from living abroad and, and really changing things in a way that people had never seen here in the lifetimes. And you just breathe in air that you don't anymore. And so I would like to get back to that however we can. And certainly I, I would not like to see my country, the US attack the country that I've chosen to live in most of my life. I don't know, it doesn't make sense to be here anymore on a rational level. And yet, you know, ration is left. I love this country. I want to see it have a better future. Hopefully that will come sooner rather than later, one that doesn't involve violence, preferably, you know, if the government could, could open up and, and, and certainly you would like to see a place where people can pick their leadership, have, know what their leadership stands for, have elections with more than one candidate. I think we can all agree, you know, no democracy is perfect, but that, that is a, a better way to pick, to pick your, your leaders, have a sense of what they're for, have real political debates. And so this is really the most interesting moment, the hardest moment, but the most interesting moment that I can ever remember living in Cuba, you know, having spent so much of my life and now most of my career here. So I, I want to see what happens next. I've, I have friends here the same way their families have left, they're having a very difficult time. They could leave and they say I want to see what happens next. I know from people who've left that then write me every day what's going on, what's happening and they want to know. I also know that there could come a point here where it just doesn't make sense or I can't do my job here. And at that point I don't think I'd be doing anyone any favors by being here. But as you mentioned, CNN has remarkable luck and fortitude by lasting out the correspondence before me as well, who spent, you know, difficult years here as well. And so I'm sort of carrying the torch for that. And Ted Turner was the one who opened up our bureau here. And so I would like to see it through. And we are have that luxury and that privilege of telling people what's happening in Cuba as best as we can. And so I would like to continue doing so for as long as I can.
- [55:56]
David Frum
Patrick Ottman, thank you so much for being the world's eyes and ears into Cuba. Such a difficult place to work. Your work is so important and we're also grateful for it. Thank you for joining me today on the David Frum Show.
- [56:07]
Patrick Ottman
Well, thank you. Appreciate the kind words.
- [56:17]
David Frum
Thanks so much to Patrick Oppman for joining me today on the David Frum Show. As mentioned at the top of the show, my literary discussion this week will be the play Othello by William Shakespeare. The play came to mind because I happened to see a very powerful and emotional performance of the play this past weekend at Washington, DC's Shakespeare Theatre Company. If you have a chance to go, I strongly recommend it. The title role is played by Wendell Pierce. Othello is a play that drives home a message that I often think about when engaging with ancient literature, which is that by engaging with plays written before our time, we can emancipate ourselves, forcibly emancipate ourselves from some of the trammels of living in our time and escape some of the habits of mind that make us very conventional in our thinking and open the way to broader thoughts. Now, I assume everybody knows the plot of Othello, the great general. He's a Moor from the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He has found himself in Venice. After many harrowing adventures, including a spell and servitude, he is accepted by the Venetians. They make him commander of their armies and they welcome him into the homes of powerful people. But they don't quite want him marrying their daughters. Nevertheless, Othello and the the daughter of an important senator fall in love. Othello and Desdemona. They get married and the play commences just after their marriage as Othello succumbs to pangs of jealousy, fanned by his aide Iago, who, motivated for reasons that are actually kind of obscure, motivated by reasons that are kind of obscure, is determined to destroy Othello and Desdemona alike. He succeeds in igniting Othello's jealousy to the point where Othello murders Desdemona. And indeed, by the end of the play, about four people are dead on stage, someone else is dying off stage, and there are a couple of wounded men bleeding. It is quite a pileup of carnage at the end of the act. Now, one of the problems with the production of Othello, if you're a director or an actor who has to work with it, is that the material with which Iago has to work to get Othello to the point of murderous jealousy is pretty flimsy. The plot turns on the mystery of a handkerchief that Othello gives to Desdemona. Desdemona loses it or it's stolen from her. Iago then plants the handkerchief in the lodging of another man, and with that, he convinces Othello that his wife has been massively and serially unfaithful to him to the point of murder. It's not a very good plot contrivance. It's so notoriously bad that 1 17th century critic of the play said the moral of the play was, ladies, look to your linen. If you lose a handkerchief, you could be dead. So if you're a director or actor working your way through this problem, you've got, it seemed to me, on my way home, three solutions, three exits to the problem of the flimsiness of the plot leading to these calamitous consequences. One is to emphasize Iago the guileful, insinuating convincingness of this malicious supervillain who works on. On Othello to the point where any reasonable man would be deceived and. And fooled and worked into a. Into a rage that can lead to such a catastrophe. So exit one, emphasize Iago the super villain. Exit two is to de. Emphasize the heroism of Othello and to say, you know what? Maybe Iago wasn't a super villain. Maybe Othello was primed and ready to be worked into a murderous rage. There was something wrong with him, a crack on the inside that just the first encounter with outward pressure could. Could snap and destroy. And the third exit from the plot is to work a