Trump vs Fidel, False Left and Right Personified

https://spectator.org/frightened-by-trump-inspired-by-fidel/

I find that contrast is a great way to understand the vast differences in world view -- Trump vs Fidel is a great opportunity. The top linked article is an  example of those contrasts.

Here, Roger Cohen, a NY Times columnist who has savaged Trump sings the praises of Fidel.

Fidel. A single word suffices to evoke the man who descended from the Sierra Maestra with his ragtag army to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, purge Cuba of American domination, proclaim the empowerment of the poor, and embody Latin America’s thirst for an end to government by the pampered coteries of imperialism.

Here Cohen talks of the joys of "the left".

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen describes how, as Communist forces loyal to Ho Chi Minh advanced towards victory in Vietnam in 1975, his protagonist “longed to tell someone that I was one of them, a sympathizer with the Left, a revolutionary fighting for peace, equality, democracy, freedom, and independence, all the noble things my people had died for and I had hid for.”

One of Castro's many "achievements" accorting to the US press was lowering heart disease through famine and fuel shortages, causing his island prisoners to eat less and excercise more!

The food shortage was severe enough that per-person calorie consumption dropped to about 2,400 calories a day in the 1990s, and typical adults lost about 10 pounds. At the same time, they had to exercise more by walking or riding bikes instead of taking buses. The number of Cubans meeting exercise guidelines climbed to an impressive 80 percent.

Even a famine is cause for admiration when the dictator is Fidel!

Fidel was responsible for at least 10's of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees -- some of the people that fled Cuba no doubt helped Trump take Florida.

The key differences between "left and right" jump out here, and (as always) the confusion created by the wartime propaganda making Hitler and Nazi Germany "right", when in fact they were LEFT as all dictatorial and totalitarian regimes are -- the spectrum would better be called "Control vs Chaos" vs "Left and Right" (covered in detail here).

While the MSM in the US has been unremittingly disparaging of Trump, they at best can mount tepid criticism of Fidel. The closing paragraph of the Cohen article is an example.

Fidel was a flawed giant. By the end the only idea of his still standing was the anti-American nationalism taken on by the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. However, this is certainly not the moment to say his stand for the disinherited of the earth was unimportant. Nor, at a time when the United States has elected a charlatan as president, is it the moment to overlook the fact that Fidel was a serious and uncorrupt politician. Nor to leave unsaid the suffering he inflicted.

 For contrast, here is his article claiming Trump a sociopath. No explanation required on why Fido was a "serious and uncorrupt politician". From the left, mass murder does not corrupt you ... but surprisingly, living a hidden luxury lifestyle and being worth $900 million doesn't either! As we have discovered many times, being left means being incorruptible!

The themes that come out through a lot of the writing are:

1. The evil of historical America. Fidel thumbed his nose at America the capitalist/imperialist unjust nation. Putting America in "it's place" made Castro a hero to the left -- no matter the cost to his people. BO established relations between BOistan and Cuba at the end -- a victory for Fido.
   
2. The vision of the masses as "children" -- unable to care for themselves, they need a "strong man" to guide them -- "properly". But if that strong man is not a doctrinaire leftist, he becomes "dangerous", like Trump.
   
   It is here where the left/right dichotomy has some complexity. The ORIGINAL left / right of the French Revolution had "Church / monarchy" on the RIGHT, with "revolution" on the left. As I make clear in the "Left/Right" blog post linked above, my choice of the terms "Control vs Chaos" is obviously imperfect -- as any selection of a single axis to describe the complexities of ideology is bound to be.
   
   Religion is part of "natural" (in my world view). We are created with a spiritual hole to be properly filled by God -- on the left, that hole is filled by the state and leftist ideology. At the time of the French Revolution, the understanding of the "Natural Order" included God, The Church, and The Crown, "natural" was equal to "right" and thus included the church and state.
   
   Our founders separated church and state and allowed freedom of religion in what they saw as a "center-right" nation ... enough control to prevent chaos, but with the "divine right of kings" severed. The people gained power in the form of a democratic Constitutional Republic with a strict Constitution, separation of powers, and a number of anti-democratic measures to prevent shifting to toward democracy and the tyranny of the masses.
   

The MSM sees no danger in moving left continuously, and ideally by force -- you WILL bake a cake, you WILL let this man in the woman's locker room!, you WILL only contribute politically as we decree!.  Even slowing the slide to totalitarianism is seen as "fascist", thus the hatred of Trump. It is an article of faith for the left that "the masses" lack the intelligence and maturity to "make correct choices" without largely state controlled media, massive educational indoctrination, and  demagogic leaders like BO or Fidel -- thus, Trump must be destroyed at all costs.