And He Will Go Gently Into that Dark Night

It had never ocurred to anyone that Fidel Castro's mind would die before his body did. And yet, in retrospect, nothing seems more obvious. Castro's body has never been exercised in the ways that other men's bodies have by the time they reach his age. He lived and will die a man who never did an honest day's work in his life, the national bitongo, because it took the unceasing labor and sacrifices of an entire nation to support his lifestyle, the nearest to that of a sultan which any man lived in the latter 20th century.

His mind, or, more precisely, his tongue did not live such a life of leisure. It was once calculated — and there is no reason to doubt it — that Fidel Castro has pronounced more words than any contemporary. The value of the words is negligible; their quantity prodigious. Fidel holds the record as the longest-playing record in the history of mankind. His parents wound it up 80 years ago and it is still humming the same monotonous tune, now more "mono" than ever before. Naturally that propitious organ was not a perpetual motion machine. The gears that kept his mouth moving were in his brain. It was an exceptional brain in its capacity to absorb information without the ability to process it. He had some knowledge of everything, or claimed to; but no practical knowledge of anything. He gathered numbers but could not add them; he drew conclusions in the absence of facts and made up facts to support his groundless conclusions. He thought he knew everything when in fact he knew nothing. Therein is the cause of every calamity that has befallen the Cuban people in the last 48 years. For it is better to be ruled by an incompetent who relies on others than by an incompetent who relies only on himself.

His latest interview (and probably his last), which was more carefully edited than The Battleship Potemkin, could not erase, but, rather, confirmed as never before the fact that Fidel's brain has at least kept up with the deterioration of his body, though I believe that by now it has actually gone leagues more on the route to extinction. In his declining years (will it be years?) he is destined to become a waxwork, more or less animated depending on his medication and other unpredictable factors, who will be rolled out periodically for important guests who don't want to miss out on the opportunity to say that they too communed with the great sham. In that twilight area between existence and non-existence he will quietly pass to the other life, or, for him, the perpetual void, unnoticed and mostly unlamented. We might almost regard this slow decline as poetic justice of a kind except that for every additional moment that Fidel languishes on earth, there are thousands of innocent men in his jails who suffer that many more minutes of unremitting suffering. If it necessary to end their suffering by wishing an end to his, then there is nothing that we can do but to wish him a quick release.

We will not know the satisfaction that the Romanians experienced when Ceausescu was terminated; nor shall Christmas bring the pleasant memory of our deliverance. Castro has eluded justice as he eluded responsibility for his acts all his life. We may hope that divine providence will settle accounts, but having been so indulgent with him thus far at our expense, I must really wonder what punishment could even come close to fitting his crimes.

On top of all his other shields — material or diabolitical — Fidel now has the additional one of an addled brain. No excuse or concession is to be denied him. His charmed life, with the common mishaps of an ordinary man and the compensations of those born to the purple in antique times, will end placidly; for he has no conscience and now probably does not even have the full recollection of his crimes.

There is a great unspoken secret among the survivors of the Holocaust; it seems almost indecorous to say and so it is seldom said. But the truth is that the Jews who did not lose their lives lost their faith in the Holocaust and it seems likely that such is and will be the reaction of many of our countrymen to his 54 years of inflicting pain and misery on our people without even a minute of retribution.