little bit of tension with the written lies in the play and to make Desdemona a more seductive and tempting character than maybe Shakespeare wrote her to be. To give play her in ways that give Othello some reason to inspire his jealousy and thus to set the plot in motion. So Iago the super villain, working on Othello, Othello the flawed hero, easily worked upon. Or is Desdemona the flirtatious woman about whom a man could have suspicions? But the problem with all of these exits is they touch powerful pain points in our modern outlook and habit of mind. If you make Iago the supervillain, you sort of make Othello the Moor, rather dim and gullible. And that's kind of working on some stereotypes that are uncomfortable. If you make Othello a flawed hero who is easily manipulated, well, that suggests that he's kind of emotional and irrational and excitable, and that plays on some stereotypes. And of course, if you make Desdemona flirty and seductive, then you're suggesting what, she deserved it, she was asking for it, she brought it upon herself. That is also uncomfortable. These discomforts are so intense that one of the great actors who's played the part of Othello, Hugh Carshy, a British black actor, gave a lecture in 1998 suggesting that as a black actor, he would want to not do Othello at all. He gave a lecture in which he said, I am left with a nagging doubt. If a black actor plays Othello, does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true? When a black actor plays a role written for a white actor in black makeup and for a predominantly white audience, does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men, namely that black men or moors are over emotional, excitable and unstable? And Hugh Carshi concludes, of all the parts in the canon, the Shakespeare canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most definitely not be played by a black actor. And despite this, 17 years later, Karshy took the role himself and did play it at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And he had the ingenious idea of pairing the Moor Othello with a black actor playing Iago, so that both the protagonists were themselves both the emotional one, the one who was worked upon, and the one who does the working, were challenged the stereotypes together. But as you think about these stereotypes and expectations, here's the thought that came to me again on the rest of the way home. That maybe the problem isn't the play, maybe the problem is the audience. And maybe the problem is that as we grapple with the three exits from the dilemma of the flimsiness of the proof, the super villainous Iago, the flawed Othello, or the flirtatious Desdemona, that the reason we don't readily put our hand on any of the doorknobs to those exits is because we are so fearful of the prejudices in ourselves that we don't want to see a logical exit from the dilemma that might in any way appeal to the prejudices which are in us. And maybe not in the play, and maybe not in Shakespeare's mind, but in our minds. And as we confront why is this plot so difficult and how do we get out of it? We are forced to confront, why am I uncomfortable? What is wrong with me that I am uncomfortable with the literary solution to a logical problem of human psychology? Maybe I need to look not to change the play, but to change myself. These plays long predate us and long outlast us. They are produced under social conditions very different from our own, and they'll continue to be watched under social conditions very different from our own. And that reminds us that we ourselves, we're the accidental and contingent factor here. And that maybe the things that we believe and so strongly fear and so strongly believe to be true, maybe those are just passing shadows too, and that we are ourselves products of a society that will change after we are gone. And that was changed before we arrived. Before saying goodbye, I need to make a correction to two mistakes I made in last week's program. The interview with David Blight where we Talked about the 14th Amendment and my preliminary monologue about Brexit. I made a mistake in the Brexit segment where I said that Norway was a member of the European Customs Union, but not the European Single Market. In fact, it was the other way around. I should have said that Norway is a member of the European Single Market, but not a member of the Customs Union. I just misread my notes. Glancing up and down. I have no excuse. It was correct in the notes. I bungled it and I apologize. And to the astute experts on Norwegian participation in European Union, thank you for bringing this mistake to my attention. The second mistake I made, I made without notes. And this one is really inexcusable that at a couple of points in the discussion with David Blight, I said that it took 2/3 of the states to ratify a constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution. In fact, it takes 2/3 votes in both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate and Then ratification by 3/4 of the states. And again, I have no excuse for that mistake. And I. I regret my error. And thanks to the many people who brought that mistake to my attention. I winced with every repetition because of course I. I don't know why, how I made it, this mistake. It's just a reminder of the danger of. Of speaking rather than writing. And I thank everyone who brought it to my attention. That's it for this week's program. Thanks to Patrick OPPMAN for joining me today. Thanks to all of you for watching and for listening. Remember, if you are minded to support the program, the best way to do so is by subscribing to the Atlantic where you see all the work of all of my colleagues. Please consider sharing and subscribing to this program on whatever platform you use. Thanks so much for watching and listening to the David Fromm Show. See you next week. Bye Bye. This episode of the David Frum show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme is by Andrew Edwards. Claudine Abayad is the Executive Producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our Managing Editor. Leadership today is defined by how you
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