why i dig fidel castro

of all of america's wooly-faced archvillains, fidel castro has got to be my favorite. my mother raised me to have a deep respect for the man, the revolutionary. i know what you're thinking: castro is a horrible dictator, responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands. i cannot deny this to be the case, but i think i can offer a reasonable defense.

first off, compared to other dictators, castro hasn't really killed that many people. i mean, look at your hitlers, stalins, pol pots -- these guys murdered in the hundreds of thousands and millions. castro himself probably hasn't even killed more than a thousand people. having led a country through a revolutionary war and the ensuing power shift, it is reasonable to assume that a man might kill a thousand people. shit, bush has killed over a hundred thousand in just two years.

second, let's face it, some of those guys probably deserved the fate they got. don't forget that castro was responsible for overthrowing an even worse dictator (fulgencio batista) and his gang of bourgeois cronies. motherfuckers got shot, yes, but some of them just had to go.

third, cuba has done pretty well under castro. their economy has thrived (thanks to tourism and cigars) even in spite of over forty years of hypocritical, us economic oppression. they have some of the toughest environmental regulations of any nation, and the government is extremely supportive of the arts.

finally, castro just seems like he'd be a nice guy. he's always smiling and jovial when they show him on tv. i think he'd make a good grandpa. i'd like to sit down with him, have a nice glass of rum and a fine cuban cigar and say to him, "you know fidel, i dig your style man."