Keegan Blackler is a junior majoring in English with a Creative Writing concentration.

Just over a week ago, in a move that surprised absolutely no one in the entire world, Fidel Castro officially resigned from his position as president (for life?) of Cuba. After all, the man is 81 years old and getting increasingly sick.

As you read this, political analysts are wracking their brains, wondering what this means for the future of Cuba. Is a wind of change coming? Is a hard rain going to fall?

Has someone finally put baby in a corner?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but hopefully, his successor Raul Castro does.

As I sat and read this news over a nice hot mocha, however, another question reared its grotesquely malformed head: Am I supposed to care?

The inevitable answer, it seems, is no. Castro is a relic--not because he's older than sin, but because he's a major character in a book that America has long since finished reading, lent out to a relative it doesn't really like and donated to the local library.

His retirement is just the coda, published years after everyone stopped caring.

Now, for every point there is a far less valid counterpoint, and for that I turned to my longtime friend and aficionado of all things communist (and especially Cuban), junior Alex McCrum.

Comfortably adorned in his Cuba hat, which he insisted I mention, McCrum is quick to defend the importance of the former dictator.

"Castro is definitely a relevant political figure for our generation. For one thing, he still has an effect on U.S. elections. Florida's a swing state, right? There're a lot of Cuban ex-patriots that vote in Florida and a [presidential] candidate has to take a hard line on Cuba to ensure that vote."

Perhaps he's right, but that still limits Castro's geopolitical relevance for people our age to, say, that of the governor of Rhode Island, or the president of Canada.

None of this is to say that Castro didn't warrant the world-spanning attention he drew to himself back in the day, but that was a long time ago when communism was the great looming terror, rather than just our neighbor's quirky habit.

McCrum argues that Castro warrants our consideration due to his being a powerful force for change.

"Before Castro there was undeniable dictatorship and oppression in Cuba, in which the United States was complicit," McCrum said, "and under Castro there has continued to be dictatorship and oppression in Cuba. But now they have doctors, roads, schools, public service and public welfare. Cuba is now a tangibly better place to live."

A stirring and witty argument, but all it does is further convince me that Castro's international importance became historical long before his decision to step down. He accomplished change in Cuba, to be sure, but the revolution was over before any of us were born.

While we're at it, let's ask the question: When it comes to global politics, is Cuba even that important anymore? Before Castro's sick leave, I can't remember seeing the nation come up in the news unless the subject was Guantanamo Bay, and the blame for that one can really be placed on us.

Generally speaking, the global players are limited to the insanely rich ones (examples include the U.S., Saudi Arabia, China, England and Japan) and the butt-clenchingly terrifying ones (examples include the entire continent of Africa). Cuba is neither of these.

McCrum and I do agree, however, that Castro is impressive, in his own way.

"I'm impressed by the way he's been able to thumb his nose at the United States' empire from 90 miles away for the past five decades," McCrum said.

Also, whichever way you look at it, Castro is quite possibly the first dictator in the history of history to ever actually retire of his own free will. That's the kind of feat that could strike awe into the heart of the Grand Canyon.

I think the final word, however, should go to junior Bernard Nguyen, who gave voice to the spirit of my argument when he responded to the question, "What do you think about Castro?" with the statement, "I don't know, I don't care."

Couldn't have said it better myself.