Freedom Is In The Mind-What's on Your Mind?

"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"--The Eagles

photo by Pixabay

How free to you want to be?

So many things happen in our lives.  We can’t remember them all.  I have speculated that we remember absolutely nothing about most of the days in our lives. We do remember weddings, funerals, graduations and such.  And we also remember some pretty innocuous things that somehow stay in our minds. Perhaps it was some embarrassing moment that stays with us beyond any good reason to remember.  And, maybe it’s when a guy stood there and told you about meeting Fidel Castro.

Perhaps I was too polite.  In fact, I KNOW I was.  But I stood there and listened to him tell me what an imposing, impressive person that Castro was.  The encounter happened in Cuba, at some sort of political meeting, or rally, or something.  I forget why he was there, but he ended up being in the same room as Castro. Castro only dropped in and was not a direct participant.  But this guy went on and on about how magnetic Castro was, the extent to which he drew people around him, remembered names and was impressively personable.  This guy was clearly enamored of Fidel.

What the guy never mentioned, or in any way incorporated into his narrative is that Castro was a dictator.  He was a died in the wool dictator for over fifty years.  There was never a legitimate election in Cuba in all that time. Castro bragged about how he had stayed in power for all those years, as American presidents have come and gone.  Of course, in America, that’s the POINT!  No one is supposed to be all powerful.  Either Castro failed to see that point, or he just didn’t care.

It's been a few years since this guy told me about meeting Castro.  In that time, I have forgotten countless other conversations.  Why remember this?  It has played in my mind for these past several years.  How can a college educated, reasonably intelligent person have such a huge blind spot?  And if this guy can have a huge blind spot about Castro being a dictator, what other blind spot does he have? Should I trust this guy’s judgement about good government and legitimate authority?  Absolutely not.

I’ve said at various times that there are perfectly good, varying points of view on abortion, on education, on healthcare and the like.  But when people’s opinions are so clouded, so blind, so ideological rather than rational, we can not hope to reach consensus or solve problems.  I believe in God.  I do not presume that everybody does, or should.  In my own mind I consider my belief in God as it relates to abortion, education and healthcare.  But I will never presume that everybody does, or should believe in God.  I will never presume that my belief in God trump’s anybody else’s belief.  I do not claim that my belief in God gives faultless vision.  Most of all, I do not claim to be right.  I claim only to have rational, carefully researched, and thought-out opinions.  I fear not, those who disagree with me.  I fear those whose moral center is really just a clone of some dictator.  Cuba is a banana republic.  It has been for the entire time of Castro’s regime, and still is.  ‘Banana republic’ is a derisive term for totalitarian governments that stay in power by arresting and persecuting the opposition.  That’s how it has worked in Russia for a century.  That’s how it has worked in China for a half a century.  And now, that’s how it works in America. 

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