Don't ever change, Washington Post. Even when you get an issue really right I know I can count on you to screw it up in the end. I was impressed with the short op-ed from last Sunday's paper that was critical of Cuba. It was a mixture of the author's artwork as well as a few short passages, and with a title like "As a boy, I fled despotism in Cuba. Now I’m fighting it here in America," you know it's just itching to open a can of stupid.
Edel Rodriguez starts the narrative of the childhood of a boy born in Havana in 1971, and with it describes some of the harassment that his family received at the hands of the Castro regime. I was somewhat surprised to see an account like this being in the Washington Post, providing narrative and imagery that shows the brutality of this regime that so many members of the Radical Left idealize.
He continues with a brief passage on how the government monitored its citizens and how easy it was to be snitched on by the local government agent (Attack watch, anyone?) His family tried to escape, was discovered, and punished accordingly. They finally managed to escape with the 1980 flotilla, and Rodriguez continues with adapting to life in America. And then it goes off the rails - this is one of the two anti-Trump images he uses in his post. Here is what he had to say:
Over the past year, though, I’ve sometimes strained to differentiate my adoptive country from the dictatorship I fled. Violence at political rallies, friends watching what they say (and noting who is in the room when they say it) and a leader who picks on society’s weakest — this has felt all too familiar. I began making art about what I saw, to bear witness. I wanted to hold up a mirror to the president’s daily abuses of the Constitution, test the rights given to me by that Constitution. I wanted to find out if this is really the land of the free, the home of the brave.I'd be lying if I said my jaw didn't drop when I read this.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
