
What's your opinion of Fidel Castro?


He set out to overthrow the corrupt, brutal Batista dictatorship. He wanted what was best for all Cubans, not just the white casino and business owners, U. S. corporations, and land owners who treated brown-skinned and indigenous people literally like slaves.
Right after he came to power, he came to the U. S. to cultivate a relationship between the two countries. At that point, he was a socialist in the mold of Musaddiq, Peron or Chavez. But after his meeting with then VP Nixon, Nixon reported that Castro was just a damn commie. The U. S. immediately set out to destroy the new Cuban government because the U. S., ruled as it is by corporations and global bankers, would no longer be able to vacuum profit out of the island as it did everywhere else. Castro could not be bought.
After the U. S. essentially declared war on the revolutionary government, Castro had no alternative than to seek alliance with the USSR. He moved to a full communist economy.
Many of the white ruling class lost their plantations and businesses and fled to the U. S. Mobsters lost their casinos and property, too. And corporations cried their eyes out.
As for those who were imprisoned or executed, the fragile new government had little choice - either allow subversives to plot overthrow with the help of the CIA, or eliminate the threat. I can relate to that in light of the fact that there are people undermining the U. S. that I would love to see executed.
The U. S. always claims that its motives for attacking other countries are about human rights and democracy, even while its overthrow tactics result in misery and death to millions. It always call the leaders of those countries brutal dictators. The U. S. doesn't give one fuck about human rights or democracy. Anyone who hasn't figured that out by now is blind.
It's true that the Cuban government did some bad things such as outlawing homosexuality. But the U. S. was still practicing racial segregation at the time. Cuba was tough on drug use. It didn't put up with dissidents, so free speech and rallies were considered dangerous. In those respects, it was oppressive.
In the end, though, despite every effort by the U. S. to kill Castro, starve the country, and overthrow the revolution, Cuba managed to do fairly well by being innovative in the fields of agriculture and medicine. It has even helped a lot of countries around the world.
Castro, himself, was a mixed bag. Name one U. S. president who wasn't. But I think Castro was genuine in his desire to benefit the Cuban people. I think he was a good man. He was certainly courageous, intelligent, and incorruptible. And I applaud his success in keeping his rabid and extremely powerful northern neighbor at bay forever. Viva la revolución!
He was no worse than Batista. I’ve gotten a little inside info from Cuban nationals, and they’d rather be under Castro than Batista, given the choice (if both were alive, obviously). The old Batista regime was corrupt and in the pocket of both the American government and the American mafia. Sugar, tourism, gambling, prostitution…. Americans were seeing their cut. And that, along with the standard irrational American fear of communism existing, not even in America, but just existing, and Castro was always going to be portrayed as a bad guy to Americans.
All you need to know is that, to have my American education tell it, Cuba basically never existed until like 1950-something, then it suddenly existed as some major threat to the American way of life, lmfao. There was no backstory, just Cuba—>Castro—>bad—>U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!!🤦♂️😂 That pretty much tells you how unbiased the information source is.
Batista types is a country's worst nightmare as a leader willing to sell out his country and people for money and power. He isn't even close to the leader Castro was.
I don’t know much about him other than about his relationship with and his thoughts of JFK. There are transcripts of his interviews when asked about JFK and he was even in the middle of one when he got the call Kennedy was assassinated. Intriguing, interesting stuff for sure.
Other than that, don’t know much.
Opinion
27Opinion
He was a commie piece of shit that ruined what could have been a great country.
It’s disgusting how the left wingers here in the US glorify him even when the Cuban people protest against the tyranny Fidel created.
My first opinion: Fidel Castro is dead.
He led a revolution against a dictatorship... a good thing. But then he got too power-hungry, sided with the communists, and ruined his country.
In hindsight, he was initially good for Cuba, then became misguided.
America severely ruined his country's economy, plus added the embargo which left him no choice to become a communist, when he actually wasn't one but was forced into it.
From what I've learned in history, the US pretty much controlled Batista and was upset when Castro overthrew him.
