Okay, so here's a hypothetical: So, you're in charge of an alternate-world USA where the USSR never collapsed, and in fact took over Europe, and Africa, and Oceania, and pretty much everywhere else ended up at a combined population of 9 billion people.

Now suppose this "world soviet union" was putting huge amounts of effort and money into undermining your government, including decrying you as violating human rights every time you arrested enemy agents.

I specifically chose the number 9 billion because that's the population of the USA, times thirty. Because the USA is 30x the size of Cuba, and that's what the USA is like for Cuba.

Can you imagine how massively fucked we'd be if there were a country with 9 billion people behind them attacking us? Would you say "we would be better to join the USSR than to give up our liberty"? Well realistically/pessimistically, we've already done that with the PATRIOT act and PRISM and all sorts of other fucked-up unnecessary legislation just to respond to an imaginary threat, but that doesn't mean we should. But that's irrelevant.

Anyway, Cuba really are being attacked - the USA is massively crippling the Cuban economy (and its own, to the tune of $1.2billion/year, for that matter), and frankly of course Cuba aren't focused on human rights. They're focused on existence.

They're focused on not becoming the Batiste government, where the country was literally run by the mob, with the US ambassador was well-known as being second in command only to the el presidente. They're focused on not becoming like Guatemala and El Salvador. Honestly, the USA has a well established reputation fo completely fucking up South/Central American countries it has major sway in, and the Castro regime was a direct result of that.

And to state the obvious, there's a distinct difference between human rights being a threat to your government, and foreign agents explicitly abusing human rights being a threat. Again, imagine a country of 9 billion.

I'm not even saying it's "right" that Cuba is a dictatorship, I'm saying it's a pragmatic and sane response, given that the USA tends to prop up "business friendly" governments (NB: human rights tend to get in the way of business, and are not "business friendly", and people who try to unionize tend to be hacked to death with machetes) and the alternative is bloody Batista (btw: He has an amazing story, talk about "see yourself become the villain", I highly recommend reading his entire Wikipedia page even if only for the entertainment value).

That said, I think the crux of our disagreement is that you're taking a rather Kantian attitude to morality, and basically rejecting the notion that the ends justify the means. Which generally indicates a really interesting person if they apply it broadly, since it's usually a result of serious thinking about personal ethics. Then again, I might be reading too far into it, considering that literally every time I've seen people downvote every comment (including those asking for clarification) and say "that's pathetic" and "I mean fuck. Are you nuts?" for more than half their comment, they've always flung shit around rather than to engaging in civil discussion.

But whatever, writing this comment was at least useful for clarifying my own thoughts (and sources), so thank you either way, I guess?