The Year of the Deplorables (and some Greats)

Two Thousand and Sixteen will be remembered as the year of the Deplorables. The clever, considerate, right-thinking people that run the governments of Britain and the US had been doing what they always do - looking after their subjects who are too stupid to look after themselves - when the ungrateful hoards turned their backs and voted for Brexit and Trump. This was despite almost the entire news media, the smart people in academia and the bureaucracy, and most of the lovely people in the entertainment industry, telling them how they should vote and how racist, sexist and xenophobic they were to even consider not choosing Remain and Hillary. I mean, how dumb and ungrateful can people get?

The so-called Islamic State organisation claimed responsibility for bombings and terrorist attacks in Brussels, Baghdad, Kabul, Pakistan, Germany, Ohio, Cairo and Turkey (to name just a few) and there was the terrible attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida - but of course the thousands of deaths from terrorism in the name of Islam paled into insignificance against the true horror (if you believe Western governments and the mainstream media) that was Islamophobia, particularly that fomented by Donald Trump.

We had the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with an opening ceremony that tried to out-propagandise the London one, this time on environmentalism, which was a bit rich considering Brazil has destroyed more rainforest than any other on earth and the host city was so polluted some athletes refused to compete because of fears for their health.

On the subject of sports, Ireland broke an 111-year losing streak by finally beating the All Blacks, the Chicago Cubs overcame the Curse of the Billy Goat to win the World Series (for which I was in North America, so had to take an interest), Novak Djokovic was finally dethroned after 200 weeks as the number one men's tennis player in the world by Andy Murray, and Muhammed Ali, whom I thought truly was The Greatest, died.

We also lost David Bowie, who died just after releasing a last album that presaged his death, followed by Prince and, later in the year, the eloquent Leonard Cohen, and Bud Spencer - the star of spaghetti westerns that I loved in my childhood. On a happier note, the Cuban people finally got rid of their murderous dictator, Fidel Castro, and hopefully his brother Raul won't be far behind.

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature and promptly proved he didn't deserve it by saying the award "was truly beyond words", and all of the rest of United States' Nobel winners were immigrants, demonstrating once again that immigrants usually aren't bludgers and criminals.

At the end of the year an undistinguished New Zealand prime minister (whose name I've already forgotten) resigned to be replaced by...er, the other chap.

And if some of the above depresses you, a Swedish author has a wonderful advent calendar on Twitter that makes you realise that 2016 was one of the best years ever to be alive on Earth (H/T Not PC).

Finally, I would like to thank those of you who read and commented on my blog. I have tried to keep up the regular posts, although overseas travel and some busy periods in my work thwarted my best intentions. As always, I resolve to do better next year. Merry Christmas!

Castro's Apologists Reveal Their Anti-democratic Tendencies

A while ago I was doing some work for a government agency and I was surprised to see one of the staff had a picture of Che Guevara as the screen background on his PC. I somewhat facetiously asked him whether he alternated the image with others of murderous secret police chiefs such as Heinrich Himmler, Lavrentiy Beria and Erich Mielke. He seemed unaware that Che Guevara was the head of Fidel Castro's secret police and ran the Cuban dictator's concentration camps and that he personally killed hundreds of Castro's political opponents.

I recalled this incident while reading some of the tributes to Castro over the weekend, particularly the fawning eulogies from left-wing politicians like Justin Trudeau and Jeremy Corbyn, and it got me thinking about why so many on the left seem to be wilfully blind to the crimes against humanity of Communist dictators like Castro, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-Sung. I say wilfully because, unlike the public servant above, I cannot believe these Western politicians are unaware of the crimes of those they admire.

Why are democratically-elected Western leaders so keen to embrace and legitimise dictatorial thugs? I think the answer is obvious and revealing, like a political Freudian slip. Most Western leaders believe in big government as the solution to all the world's problems and there is no bigger form of government than brutal dictatorship. In praising Castro, they are revealing their secret pining for the free hand he had to do whatever he wanted. As Mark Steyn put it, 'if you believe in big problems that demand big government solutions, democracy just gets in the way.'

The distrust of democracy amongst Western leaders has been all too evident this year in their responses to the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election. Their churlish dismissal of the voters as ignorant, racist and xenophobic has revealed their distaste of the reality of democracy. They like the pretence of having a democratic mandate but only when voters stick to the script they have written.

The very worst thing about the reaction of these Western apologists to Castro's death is their arrogance in thinking they can speak for the Cuban people, such as Trudeau's observation that the dictator 'served his people for almost half a century.' It takes a particularly weasel-like hypocrisy to label Castro's extra-judicial killing of thousands of his countrymen and his imprisonment of tens of thousands of his political opponents as 'serving his people'.

The only aspect of Castro's death that is regrettable is that he died in his sleep and thereby denied his oppressed people the opportunity of seeing him hang for his crimes.