Let's just say, it doesn't take much effort to guess where Ubisoft got its ideas from for Far Cry 6. Castillo is a paper-thin stand-in for Castro. Lacking only the iconic beard. The DLC Breaking Bad jokes also feel weirdly appropriate. As in, if we didn't have monsters that like the Castro regime running our current CIA, we'd probably have had the CIA plant a lot of real-life Walter Whites just to take out the real life Gus.
One thing the game gets wrong: it ignores China. Cubans this year decided they all wanted to be Dani Rojas. And then China invaded and put a stop to that nonsense.
He did good for Cuba. Cuba's working classes were being fucked by the upper classes, corrupt politicians like Batista, and exploitation by foreign countries like the USA. Castro broke the cycle that is pretty much the same all over Latin America, the rich stay rich and poor stay poor with no hope of economic success or education to better their selves. Under Castro Cuba's medical/ healthcare system became one of the best in the world for a 3rd world country. The Cubans are better educated because of the free school system and free higher education that was started by Castro's system. My opinion of Castro is good.
Given how people talk about "what he did do Cuba", you get the impression that Cuba under Batista was a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity LMAO.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jeH3MTNUjmUAnd FYI, he wasn't originally a communist. His revolution was to make Cuba's wealth benefit it's people versus crime sindicates in the US. He became a communist to ally with the USSR because he was afraid of an invasion by the US.
I know he wasn't a communist.
Yet another human who exploited the lives of others for personal gains and went insane with power. Whether he started off with the intent of becoming a ruthless military dictator or not is debatable, but I don't know a single person of Cuban descent who has anything but unadultered resentment for him.
As someone who personally knows survivors of his Gulags. I can say that I hate him. He was a dictatorial Warlord who didn't care about Cuba, and only wanted to pander ro his largest ally at the time. His actions hurt and displaced people I know and love. For that he will always be seen as a Demon.
All we can do is compare him to other communist leaders. He didn’t have gulags or secret police- that I know of- and didn’t kill thousands or millions. He didn’t do much for his country though. Just let it rot as he drank banana daquiris. Though the 60 yr American boycott didn’t help.
He’s a good communist. The only good one is a dead one.
If you talk to actual Cubans none of them like him. And that’s pretty telling.
So it doesn’t matter what I think.
He's actually adore by many Cubans. Most Cubans in the exile don't like him.
I don’t know a single Cuban in South Florida that speaks positively of him. And by the way many of them still have family in Cuba
Those Cubans born in the U. S have been brainwashed by their misguided parents and media.
Cuba should consider themselves lucky that a man with balls of steel was once their leader and fought for his country's freedom and was willing to die doing so against anyone.
The U. S. ruined his dreams to see Cuba become prosperous.
If it wasn't for U. S. sanctions and embargo Cuba will today be a very prosperous paradise.
The Cubans in Florida were the pro-Batista crowd, and their descendants. Cuban-Americans will largely be anti-Castro. My girlfriend lived in Cuba with a Cuban family for a few months, they have very different opinions. Not perfect, but he was a hero to the dark-skinned Cubans who dealt with a lot of racism from the light-skinned Cubans who were mostly pro-Batista back in the day and were effectively an oppressive “1%”, to have some tell it. So when Batista was overthrown, the defectors who came to the US looked like Pitbull and Gloria Estefan. Go to Cuba, a lot people look more like Yasiel Puig. Racism isn’t just an American problem.
Life in Cuba actually isn’t so bad, I’m told, it’s just no-frills, mostly because of problems that result from the US embargo. But there’s little to no crime, everyone had what they needed to survive, you just don’t live fancy. And what the hell is wrong with not living fancy? Lmao. To ask the Cuban-Americans about Castro is kind of like asking a British Redcoat what they think of George Washington. Washington is a “bad guy”, if he’s the one who led a charge that killed someone you love who was just a patriotic Brit just trying to do right by his country, the same way people in America respect their own perceived patriots. But one man’s hero is another man’s villain, it’s all relative. Not say it’s right or wrong, it’s likely just “neutral”, but every story has multiple sides and perspectives.
Ah well. Most Cuban Americans would disagree with you. But if you insist you’re smarter than the exiles who have actually fled communism and lived there than so be it
Many of them were born in Cuba and have family still living there by the way
@WhiteSteve: Exactly. I liked the British and George Washington as a comparison. Lol 😂
@WhiteSteve I dont know what actual Cubans think but the ones in Florida sure as hell ain’t happy at all with him. So in the interest of politics and electability Trump’s anti-communism stance helped him win Florida
@Hispanic-Cool-Guy And how do you explain the protests in Cuba this July?
