As you might expect, the Miami Herald has an excellent retrospective on the life of Fidel Castro who has passed away at the age of ninety. He was such a consequential man that there many angles one can take. As the Herald notes, “By the time he was 35, two American presidents had devoted a considerable amount of time and effort to killing him.”

Those efforts to assassinate Castro weren’t divulged to the Warren Commission and didn’t come to light until the early 1970’s when Congress began looking carefully at the activities of the CIA. But they explain a lot about why Castro ruled his island nation with an iron fist. That doesn’t excuse Castro, but it’s a perspective was that missing for too long as Americans formed their opinions of him.

His death is anticlimactic in a way, both because he turned the reins over to his brother years ago and because the Obama administration has improved relations with Cuba and lifted the travel restriction. Had he died during a period of greater tensions, it might have signaled a greater change in relations between our two countries.

There was a lot of reckless behavior on all sides during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the world very nearly came to an end as a result of Castro’s decision to invite Soviet warheads into his country, a mere ninety miles off the coast of Florida.

How you ultimately feel about Castro’s legacy probably reflects how you feel about America’s historic role in the world. That he outlived John F. Kennedy by fifty-three years is remarkable. So many things changed in the interim.

One thing that changed is that our country went insane.

I doubt that was vetted with the State Department.

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. – H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920.

I believe that H.L. Mencken nailed it.

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