“Dude, he’s a dictator.” That’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’s refreshingly simple takedown of Representative Bobby Rush, who has expressed the highest regard for Fidel Castro after a trip to Cuba. Rush has long availed himself of the right to participate in democratic elections in the United States. Yet he has no problem heaping praise on a man who has denied Cubans the same right for 50 years. This sort of hypocrisy runs deep in left-wing culture; it needs to be exposed and combatted, for the sake of the left. (Of course, we should expect nothing less from Rush, who used the word “lynching” in order to cow critics of the reprehensible, stinking corruption that made Roland Burris a Senator.)
…it’s weak to act like Castro is consistent with best of the progressive tradition. It’s weak to call out Dick Cheney here, and cheer on Castro over there. It’s weak to shout apartheid at Israel, and then turn around and applaud Castro. It’s weak to say, “Yeah, I hear you but…” Either repressively ruling a country for half a century and then conspiring to pass power to your brother, is wrong or it isn’t. We have to choose. Or we have to be jesters.
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