Never said it’s for everyone. Some people want to be rich, not just survive, to feel superior to others, I guess. People will still want out. My buddy is married to a Cuban guy, he went to dental school for fucking FREE in Cuba, and bounced for America because he didn’t want to only make like $15 an hour for it, which seemed very offensive to him. I didn’t really respect his mentality. Be a dentist because you want to help people, don’t do it for the money. I mean, holy fuck🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ But yeah, kid had NO PROBLEM getting like $200k worth of schooling for nothing and then coming here to cash in. Strong character💪😂
People who just like to yell that America is the best and everyone else either sucks or is bad, they usually HATE that analogy😂
@WhiteSteve I could care less that some guy got a free education. All at the expense of Cuba’s wealthy that create jobs and lead to actual development
But that’s what I’m saying…to go back to the American Revolution analogy, you wouldn’t find many colonists in 1776 with much good to say about King George. We automatically side with the colonists because it’s our country, we’re biased. Right, wrong, or somewhere in between, it’s just a learned behavior to be like “fuck the opps”, lmao, for anyone. Taliban and ISIS think Americans are horrible, and you would too, if you grew up in that culture. Relative to their culture, how we live is wrong, in their eyes, and vice versa. Three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth.
@WhiteBoyChill: Well, Cuba have gone bad. Cuba will suffer another revolution to get rid of communsim.
So how do you counter it when the wealthy are oppressive? Just sit there and take their shit with a smile? Or revolt?
I’m just saying, modern Cuba, there are certainly some luxuries missing, but there’s hardly any crime, everyone has what they need for the most part (albeit improvements could be made), and most importantly, the citizens are generally happy. This is the opinion of one family, to be fair, but it’s one family who lives IN Cuba, and has enough generations still surviving to have experienced both capitalist and communist Cuba, and both men as leaders. Like anywhere, people have complaints. And the now-Cuban-Americans were the ones with sugar plantations and whatnot, fucking with dark-skinned Cubans, and they took the L, so of course they’re salty. Again, it’s not that anyone is right or wrong, it’s just that there are different perspectives, all of which are real and valid. My issue is only that people have this weird objection to other countries they don’t even live in and wouldn’t otherwise give two squirts of piss about, operating as a communist society. I can’t for the life of me understand how it’s anyone’s concern who isn’t Cuban, how Cuba operates.
@WhiteSteve Because some people want to bring Cuba’s politics to our own country
He was an evil dictator up words of Stalin Mao and Hitler
Well I have a friend whose Grandparents were from Cuba from what I understand is the guy's a real piece of s***
Many people who has fled to the US from Cuba has definitely hated this guy with a passion and I don't blame them. Socialism ruins countries and Cuba is no exception.
"Socialism ruins countries and Cuba is no exception."
Tell me all about how Cuba was a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity under Batista.
@Ad_Quid_Orator I'm gonna be real with you, I don't know all that much about Batista. However, surely he seemed to be just as much of a socialist if he used the state against his own people enough to drive them to revolt.
He used the state power to enforce the power of the wealthy business owners and cracked down on any attempt to unionize. I heard of stretching the definitions but this is ridiculous.
@Ad_Quid_Orator ok so it sounds like the regime didn't change much did it? Working and living conditions were and still are shit, the currency was and still is barely worth anything and nothing can get produced either way because being under threat by a firing squad isn't as great as motivating factor as you might think.
Infant mortality rates are lower in Cuba than they are in the US so obviously that's BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-_6KQ75nE
@Ad_Quid_Orator There is a paper written by economist Roberto M. Gonzalez suggesting that Cuban authorities might have been lying about that statistic. fee.org/.../
Also, even if that was the case, that one stat alone does not determine the overall standard of living for a country.
