The other bastards
Though we 'Muricans live in a country with such a despicable and damnable ruling class, there is such a thing as being overly infatuated with that fact at the expense of down-playing, even unintentionally, the execrable behavior of certain foreigners. Let me say right off that this post is more about my observations of my own sense of awareness about global goings-on than it is about observations of other friends or activist types, or a proscription thereof. Let me say also that this post was not preceded by a flurry of internet searches that might have easily mined contridications to anything I'm about to assert that may come off as an argument. Just thinking out loud, as it were; no strawpersons intended.
Two recent events precipitated these thoughts. The first was Hu Jintao's state visit to the US. Hu is the leader of a political machine that, almost 60 years after its ascension to power, still engages in widespread naked repression and censorship of its subjects. Leaving aside the mad, murderous legacy of Mao himself, and the little matter of a student protest in 1989, the salient fact is that the Chinese Communist Party continues to rule with an iron fist. Or at least does its best in a country of over a billion people. But its position is untenable, and with the documented explosion of protests around the country (that even the government itself has publicly recognized), we're likely to hear more bloody tales coming out of the east as the CCP pushes back against its inevitable, if still distant, dissolution. (Isn't it deliciously ironic that the diffusion of capitalism in China is helping to produce a state of "heightened contradictions" in the rule of the Communist Party? Love that.)
So Hu hops over the Pacific bringing all this baggage with him to spend a few days in the US, including, of course, here in Washington, and the only folks I'm aware of who protested his presence were the Falun Gong. Even if one isn't prepared immediately to swallow all of that group's accusations against the Chinese government, one can swallow many of them with ease, and so it's not surprising to see them taking to the streets. And they should be commended for it. But where were the rest of us, myself included? Based on the lack of chatter on listservs and amongst friends, I take it we were absent. Which is a shame.
Now, without totally contradicting my opening point, I have to say that our government is partly to blame. It's can be frustrating to be a globally conscious American when conversations about evil deeds committed abroad by others can so easily go like this:
Globally conscious American: Your government wrongfully imprisons people.
Native defender: Your government wrongfully imprisons people.
GcA: Your government uses war and torture as a matter of policy.
Nd: Your government uses war and torture as a matter of policy.
GcA: Your government controls the national media.
Nd: Your government pays to have favorable stories planted in the media. And your media is controlled by the rich. As is your government. I say tomato...
It's tough enough as is to fit any kind of thoughtful, coherent sentiments on a protest sign, but it's doubly difficult when you're required, as an entrance fee to legitimacy, to make it clear that you're not just another white (in my case), holier-than-thou, know-nothing American with a kneejerk hatred of all things non-cowboybaseballapplepie. Like if I had gone to one of those rallies Christopher Hitchens organized in support of the Danish newspaper that ran the Muhammad cartoons and of the artists who, as a result, had been receiving death threats, I would have felt it necessary to have a poster that read "Against Theocracy AND Imperialism" - since we all know about Hitch's obsessive support of Bush's textbook imperialist adventure in Iraq. Which is frustrating, because I am of the firm belief that the artists, editors, and politicians who have stood up for the cartoons ought to be given unconditional support and their opponents derided and condemned as bedfellows of theocracy. Period. That position ought not require qualification. But it does, which can have a chilling effect on its being expressed at all.
And as for said adventure in Iraq, I've always opposed it and continue to oppose it, and it's worth noting that, as far as I can tell, the only major prediction made by the antiwar crowd about the whole charade that didn't come to pass was the relative ease with which "coalition" forces took Baghdad. Other than that, we've been proved right about everything. Ted Williams in '41 had nothing on us. (Ok, I'll grant him slugging percentage.) But with that being said, I've also been disappointed that anti-authoritarians were not the loudest voices calling out Saddam for his reign of various terrors. (GcA: He had rape rooms, for God's sake. Rape rooms. Nd: You have rape rooms too. They're called male prison cells. There's just an extra degree of outsourcing involved.) Any set of ethics whatsoever should have required movement toward the removal of this man from power. But any fool with passing knowledge of a) the history of American foreign involvement, and b) the constitution of the Bush administration, should have leapt to the conclusion that the way it ended up going down was not the way it should have gone down. But something had to be done, and the humane among us should have spared no breath in advocating that necessity.
