A Monster and his Suck-Ups - Cuba on Our Mind

As the USS Nimitz heads to the Caribbean, we share Mark's "obituary" to Fidel Castro, from back in 2016. Wishing all a peaceful Memorial Day weekend.

Who knows when Fidel Castro actually kicked the bucket? But this weekend his brother decided to let us in on the secret. His presidential term lasted, gosh, an awfully long time, as The New York Times reminded us:

Fidel Castro had held on to power longer than any other living national leader except Queen Elizabeth II.

That's one way of putting it. But in the end, when it comes to ruthlessly holding on to power, no one can compete with Her Majesty, and so that piker Castro got relegated to second place, while millions of English, Canadians, Jamaicans, Bahamians, Barbadians, Grenadians, etc, still groan under the jackboot of the Queen.

Castro almost outlasted 11 US presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and passing in the waning days of Obama's last term. Perhaps he just couldn't bear the thought of President Donald Trump.

Impressive. How exactly did he manage to outlast all those here-today-gone-tomorrow US presidents? As I wrote in Maclean's eight years ago:

"Saying he is no longer healthy enough to hold office, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not seek re-election after 49 years in power" — the Miami Herald.

Message from Jim Robinson:

Dear FRiends,

We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.

If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:

Click here: to donate by Credit Card

Or here: to donate by PayPal

Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794

Thank you very much and God bless you,

Jim

..... there beats in the liberal breast a strange passion for normalizing dictatorships. You'll recall that, at the funeral of Pierre Trudeau, the Father of Our Country, the only fellow global colossi to show up were Fidel Castro, Jimmy Carter and Najib Zerouali (Minister of Scientific Research for Morocco, a nation renowned for its scientific research). This would have been a bleak enough comment on Trudeaupia's standing in the world, even without the general media swoon over Fidel. Apparently, millions of freeborn citizens of one of the oldest constitutional democracies on the planet were flattered by the attentions of the grubby strongman from an economic basket case representing the last redoubt of history's most blood-soaked and comprehensively failed ideology.

Um, in Spaniard countries, being Presidente for Life is considered proof of your manhood, superiority over all the gusanos, and evidence that you should have 50 women every night.

Nobody holds it against El Caudillo - they love them for it.

Applying Anglo-Saxon ideals to their dumps is a waste of time - it doesn’t compute with them.

Castro wasn’t a Communist - just the latest encomendero in charge of charge of the hacienda.

Conquistador strutting and posturing - coming to a formerly American town near you!

—“Give the Cuban communist government 48 hours to leave”

And what happens after that?

Like the dog that chases cars and catches one; now what?

East Berlin’s transition into a unified city took over two decades to resolve. While physical infrastructure disparities and unemployment crises were largely addressed within 15–20 years, deep economic, cultural, and political gaps remain...

The economic disparity in East Germany remains an ongoing challenge more than 35 years after reunification. While the initial collapse and infrastructure crisis were the most acute in the 1990s, the former East still lags slightly behind in GDP per capita, and the total cost of redevelopment has exceeded €2 trillion
Cuba is roughly 124 times larger than Berlin.
Cuba has a population of approximately 10.9 million people, while Berlin has about 3.9 million residents.

And the good ol’ American taxpayers will provide for all their needs and whatever the lawyers can dream up.

And if Trump fails to give them voting rights and a couple of US Senate seats and more in the House...
The Dems will at the first chance...

Cuba has been a long suffering human tragedy thanks to decades of a repressive communist regime that has brought nothing but misery to what was once one of the richest countries in Latin America. Nothing will change for the better as long as the current leadership is in control.

You asked what happens after they are removed. Ten million people can once against have an opportunity to feel the benefits of political and economic freedom. Like all transitions it won’t be an easy one, but Cuba will at least have a chance of realizing its potential and cast aside its ugly past of repression, poverty and misery.

“Nothing will change for the better as long as the current leadership is in control.”

In Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli observed that freeing a repressed people who are accustomed to servitude is extraordinarily dangerous. He warned that “it is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.”

Ancient Greek philosophers viewed the liberation of a repressed people as a dangerous, transformative, and profoundly psychological process. They believed that sudden freedom without moral and philosophical education leads to chaos, as the newly liberated mistake unbridled impulse for true liberty:

“You probably remember the story, too. As Plato has Socrates tell it, we humans are prisoners in a wide-mouthed cavern, shackled so we cannot move or see one another. All we can see are the shadows produced by puppets, which are manipulated by some other people situated above us, behind a fire and a low wall. One prisoner eventually gets free and makes his way up into the light of the world. Little by little, first by looking at shadows of things, then at reflections in water, then at things themselves, this man is finally able to look directly at the stars and even the sun, the good itself. But watch out: when he returns to the cave to enlighten his enchained comrades, he’ll be mocked, punished, and even killed.”
https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/liberating-platos-prisoners

How much will this cost American taxpayers?
Everything the government does is paid for with borrowed money; now we borrow to pay for past borrowing.

The Germans are still paying for East Berlin.
Solidarity Surcharge: To help fund these costs, Germans paid a solidarity surcharge (a supplementary tax) on income, capital gains, and corporate taxes.

Ongoing Regional Disparities: Despite decades of massive state aid, economic productivity and per capita GDP in the eastern states generally continue to lag behind those of western Germany....

Not even close to any financial return! And Cuba is 124 times the size of East Berlin.

Perhaps you recall the Mariel Boatlift?
I do, pulling into work, and the building was surrounded by cops! The Near North Side of Chicago was a safe area at that time. The building has been stripped clean of anything of value, including my Carhartt Arctic Parka from my closet.

Months later, Chicago Police found a warehouse of stolen property managed by a gang of “Marielitos.” The cops said it was a large gang of a hundred or more and well-organized.

My parka was listed on the property sheets, but disappeared from the police possession: it’s Chacigo.

Expect another wave of “Marielitos.”

Oh, but Cuba will be different, RIGHT?

What is your plan to make it work?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.