Oh, it might not be higher than the US? Well it's still way higher for a country with a similar GDP per capita and the standard of living skyrocketed compared to that under Batista. Yeah Castro was an authoritarian (even though he had to model his system after the USSR to form an alliance with them because he feared the US would overthrow him for making Cuba's wealth benefit Cubans versus American crime lords) but so was the previous regime. And you see this pattern over and over where right wing pundits talk about how communists brought tyranny to places like Russia and China when in reality they were authoritarian long before communism came to power. So the idea that putting the collective before the individual leads to tyranny is BS. What leads to tyranny is concentrating power in the hands of the few (the core principle of capitalism).
@Ad_Quid_Orator I am not saying that the regimes before the communists took over weren't authoritarian. I am saying that because both the current and the former regimes are authoritarian, we should stay the hell away from their ideas unless you want to completely undermine the entire reason why the US was created in the first place, to live free from tyranny.
And no, "concentrating power in the hands of the few" is the literal definition of an oligarchy not capitalism. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, capitalists tend to want government as far away from their daily lives as possible and why they call people like Zuckerburg "tech oligarchs". That also means that corporations cannot exist under capitalism as corporations recieve a degree of funding from the state in exchange of enforcing the narratives the state wants to enforce.
The merger of corporation and state? That sounds awfully familiar doesn't it?
Private ownership of the means of production concentrates power in the hands of the owners; capitalism leads to oligarchy whether it's enforced by the state or not. And talking about how corporations are only able to get as wealthy as they are is a blatant lie by omission because it breaks economic growth to a 0-sum game. Without state involvement in the economy (lase-fair capitalism) big corporations wouldn't have as much wealth BUT there would also be way less wealth top go around and a higher percentage of that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of the few. Now the government could do more to benefit the population versus big corporations (and vice versa) BUT things are just going to be worse for everyone if you get the government out of the economy.
@Ad_Quid_Orator "capitalism leads to oligarchy whether it's enforced by the state or not; capitalism leads to oligarchy whether it's enforced by the state or not"
Well, it shouldn't because at least the state is supposed to stop something like that (which is why we have antitrust laws) but no, we have something called lobbying where the marriage of the state and corporation can take place.
The left doesn't consider this corrupt because it touts their propaganda no matter how contextual it is and silences those who disagree calling them Nazis or white supremacists counting on the average person's dislike of people who actually believe Nazi and white supremacist ideology and not the exact opposite which is usually anti-state control and pro individual liberty.
@Ad_Quid_Orator "And talking about how corporations are only able to get as wealthy as they are is a blatant lie by omission because it breaks economic growth to a 0-sum game"
I never said that they got rich the legitimate way. I think the reason they are staying rich has partly to do with the state's influence and that they own a huge chunk of the services we use, making them unreasonably harder to compete with.
The economy used to not be a zero sum game because actual major purchases in life (housing, car, education) weren't as expensive due to the lack of lending services. Now that they do, the prices skyrocket now that people can buy now and pay it all back later and more money will be owed at the end of the day.
Also the unions suck which is why cars are so expensive. Employees are only required to make so many parts in one shift so they rush and then fuck around for the rest of the shift and will very likely never be fired for it. Now you will end up paying more due to the lower supply. Congratulations.
@Ad_Quid_Orator "Without state involvement in the economy (lase-fair capitalism) big corporations wouldn't have as much wealth BUT there would also be way less wealth top go around and a higher percentage of that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of the few."
As much as I am slightly against LFC, I disagree because you have no way of knowing that a higher percentage of the wealth will be in the hands of the 1%. If you don't get paid as much as you'd like, there is nothing stopping you from continuing to look for work. I think the government is supposed to stop that wealth gathering of the 1% but a load of good that is doing right now, we keep feeding the beast and yet they never do it. Maybe we should stop.
"Now the government could do more to benefit the population versus big corporations (and vice versa) BUT things are just going to be worse for everyone if you get the government out of the economy"
Why? The reason we have so many issues right now is because they are influencing the economy in ways they shouldn't and not in ways that they should which is far less than they do now. Fixing that would bring back capitalism as it was and how it should be.
Actually if you want to see what happens when you have minimal state protectionism in the economy you can look at the third world which is why the third world looks the way that it does.
@Ad_Quid_Orator Really? Just in August, we saw a terrorist organization take over the government in Afghanistan. I guess that means that terrorist organization isn't a threat to the people of Afghanistan now that they are the government, right?
