From the Gulag Archipelago:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
That is the answer: AWARENESS.
Leaving the benign dictatorship of Batista, the new revolution of Castro seemed like a good thing for a while.
Hell, he was even on the Tonight Show in New York as I remember. He was new and glamorous.
Many, many countries have fallen under dictatorships or totalitarian regimes. It happens because the people are not “aware” of its happening. Visit your local junior college.
Some of my ancestors were serfs in 1600s in what later became Germany. One was fortunate and smart and immigrated here in 1709. Who knew the outcome?
great comments and SPOT ON.
It begs the question too of “what REALLY happened at the Bay of Pigs?” Was it Kennedy’s fault or did “the Cubans” invading cower and shrink as they landed on the beach in the face of real hot lead coming their way and Kennedy knew it was all doomed to failure so he pulled the plug?”
I’m not accusing. I don’t know. I admit. But, I think it is a question worth asking since this 21st century we have no media or government we can trust anymore.