I couldn't pinpoint it on a calendar, but some time about a year and a half or two years ago, I ended up in conversation with strangers in a friend's kitchen. I was taking the position that it was important to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously views which could be taken as conflicting; viz., that one should oppose any effort by the Bush administration to ride its own bellicose coattails across the border of Iraq into Iran, but that one should yet hope the worst for the neanderthal clerics ruling over the good people of Persia. The other folks in the room were significantly older than I and of a more ideological, inflexible leftist bent. One of the women in the room was either Iranian or of Iranian extraction, and protested that it was in fact not ok even to suggest room for advocacy of violence against the Iranian government, because that would leave some theoretical door open to an American bombing campaign, and it was her relatives, not mine, who would end up dying. Point taken, and in fact, I don't think our points were in contradiction (as I'm quite sure I must have made clear my opposition to anything like a foreign invasion of the country). But as she rejected mine, I have to reject hers. I'll happily lie to save lives, but given the hypothetical nature of it all, you'll have a hard time getting me to offer even rhetorical aid to a theocratic government. Whatever else may equal death, we know for certain that silence does. (The conversation eventually moved to the topic of the killing fields of the Soviet Union, which elicited, "if Stalin killed all those people, where are the bodies?" from another participant - at which point any sensible person would have uttered "meep meep," kicked up a cloud of dust, and raced from the room. But I think I stuck it out for a while longer.)
It's late at night, and I realize this post is packed with digressions, but I still need to mention the second event that catalyzed these thoughts. The Nepalese people have, in about a week's time, come to the verge of overthrowing a monarchy. That's no small feat, and it's come at a cost: over a dozen dead and hundreds wounded in the courageous street protests. Deposing a monarchy is one of humankind's noblest endeavors (even if the aftermath tends to get messy), so I don't want it to go overlooked by the mainstream activist community here. I haven't really looked into the best ways to offer support but maybe after some shuteye I'll be up for it.
Down with the crown indeed.
Two recent events precipitated these thoughts. The first was Hu Jintao's state visit to the US. Hu is the leader of a political machine that, almost 60 years after its ascension to power, still engages in widespread naked repression and censorship of its subjects. Leaving aside the mad, murderous legacy of Mao himself, and the little matter of a student protest in 1989, the salient fact is that the Chinese Communist Party continues to rule with an iron fist. Or at least does its best in a country of over a billion people. But its position is untenable, and with the documented explosion of protests around the country (that even the government itself has publicly recognized), we're likely to hear more bloody tales coming out of the east as the CCP pushes back against its inevitable, if still distant, dissolution. (Isn't it deliciously ironic that the diffusion of capitalism in China is helping to produce a state of "heightened contradictions" in the rule of the Communist Party? Love that.)
So Hu hops over the Pacific bringing all this baggage with him to spend a few days in the US, including, of course, here in Washington, and the only folks I'm aware of who protested his presence were the Falun Gong. Even if one isn't prepared immediately to swallow all of that group's accusations against the Chinese government, one can swallow many of them with ease, and so it's not surprising to see them taking to the streets. And they should be commended for it. But where were the rest of us, myself included? Based on the lack of chatter on listservs and amongst friends, I take it we were absent. Which is a shame.
Now, without totally contradicting my opening point, I have to say that our government is partly to blame. It's can be frustrating to be a globally conscious American when conversations about evil deeds committed abroad by others can so easily go like this:
Globally conscious American: Your government wrongfully imprisons people.
Native defender: Your government wrongfully imprisons people.
GcA: Your government uses war and torture as a matter of policy.
Nd: Your government uses war and torture as a matter of policy.
GcA: Your government controls the national media.