A government can be authoritarian without economic protections; like Afghanistan and the Batista regime.
@Ad_Quid_Orator OK and? My entire point is that taking control of the economy is a very common way for a government to corrupt a country because it is an easy access to brainwash it's citizens. That's what every regime in WWII did, that's what most if not all countries are doing now and if we don't put a stop to it we could very well end up like those countries.
The fact that we have corporations means that we have already begun in our descent into fascism, the fact that we have at least one side of the political spectrum trying to turn the races against each other for retarded reasons means that we have begun our descent into Nazi ideology and the idea that the government should take control of everything (making it no different than the only corporation in existence) being more and more favored by the youth of today means that we have begun our descent into authoritarianism as a whole.
If we keep going down this path I see a dark future for this country.
"OK and? My entire point is that taking control of the economy is a very common way for a government to corrupt a country because it is an easy access to brainwash it's citizens."
Actually power is enforced through the police and military, not through social safety nets. Yeah, some authoritarian regimes had social safety nets but that's not how they maintain power.
And the US (along with many countries) is in a Democratic backsliding process but that has been driven by the right, not the left and now the GOP more closely resembles authoritarian parties than democratic (lowercase d) ones.
www.vox.com/.../republicans-supreme-court-gop-trump-authoritarian
And when it comes to positive rights, there is no "individual versus the state". This may be the case when it comes to negative rights but with positive rights, it's the collective versus private concentrations of power.
@Ad_Quid_Orator There is no such thing as a positive right. Call it what it really is: an entitlement to someone else's work. Actual rights are something that we already have and no one needs to provide it but protect it.
Really, the fact that we are calling everything a right now is the reason why fewer and fewer people seem alarmed about the fact that our bill of rights is slowly being shredded and replaced with these new "rights".
Positive and negative rights are both protected by taxes that we all contribute. In order to have freedom of speech, it's not enough for the government to not have you arrested for saying something, they also provide you tax funded police protection from private citizens who would commit violent acts against you for saying something that they disagree with.
The only entitlement going on is with people who want to utilize the benefits society provides while not wanting to pay back into it.
@Ad_Quid_Orator If the police ARE violating the rights of others, which I am sure it's not hard to convince you that they are and I agree, then I think we should be able to choose where out taxes go and decide not to put it towards the police. At the very least that will give us leverage over the cops to not violate our rights.
You're right, I don't want to pay for the majority of what the state is doing because either I don't need/use them or infringes on my rights but I go to prison if I don't.
We all pay taxes and we all have a say in what they're spent on and we make our voices heard in the ballot box. That's what taxation with representation is about.
@Ad_Quid_Orator There is only so much we can decide when politicians lie about what they are going to do in office like how Biden said he wasn't going to put in vaccine mandates, which thankfully failed for now.
And without an imperfect representative voice the only alternative is a society dominated by businesses that were built up to exploit the public.
Opposition to the lockdowns and mandates was never about freedom and it was only ever about exploitation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFqNAEx1lm4&t=473s
@Ad_Quid_Orator Exploitation of what? Your ability to be under state control? Your ability to be so feckless that you need the state to babysit you and everyone else?
You should be thanking those all around the world who oppose the lockdowns that we aren't like Australia where anyone can be thrown in internment camps like Howard Springs with no due process all because of an accusation of being nearby someone with covid. All in the name of safety.
Were it not for the lockdowns, the economy would be even more fucked up because a sizeable fraction of the workforce would have been incapacitated when they were too sick to work and unlike the lockdowns don't discriminate between essential and non-essential workers. This would have left absolute ruin to our economy and were it not for government programs, the majority of the population would have to chose between being dependent on private financial institutions built from the ground up to exploit the public or utter destitution.
The problem with your perspective is that you just see the government as a private institution bent on consolidating power. There was a time that was the case (pre 1776 when we were ruled by a monarch) but we had a revolution to make a government to serve as a representation of the popular will of the people. It's not "the nanny state" it's big US.
@Ad_Quid_Orator If we never locked down, we would still have people working while the sick stayed home until they were better. When we had stay at home orders, the government decided who gets to work and who has to lose theirs and that is none of their business.
