I read a few disparate things but somehow, my friends, and wrote about them and they link up. Either that or I’m multi-tasking again.
As an outsider, and despite knowing only a little about how the world may actual run, I am, and we are, as human beings, destined to have our own thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes.
Was it an amazing moment when Evo Morales, the first indigenous head of state in Bolivia since the conquest, was elected President in 2006 in Bolivia? Yes, it was democracy and justice in paradigm-shifting proportions. He and the majority of people, finally represented, were able to come together, finally have say about their own lives, and throw out the Bechtel (Giant Water) Corporation who had become so tyrannical—with government support, no doubt—that the poor indigenous people were not allowed, legally, to even gather rain water. That is moral sickness in the extreme. It was reminiscent of the Machiavelli nature of multinational conglomerate Monsanto’s GMO seed drifting off one farm and landing in another’s farm, then Monsanto suing, and ruining, the second farmer for using Monsanto without permission (see Food Inc.).
So democracy in Bolivia is exciting and hopeful for so many long-disenfranchised (and partially forgotten) humans all across the globe—and for those who are less disenfranchised, too, because equality, hope, freedom, human rights and so on are stunning possibilities in this world and make life’s beauty even more obvious. And Evo Morales—hated by much of the elite in Bolivia, some of that being pure racism, some more being pure Power-based—has to be careful, I am sure, how he picks his friends. And, unsurprisingly, he aligns himself with the Latin American Left. That is understandable. We go where we’re wanted, where we’re embraced.
So on some level maybe he has no real choice. So he throws his political hat in with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Now Chavez is at least democratically elected, although I think he is unfortunately showing a lot of signs of becoming one of those dreaded so-called caudillos (traditional Latin American Political Big Men, who were and are generally backed by Western interests—Chavez, of course, is not). But let us not forget the Americans supported the botched coup against this democratically elected nationalizer of oil. Hardly heart-warming international relations. And I believe one of the newspapers he has suppressed, also supported not his removal by election, but by the coup itself. Imagine if the New York Times supported the coup of an American president. That’s treason, n’est-ce pas? But you can always tell despotic tendencies by the desire to talk on television for hours on end—and doing so.
As for Fidel Castro? Yes, Castro, of course, represents for many the standing up to imperialists and oppressors—and his health care and education policies in Cuba (and shipping doctors around the world) are laudable, at times remarkable, even more so under the relentless economic embargo Cuba has withstood for forty-odd years.
But Castro has had over fifty years to bring in a democratic election. Just one. He’d probably win, for crying out loud. But he doesn’t do it. He is a dictator, and dictators are, by definition, oppressive, and against free speech. And what do we have, as humans, without free speech? Free speech is something utterly cherishable, and obtained only through stunning solidarity and struggle, and must be vigilantly held on to and refined. Otherwise we have, well…China, I guess.
The incarceration rate in the United States is appalling and insidious, astronomically greater than any other country, per capita, in the West (if not the entire world), with well over 2 million people behind bars today. Under President Clinton, for the record, the number jumped from 1 million to 2 million. The US, allegedly, has 4% of the world’s population, and 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.
In admittedly undemocratic China, in the dreaded Laogai, forced labour camps, with the motto “reform by labour”, have imprisoned between 40 and 50 million people (who knows how many for exercising free speech?) since 1949. Consider the remarkably courageous dissident Liu Xiaobo’s case here. Take a moment to consider what some people are right now going through simply because of their commitment to speaking freely. heart-breaking.
As critical as I have been of the democratically disastrous bailout and other things, I will say I do appreciate President Obama talking to the Dalai Lama. To not talk to the Tibetan spiritual leader because of Chinese threats and grumblings (and in light of the decades long brutality in Tibet) is to really say no to the most remarkable accomplishment of all in the West, the right to free speech, and from that, the right of assembly et cetera (none of which are perfect, of course). But god, defence of free speech is a beautiful thing, and that should never be dismissed or taken lightly. And a definition of real free speech is: ‘The willingness to defend the right of others to express ideas you abhor.’
