The Cuban Scam
The Czar is frequently in and out of the Castle, and has so many visitors that he just cannot make time for everyone. Derek the Last, long-time castle visitor (because he cannot pay his guest bill, so he’s decided to live here and basically run up the tab), has resorted to sending the Czar memos in order to stay in touch. Today’s, for example, was really worth sharing.
| Ваше Императорское Величество, I have been enjoying my stay here in the castle. The Tcho-Tchos are turning out to be fairly enjoyable fellows once you get used to their quirks. They have even been kind enough to bring something they called complementary White Pork Sauce to dip my breadsticks in while dining in the amazing facilities here. However, I do find the way they gently poke you at the end of your meal and their constant offers to boil a hot bath for you a bit unsettling. Although I do hear that the aromatherapy with the carrots and onions in the bath is very relaxing. Now, on to the reason for my writing today. In my old age I have given up being an armchair quarterback as professional football has lost its appeal over the years and have taken up armchair psychology. I feel I am qualified for this as I own at least two chairs with arms. So I have been pondering this unrequited love affair that people have been having over the late Fidel Castro. I am overjoyed that he is dead. The only sadness that I feel is that he died of old age instead of 9mm of neurological lead poisoning a long time ago. The man was a monster who destroyed a country and his own people for no other reason because he could do so. His list of atrocities are undeniable and even those that support him here never deny he did those things they just make up excuses for him. That is what has mystified me. El Jefe did all the same things that Hitler did but to the left Hitler is bad and Castro is good. My theory on that part is that since the left has painted Hitler as a right-wing creation he gets reviled but since Castro paid lip service to left-wing thought then he is the Messiah. I marvel at the mental gymnastics one would have to go through to get to the point where just because a mass murder purports to believe what you believe then he is a swell guy that I want to have coffee with. The above would explain the admiration but then you get to the love affair people had with that man. They get all hot and bothered like teenagers on prom night when they talk about him. The only other people I have seen this behavior in are those women that fall in love with serial killers that are in prison. They send them love letters, visit them for the occasional conjugal and even marry them. They do this for the thrill that being associated with them gives. They get a portion of the fame and attention. Also it is fairly safe to do this as the object of their affection is in prison with no hope of getting out. Notice they are happy to visit with them but never ask to stay. They get to go to dinner parties and profess their love of Castro and score social points among their peers. They will even go to Havana for a conjugal visit with their beloved and enjoy the attention he lavishes on them because he rarely gets out of his island prison. Then they pack up and go home content that they only had to stay there a short time instead of live there and never worry that Fidel would show up on their doorstep one morning with a trash bag full of his clothes saying he has been paroled and they can now finally be together. If you attempt to point this out to them they viciously turn on you. They froth like a child with a mouth full of Mentos and Diet Coke. There is not enough safe spaces in the world to protect you from their need to defend the honor of their beloved. It is sad, but I were to lock them up for their own safety then I am the monster. Compared to that a nice hot, carrot and onion bath down in the Tcho-Tcho’s quarters may not be so bad after all. Loyalty until Death, |
Glad you’re finding the Tcho-tchos more to your taste. The Czar is certain they like the taste of you, too. Incidentally, the white pork sauce is pretty good, but feels you should avoid the breadsticks for a few weeks. At least until we verify their source (hint: don’t limit yourself to animals with four or less legs).
We should probably talk about Fidel Castro, although he doesn’t seem nearly as useful as the Tcho-Tchos.
As you have seen in recent weeks, there has been no shortage of news punditry providing examples of the Left’s fascination with Fidel Castro. Stories go into detail about how America’s liberals are whitewashing every atrocity and spinning every abhorrence. It’s unlikely you were unaware of this, but even if so, by now you just want them to stop listing examples. We get it already.
What’s rather lacking in coverage is an explanation. Of all leaders, as you note, why does Castro seem to get such a pass? Good luck finding any long-form explanation for the Left’s worship of Castro, and that’s probably because the psychology is pretty simple. The Czar regrets that no complex explanation is forthcoming, with lots of big words and paragraphs to impress you.
