| Number 206 | May 20, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Another double issue of Nygaard Notes this week. I can’t help myself. On the bright side, you’ll have 10 days to read this one while I’m out in New York watching my nephew graduate from college. Number 207 won’t be out until the regular time, on Friday, May 30. If you live in Minnesota, please take a moment to call your state legislator and tell them what sort of state you’d like to live in. The one that is being contemplated this year, in service to the “no new taxes” doctrine, will be different, and not better, than it is now. Let them know what you think. The state capitol switchboard can give you the number of your legislator: (651) 296-6013 Or visit: http://www.leg.state.mn.us/. Welcome to the new readers this week! OK, I gotta go pack for my trip. Nygaard |
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Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, speaking to the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) on May 15th about managing the image of Mr. George W. Bush:
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Lindner Watch, The Final Installment: Racism and The Great White Silence |
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After only three installments of “Lindner Watch”—my irregular feature on Arlon Lindner, the State Representative who has become a sort of paragon of ignorant bigotry among Minnesota’s elected officials—I’m starting to think that I don’t need to run this feature any more. When I saw the official editorial in the March 13th Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) entitled “Lindner's Lapses; A Gaffe Grown into a Disgrace,” I began to suspect that it had become unnecessary for Nygaard Notes to point and shout about the antics of this ignorant bigot. It’s true, as the Star Trib puts it, that this man “seems hellbent on showing how little he knows and how much bias he harbors,” but apparently there is enough of a sense of decency remaining in the mainstream media in Minnesota to accord some of his more egregious spoutings the attention they deserve. So, I’ll save valuable Nygaard Notes space for the important stuff that does not get in the mainstream media. Dangerous though Arlon’s rantings may be, now that he’s all over the front pages, having a “Lindner Watch” in these pages feels a little too much like piling on. But, before I give up on the Arlon stories, I want to make one final comment on a larger issue that goes beyond Arlon and that hasn’t gotten enough attention in the press. It was in mid-March that Mr. Lindner’s obsession with sex led him to make some comments indicating that his bigotry, not surprisingly, extended also to racial issues. Arlon, in case I haven’t mentioned it, is of the breed known as Caucasian, or “white.” (I put the word in quotation marks to underline the absurdity of the concept. For more on this, visit the website of the New Abolitionists at http://racetraitor.org/naindex.html.) Here’s what the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) had to say on March 11:
If he really did “just think of them as people,” that would be bad enough, as it would betray a horrifying insensitivity to the realities of race and to his own white privilege. But a story in The Advocate (a gay & lesbian newsmagazine) of April 3rd reports that one of the only two African-American legislators in Minnesota recently was listed in a letter from Lindner’s lawyer as “Neva Walker-Black.” Her name is Neva Walker. The lawyer, James Anderson, called it “a simple mistake,” and Walker said that the way her name was printed on the letter was “probably an accident.” It seems to this writer that it was fairly “simple,” all right, but it’s hard not to notice that the “mistake” resulted in “Walker-Black,” and not “Walker-People.” Their Offense, Our Responsibility It’s easy to throw stones at Arlon Lindner, but speaking for myself as a Minnesota-born “white” guy, possibly more disturbing than Lindner’s comments were the responses that were reported in the press. In all the reports I saw, quite a number of legislators attacked Lindner for his ignorant remarks about sex education and gay rights. That’s great, and we should all support those who spoke out. But how about the response to his racist comments? According to the Star Trib, “The House's only two black members immediately lashed out at Lindner” for his “statement of fact” on Africa. But they were the only people quoted on the subject. Assuming that it wasn’t just a failure of the press to report it, and that there really was no other response, then we have to ask, “Where are the ‘white’ folks?” Such silence on the part of our “white” leadership is shameful and dangerous, as it allows the rest of the majority (“white”) population of the state to continue in our “normal” state of oblivious privilege. When the only voices raised in protest of racist language and behavior are the voices of people of color—all too common in this state—many “white” people are allowed to believe that racism is “their” problem, and not a problem for all of us. This is dangerous, and those of us who benefit from white privilege have to take responsibility for stopping it. SPECIAL NOTE TO “WHITE” READERS: The next time you read about or hear a public official spouting racist trash, take it upon yourself to call your own representative and demand that they make a public statement condemning the offensive action/remark. Be sure to identify yourself as “white” (or Caucasian, or European-American, or whatever you want that lets them know you are a member of the White Privilege Club). They need to know: A) Their “white” constituents are paying attention to THEIR behavior, B) Silence in the face of injustice is an injustice in itself; C) Talk is cheap, and the best way to make their condemnation of their colleagues’ racist behavior believable would be to support or sponsor [Pick your favorite]: Affirmative action legislation; Anti-redlining legislation; Fair housing laws; Strong hate-crime legislation; Anti-racial profiling bills; Immigrant-rights laws, Reparations laws, Drug-law reform bills, Prison reform bills, Full funding for civil rights enforcement, or whatever the local anti-racist activists in your community are calling for. Your representative may act like they don’t know what you’re talking about, but if enough “white” people call and say similar things, maybe it will get them to doubt that the silent majority of “white” people really supports a backwards-looking agenda of white privilege. And that we need action to back up what we say. |
