Never before have I seen such a verbal hand-job as this recent piece, appearing in the Toronto Star celebrating Fidel Castro and all of his super-human manliness. His Aristotelian intellect. His physique which rivals Adanis. The great revolutionary – striving for the greater good in a cold and callous world.

“But Castro’s leadership can be something of a burden, too. They do occasionally complain, often as an adolescent might complain about a too strict and demanding father. The Jefe (chief) sees all and knows all, they might say. In particular, young Cubans have told me that an outsider cannot ever really imagine what it is like to live in such a hermetic society, where everyone has an assigned spot and is watched and judged carefully. You can never really learn on your own, they might say. The Jefe always knows what is best for you. It can be suffocating, they say.”

Compulsion and central planning will never be adequate substitutes for freedom and imagination.

A few summers ago, I did a study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, France. Another student and I stayed with a middle-aged woman just outside of town, and during the course of her life, she had visited Cuba on several occasions with her ex-husband. The French are not forced to jump through hoops to vacation there, and apparently there are some very nice resorts with pristine beaches and the like. She recalled that the resorts were nothing short of stunning.

But her description of Cuba’s beauty came with one caveat, impossible to ignore. She would never return to the island.

Having never been to Cuba (or any other isle in the Gulf, for that matter,) I found this curious, and inquired. She explained to us that the grandeur ended at the gates of the resort, outside of which, as far as she could see was nothing but abject poverty. She explained that they would occasionally leave the resort, and sometimes end up conversing with the children or people in Cuba proper, who always displayed a terrible paranoia, looking over their shoulders for the State’s watchful eyes: there was no reason for them to be talking to Westerners.

But the article’s coup de grâce is Trudeau’s proposition that, “Cubans will always feel privileged that they, and they alone, had Fidel.”

Describing the situation faced by the native Cubans, she was almost in tears. She said that after having left the resort, and seeing the widespread poverty and pestilence, that she could not bear to go back there – knowing that her money was being used to prop up a regime bent on keeping Cuba that way. Maybe, someday she would go back, under different circumstances and different government. But she would never return to Castro’s Cuba.

At no point in our conversation did my host convey any message of hope, and I was given no reason to believe that the people of Cuba felt at all priveleged. People who feel priveleged and fortunate do not risk their lives on shark-infested waters in home-made rafts in order to obtain an under-the-table-job as an illegal immigrant in another country.

I was given no reason to believe that the people of Cuba felt priveleged.

More thoughts on the intellectual affliction of communism via Colby Cosh, and a H/T to Catallarchy.