Pity the poor Cubans, who as of Tuesday have found themselves
deprived of the benevolent care of their glorious leader Fidel
Castro. So say today’s Commie tools, anyway.
Reading the photosphere’s reaction to Castro’s retirement
provides a gentle reminder that too many academics and other
propagandists for socialist totalitarianism just don’t care how
many skulls must be cracked if the blood fertilizes their utopian
fantasies.
Take this comment from Chris Bertram of the Crooked Timber blog:
I haven’t looked yet, but I’ve no doubt that there’ll
be lots of posts in the blogosphere saying “good riddance” to Fidel
Castro (especially from “left” US bloggers like Brad DeLong who
never miss the chance to distance themselves). And, of course,
Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair
share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc.
Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other
(reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and
their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its
tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the
earth’s surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto
Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let’s hear it for universal
literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the
Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in
Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for
the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US
forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez.
Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US
blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!”
Who is Chris Bertram? He’s only the head of the school of the arts,
and a professor of philosophy, at the University of Bristol in the
UK.
Other less exalted fools gushed over Fidel’s alleged
accomplishments in the chat rooms and comment sections of
left-leaning blogs Tuesday and Wednesday. Here is a smattering:
From Lysistrata
at Huffington Post:
Under Castro the Cuban people learned to read and
write, it is now an educated nation sending doctors and teachers to
other countries. The infant mortality rate is lower than ours. And
he did it in spite of 50 years of embargo. Take a look at Mexico
and compare. Ever wonder why all these Mexican people leave Mexico?
Mexico is a Democracy it should be heaven on earth. Cuba does not
belong to the US, we have no business to interfere. So Bush and all
three presidential candidates made a mealy mouthed stupid
statement. Just the usual pandering for the votes.
From Danind at the Huffington Post:
I think Bush cares much less for America than Castro
cared for Cuba.
Castro is proof that the only way you stop a poor hispanic
country from becoming Northern Mexico or simply another Cozumel is
by giving the Americans the finger for 50 years. I am all for a
democratic Cuba, as long as the Americans stay the hell out of
their business, which is impossible for the republicans and certain
shameless capitalists.
From Doug Stych, Doug’s Darkworld:
Much is made of the poverty in Cuba, that and the fact
that Cubans flee Cuba is touted as the failure of the Cuban
revolution. Unfortunately, people flee every Latin American country
trying to get to the USA, so that doesn’t really mean much. And by
any objective measure the typical Cuban is far better off in terms
of crime, health care, and education than most people in other
Latin American countries. More on point, how much of Cuba’s economy
can be blamed on bad management…or on the effects of the USA
embargo?
As for “Why didn’t he just hold elections if he was so popular?”
I can think of two good reasons. The first is that the USA doesn’t
care who wins elections, they only recognize elections if the USA
chosen candidate wins. In the 1960s especially people remembered
what had happened to the elected leader of Iran in 1953, the CIA’s
first successful overthrow of a foreign government. The second
reason is that if you allow opposition parties, guess what huge
country is going to fund money and expertise to those parties to
meddle in your countries internal affairs?
John Goodrich, commenting on The Political
Voices of Women blog:
Let me add this about Cuba; say what you will about it
but remember this: there is or was a billboard up in a main square
in Havana that read (s):
“In the world today millions of children sleep in the
streets.
NOT ONE IS CUBAN.”
Consider that every year in the Third World some 12 million
people die of starvation, tens of millions die from preventable and
curable disease and roughly half the world barely exists on $1-2.00
a day.
None of this happens to anyone in Cuba.
So how appropriate is talk of so-called “freedom and democracy”
in Cuba in light of those facts?
From Jakbeau, in DailyKos:
Can you say 2 million incarcerated? As the largest
proportion of a population anywhere on earth, including Cuba?
Oh, you might argue that Cuba’s are political prisoners, but
some may argue that the U.S. War on Drugs is distinctly political
at its core with prisoners who are 70% black, though only
representing some 13% of the total population.
From Lineatus, in DailyKos:
I’m really glad that I was able to see Cuba a few years
ago. I will be happy for the people when their lives get easier,
but I will be sad to see the country’s natural beauty destroyed as
it becomes one gigantic spring break haven. I expect that the high
literacy rate and the health care coverage rate and many other good
things will be lost as well.
I could provide more, but you get the point by now. Socialism =
good, USA = bad.
These were by no means all of the thoughts about Castro
expressed on these sites. There were thoughtful criticisms of
Castro’s brutality and human rights abuses. But there were far too
many people who apologized for or excused Castro’s thuggery on the
grounds that it either produced good socialism or checked American
capitalism and imperialism.
It is always disconcerting to see just how many people consider
oppression an acceptable tool for realizing hoped-for domestic
policy goals.
