{"id":6623,"date":"2016-11-27T18:13:26","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T00:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6623"},"modified":"2016-11-27T18:13:26","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T00:13:26","slug":"making-sense-of-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6623","title":{"rendered":"MAKING SENSE OF MADNESS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Carlos Eire, eminent professor of history and religious studies at Yale helpfully explains the mythical spell of Fidel Castro:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Oddly enough, some will mourn his passing, and many an obituary will praise him\u2026 Because deceit was one of Fidel Castro\u2019s greatest talents, and gullibility is one of the world\u2019s greatest frailties. A genius at myth-making, Castro relied on the human thirst for myths and heroes. His lies were beautiful, and so appealing. According to Castro and to his propagandists, the so-called revolution was not about creating a repressive totalitarian state and securing his rule as an absolute monarch, but rather about eliminating illiteracy, poverty, racism, class differences and every other ill known to humankind. This bold lie became believable, thanks largely to Castro\u2019s incessant boasting about free schools and medical care, which made his myth of the benevolent utopian revolution irresistible to many of the world\u2019s poor.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Many intellectuals, journalists and educated people in the First World fell for this myth, too \u2014 though they would have been among the first to be jailed or killed by Castro in his own realm \u2014 and their assumptions acquired an intensity similar to that of religious convictions. Pointing out to such believers that Castro <a href=\"http:\/\/cubaarchive.org\/home\/index.php\">imprisoned, tortured and murdered <\/a>thousands more of his own people than any other Latin American dictator was usually futile. His well-documented cruelty made little difference, even when acknowledged, for he was judged according to some aberrant ethical code that defied logic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The rest is here.\u00a0 HT: Alan Jacobs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/global-opinions\/farewell-to-cubas-brutal-big-brother\/2016\/11\/26\/d369affe-0eeb-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html?postshare=1341480166071356&amp;tid=ss_tw&amp;utm_term=.ee07ecbf5211\">http:\/\/https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/global-opinions\/farewell-to-cubas-brutal-big-brother\/2016\/11\/26\/d369affe-0eeb-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html?postshare=1341480166071356&amp;tid=ss_tw&amp;utm_term=.ee07ecbf5211<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carlos Eire, eminent professor of history and religious studies at Yale helpfully explains the mythical spell of Fidel Castro: Oddly enough, some will mourn his passing, and many an obituary will praise him\u2026 Because deceit was one of Fidel Castro\u2019s greatest talents, and gullibility is one of the world\u2019s greatest frailties. A genius at myth-making, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,122,14,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conspirarcy","category-controversy","category-suffering","category-worldview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6624,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions\/6624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}