Whether they are private or public is irrelevant. What matters is how influential they are in everyone's lives and how hard it would be to fight them if they turned on us. Corporations have a lot of influence over our lives because they make products that make up the cornerstone of how we communicate and do our business. Because they have so much influence, they can have borderline slave labor in places like China where the workers are paid so little they kill themselves often as well as a bunch of other messed up stuff and we know this is happening, but we keep buying their shit because it costs too much to stop using them.
The state works in a very similar way. The combination of the fact that they are impossible to ignore in our daily lives, no one is allowed to compete with their services with only one exception I can think of and that it is illegal to not fund them even if you never use them, they can turn on you and there is very little you can do because you have no choice but to rely on them. This is why I am all for self governance and the constitution because that is the best way that government can stay out of our lives enough to make our own decisions while they can still be helpful in terms of stepping in when someone violates the rights of others, as defined in the constitution.
@Ad_Quid_Orator This is why I find it interesting that you mention the revolutionary war because the constitution was designed to not become tyrants and yet you seem to be totally fine with the state ignoring it all the time. Once the state knows that they can get away with ignoring the promise they made to protect our rights, they will just do it more and more and who you elect will matter less and less. Some will speak out but they will be disparaged as "conspiracy theorists" or the like and be dismissed by political opponents without any debate. Meanwhile for those who are on their side will tell them to wait until the next election cycle and they will win then, neither of which are good plans. The same shit happened in Germany when Hitler took power, "oh, that won't happen" or "that's ok we'll get em next cycle". Thankfully some fled and some actually tried to stop Hitler from taking power before the Night of Broken Glass happened. Then at that point, you could either die a warrior's death or just hop into the oven.
We are seeing similar signs of this happening, the slow but eventual collapse of our currency and the strong political divide, enough where people can actually lose their job if they agree or disagree with a certain opinion that has no relevance to the job itself. I don't think we have been at this point since the civil rights movement when you can be fired for wanting integration.
All I am saying is we should never let it get to that point again, but I fear that the only way we can learn how harmful this will be to us is if we actually let it happen.
Nothing done so far has violated the rights laid out in the constitution. The first vaccine mandate was passed here in the USA back in 1809 well within the living memory of the founding of this country. Mask mandates aren't government overreach any more than indecent exposure laws are and social distancing laws don't violate the freedom of association any more than fire codes do. And one thing is true, the US has experienced Democratic backsliding towards authoritarianism BUT this has been driven by the GOP which is now in the autocratic camp.
As for comparisons with Nazi Germany, if you think people have to cooped in their house or play a round of Russian Roulette, you've already fallen deep into the fascistic us versus then mindset. When tyrants come to power, they use the fear of a foreign country (China) and subversive elements (Antifa) to reconcile powers, they don't use forces of nature like pathogens. However, while the state using a force of nature to reconcile power is next to unheard of, downplaying the severity of a force of nature has a long history of being used to reconcile unaccountable private power. And whether or not there's a risk of the workforce at a job being incapacitated by a viral outbreak has relevance to the job itself.
@Ad_Quid_Orator Just because it was made law doesn't mean it was good, just or moral. People who hid Anne Frank were in violation of the law but the Nazi soldiers who killed her in the end were in compliance of it. As a practice, I think wearing masks and social distancing is fine but adding state power to it only breeds authoritarianism because enforcing that requires extreme scrutiny of other people's actions. Need I bring up Australia again and their covid internment camps like Howard springs, you know where they can throw people who they suspect had close contact with covid positive individuals without due process?
"they don't use forces of nature like pathogens"
Wrong, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hitler had propaganda posters that translates to "Jews are lice, they spread typhus". https://perspectives. ushmm. org/item/propaganda-poster-jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus
We both know that Jews are not lice and don't cause typhus but to say that Hitler never used pathogens to inflict fear into his people is wrong.
Very much like what Hitler did, I think the fear over covid is way too blown out of proportion. Whatever we did for swine flu or sars, seemed to work just fine and no one seemed all that scared to get it as people do now for covid, probably because the state requires this fear in order for the laws that were put in place has legitimacy. Otherwise, a lot more people would be as pissed off as those who are against the mandates now, like those who were actually awake in history class enough to know that you NEVER give government an inch because they WILL take several miles and will continue to take until we put a stop to it. The US government has done this multiple times and people are too blind to see that the rights the government promised they would protect is being stripped from them.
