Babaloo's Waterloos: The Old Stand Bys

These are not new questions. Val has posed them all 100 times, at least, in different ways, because he knows that they will strike a chord with his readers when nothing else does. The questions are intended to sow division and distrust among Cubans, to pit the newcomer against the longtime exile, and to blame all Cubans for what Castro and his henchmen have done to our country. The old stand bys, the tried and untrue bromides.

This time around Val added a dash of alliteration to the poisonous mix. The "Topic for Tuesday' was "The Cuban people's worst enemy is the Cuban people." It was presented without qualifiers and Val himself subscribed to his own proposition in the "Comments." We did not and devoted a post of our own to explaining how truly disingenuous that statement was.

The next day it was "A Wednesday Wondering." This time, not wishing to be identified with his own proposition, Val posed it as a "True or False" question: "When it comes to Cubans there are too many chiefs and not enough [I]ndians." Is this supposed to be a bad thing? The desire to excel and to lead is berated in no one except Cubans. Most people are content to be followers. If Cubans desire to be leaders, what is wrong with that? If it is by their merits and with the consent of others then there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If, however, one man takes onto himself absolute power and governs arbitrarily and against the wishes of the people, as Castro and his clique have done for 50 years, then it is a dictatorial impulse for which the dictator should be blamed not his hapless people. The implication of this proposition is that every Cuban is a Fidel Castro in utero. No greater injustice could be committed or greater libel published against the Cuban people.

Today Val posited A Thursday Thought: "All Cubans are political asylees, regardless of whether they come solely for economic purposes. Sí o no?" Another misleading and tendentious question because no Cuban came to this country solely for economic reasons and no Cuban came to this country without at least some economic reasons, whether they came on January 1, 1959 or yesterday. We all political exiles and all economic exiles.

Cuban haters attract Cuban haters and the threads to these posts bear that out. Babalú is now the most notorious anti-Cuban blog in the Cuban-American blogosphere. What formerly was restrained is now in the open for all to see. No attempt is made to veil their hate and no excuse proferred for it. Vitriol flows in their veins in torrents, and so, in their opinion, should the blood of Cubans on the island to expunge the crime of 1959. Except that Cubans living on the island today are not guilty of the crime of 1959. 70% were not even alive then. They are the real victims of Castroism, not their contemporaries who were spared the horrors of Communism and now have the gall to blame its victims for not surrendering their lives so that some day they might be able to vacation in a country to which they owe no allegiance and for whose people they have only the greatest contempt.