Nd: Your government pays to have favorable stories planted in the media. And your media is controlled by the rich. As is your government. I say tomato...
It's tough enough as is to fit any kind of thoughtful, coherent sentiments on a protest sign, but it's doubly difficult when you're required, as an entrance fee to legitimacy, to make it clear that you're not just another white (in my case), holier-than-thou, know-nothing American with a kneejerk hatred of all things non-cowboybaseballapplepie. Like if I had gone to one of those rallies Christopher Hitchens organized in support of the Danish newspaper that ran the Muhammad cartoons and of the artists who, as a result, had been receiving death threats, I would have felt it necessary to have a poster that read "Against Theocracy AND Imperialism" - since we all know about Hitch's obsessive support of Bush's textbook imperialist adventure in Iraq. Which is frustrating, because I am of the firm belief that the artists, editors, and politicians who have stood up for the cartoons ought to be given unconditional support and their opponents derided and condemned as bedfellows of theocracy. Period. That position ought not require qualification. But it does, which can have a chilling effect on its being expressed at all.
And as for said adventure in Iraq, I've always opposed it and continue to oppose it, and it's worth noting that, as far as I can tell, the only major prediction made by the antiwar crowd about the whole charade that didn't come to pass was the relative ease with which "coalition" forces took Baghdad. Other than that, we've been proved right about everything. Ted Williams in '41 had nothing on us. (Ok, I'll grant him slugging percentage.) But with that being said, I've also been disappointed that anti-authoritarians were not the loudest voices calling out Saddam for his reign of various terrors. (GcA: He had rape rooms, for God's sake. Rape rooms. Nd: You have rape rooms too. They're called male prison cells. There's just an extra degree of outsourcing involved.) Any set of ethics whatsoever should have required movement toward the removal of this man from power. But any fool with passing knowledge of a) the history of American foreign involvement, and b) the constitution of the Bush administration, should have leapt to the conclusion that the way it ended up going down was not the way it should have gone down. But something had to be done, and the humane among us should have spared no breath in advocating that necessity.
I couldn't pinpoint it on a calendar, but some time about a year and a half or two years ago, I ended up in conversation with strangers in a friend's kitchen. I was taking the position that it was important to be able to hold in one's head simultaneously views which could be taken as conflicting; viz., that one should oppose any effort by the Bush administration to ride its own bellicose coattails across the border of Iraq into Iran, but that one should yet hope the worst for the neanderthal clerics ruling over the good people of Persia. The other folks in the room were significantly older than I and of a more ideological, inflexible leftist bent. One of the women in the room was either Iranian or of Iranian extraction, and protested that it was in fact not ok even to suggest room for advocacy of violence against the Iranian government, because that would leave some theoretical door open to an American bombing campaign, and it was her relatives, not mine, who would end up dying. Point taken, and in fact, I don't think our points were in contradiction (as I'm quite sure I must have made clear my opposition to anything like a foreign invasion of the country). But as she rejected mine, I have to reject hers. I'll happily lie to save lives, but given the hypothetical nature of it all, you'll have a hard time getting me to offer even rhetorical aid to a theocratic government. Whatever else may equal death, we know for certain that silence does. (The conversation eventually moved to the topic of the killing fields of the Soviet Union, which elicited, "if Stalin killed all those people, where are the bodies?" from another participant - at which point any sensible person would have uttered "meep meep," kicked up a cloud of dust, and raced from the room. But I think I stuck it out for a while longer.)
It's late at night, and I realize this post is packed with digressions, but I still need to mention the second event that catalyzed these thoughts. The Nepalese people have, in about a week's time, come to the verge of overthrowing a monarchy. That's no small feat, and it's come at a cost: over a dozen dead and hundreds wounded in the courageous street protests. Deposing a monarchy is one of humankind's noblest endeavors (even if the aftermath tends to get messy), so I don't want it to go overlooked by the mainstream activist community here. I haven't really looked into the best ways to offer support but maybe after some shuteye I'll be up for it.
Down with the crown indeed.
