I'm amazed that purported health care and literacy rates are isolated and used to justify the 50 year reign of a demagogue.

Next comes the argument that North Korea has done the same and the deprivations of its chunky hairball of a dictator are worth the brutalization, starvation, and subjugation of its population.

And Zimbabwe has done such a lot to liberate the land from white-held ownership. Leading to the long reign of another freedom-fighter/ demagogue.

All those regimes and more are built on one of the most reprehensible of human traits, the personality cult.

I visited the Soviet Union and noticed that as far as I could tell, every citizen's teeth were looked after. They had nice stainless teeth instead of gaps. It didn't occur to me at the time to wonder how many of those teeth had been knocked out first.

This hagiography of dictators overlooks that the people of said countries are looked after like cattle. They have been medicated and organized for the good of the herd, and the herder. Those who could not be better or act better are in mass graves or the bellies of their owners.

This applies equally to fascists and communists. The extreme right and left wings meet behind the founders' backs and shake hands.

The Tsars and their Orthodox priests kept the Russian people in a state of peasantry for centuries. What freedom lover could be against bringing them down? Who could have foreseen Stalin, mass starvation by the government, and the show trials?

Having seen them, who could support Communism as a road to human progress.

The hardest and best thing to be is a rationalist who can speak to power no matter what color it wears. There was a good line in the BBC's "I Claudius" series about the importance of mankind not losing its sense of smell.

Castro smelled long before he assumed room temperature.