Castrogasms

So...is it just me, or is there a distinct odor of crashing Saddam statues, Van Halen-blaring-at-the-Panamanian-Presidential-Palace, and prewar victory celebrations circa March 2003 about this? And a soupçon of chickenhawk? Third-generation dispossessed petit-nobility, none of whom has any intention of returning to Cuba, none of whom knows any more about Cuba today than about Cuba in the 50s.

Okay, you're 20 years old. Fidel is 80. Unless the state of Florida begins executing people for bad taste (and what a slaughter that would entail) you're almost certain to outlive him. Celebrating a polyp seems a teensy bit overdone.

And look, the US of A didn't give a shit about how Castro treated dissidents, anymore than we cared how Batista did, right up until Fidel started appropriating the property of United Fruit and offering compensation based on the absurd valuations it had placed on its holdings for tax purposes. Get it? The source of our disagreement with Fidel was actuarial tables. Frankly, that the expat Cuban community in south Florida has cried for Castro's head for fifty years while saying nothing whatever about the exploitation of Cubans by foreign companies before he came along was a good enough reason to ignore it.

And yes, that's an oversimplification, just as there aren't really all that many camera-hogging Mambo Revolutionaries out there, and even some strident anti-Castro Miamians have condemned the parading. But it's also the sort of thing the US government plays to in announcing it will "aid the transition to democracy in Cuba" with $80 M above the table. And the Cuban patriots among us should bear in mind how many soccer balls that money'll buy, and how many schools it'll paint, assuming everything goes well.