" As a practice, I think wearing masks and social distancing is fine but adding state power to it only breeds authoritarianism because enforcing that requires extreme scrutiny of other people's actions."
The same could be said of indecent exposure laws and fire codes; but would you consider an evacuation ORDER during a hurricane to be an overreach of state power?
Also you seem to be living in a bubble where you think that the only thing that can take away freedom is the state; it's not. When people have to stay confined to their homes or face a chance of dying from a pathogen, that is a violation of their individual rights; rights that mask mandates and social distancing laws protect. And yeah whenever we go outside we risk dying but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do what we can to minimize it. Whenever you go out on the road, you risk dying of a car accident but we still have a wide range of traffic laws to minimize the risk of dying in a car accident.
Hitler didn't blame an outbreak of typhus on the Jews to gain dictatorial power; he used the prevalence of typhus in the camps as propaganda after he crammed thousands of people in them in un-hygenic conditions.
But the threat of COVID has not been overblown; it has killed more Americans than any war in our nation's history and if we did nothing, the death toll would have been in the millions. But people who want to downplay have embraced the same us versus them mentality when it comes to the vulnerable that has personified fascist regimes.
@Ad_Quid_Orator No because at least we can SEE a tornado, fires and all that other stuff. Because we have the government feeling that we must all live in a medical surveillance state, we have some denying that covid exists because they cannot see it and the government uses it to slam the boot down on our faces.
I never said that the state is the only one who can take freedoms away but of all the cases where countries turn to shitholes it is usually due to governments being uber corrupt because it is their job to protect our freedoms at all costs. If they disregard any of their freedoms for any reason then they suck at their job. They want control of everything because they cannot stand the idea of people having their own thoughts and actions. You compare it to being a pedestrian but the problem with your comparison is that if anything happens to them, the law rarely considers the pedestrian at fault. These covid laws cover everywhere and you are FAR more likely to survive covid than a car crash, that's why I think they are far too overblown and uses the hysteria of a disease to violate our freedoms.
Then why would Hitler say that Jews cause typhus if this only happened in the camps? Did the civilians know that about the camps or did Hitler use it to make the civilians avoid contact with Jews?
And yes, I know covid has killed more people than the civil war but there are still factors that you are missing. The vast majority of the people who died from it have a weakened immune system like the morbidly obese or have a medical history where it left their immune system weakened. Instead of just warning those people of the risk of exposing themselves to people who have it, they want EVERYONE to do it under the boot. Places like Austrailia are throwing people in camps over this and it needs to stop in the US before it gets to that point.
-You can see covid, but you need a microscope but because you can't see something with your bare eye doesn't make it a threat.
-Actually, every year there are 5.25 million car accidents and 35,000 deaths (.67% mortality rate) while there have been 60million covid cases and 836,000 deaths (1.39% mortality rate). So, saying my body my choice when it comes to the vaccine mandate is even more asinine than saying my body, my choice when you down a bottle of wine before you drive. Too bad people are surrendering their freedom to not have to wear a mask in a public setting like they surrendered their freedom to drive wasted.
-He used it to demonize the Jews AFTER he caused typhus to spread among them in the ghettos by cramming them together (basically the opposite of social distancing).
-"Vast majority" is a nebulous term, give me a fraction. Because as much as you indulge in this "us versus them" mentality, there isn't one subset of the population who doesn't have to worry about covid and another that will die from it if they get it. There's a continuum where a small part of the population might have a 50% chance of dying from it if they get covid while another has a.1% chance. However, if we're talking about those who would have a 5% chance of dying from it, we are no longer talking about a negligible part of the population.
Now here's a thought experiment: would you rather go to prison for 1 year or play 1 round of Russian roulette (i. e. facer a 1 in 6 chance of dying). And if you chose jail, how many chambers would the cylinder have to have for you to choose Russian roulette, 10, 16, 20? And if it was between sheltering in place or playing a round, how many then?
Also, if the hospital system is overrun, people who will need medical care will have to be turned away and there will be a surge in preventable deaths because the healthcare system can't handle them and the coronavirus cases.
