Archives for September 2004

Cult of Che

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Paul Berman has a wonderful piece on Slate today reviewing the new movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, which is based on Ernesto Che Guevara’s trip across South America. Everyone should read it. Berman’s point is an obvious one, but one that is eminently lost on my generation: that Che was a murderer and a totalitarian. He castigates the modern “cult of Che” that glorifies their martyred messiah ironically much like the reactionary Catholic Church that Che rebels against in the movie.

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system–the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che’s imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for “two, three, many Vietnams,” he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: “Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become…” –and so on.

I was always took Berman, a lefty, with a a grain of salt, but now I know his anti-authoritarian credentials are sincere.

Sep 27, 2004 | Comment

Don’t write off a President Schwarzenegger

arnold.jpgEven before his great performance at the RNC convention last week, many were putting forth Arnold Schwarzenegger as a possible presidential candidate … if the Constitution could be amended. That’s a big if, but not an insurmountable one.

Orrin Hatch has already introduced an amendment in the Senate that would allow foreign-born American citizens to be president. While I don’t think such an amendment would be too unpopular, even despite the recent resurgence of nativist attitudes, I also don’t think it’s the kind of thing that would be atop of Congress’s or the States’ agendas and would therefore not pass anytime soon.

But here’s a thought: it would be no big surprise if George Bush won the presidency again without winning the popular vote. The most populous states, including New York and California, are likely to vote overwhelmingly for Kerry. A clear Electoral College victory for Bush and a similarly clear popular victory for Kerry would no doubt make everyone rethink the constitutional system for electing presidents.

An amendment to reform the Electoral College might well be one that gets fast-tracked. It is also related enough to Hatch’s foreign-born president amendment that he could combine the two as a general presidential election reform. Then it wouldn’t seem so blatantly as an ‘elect Arnold’ amendment (not that Democrats could vote against it for that reason with a straight face since they claim immigrants and minorities in their coalition).

Sep 6, 2004 | Comment

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