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Matthew 7:3-5 King James Version (KJV)

³ And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

⁴ Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

⁵ Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

RobbietheRobot has it right. After conflating a tragic accident aboard the MAINE into a casus belli, the United States began the Spanish-American War with noble rhetoric about liberating the oppressed peoples of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, from the yoke of Spanish imperialists. However, in the words of the late historian Howard Zinn, "we liberated them from the Spanish, but not, of course, from ourselves." For sixty years, the U.S. micromanaged Cuba through a series of compliant dictators for the benefit of American corporations and banks. The successful revolution led by Castro put an end to that highly profitable exploitation, which is the real reason why he is so despised by American elites, not the conduct of his brutal, undemocratic regime. For decades, the United States has maintained warm, friendly relationships with dictatorial governments throughout the world, whose ghastly violations of human rights makes Castro look almost saintly by comparison. In many cases, such as in Iran, Guatemala, Zaire, Indonesia, Chile, and recently, Honduras, the U.S. has sponsored overthrows of democratically-elected governments by military thugs, with a resulting death toll in the millions. Castro's decision to invite the Soviets to station nuclear weapons on Cuba was a response to the American attempt to overthrow his government the previous year with the CIA's ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion. Additionally, Fidel survived hundreds of U.S. assassination plots. He wasn't paranoid. He had real, powerful enemies. His support for liberation movements throughout Latin America and Africa made him a hero throughout the third world. I strongly agree with much of your commentary, Thomas, but I would suggest that you consider the overall context in which U.S. elites vilify Castro. America today has the highest percentage of its people in prison of any first world nation. Millions lack adequate health care. Our public education system is an incompetent embarrassment. One in four American children live in poverty. Unpunished police murders of unarmed citizens is practically a daily occurrence. Our infrastructure of roads, bridges, water and sewer systems are antiquated and collapsing. Our gerrymandered "democracy," controlled by plutocrats, has bestowed its highest office to a candidate who received the second highest vote total in two of the last five elections. And all these injustices routinely take place in the richest, most powerful country in world history, the much-vaunted "land of the free," built largely by slave and horribly exploited labor, following the continual genocide of the native population. How dare the U.S. lecture others on democracy and human rights? Doesn't our long-standing policy of eagerly accepting Cuban refugees, while unceremoniously deporting those from U.S. supported hellholes, smack of rank hypocrisy? Why would anyone wish to consign the Cuban people once again to the tender mercies of predatory U.S. corporations?

Only diff twixt him and Batista was one was a dicktaster of the left; whilst the other was a dicktaster of the right. QED.

— He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust.

— He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators on earth.

— He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon.

— He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.

— He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.

— He forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels.

— He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.

— He outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.

— He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.

— He censored all means of expression and communication.

— He established a fraudulent school system that provided indoctrination rather than education, and created a two-tier health-care system, with inferior medical care for the majority of Cubans and superior care for himself and his oligarchy, and then claimed that all his repressive measures were absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of these two ostensibly “free” social welfare projects.

— He turned Cuba into a labyrinth of ruins and established an apartheid society in which millions of foreign visitors enjoyed rights and privileges forbidden to his people.

— He never apologized for any of his crimes and never stood trial for them.

In sum, Fidel Castro was the spitting image of Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel “1984.” So, adiós, Big Brother, king of all Cuban nightmares. And may your successor, Little Brother, soon slide off the bloody throne bequeathed to him.