@Ad_Quid_Orator
- Yes I know but not everyone has a microscope nor can they readily capture a virus at will and look at it if they do.
- The only way your analogy would work is if every single driver drove wasted, which is easy to see in someone because their judgment is impaired. We can't always see that someone has covid because they are asymptomatic. Also, one thing that people love to conveniently leave out is the fact that according to the CDC, only 6% of the deaths of covid only have covid as the cause of death, the rest of the covid deaths have covid along with other conditions, pre-existing or otherwise, but there is no specification of which condition was the most influential.
-I never said that Hitler used social distancing. The point was that Hitler used pathogens not only to use as an excuse to gain power but to demonize a certain group of people.
-I am not participating in your retarded thought experiment because it makes no sense in context. If you are trying to compare that to what is happening now you got the numbers all wrong. If you want to go build your own commune somewhere in the US, because you can absolutely do that, and force everyone under house arrest and you and your police force can come to everyone's homes in hazmat suits to spoon feed them you are more than welcome to do that, good luck trying to get anyone to come with you though.
-Yeah, pandemics make hospitals overrun and the reason they keep turning people away is because the hospitals run by Big Pharma's pricing of which the government you keep kissing the ass of refuses to do anything about except completely make hospitals public and ask any Canadian (outside of Quebec because they seem to love the government no matter what it does) how that is going.
-That analogy works because the pathogen spreads from person to person (i. e. makes them 'wasted').
-The difference is that Hitler deliberately put people in conditions conducive to the spread of disease (kind of like how the GOP denied homosexuals medical care and used the exacerbated AIDS crisis to demonize them). We're condemning people who engage in practices conducive to the spread of the disease, whether they be people refusing masks/vaccine mandates, the Reagan administration for neglecting AIDS care for the LGTBQ+ community or the Nazis for cramming people in ghettos.
-Social distancing and vaccine mandates aren't keeping people under house arrest, but without those a people have to remain in their homes or risk dying. If ~1/7 people have to stay couped in their homes or face a 1/6 chance of dying, that's a far greater infringement of liberty than any lockdown measure in any country (let alone the US).
My grandfather is in the sign advertising business back then and he met Fidel and he actually made a sign for him before he turned bad
Dopey Communist who took advantage of a corrupt situation in Cuba and generally made it worse.
he's an evil man who drove cuba back into the stone age
Better than average pro pitcher , communist , and dictator.
The Cromwell of the Caribbean.
He's dead now who cares.
He’s a scumbag commie. Like all commies.
Why? You want his regime here?
I would have loved to have a leader like Fidel Castro in my home country.
No saint, did some bad stuff and mistakes but overall a great leader and decent human being.
All you ever heard is the negative from his enemies.
He had to be by force under the circumstances he and his country was in.
Yes, he did when he had a country (USA) hell bent attacking and undermining his country.
Because the U. S. evaded his country. Cuba is no match for the U. S. military so Castro did what he thought he had to do to protect himself and his country from future invasions by making partnership with a equal military which was the Savoit union.
The bay of pigs was a direct invasion of his country.
Backed and supported by the U. S. help.
I'm defending and admiring a man that stood up for his country and cared for the welfare of his people and not the best interest of greedy and corrupt pricks.
Nope. The scumbags that he did killed deserved to be killed because they will try to overthrow Castro and put Cuba in a vulnerable position.
Anti patriots can't be trusted and must be killed.
A patriot doesn't mean America or American. A patriot is a person who looks after the best interest of their own nation.
Where did I write of what you are accusing me of? Lol...🙄
A commie dictator aka a cunt
Im not sure what opinion you want me to have
He was a murdering evil thug.
He killed a bunch of scumbags.
And killed many more good people too. Had a pastor whose family were murdered because of that sick SOB.
Castro had faults but overall he wasn't a bad man. He killed anyone that threaten Cuba's best interest.
Traitors will be killed as they should.
He didn't care about Cuba. He and his family killed people to enrich themselves.
Not true.
100% true. And anyone who can defend the Castros are cut from the same cloth of those who defend Hitler.
no opinion
Dirty Commie
Deep undying hatred
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