
Castro has his doubts on Communism - zmitri
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/fidel-castros-doubts-about-cuban-communism-and-iranian-anti-semitism/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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zmitri
This has really changed my view point on Castro. I'm not sure if he's been
looking at lives of Cubans and realizing that maybe the revolution wasn't
worth it, or if he's just getting older and his youthful " altruistic
idealism" is fading.

Nice to see people can change their mind, and recollect... even after decades.

~~~
stephenjudkins
It would have been great if he'd realized it earlier.

However, I imagine that growing up during the great depression (especially
under a series of kleptocrat dictators) changes one's perspectives on the
relative merits of different economic systems. I'm currently reading a book on
J. Robert Oppenheimer, and I've been struck by the seeming ubiquity of very
left-wing views among brilliant young theoretical physicists in the 1930s.
Combine the dire economic circumstances in the US at the time with the rise of
the Nazis and little accurate knowledge of life under Stalin, and some very
smart people came to conclusions that seem very misguided in retrospect.

~~~
maxharris
It is very difficult to develop your own philosophy from scratch, which is
what it took back then to come to correct conclusions. In fact, doing this
took nothing less than a genius in the field, and these are very rare.

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ataggart
>"The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore."

Anymore?! What, it was working sometime during the past half-century of
murders, starvation, political imprisonment, destruction of wealth and civil
liberties, poverty, de facto slavery, and general screwing-over of generations
of Cubans to the extent they'd be willing to risk their lives floating in a
cardboard box to Florida?

~~~
jbooth
It's actually been a lot nicer to live in Cuba during most of that time than
much of the rest of Latin America. Pinochet comes to mind.

~~~
hugh3
What was so bad about Pinochet by South American dictator standards? It's hard
to think of any metric under which Pinochet's Chile could be considered worse
than Castro's Cuba.

~~~
jbooth
That's because you've spent your American life hearing about how Castro is the
devil (because Cuba was allied with the USSR!) and hearing very little about
Pinochet or any of the rest of Reagan's buddies.

I mean look at the comment I responded to, it sounded like they were running
gas chambers in Cuba. I'm no defender of communism or non-democratic
governments but just because someone wasn't allied with us doesn't necessarily
make them more of a monster.

~~~
hugh3
Actually I asked for information on how Pinochet was worse than Castro, not
just a repetition of the assertion that he was combined with a false
assumption about my nationality.

I don't claim to be an expert on South American dictators, but as far as I
know the worst thing Pinochet did was to kill and imprison thousands of
political dissidents, which is coincidentally also the worst thing that Castro
did.

~~~
jbooth
You've almost got it.

Now think: How come for certain people, whenever Castro comes up we hear about
how he was/is some exaggerated monster yet those people don't actually seem
concerned about Latin Americans or any other monsters in Latin American
history?

~~~
hugh3
Geez, you're _still_ not answering my question about how one was worse than
the other, you're just responding with unwarranted patronization and innuendo
about "certain people".

I'm the one arguing they're both in the same ballpark. You're the one trying
to argue Pinochet was worse.

------
absconditus
Source:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/fid...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/fidel-
cuban-model-doesnt-even-work-for-us-anymore/62602/)

------
echaozh
At least he admits what's real. We know the system doesn't work here in China,
but they won't admit it. They even force people to think the opposite.

------
gloob
This is the very definition of politics.