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The U.S. and Democracy in Iraq: “You Can’t Stand Back Completely” |
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Despite an ever-growing quantity of evidence to the contrary, the idea of the U.S. as a staunch defender of democracy is, as I said last week, so deeply embedded as a self-evident truth that it is extremely rare to see someone in the media even make the attempt to produce evidence that it is, in fact, true. Last week I drew a few quotations from the mainstream media to illustrate the phenomenon in which the leaders of various would-be allies of the United States chose to support the United States government in its recent invasion of Iraq. In the cases I cited, the pro-war alliances placed those leaders in direct opposition to the wishes of the great majority of their populations. This opposition to their people was, in turn, generally referred to as “success” by the leaders of our own United States of America. There’s a lesson there, for those who care to learn it. Last week was all about alliances and coalitions among friends, or would-be friends. But how about U.S. efforts at “nation-building” in Iraq? Is the U.S. government a “friend” to the Iraqi people? Those who look will, I think, find a startling contempt for democracy hidden between the lines of the reports from and about Iraq presented in the corporate media. Startling, at least, to those with the standard blind spots about the history of U.S. military interventions in the world. The Nature of Democracy I touched on the subject of the U.S. contempt for democracy briefly in Nygaard Notes #200, “The ‘Liberation’ of Iraq: ‘A Perfectly Choreographed Event.’” At that time I quoted the LA Times, which referred to anonymous “supporters” saying that Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi “shares with the Bush administration a common vision for a democratic, secular Iraq that encourages free enterprise, eschews extremism, and is pro-Western.” The other Times—the New York one—I quoted as saying that certain hawks in the Bush administration “are thought to be particularly fervent about trying to remake Iraq as a beacon of democracy and a country with a tilt toward Israel.” I commented that such things as the “tilt” of a country’s foreign policy and the degree of “extremism” a nation chooses to embrace are examples of the very decisions that a “democracy” gets to make for itself, and which can’t be dictated by the occupying power. That should be obvious, but apparently is not so obvious to these journalists. The anti-democratic nature of reports in the press are not always as easy to discern as in the case of the two cited above. Some are a little subtle, in fact, as this one from the NY Times of April 9th: “A retired American general, F. J. Walters, and the first Americans dispatched by the Bush administration to bring democracy and aid to Iraq crossed over the northern border of Kuwait and into Iraq this morning in a small convoy of armored Suburbans.” The idea that one can “bring” democracy across the border in a sport utility vehicle, along with some other commodities, reveals a peculiar understanding of the process—and a process it is, not a commodity—that I call “democracy.” The thing about democracy is that the majority of people get to make the big decisions. In a democratic country, the best interests of its people will be the primary consideration of the leadership when they decide such things as the nation’s foreign policy, how to use the nation’s resources, and how to distribute the nation’s wealth. Even the sort of economic model they follow will reflect the interests of the majority, which may not be the same as the interests of the dictator’s family or—as in the present case—the interests of the occupying power. The current occupying power in Iraq understands this quite well, on occasion even stating it quite clearly to the press, as in the following anonymous comment found in the April 23rd NY Times:
You certainly can’t, Mr. Pentagon Official, because what if a democratic Iraq were to decide to do something “extreme,” like denominating its oil sales in Euros instead of in dollars, thus weakening U.S. control over the global economy? Or orienting its exports toward Russia and Asia instead of the U.S., possibly strengthening a potential competitor to U.S. military might? Or nationalizing its oil industry completely and keeping the immense profits for its own people instead of for investors in U.S.-based multinationals? |
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A little story about myself: I was elected the president of my junior class in my small-town high school of Waseca, Minnesota in 1970. At that time, each class elected a representative to sit on the “Student Council,” which was supposed to be a place where we learned about government and how to be leaders. The president of each class was also awarded a seat on the council, so off I went to my first meeting. I don’t recall specifically what was on the agenda of that meeting, but it was largely trivial things like how many chairs did we want in the student lounge and things of that sort. In any case, the agenda had been set for us before we got there. My first official act was to raise my hand and ask that we be allowed to talk about the nature of the curriculum in the high school. My reasoning was that, if this was “student government,” we should have a voice in governing the nature of our education. The principal immediately made it clear that this was not for us to discuss. If he hadn’t made it clear enough, it became very clear the next day when the school administration announced that, effective immediately, class presidents would no longer sit on the Student Council. I got the message; I think we all did. On a related note, the headline in the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of May 17th read: “In Reversal, Plan for Iraq Self-Rule Has Been Put Off.” The story led with the following: “In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month.” “What kind of “democracy” is this?” one may wonder. For the answer, consider the following couple of snippets from the NY Times. First, from April 14: “Lt. Gen. Jay Garner insisted that American-style democracy could sprout on the shards of President Saddam Hussein's government. ‘I don't think they had a love-in when they had Philadelphia’ in 1787, he said in an interview here [in Kuwait] before his departure [for Iraq]. ‘Anytime you start the process it's fraught with dialogue, tensions, coercion, and should be.’” Dialogue and tensions, yes, of course. But the General pointed out on the same day that, in “the next few years...