The motorcycle diaries and the jurassic left...

Along the same lines as Sgrena's beliefs we have a recent movie that continues the re-writing of history by lionizing of all people, Ernesto Che Guevara, one of Fidel Castro's more important Lieutenants. Against the backdrop of South and Central
American politics, where American interventionism and adventurism has a bizarre history of supporting vile despots, he doesn't seem so bad. In fact, the history of communism is poorly understood. There isn't much doubt in my mind that any one of us could have ended up communists had we lived in pre-revolution China, Russia, or Cuba. But there also isn't much doubt in my mind that many of us would have been swallowed by those same revolutions in the way the French revolutionaries were by Robespierre's reign of terror. It is in this line of thinking that Paul Berman writes this excellent piece on "The motorcycle Diaries"
http://slate.msn.com/id/2107100