The Left loves Castro because he has been giving a middle finger to America since 1959.
Obviously, it wasn’t always this way. As the Czar remembers it, he went from this yapping little pro-Soviet dictator to thing of beauty in about 50 years. We did try to assassinate him, and those efforts failed pretty badly. By the end of the Missile Crisis, it was pretty clear that he wasn’t nearly as influential as we feared and we sort of forgot about him until the 1980s. With the Mariel boat affair in 1980s, we remembered Cuba was there, thanks to the Miami Sound Machine, but this didn’t do much for Castro’s popularity. Indeed, Americans didn’t think much about him until Cuban troops invaded Grenada and Calumet, Colorado.
Try the white pork sauce. It’s free, and the Tcho-Tchos insist.
When the Communist world broke up over artistic differences in 1989 and 1990, Cuba was one of the few countries that wanted to cut a solo album. Those of us around at the time will recall that America’s overall reaction to this was Seriously?—after all, how much longer could that latrine of a country hold onto Communism?
Really, it wasn’t until the 21st Century that the whitewashing and spinning began in earnest, with the dream resort of Cuba in Die Another Day (as plausible as Madonna being a fencing instructor could be) and culminating in Sicko, which you will recall as Michael Moore’s homage to Castro. In between, say, 1989 and 2009, the Left began to marvel at Castro. Here the sophistry became paramount: the oppression and poverty was now the result of the cruel American blockade. Castro’s 100% control over the economy hadn’t failed; indeed, Cuba never experienced an Enron crisis or housing market bubble the way awful, capitalist America did. Education was second-to-none in Cuba, as explained by the thousands smart enough to risk their lives and flee to the United States. You can easily come up with more examples.
The point is that the Left began to believe their own bullshit. Little communist socialist Cuba, with its strongman who answered to no Congress or Republican lawmakers, standing proudly before a marvelous country that defied American power. Short of military intervention, the United States threw everything it had at Cuba, and Cuba survived. Remember all those stories about communism socialism inevitably leading to privation and depravity? Cuba was and is ongoing proof that Bernie Sanders wasn’t a whackjob. All the Star Trek fantasies of the Left’s world of no money, space travel, peace and harmony, and whacking people in red shirts was merely a Cuba away.
Overjoyed were the Left when Barack Obama let himself be duped into lifting economic sanctions by a far smarter Raúl Castro. Now we could finally see for ourselves that Cuban cigars actually tasted like dog feces compared to the ones we get now from Honduras, and you could actually vacation in this wonderland!
The Czar has some extended family members who bought into all this crap. They were born at the tail end of the Boomer generation (but not so late that they became libertarians like a lot of the kids born in the late 1950s and early 1960s). Although they weren’t in the first wave of tourists, they were in the first five or six waves who ponied up thousands of dollars to stay in a Cuban resort.
They were a bit shell-shocked. The resort was worse than a 1950s Florida motel, infested and uncomfortable. The country was wrecked, and the poverty so bad they realized this is the Cuba that the Castro government wanted them to see. Just imagine what the hidden Cuba must look like. Even the Potemkin Village was terrible, and they realized that—in addition to being a huge waste of money—the liberal dream of Cuba was a lie. They returned to the States actively hoping that the Castro government falls very soon. They sound to the Czar very much like victims of a scam who want to see their confidence tricksters arrested.
The Czar thinks they went in total denial, buying all the bullshit in popular liberal culture. He doubts they voted for Ted Cruz in the Illinois primary. But they realized that much of what the Left says about Cuba—verily believes about Cuba—is a terrible, terrible lie.
Castro’s Cuba is indeed a scam. It has been perpetrated on Cubans to the deaths of thousands, and foisted on America’s Left, who try to minimize their losses by swearing it’s the real deal and not at all a criminal enterprise. The Czar is not optimistic that the death of Fidel Castro will result in anything imminently positive for Cuba any more than the death of Charles Ponzi ended pyramid schemes in 1949.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.