I also deeply appreciate how the Dalai Lama has always said that Tibet was no perfect place before he was forced into exile, but rather feudal and backwards. Don’t you just appreciate honesty? Massive posters of Chairman Mao still hang all over China, looking down paternally (and, wouldn’t you know it, abhorently, on occasional Western T-Shirts, too—in much smaller numbers, thank god, than Che T-Shirts).
Check out this radical monk from Tibet, Gendun Chophel, from the first half of the 20th century. From one of his astute poems:
All that is old is proclaimed as the work of gods
All that is new conjured by the devil
Wonders are thought to be bad omens
This is the tradition of the land of the Dharma.
But where was I going? God knows. Oh yeah, what inspired this writing: Castro’s right hand man during the revolution? The T-Shirt-emblazoned Che Guevara. Morales speaks of him as a symbol of Latin American freedom. Fair enough—he may well be that symbol. And if anything, Morales is that.
But is Che Guevera that man? Granted, everybody chooses their own heroes, but as historically interesting as he is—and the reasons for his appeal as a symbol are obvious—I just don’t celebrate him, and the reasons why are utterly simple: Guevara executed a lot of people and also allowed the execution of even more people without trial (untried political prisoners—and, hey, I donate to Amnesty and believe in what they fight for) which makes him, to me, not unlike like the despotic Bolsheviks as Emma Goldman described them: largely a replacement for the previous Tsarist regime of the despotic Romanovs.
This from 1923:
The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution—particularly the Socialist idea—is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—or by that of its “advance guard,” the Communist Party. Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People’s Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice.
And so on. Unavoidable in terms of human nature? I don’t think so. But challenging, to be sure, in the extreme. But there is a very old saying from Pindar that goes something like this: “We become like that which we hate.” So Jesus says, tough luck: “No longer love your neighbour, love your enemies.” Hey, I can still have trouble with neighbours. But what a daring concept.
This is from Rolf Potts, entitled Che: The Ronald McDonald of Revolution
SPEAKER’S CORNER, in which he writes about some of the spewed clichés of Guevara’s supporters and detractors.
Actually, a couple of more things first. The mention of Ronald McDonald is, in this moment, somehow apt with Guevara, too, and not just because his face on T-Shirts is a marketing and propaganda bonanza. But because with the health plans of America (and even Canada) more and more at the mercy of anti-health insurance companies, and childhood obesity booming and diabetes sky-rocketing, I’m no fan of McDonald’s, either—in fact, quite the contrary. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but I like respected animals and conscious health and real food and dignified labour way too much.
McLYMPICS
McDonald’s is the Official Restaurant of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Personally, I never even think of McDonald’s as a restaurant, in the food experience use of the word. But sponsor of the Olympics? Is this athlete food? And even if it is because you’re young and remarkably fit and burning 5,000 calories a day, what about once you’re past 22 and working out 8 hours a day? Does it work for anyone, or is it just one expanding Super Size Me?
McDIGENOUS
And the film Avatar, with its grand indigenous motif and call for sustainability, is also sponsored by McDonald’s. I see a clash, but maybe I’m just picky. Shouldn’t we all be a little pickier? McDigenous is more like it. Maybe McDonald’s could sponsor the upcoming Canada Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and the attempted cleansing of indigenous culture in Canada over about 150 years. Nah, McDonald’s has already contributed enough: to spiking and deadly Type II Diabetes among First Nations people in Canada.
And I agree, people do have a choice, but the food still sucks (I know, but that’s my opinion. Even as a kid, the Big Mac special sauce flavour lingered in my belches for hours—gross!). Does anyone like the smell of those fast-food restaurants? (Okay, I know some people do, and I guess I did, sort of, too, when my nose was seven-years-old and I didn’t know about the endlessly tortured animals). But I really find it distasteful now.