[Iraq] may become the richest country in the Middle East.” Methinks that’s where the “coercion” part comes in. Secondly, here is historian Phebe Marr, writing in the April 20th Times on the role of education in creating an environment in which democracy can flourish: “Changing the political culture may prove to be one of the biggest challenges in postwar Iraq. While most Iraqis want liberation, they may not yet be prepared for, or even understand, Western-style democracy.” Multiple-Choice Democracy I’ll bet many Iraqis do understand the nature of “Western-style democracy,” but I’m not so sure most United Statesians do. After all, not everyone has had the good fortune to be booted from their student council at age 16. Whatever the lessons we were supposed to learn in the Waseca High School Student Council about government and democracy, the lesson we actually learned was very plain: that the important decisions are to be made elsewhere, by processes into which we can expect to have no input and that, in any case, we barely understand. This is the “American-style,” or “Western-style” democracy about which we read in the newspapers, a creature which I have called “Multiple-Choice Democracy.” (See Nygaard Notes #90 for my first, tentative discussion of this term.) What characterizes this “style” of democracy in the United States is that it is sees “democracy” as a product, not as a process. That is, it’s conceived of in market terms. It’s a wonderful thing, we are told, that in the United States we can walk into the supermarket and purchase anything we like. Just like on election day! In a culture dominated by corporatized market relations, “freedom,” and sometimes “democracy,” is understood to be the ability to select from among some number of pre-determined choices. It’s similar to a multiple-choice test, where everyone is free to attempt success by correctly answering “the questions,” while the decisions about what questions to ask—a far more important process—is not part of the “test.” We take tests on test day, and we vote on election day, but the important decisions—decisions about who gets to ask the questions, who gets to design the test itself, and even whether or not there will even be a test in the first place—are made in the days and months and years before the test/election is held. Making these decisions is the process of democracy. The election, or test, is the product. A democracy in which the main activity is voting I thus call “Multiple-Choice Democracy.” The other I call “Participatory Democracy.” At the high-school level, the big decisions may be curriculum, or having a role in the selection of the administration. At the level of a nation-state, it may be the allocation of resources or the nature of relations with the United States. In both cases, everyone understands that “American-style democracy” means that no one gets to vote until the important decisions have been made. If they don’t understand, then “plans for self-rule” will be “put off,” as was announced last weekend. So I think many Iraqis probably understand this idea of “American-style democracy” as a paternalistic vision, in which U.S. leaders—political leaders, business leaders—will make the fundamental decisions about the design of the economy and the distribution of wealth, and the Iraqi people will get to choose which individual will administer the plan. While “American-style democracy” is far superior to the sort of cruel dictatorship personified by Saddam Hussein, it is also far short of the mythology of American democracy that many—inside of Iraq and out—may have been led to expect. In a true, participatory democracy, the election would be an anti-climax, since the citizens would have done the important work already. This idea is quite foreign to those of us raised in the U.S. This limited understanding may be what leads people like historian Marr to say that “While most Iraqis want liberation, they may not yet be prepared for, or even understand, Western-style democracy.” An alternative interpretation of the confusing events in Iraq could be that the Iraqis do, indeed, understand “Western-style democracy,” but would prefer true liberation. PostScript: The reason I ran for class president in Waseca in 1971 was that the junior class was in charge of staging the Junior/Senior “Prom.” Each year the junior class raised thousands of dollars which was used to decorate the gymnasium, hire a band and a caterer, etc, for the big social event of the year. I ran on a platform of eliminating the “prom,” replacing it with a modest dance, and donating the remaining large sum of money to a worthy cause. I had a long list of worthy causes, ranging on the controversy scale from the Cancer Society to the Socialist Party, as I recall. When I tried to carry out my plan, I was called a “communist” by all sorts of people—inside the school and out—and all but formally stripped of my duties. The prom went on without me. |
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For important background on the actual history of U.S. attempts at “nation-building” and how often it has resulted in a democratic outcome, readers may wish to peruse an interesting report put out last month by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Entitled “Lessons From The Past: The American Record of Nation Building,” the study takes a look at “The record of past U.S. experience in democratic nation building,” a record it concludes is “daunting.” The study looks at 16 cases since 1898 in which the U.S. has overtly said that they were trying to “build” a nation into a democracy (as distinct from military attacks without this component, of which there have been more than 200 cases since the founding of the U.S.). They argue that democracy did take hold in four of the cases, but they are being generous, as they include post-Noriega Panama as a “success.” Even the “coalition efforts” they cite have “a low rate of success, and the authors note that
While I have some problems with the definitions and methodology used by the authors of this study, Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, (and big problems with their overall analysis; they seem to think the U.S. WANTS to build democracy!) it’s still worth a look for those wondering about the odds of Iraq becoming a “beacon of democracy” under U.S. leadership. Read the summary or the full report online by going to http://www.ceip.org/ and clicking on “Publications.” |