<story><title>Fidel Castro has died</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38114953</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erokar</author><text>On the contrary, it&amp;#x27;s dangerous not to call out evil for what it is. Of course it might be wise to try to analyze what genetic&amp;#x2F;family&amp;#x2F;social&amp;#x2F;economic&amp;#x2F;political factors shape people like Castro, Gaddafi, Franco etc. — but if you think you&amp;#x27;re dealing with people like you and me you fail to grasp the phenomenon.&lt;p&gt;Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did, share a very predictable set of psychopathic&amp;#x2F;narcissistic&amp;#x2F;paranoid personality characteristics. They are, by definition, not normal.</text></item><item><author>jknoepfler</author><text>I would encourage the commenters in this thread who see Fidel&amp;#x27;s legacy as a black-and-white matter of an &amp;quot;evil dictator who did bad things and was wrong about economics&amp;quot; to step back, bear witness to the objective facts about Fidel Castro&amp;#x27;s life (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fidel_Castro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fidel_Castro&lt;/a&gt;), think sincerely about what could lead a highly intelligent and charismatic person to become or follow Fidel Castro (as many have), and take a moment to reflect on the complexities of global politics in the 20th century.&lt;p&gt;I am not a fan of Fidel Castro - quite the opposite - but humans are cut from a common cloth. When we see revolutions turn into dictatorships, and idealism deteriorate into a cynical fight to survive, it is foolish and dangerous to dismiss the dictators and revolutionaries as &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;idiots&amp;quot; or some similarly otherizing term. It is dangerous because it means we are refusing to learn from history, and to apply the lessons of other lives to our own. Fidel Castro&amp;#x27;s mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from.&lt;p&gt;If you hold yourself holier than Fidel Castro, and think that celebrating the death of someone you perceive as &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; is prudent, take a deep long moment and try to learn something non-trivial from his life. &amp;quot;Fidel Castro&amp;quot; in the particular was not some kind of unique demon who plagued humanity. He was a charismatic revolutionary who occupied a very complex time. His life&amp;#x27;s trajectory was in many respects one of tragic failure. He may have, in reality, occupied a very dark corner of history, but that is for us to learn and judge, not to assume.&lt;p&gt;If you think you&amp;#x27;re better, then do better. Be better. Don&amp;#x27;t refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>krmboya</author><text>This makes me wonder of what one would say of the faceless individuals that worked behind certain governments to indirectly cause death and suffering of millions of people, say in a place like Africa.&lt;p&gt;Like the well-known western government(s) that deliberately destabilized The Congo early in its independence and installed a dictator, because they did not like the ideological leanings of whoever was in power then? A conflict that still continues 56 years later?&lt;p&gt;But then it becomes hard to pick out a specific person and say how evil they are, and how they&amp;#x27;re different from me and you.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fidel Castro has died</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38114953</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erokar</author><text>On the contrary, it&amp;#x27;s dangerous not to call out evil for what it is. Of course it might be wise to try to analyze what genetic&amp;#x2F;family&amp;#x2F;social&amp;#x2F;economic&amp;#x2F;political factors shape people like Castro, Gaddafi, Franco etc. — but if you think you&amp;#x27;re dealing with people like you and me you fail to grasp the phenomenon.&lt;p&gt;Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did, share a very predictable set of psychopathic&amp;#x2F;narcissistic&amp;#x2F;paranoid personality characteristics. They are, by definition, not normal.</text></item><item><author>jknoepfler</author><text>I would encourage the commenters in this thread who see Fidel&amp;#x27;s legacy as a black-and-white matter of an &amp;quot;evil dictator who did bad things and was wrong about economics&amp;quot; to step back, bear witness to the objective facts about Fidel Castro&amp;#x27;s life (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fidel_Castro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fidel_Castro&lt;/a&gt;), think sincerely about what could lead a highly intelligent and charismatic person to become or follow Fidel Castro (as many have), and take a moment to reflect on the complexities of global politics in the 20th century.&lt;p&gt;I am not a fan of Fidel Castro - quite the opposite - but humans are cut from a common cloth. When we see revolutions turn into dictatorships, and idealism deteriorate into a cynical fight to survive, it is foolish and dangerous to dismiss the dictators and revolutionaries as &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;idiots&amp;quot; or some similarly otherizing term. It is dangerous because it means we are refusing to learn from history, and to apply the lessons of other lives to our own. Fidel Castro&amp;#x27;s mistakes are our mistakes to repeat, or to learn from.&lt;p&gt;If you hold yourself holier than Fidel Castro, and think that celebrating the death of someone you perceive as &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; is prudent, take a deep long moment and try to learn something non-trivial from his life. &amp;quot;Fidel Castro&amp;quot; in the particular was not some kind of unique demon who plagued humanity. He was a charismatic revolutionary who occupied a very complex time. His life&amp;#x27;s trajectory was in many respects one of tragic failure. He may have, in reality, occupied a very dark corner of history, but that is for us to learn and judge, not to assume.&lt;p&gt;If you think you&amp;#x27;re better, then do better. Be better. Don&amp;#x27;t refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samirillian</author><text>&amp;#x27;it&amp;#x27;s dangerous not to call out evil for what it is&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Really have to question this reification of &amp;quot;evil&amp;quot; per se. Evil is most immediately a religious construct. Or, in the words of Hannah Arendt, it is &amp;quot;banal.&amp;quot; When did calling people evil ever lead to more justice in the world?&lt;p&gt;As if George W Bush having the courage to call Iran and Iraq and Libya the &amp;quot;Axis of Evil&amp;quot; led to the US promoting peace in those countries? No, there&amp;#x27;s been a proportional increase in US-led suffering (death toll in Iraq post-invasion around .5 million).&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t honestly know too much about Fidel Castro, but take a minute to look at the US-installed Batista, who was overthrown. And, gawd, what about JFK? What about Kissinger These leaders had all the advantages of starting out in a relatively functional industrially-developed democracy, and they managed to do all kinds of evil, mainly to countries like Cuba.&lt;p&gt;Tangentially, IMHO, I don&amp;#x27;t believe Castro was nearly as &amp;quot;pathological&amp;quot; a human being as a number of US presidents.</text></comment>