Armando SimónBefore Fidel Castro publicly announced in late 1961 that he was a Communist and had always been one, many Cubans had already known from what had been happening in the past two and a half years. The usual signs — or symptoms if you wish — had been evident.
In the past decade, similar signs have been present in the United States, Canada and Britain. Those of us who lived in Communist countries have been, like Cassandra, shouting out warnings, only to be ridiculed or ignored. Until recently, that is.
Elsewhere, I wrote of this and pointed out some of the signs that were obvious to us: the mutilation of science, the falsification of history, the Jacobin-like cannibalism, the use of the words “Fascist” and “People’s.” There have been additional symptoms of Communism that have been evident for some time, but which have not been recognized for what they are.
Escape
The number of cases, and the corresponding images, of people going over (and under) the Berlin Wall, of Vietnamese escaping in rafts, of Cubans leaving also in rafts, of Hungarians crossing into Austria, are numerous and are in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Back then, it was said that those “people voted with their feet.”
The very same behavior is taking place in America in those states controlled by Democrats/Communists. As the Communists follow the usual blueprint of gleefully degrading the places they control, people are leaving.
When the Berlin Wall was opened, there was no mass of people leaving the West to go over to the Communist side. And there haven’t been hundreds of thousands of people emigrating into Cuba (except for a few leftists who occasionally go slumming for a week or two). By the same token, few people are moving to those states.
Ironically, the leftists in charge of totalitarian regimes — and in soon-to-be totalitarian states — claim they represent the people, they are the voice of the people, they have the welfare of the people in mind, and they keep saying it even as the people stampede out. I am convinced the rulers are delusional. For example, in 1980, Fidel Castro thought only a handful would be dissatisfied with his enlightened rule and publicly stated that whoever wanted to leave could do so, which resulted in the embarrassing debacle of the 125,000 Mariel boatlift (Castro had a fit).
People from New York, Washington, D.C., California, Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts have been leaving in droves, not only as shown by census figures but in U-Haul rentals (and U-Hauls are not used by millionaires). They have been moving to Florida, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arizona. In 2025, it was estimated that three million Americans had fled Democrat-controlled states; by 2026, it had gone up to 5+ million. California is the state that has gotten the most attention, partly because it was such a rich state, partly because it has had the most number of people running away, and partly because of the obnoxious yet photogenic governor.
The reasons for leaving the Democrat-Communist run states is obvious to anyone who is not a liberal: the increasingly crippling taxation, the deterioration of schools and neighborhoods, the “sanctuary cities” for criminal aliens, the increase in crime with a corresponding decrease in crime enforcement and punishment, the rolling blackouts, the Potemkin elections, the blatant corruption, the ideological (not to mention stupid) ideology (California even has a Department of Social Justice promising free everything in syrupy language), the drug use and homelessness, the sheer incompetence of the rulers, the two-tier system of justice.
By contrast, Florida has no income tax and has a budget surplus.
And it is not just individual citizens who are running away. Businesses — major businesses — are relocating to red states, as leftists, who can’t even balance their checkbooks, are managing the economy of their states. True Value has left Illinois. Palantir suddenly left Colorado, with Boom Supersonic to follow suit. Budweiser, Oracle, Playboy, Luprino Foods, McKesson, Tesla, Chevron, Yamaha, Valero, and Charles Schwab have moved away from California. Apollo Global Management, Wells Fargo, Elliott Management, Goldman Sachs, and AllianceBernstein have left New York. Exxon has left New Jersey.
And, of course, individual millionaires are also jumping ship, ironically, some of them being liberals who voted for the policies and the rulers that ruined the states they are fleeing from.
As for Canada, almost half of its manufacturing is moving to the United States.
Unfortunately, there is a very real fear among the wealthy states that newcomers will bring the same values and votes that destroyed their states because liberals, being liberals, do not change. Along the same lines, ignorant individuals will say that since things are so bad, Democrat rulers will inevitably drop their ruinous ideology and come to their senses. I say ignorant because in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, and Haiti, the countries are in disarray, but the ruling elites are doing well, and as long as they are doing well, to hell with the people and to hell with their country.
‘Please come back so we can take your money!‘
Being the arrogant people that they are, when they initially heard that companies or millionaires were moving out of their states, the Democrat politicians sneered and said good riddance.
Then, they realized the truth of what Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul some years back said that whoever did not have her values could go down and live in Florida. So quite a few people did. Then, later, when her reality check bounced, she begged the people who left to return so she could take their money. “Now, there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. Okay, cut me the checks if you want to be supportive. But maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded.”
Then, we have the Socialist mayor of Seattle. Thanks to her and her policies, Starbucks, Seattle’s signature company, is leaving while Amazon is scaling down. She was scornful of their flight at first but is now fretting and wants them to stay so they can be fleeced.
The one bright spot in this theater of the absurd scenario is that the states gaining those businesses and citizens is that they will get more congressional seats. The drawback is that many of the people working in those transplanted businesses will be liberals who will begin the rot all over again. I am not the only one who has noticed this: “Once there, they start pushing the same policies, laws, and types of candidates who brought their home states to disaster. It’s as if they’re afflicted with some kind of ideological OCD that compels them to spend their time scrubbing out imaginary political stains wherever they go.”
We shall see.
Armando Simón is a native of Cuba, a retired psychologist and historian, author of “The Only Red Star I Liked Was a Starfish,” “A Prison Mosaic,” and “Stories for Lions and Other Felines.”
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