And that food is designed, literally—I’m serious—to be addicting, acting on our brains not unlike heroin does (see former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration Dr. David Kessler’s The End of Overeating to see how the food industry works). There’s an interview with him in the Wall Street Journal:
WSJ: Early on in the book, you suggest that that major food companies know what motivates shoppers.
Dr. Kessler: They know what drives demand, and they were able to design foods to be hot stimuli. The food industry says they only give consumers what they want. But what they want excessively activates the rewards circuits of the brain. They aren’t selling just any commodity. They’ve designed highly stimulating products, and consumers come back for more. Nothing sells as much as something that stimulates the rewards-circuitry of the brain. It’s all about selling product.
Anyway, back to Potts on Che Guevara—how did I get so distracted. From Bolivia to McDonald’s to Cuba:
Granted, it’s not hard to find Che Guevara aficionados in Cuba—just keep an eye out for anyone who has the option to leave the country at their leisure.
That’s funny.
During my month in Havana, I met half a dozen Europeans with Che tattoos on various body parts, no less than two Uruguayan medical students who unironically wore black berets, and a woman from Oregon who sported a homemade “Guerrillero Heroico” tank top and insisted that the blame for contemporary Cuban misery could be traced to the small-minded prejudices of red-state America.
Whenever I mentioned the more troubling aspects of Che’s biography to these folks, none of them seemed all that fazed.
Sure, Che might have promoted his ideals through force and violence, they said, but unwavering conviction and action are the only forces that can change a complacent world.
Sure, Che shrugged off torture and executions on his watch, but he was at heart an inspiring humanitarian who ultimately hoped to improve the lives of millions.
Sure, Che tried to impose a one-size-fits-all political vision on faraway cultures—but at least that vision was just, and might well have worked had it been given a chance to take hold.
This kind of rationalization sounded vaguely familiar at the time, and it wasn’t until I returned to the United States that I realized neo-conservative apologists were using the exact same language and reasoning to defend the foreign policy decisions of George W. Bush.
Anyway, what is really interesting to remember is on how many vital levels indigenous rights and Marxism are utterly incompatible, anyway. So I think Che does fit in better with McDonald’s’ imposing style than with any indigenous rights movement in Latin America or anywhere else. Why? Ideological clash.
Check this out from Michael P. Nofz in his essay Treading Upon Separate Paths: Native American Ideology and Marxist Analysis (pg 231-232):
The shared beliefs of Native American tribes must be seen as something more than products of economic organization. Ideology instead stems from the ongoing experiences which certain Indians draw from their connection with the natural environment.
In short, Native American ideologies are more land-based, while those of industrial Europe and allied societies are production-based. Among numerous Indians, nature is not just raw material to be transformed; it also imparts a continuous set of relations through which ideological insight is revealed. The forces of nature are themselves potent guides over human thought, and not the other way around, as Euro-Induatrialism asserts.
The problem of Marxist analysis is that it minimizes the influence of nature over human thought.
This is to be expected, since the Marxist emphasis on material production confines explanations of ideology to human economic transactions. At the same time, it reduces the relations between human beings and their natural environment to pragmatic materialism.
Given such a distinct difference in processes of ideology formation, the reluctance of American Indians to embrace Marxist thinking can be better understood.
They are not likely to see real prospects for human liberation in any doctrine which underscores the inevitability of progress through production and consumption, while ignoring important human relationships to land.
Marxism is thus seen as sharing ideological similarities with capitalism. Both support forms of socio-economic organization which, while seeking different relations of production, nevertheless pose similar threats to land-based ideology. Marxism and capitalism alike threaten to strip away the spiritual significance of land, further detaching human consciousness from its affective relationship with nature.
In the broad manner of thinking common to various Indian tribes, the real difference between Marxist and capitalist prescriptions lies only in their proposed systems for distributing the benefits of industrial, material progress.
Just a few little historical tidbits, food for thought. I, like this blog, am relatively scattered these days, as we all are, eventually—wild, man. Make of this stunning journey what you can. It’s late. Life is good. Sending love,
Pete
