By Calvin Hill
On this Wednesday’s episode of Morning Joe on MSNBC, Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. was winding his way to a historical point about Fidel Castro, when Joe Scarborough, as he is wont to do, interrupted. So, now that the assets and deficits of the Cuban revolution and the Castro regime has become an issue in the Democratic Presidential Primary, it would behoove us to carefully unpack some of those arguments as it pertains to the present day politics in America.
This all started with the reemergence of candidate Bernie Sanders acknowledging the literacy program that Castro initiated after seizing power. Of course the blowback alleging Sanders’ support of the Cuban tyrant was loud, fierce and immediate. But right now, in the USA, the Trump administration, with the aid of the Republican Party, is preparing to eviscerate the funding of public education, led by a cabinet secretary whom large groups of educators in this country find unqualified to even tutor their children or check their homework.
And while noting that the dead dictator jailed journalists and political opponents, a policy supposedly antithetical to our values and our Constitution, the 45th President of the United States is getting journalists fired from, and others muted by, his favored television outlet. He is boisterously demanding investigations of political opponents and patriotic career and military professionals, and, insisting that journalists should be jailed for making mistakes, even when corrected – Sharpie retractions not acceptable.
It seemed clear that Prof. Glaude was about to embark on a nuanced version of Fidel Castro as a freedom fighter in America’s black communities due to Cuba’s active participation against apartheid in South Africa and giving aid to rebels in Angola when Morning Scarborough interjected. I have no idea who Glaude supports for President in 2020, and this is certainly not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders – far from it. Nor is this a defense of Fidel Castro. But to assume there should only be one way to view Fidel Castro, especially for an American, smacks of a vile political hypocrisy. If not, perhaps we have been psychologically reduced to believing that the mass incarceration of a specific group of people is no longer an abhorrent abuse of human rights because they have the ability to see through their cages. Or perhaps we were wrong settling with the interned Japanese Americans and we were right caging them 80 years ago. Or perhaps, inflating the military budget to pay for empty hotel rooms, or scheduling an international summit to boost the personal bottom line of the POTUS is no longer the despicable actions of an elected public servant. Thus, a pardon for Rod Blagojevich. Is Donald Trump making us numb to self-reflection?
Meanwhile, back at the issue, those Republicans criticizing any nuanced version of Fidel Castro have a tendency toward gradations when it comes to a tax cutting, deregulating American who wants his rebels to “Beat the hell out of ‘em!” if they disagree with anything he says, or have his rebels stand and deliver criminal acts without fear of punishment, encourage state media to oppose the judicial branch, and marshal grass roots supporters and white supremacists to intimidate and violate the freedom, liberties and existence of those who may visibly appear to be non-Christian as the hatred and violence perpetrated against these non-Christian groups has increased in each successive year of the Trump administration.
The media and the Democrats are at war over the good, the bad and the ugly of the Castro regime without any historical perspective of the cause of the Cuban revolution of more than 60 years ago, while the 45th POTUS secretly colludes with Vladimir Putin who continues to vanquish critics and opponents to prison, and export nuclear poisons to neighboring countries to eliminate perceived enemies. Jared Kushner, considered a risk unworthy of a security clearance, nevertheless has access to sensitive, classified information as he travels to countries with dictatorial leaders. Coincidentally, Putin suddenly knows there are moles in the Kremlin, and in a world of instantaneous global communication, Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi’s life came to a gory end because, for some inexplicable reason, he could not receive a single particular document from any Saudi Arabian embassy in the entire world except the one in Turkey.
Now that Donald Trump has sent government lawyers into federal court with the audacity to argue that the President could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and be immune from investigation and prosecution, the seriousness of our presidential elections should not involve the brutality or the benefits of post-Batista Cuba. It would be well to remember that Fidel Castro wrested power at the barrel of a gun. What will be our excuse – “That’s the way Putin wanted it?”
February 28, 2020
The Op-Ed Alternative 