Notable & Grotesque: Political Animal Compares John McCain to Jeffrey Dahmer

"With 30 years in Washington D.C., McCain is sure to have more skeletons in his closet than Jeffrey Dahmer. — Henry "Economist" Gómez, "McCain, the Media and Castro," Babalú, February 23, 2008

We know Henry's plan already. He has not been in the least reticent to reveal it. He wants John McCain to lose. Badly. So that Barack Obama can introduce socialism with a big "S" in the United States and recognize and underwrite it in Cuba. Then in four years, according to Henry's script, the whole nation will rise up against the Democrats and usher Newt Gingrich into the Oval Office or some other suitably cretinous xenophobe who will restore America to the status quo ante (that is, exactly where we are today).

Henry may be right about his country. America has shown itself to be very resilient in the past and may well withstand 4 years of unrelenting assault on its institutions and foundational beliefs. Maybe. But you can be sure that Cuban freedom will become an even more remote prospect if not an altogether unreachable one if Obama is allowed to "open Cuba," that is, to consolidate Communism in Cuba as Richard Nixon did in China.

Barack Obama is the promised land that Fidel Castro has been wondering 49 years in search of in a desert of his own making. Like Moses, Castro has even recognized that he must step aside for his dream to be realized and has resigned as head of state to make it easier for Obama to negotiate with his successors and open to them a new wondrous era of subsidies and limitless credits. At the beginning of the Revolution, Obama's idol of clay established the U.S. as the guarantor of Communism in Cuba under the terms of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact. Now his organic successor and continuator — or so Obama has been acclaimed by Kennedy's "Holy Grail" — will extend not only military protection to Castro's island sultanate but pay it tribute as well.

Henry proclaimed himself long ago to be an "American Cuban," which apparently means that it is the interests of the U.S. which are paramount to him. I cannot see how the interests of either the American or the Cuban people would be served by an Obama presidency. But it is neither American nor Cuban interests that really matter to Henry but the interests (as he perceives them) of his party, or rather, of the most reactionary faction of his party. In this, Henry has much in common with Fidel himself and other "purists" who are more than willing to bleed their people and wreck their country to maintain a social order amiable to their interests ideological and otherwise.

Henry, whose interests line up with Castro's more every day, is now chastising McCain for having publicly criticized Castro because this will supposedly evoke a counter-reaction from the media that might serve Castro's interests and damage McCain's and ours: "In attacking Barack Obama on his stance with regards to Cuba, McCain is certainly going to raise the hackles of the news media. You see Cuba is a sacred cow for the them. There are probably few issues that the mainstream media are as unanimous about as the embargo and U.S./Cuba relations. McCain should batten down the hatches now that he's taken a position contrary to his erstwhile buddies in the media."

First of all, this is not a new position for McCain who has been a consistent champion of Cuban freedom for the 30 years that he has been in the Senate, indeed, a champion in words and deeds long before that. Is this one of those "skeletons" which Henry thinks McCain should keep in his closet? No, McCain has never concealed in a "closet" or anywhere else his unconditional support for democracy in Cuba.

Henry believes this support to be a drawback. The solution, according to the political animal since the age of 5, is for McCain to stop criticizing both Obama and Castro. That way "his ertswhile buddies in the media," will, supposedly, return the favor and not criticize him. Right? No. Henry admits that the media will criticize him regardless because, in a particularly despicable phrase even for him, "[McCain] has more skeletons in his closet than Jeffrey Dahmer." At least that is what Henry hopes and the media will disappoint him sorely if they do not discover those "skeletons." Although Henry "applauds" McCain's anti-Castro rhetoric because "it is the truth," it is not a truth which he believes the American people are not ready for (if not now, when?) and he wishes that McCain would stuff his criticisms in that closet to which he has just alluded with whatever else may be "politically incorrect" in his past.

Whatever McCain does or does not say, the media will savage him as it would any other Republican. That is what the media do. It would not make any sense for McCain to court their favor when he can never hope to have it, much less to try to skirt their disapproval by becoming something he is not. His only hope is to hold steadfast to his beliefs and hope that his opponent will also. Then it shall be an easy choice for Americans in November.

What no one in his right mind, least of all a Cuban, should ever do is advice McCain to throw Cuba to the media jackals.

I confess that before becoming acquainted with Henry I had never known in the fullness of its meaning what has been described a "useful idiot." I knew, of course, that the breed existed and was by no means a new creation. What I did not understand until now is that they could really be oblivious to the harm they do and to the fact that they are accomplices of evil. But now I realize that a man can be so wrong in the estimate of his own abilities that he can serve the devil while thinking himself on the side of the angels. Of course, after he has been confronted with that fact time and again he longer has the excuse of ignorance although pride may supply its place; but then he would no longer be a "useful idiot" but a conscious agent of those nefarious interests.