Go Che!
October 9th, 2007
It’s apparently the anniversary of Che Guevara’s death. Or it was yesterday. The hero of half-witted leftists and t-shirt manufacturers everywhere is being honored. Hooray.
Then again, completely ineffective communists are the best kind, aren’t they?
Che was a hopeless idealist – completely out of place in the power game. He proposed to a CIA agent once that Cuba would keep to itself, stay out of other Latin American countries, if the CIA woudl stay out of Cuba. CIA interpreted this as a sign of weakness, and no such luck, eventually wound up sponsoring his murder. The Bolivians had to produce a finger cut off the corpse to prove it was Che.
SO anyway, your sneer at “half-witted” leftists might better be placed at agents of the US government that sponsor and engage in terrorism and clandestine murder. Read, sometime, “The Fish is Red”, a funny and interesting narrative summary of the Church Committee hearings of the late 1970’s. Or, on the other hand, if you like sausage, don’t ask how they make it.
The uglier moments of U.S. history you’re referring to are not being celebrated here, Che is. You can’t really deny the shallow veneration by people, especially on college campuses, who know little about him.
It’s not an either-or situation – they both can be criticized.
Where would high school history be without shallow veneration? Why single out Che?
Who says I’m singling him out? It was the anniversary of his death, there were news articles on it, so it seemed worthy of comment. Do I need to go through the entire list of historical figures celebrated for poor reasons to satisfy your sense of fairness? I only have so much time.
Fair enough – I was reacting to the characterization “half-witted leftists”. It offended me.
Why? I wasn’t calling all leftists stupid (that would be a rather odd thing for me to say).
I kind of like the fact that Che, after all these years, still inspires kids. I don’t think they are half-witted at all, just young. Che both inspires me and reminds me of ugly reality. Battista was an ugly fascist, and it was right to overthrow him. He should have quit while he was ahead.
Che, that is.