Sad and angry

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For what­ev­er rea­son, the Tianan­men protests stuck with me more than the fall of the Berlin Wall. I find peo­ple ral­ly­ing against an oppres­sive regime a more com­pelling sto­ry than a large mil­i­tary force sur­ren­der­ing to anoth­er large mil­i­tary force. Maybe it’s just the dra­ma of the sto­ry, or maybe it’s that I don’t believe what Mao wrote about pow­er flow­ing from the bar­rel of a gun. I believe in democ­ra­cy, not just as a prin­ci­ple but as a prac­ti­cal real­i­ty. How­ev­er slow­ly or imper­fect­ly it hap­pens, even­tu­al­ly the com­mon major­i­ty always crush­es an elite minor­i­ty. If you watch, they always seem to prop up an elite minor­i­ty in the place of the one removed, so I’m con­vinced that the exis­tence of the elite minor­i­ty is in fact part of the will of the com­mon major­i­ty. It’s not pow­er TO the peo­ple, it’s pow­er OF the peo­ple. We’ve got it if we only choose to exer­cise it.

Any­how, I kept a pic­ture of the paint-splat­tered poster of Chair­man Mao in my wal­let as a reminder for sev­er­al months. When I opened my wal­let, I’d often see the Chair­man there with red paint on his face. It was an encour­ag­ing reminder to me of the brav­ery shown by the pro­test­ers at Tianan­men Square.

So it makes me very sad to see the news today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4742478.stm

The throw­er of the paint bal­loon that defaced the por­trait I kept a pic­ture of in my wal­let was released from prison Wednes­day. He served sev­en­teen years in prison for an act that at worst could be called vandalism.

Those sev­en­teen years were not spent work­ing out at the prison gym and watch­ing cable TV, either. He spent two entire years in soli­tary con­fine­ment, and was lashed to a pole in the sum­mer­time sun for days at a time. He was beat­en and tor­tured in ways that we’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know, and he was released to his fam­i­ly com­plete­ly men­tal­ly bro­ken. Report­ed­ly he does not rec­og­nize his own fam­i­ly and can­not speak intelligibly,

I don’t know that much about pris­ons. I’ve nev­er spent more than a cou­ple of hours inside one, and even then I was always free to walk out. But I remem­ber Solzhen­it­syn writ­ing about the gulag where he said that pris­on­ers could not take more than about two weeks of soli­tary con­fine­ment with­out los­ing their soul. And here is this guy who was kept in the hole for two years.

I sup­pose that all men have their break­ing point. And I sup­pose I should­n’t find it at all sur­pris­ing that a regime who holds down their pop­u­la­tion at gun­point should want to break the ones who real­ly hold the pow­er. Espe­cial­ly a gov­ern­ment that came into place by bloody rev­o­lu­tion should remem­ber the les­son that their posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence are at best held precariously.

Yet I have to won­der why we, in the parts of the world where no mat­ter how bad­ly we fail at it we at least believe in lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy, con­tin­ue to do busi­ness with tor­tur­ers. I am ashamed that yes­ter­day I pur­chased a Chi­nese motor­cy­cle tire.

Published by splicer

3 Replies to “Sad and angry”

  1. “Yet I have to won­der why
    “Yet I have to won­der why we, in the parts of the world where no mat­ter how bad­ly we fail at it we at least believe in lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy, con­tin­ue to do busi­ness with tor­tur­ers. I am ashamed that yes­ter­day I pur­chased a Chi­nese motor­cy­cle tire.”

    Who is this “we” you speak of?

    The peo­ple who make deci­sions at the top lev­el are politi­cians. Hav­ing trade rela­tions with Chi­na suits the prof­it-no-mat­ter-who-gets-hurt crowd. Do they care about a bunch of exploit­ed Chi­nese people?

    The last time I checked, the cur­rent U.S. regime was scram­bling around to jus­ti­fy the tor­ture that has occurred while it has been in power.

    Iron­i­cal­ly, 25 years ago when those trade chan­nels were first being opened, Lib­er­al™ acquain­tances of mine were spooging them­selves with joy that we’d be deal­ing with Chi­na, won­der­ful social­ist Chi­na, which they seemed to think was some kind of left­ist utopia that com­bined the Wis­dom of the Ancient East with Marxism.

