Guatemalan Dictators, and Brutes of our Own. . . .

Yesterday the former dictator of Guatemala, Efrain Montt, was convicted of 80 years in prison for Genocide. The sentence is, in a sense symbolic considering that Mr. Montt is now 86 years old and very unlikely to survive any significant time in prison. But the sentence is interesting at least because it is one of the very few examples in which a nation is actually trying to come to grips with its fascist past. The sad fact is that Guatemala has seen a string of dictators and brutal militarists (the current president was an military officer under the Montt regime). Central America (and Latin America in general) is awash with former dictators and political murderers, almost none of which have been brought to justice. In 1954 the CIA orchestrated a coup in Guatemala and in 1973 they orchestrated another in Chili. But few (and certainly no one in the US) has ever been properly brought to account for these events. The sad truth is that Montt is a drop in the bucket.

As the years have past I have come to realize that, for the most part, nations really don't really want to come to terms with their past. Nations (and nationalists) want to wave flags and sing anthems and are very good at ignoring the negative aspects of their country's past. I was shocked with I visited Spain with my partner (who was born and raised there) and realized that not only was it a country that had not come to terms with the fascism of the Franco but the country is full of young people who think he was a pretty good guy. If good ol' George Santayana was right, then counties that fail to come to grips with their past are in real danger of slipping back into the fascism that their country once embraced.

I grew up amid the Watergate scandal and as I have gotten older I have been amazed at the way that people in the US have gradually rebuilt the public image of Richard Nixon. Now, as countries go, the US is surely one of the most rabidly nationalistic and as a result even the so-called left in the US is not eager to keep the memories of Nixon's crimes in the public mind because they feel that it hurts the nation in general. A couple of nations (including South Africa and El Salvador) have used national reconciliation commissions in an attempt to come to grips with their past while avoiding the logistical mess of bringing potentially tens of thousands of people to justice. But it seems almost that, as a general rule, countries want to ignore the anti-democratic, brutal, dictatorial elements in their past. And in many cases they are inclined to even vocal defend such misdeeds. (I think that there is little question that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could, and should, have been brought up on charges of crime against humanity be we all knew that wouldn't happen.) It is not just that the victors write history but nationalists and so-called patriots simply don't want the "wrong" kind of history written.

And the saddest part of all is that Montt, his supporters (and his ilk elsewhere) actually believe that their crimes against humanity were not crimes in the first place, but that their deeds were harsh but necessary.

This brings us to our own dear leader. As far as I am concerned, Stephen Harper is a criminal. He has actively contravened the constitution, he has operated through electoral fraud, he has attempted to dismantle our democratic institutions, he is destroying the environment in ways that will be a terrible burden on future generations, and he has poisoned the political discourse in Canada to a degree from which it may never recover. But despite the fact that Harper makes the previous Liberal government (which he never tires of condemning) like a bunch of honest and honourable public servants, a good swath of Harper supporters believe that ANYTHING Harper does is justifiable and continue to hold to the untenable postion that he is an excellent Prime Minister.

I have no sympathy for a brute like Efrain Montt. But the truth is that this 86 year old man is little more than a scapegoat, a meaningless symbol for people to hold on to as though dictators and brutes really are held responsible for their murderous and anti-democratic past. As a general rule they aren't and perhaps never will be.

What of Cynicism....

Recent years have seen me grow progressively more cynical toward politics. I have known it was happening for a long while and always hoped that some events would come along to reverse my cynical trend. I guess the trend really got started when I lived in Central America and met so many committed leftists who didn’t apply their principles of justice and compassion in their own daily lives. In San Salvador I lived in a sort of rooming house that was run by a man who had been a high placed commandant in the FMLN. He and the other guys who ran the house employed a great young woman named Rosa with who I developed a friendship. It didn’t take me long to realize that the guys who employed her paid her far too little and made her work unreasonable hours and really did nothing to make her life better. She lived quite far away and was forced to leave her young son with her mother for days at a time and they really didn’t care to work things out to make it easier for her. The circumstance disgusted me. I had always been suspicious of ultra-partisan types on the left or right. I had been involved with the Revolutionary Communist Party in England (almost out of morbid interest rather than a real political expectation) and I found them really just to be a bunch of social misfits who felt that they had found a home and they mindlessly rehashed an insipid political analysis, much of which they didn’t even understand. And as far as their real knowledge of Marxism and history it was pathetic. The leaders of the party reveled in their star status among the members but their analysis was not much better. Now given that this was really a Leninist group, I didn’t have high expectations because I never bought the whole vanguard argument and have always shied away from any elitist form of politics. Then I watched the Socialist Workers Party and found that the Trotskyites where not much better.

I remember a few years ago having a long conversation with a Trotskyite who desperately wanted to believe that her left-wing philosophy was not rooted in basic ethical assumptions – an idea almost too absurd to address with serious rebuttal. This woman, was not a bad person, and she really does attempt to live I a just and ethical way. However, the discussion brought home to me the fact that it must be basic ethical principles that guide us in our everyday as well as our political life and the tendency for people on the left to forget this is deeply troubling.

Since those years in Central America I have had far too many experiences with supposed left-wing people who are supposed to be upholding principles of justice and compassion but who are just as power-hungry and mean as anyone on the right who we are supposed to be opposing. These people have failed utterly to make their political principles personal. All of this has made me cynical because while I expect the right-wing to make excuses and pay lip-service to justice while maintaining a power structure that favors the rich and powerful and punishes the vulnerable, there was a time when I expected more from the left, even if some were misguided enough to support Soviet style communism.

Now I have no expectations anymore because there is a certain portion of the population who are attracted to power and they are corrupted and seduced by it. In the end it doesn’t really matter what side of the political spectrum these type of people are on, because in the end power allows them (or changes them enough) to become exploiters of the vulnerable and over time they get off on it. Politics doesn’t matter in such cases – it is power that matters. I still have no doubt that most average leftists are compassionate and good people but such goodness is not attracted to power. There power forms in the very hands of those who shouldn’t have it, and this happens on every side of the political spectrum. And the tendency of partisanship does the rest of the job by keeping even good people in line with the unreasonable demands of those in power. I don’t see my cynicism ending any time soon.