11-28-2016, 10:10 AM
(11-28-2016, 06:52 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(11-27-2016, 09:34 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(11-27-2016, 11:20 AM)Bronsin Wrote: You know you're on the right side when the opposition is burning flags and mourning Castro.
Marxism-Leninism, including Castroism, is in part a moral appeal -- that mass suffering for the indulgence of a few is unconscionable. That it comes with a police state, numbing propaganda, pervasive regimentation, material scarcity, and the absence of political choice discredits Marxism-Leninism, including Castro's variety. But should Donald Trump and his supporters 'give' us a police state, numbing propaganda, pervasive regimentation, material scarcity, and the absence of political choice in the name of "national greatness", then maybe there will be American exile communities elsewhere in the world in which people celebrate the death of someone who murdered American democracy.
Yes, I hope for the best, but this largely depends upon Donald Trump operating with a moral compass that he never showed during the 2016 election. Expecting a politician to become more humane and decent in office than he was in a campaign is like expecting a tiger to go vegetarian.
For the record, I'm not mourning Castro.
In my exchanges with Kinser during his Marxist phase, I repeated often my feeling that the followers of Marx replace one group of ruling elites with no check on their power with another. Castro would be no exception. At least, I envision Castro as the typical communist leader riding in fancy cars, not going hungry, and having access to good medical care, while his people are treated less well.
Trump? He rides in fancy cars and planes, doesn't go hungry and has good access to medical care too. How proactively will he take health care away from the poor? How active will he be in further increasing the division of wealth? While I'm dubious that another round of borrow and spend trickle down will have a different long term result than Bush 43's, I don't think Trump will produce an economy as bad as Cuba's under Castro. Pushing Trump = Castro is a bit much for me, but I'm not expecting a vegetarian tiger either.
For the same reason that I did not mourn Pinochet, I'm not mourning Castro.
All economic elites live far better than the masses. Just look at the Pope's residence (OK, there was a time when the Papacy was selected from the noblest families of Italy for political reasons). I don't see much difference between the Soviet nomenklatura and the American executive elite.
Castro was surely less indulgent than Nicolae Ceausescu, whose vulgarity offended as much as did his excess.
Donald Trump obviously has no mystique of leading a guerilla revolution against a nasty dictator (even if many of his supporters think of Obama as such he most certainly isn't). It is unlikely that Donald Trump will ever proclaim that he is involved in a totalitarian movement like Fascism, Apartheid, or Ku Kluxism as Castro proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist. His ideology will be the stated opposite of Castro's Marxist ideology -- as far as I can tell, a return to the capitalist order that Karl Marx gives as a stereotype. Like Castro, Trump is a demagogue. Both have readily used violent rhetoric. Both scapegoat, if about very different groups of people.
If Cuba has endured a loss of entrepreneurs, then the America of Donald Trump could have a huge loss of educated, imaginative, creative people. If he starts telling Disney to start praising entrepreneurs and to vilify unions and environmentalists, then Disney can pack up its creative talent and go somewhere in which it endures no such interference, and maintain offices in America solely for marketing. Australia could use the business. So could many other countries.
Much of the wealth in America is intellectual property. But records can be cut anywhere. Text can be created anywhere. Film, including animation, can be done anywhere. Should someone like Carly Simon find the heat on for letting You're So Vain be used against a political candidate she considered inordinately vain, then she can resurrect her recording career in England. Bollywood is now bigger than Hollywood. And don't fool yourself: the climates of California from San Francisco to San Diego can be found elsewhere.
When Hitler overthrew the Weimar Republic, a country with great cultural productivity, he chased out the creative people that he disliked. There was no greater gift ever to American culture than creative people who fled Hitler. American film studios got to create the successors of Metropolis and M. Nazi cinema became rubbish. America got many musicians who had played in the Berlin Philharmonic but could no longer do so because they were Jewish. They could go to New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. We got some excellent professors. The influence could be subtle. The camera technique used in all American sitcoms was introduced in I Love Lucy was introduced by a cameraman who had introduced some amazing techniques in Metropolis.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.