    Name the coun­try where the largest num­ber of work­ers are exploit­ed to the worst lev­el, and it’s also the largest com­mu­nist coun­try. Kin­da iron­ic, eh?

    Yet there is some resid­ual sym­pa­thy for Chi­na on the left side. So the politi­cians get some­thing of a break over there.

    I hope Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism can some­day shake off the lin­ger­ing attach­ment to Marxism/Maoism.

    There needs to be a new term for the kind of lib­er­al I con­sid­er myself to be. I believe in sup­port­ing the com­mon good because it’s good for busi­ness and good for me per­son­al­ly. I’ve thought of the term “post lib­er­al,” but there’s some branch of the­ol­o­gy that already claims that one.

    Curi­ous: since you’re a recov­er­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an, what would Lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy say about this sit­u­a­tion? Is it just Their Prob­lem And Not Mine? Is the mag­i­cal San­ta Bun­ny of The Free Mar­ket sup­posed to swoop down and some­how cor­rect it?

  2. The only answer I can give
    The only answer I can give is one that I wish I did­n’t believe were far too idealistic.

    The mag­i­cal San­ta Bun­ny of the free mar­ket would cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion thus­ly: Con­sumers would give a shit about oth­er peo­ple on the plan­et and not par­tic­i­pate in their exploita­tion by pay­ing mon­ey to the exploiters for goods made by the exploit­ed. They would do this vol­un­tar­i­ly because they believe that tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for one’s own action is more impor­tant than finan­cial gain.

    Sad­ly, the (major­i­ty of the) very peo­ple that believe that a free mar­ket would solve these prob­lems thus­ly are also the ones that hold in con­tempt the idea that eco­nom­ic deci­sions should be made on moral grounds. When was the last time a con­ser­v­a­tive sug­gest­ed that you join a boy­cott? I’ve always found it a lit­tle dis­gust­ing that the ratio­nale to remove restric­tions because we can do more good with­out them has always been cou­pled with the ratio­nale that noth­ing needs to be fixed anyhow.

    If the world – or even the peo­ple of this nation – believed in lib­er­ty as a means to make the world a bet­ter place or as an end unto itself instead of as a way to make more mon­ey, the lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy would work.

    Instead, we (and I mean Amer­i­cans but I doubt that this is lim­it­ed to Amer­i­cans) divorce our actions from the repur­cus­sions of our actions. We do this by igno­rance and we do this by apa­thy. “Gosh, all I want is a pair of shoes! Should­n’t some­one else be try­ing to make sure that shoe fac­to­ries don’t employ sev­en-year-old work­ers?” does­n’t cut the mus­tard when one is hand­ing mon­ey to the employ­ers of sev­en-year-old work­ers for a pair of shoes. Like­wise “we just con­tract out to the fac­to­ries that give us the best price, we don’t hire the sev­en-year-olds” does­n’t cut the mus­tard. Every­one’s seen the news, but we keep on buy­ing Nikes and whin­ing to our politi­cians to do some­thing about some­thing that we’re pay­ing for. And any­one that sug­gests maybe not buy­ing Nikes is some sort of pinko lib­er­al fringe con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, because only com­mu­nists believe that the indi­vid­ual should have the free­dom to wield eco­nom­ic pow­er for them­sel.… oops, nev­er mind.

    So yes, you nailed it: that’s why I’m not a prac­tic­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an. I think the Lib­er­tar­i­ans should be the ones out there telling us why we should­n’t buy Nike prod­ucts TO PROVE THAT THE MARKETPLACE CAN DO GOOD. But no, the mar­ket­place will only do good when the peo­ple who make up the mar­ket have morals and the integri­ty not to set aside their morals for a cou­ple of bucks or to look cool.

    Which is not to say that I’m the enlight­ened con­sumer. Yes­ter­day I bought a Cheng Shin tire. But today I’m wear­ing a pair of Red Wing boots, and I believe that the Red Wing Com­pa­ny treats its employ­ees humane­ly if not well. I bought an Ital­ian motor­cy­cle, and I believe that Ital­ian fac­to­ry work­ers are rea­son­ably well pro­tect­ed under Ital­ian law. I could cer­tain­ly stand to pay more atten­tion to the things I buy and the peo­ple I buy them from. How­ev­er, I wish that pay­ing atten­tion to the peo­ple I buy from was looked upon as a wacky con­ser­v­a­tive prac­tice rather than a wacky lib­er­al practice.

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