President Obama is on his historic trip to Cuba right now, though it’s proving historic in ways that Obama didn’t intend. Right before the president arrived, Cuban authorities took the liberty of arresting dozens of human rights protesters right before he arrived. Otherwise, being forced to confront the victims of the Communist regime might make things discomfiting for the president.
In any event, Obama seems content to remain oblivious. I’d particularly like to congratulate him on his photo op in front of a giant monument to Che Guevara, a mass murderer who has performed the neat trick of getting leftists worldwide to venerate him as some sort of idealistic free spirit. A lot of people are outraged by Obama’s photo, but thankfully we have the rotting husk of The New Republic to tell us the lame duck is really a brave honey badger, to be applauded for legitimizing communist Cuba’s murderous history. Or something:
Speaking of nightmares, upon reading that stupid squib, all I could think about was this letter from 2005 by the Cuban Jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera to the guitarist Santana, who did the soundtrack to the movie The Motorcycle Diaries.
That letter was originally published in El Nuevo Herald, but I became aware of it because one of the first places it was translated into English and published was the New Republic.
Now, the New Republic was a publication that I found disagreeable much, if not most, of the time. But it once had a sense of integrity and was well-intentioned. Having been bought and sold repeatedly in the last few years, forever making desperate and pathetic bids to be relevant to America’s angry and increasingly radical left, the new New Republic seems a bit too invested not in creating a better America, but in creating a callow place that has no sense of history.
