Civilization

I've mentioned this before, and it's something I've been thinking about for awhile. Other people have argued and written about it, rightfully so, but there is something I'd like to say. Prepare yourself, this is a bit long.

Earlier this afternoon, I walked with my dog, whose renewed license from the state of New York just arrived in the mail yesterday, and who is currently receiving medication from an animal hospital for an ear infection, down to the Starbucks a few blocks away, to pick up the Sunday paper and get some coffee. I walked down a street that was for the most part clean, minus some leftover silly string from last night's festivities. The street was paved. Cars -- themselves regulated for safety standards -- passed down the avenue in the direction they were meant to be going, stopping when there was a red light, staying mostly under 30 miles an hour. I passed mailboxes, trees, storefronts. I walked the three blocks in safety; not once did it occur to me that some violence or threat would befall me.

I returned to my house safely, washed dishes with clean water that came out of a tap, and proceeded to sit on the couch and read the main news section of the Times. I turned on the lights as it got darker, and the lights, minus one bulb, were all working fine. The newspaper I held, purchased with certifiable currency, at a store that offers free health care to its employees, was not written by the government, or any other actors.

So, I read the news section. And by the time I got to page A10, I had to stop to write this.

What makes this country so remarkable is the longevity of its civilization. And of course, the order I described is, sadly, not uniform throughout the city, state, and country I inhabit; but nonetheless, there is an expectation in our culture that this should be the norm, and on average, it exists in this country.

This is remarkable. If you look at the rest of the world, this sense of civility largely does not exist.

...

So I turn to this article about Guatemalan gangs to make a point.

"Even in peace, governments across Central America have said violence remains the principal threat to stability. Here, as in neighboring Honduras and El Salvador, the violence comes with many of the trademarks of the cold war: rape, torture and extrajudicial kidnappings and killings. And now, as they did then, human rights investigators have raised concerns about a clandestine "social cleansing campaign," led by rogue police officers and vigilante mobs.

This latest cycle of violence began five years ago, when street gangs with roots in Los Angeles - especially the Mara 18 and the Mara Salvatruchas, known as MS-13 - began to spread across Central America and southern Mexico, creating the same kind of havoc in poor neighborhoods here as they once did in places like Compton and Watts.

Then in the past year, men and boys suspected of being members of street gangs began to disappear in much the same way people suspected of being guerrillas did during the 1980's: abducted from busy streets or ambushed in their beds, and forced into unmarked cars with tinted windows and no license plates.

Almost none of the kidnapped turn up alive. Some never turn up at all. When they do, they are often not found in one piece.

Beyond the attacks against gang members and youths suspected of being gang members, international human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have expressed concern about a disproportionate increase in the killing of women. The Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman reported that from 2002 to 2004, killings of women increased by almost 57 percent, while the killings of men increased 21 percent.

Adriana Beltran of the Washington Office on Latin America said many of the killings were committed with unusual cruelty, involving the kind of rape and mutilations that occurred during this country's armed conflict.

"On June 16, they found a head in a bucket right there," said Elubia Velásquez, pointing toward a tortilla shop while walking along the main street of La Esperanza. "The hands were found near a light pole where you met me this morning. And farther down that way, under the bridge at Búcaro, they found the body."

Ms. Velásquez, born and reared in La Esperanza, said the neighborhood was once terrorized by the Mara 18. She said the gang members demanded so-called war taxes from all the merchants, bus drivers and delivery crews and killed several people who refused to pay. The gang members, she said, had also raped dozens of girls, robbed countless homes and turned schoolchildren into drug addicts.

...

In a crime-plagued neighborhood called El Mezquital, people said some of the killing had brought relief.

Guadalupe del Carmen Alvarado, a resident there, said that after gang members had killed a couple of merchants and bus drivers who had refused to pay war taxes, the other merchants and bus drivers pooled their money to hire gunmen to "eliminate the gangs."

"We don't like to see bad things happen, but to be sincere, when they started to kill the gang members, I gave thanks to God," Ms. Alvarado said. "The gangs are like living with a lion, and we know if we don't kill it, it is going to eat us."

Ms. Velásquez acknowledged that "the gangs made a lot of enemies" in El Mezquital. But she said she worried that innocent youths had fallen victim in the fighting.

"Now it's not only gang members who are disappearing," Ms. Velásquez said. "Now they are taking teenagers who don't have a single tattoo. Being young and poor in neighborhoods like this one has become a crime."

On Oct. 13, three neighborhood teenagers, who residents said were not involved in gangs, were abducted by three men wearing ski masks as the youths played soccer in front of their houses. The victims' bodies were found the next day dumped along a small road about an hour away.

The authorities said the youths appeared to have been strangled. All three were found with their hands and feet tied. Their relatives said the bodies showed signs of torture.

Among them was Ms. Morales's 15-year-old grandson, José Arnoldo Arecis.

"They say a tree that is no good should be cut down," Ms. Morales said, sobbing. "But only God has the right to cut down a man. What is happening here is a sin.""

I have read, and, when I am able to not tangibly grasp the concept that others are being physically and mentally terrorized -- indeed, given the safety of the world I inhabit, it is difficult to imagine unless you're hit over the head with explicit descriptions, images, or whatnot -- I have found myself lapsing into sympathy for the arguments that torture is sometimes necessary to preserve the greater good.

I could write that I am sympathetic to that idea from the comfort of my warm, clean, well-appointed living room, in my lovely home, on my safe, well-lit street, in my happy neighborhood, in my orderly (for the most part) city.

I may have known emotional terror, but not anything of the sort experienced by, say, the women living in Darfur.

Most people of this world look to America -- and actively try to come here -- here first, then Canada and Western Europe and Australia -- because we have been a beacon, nay the paramountcy of civility, opportunity, and, of course, the four freedoms:

"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world."

When we as a nation perpetuate the violence, the propaganda, the torture, the economic enslavement, the pollution, the corruption, the terror -- either actively or through passive implicit condoning -- under the guise of the idea that it prevents that from happening here at home -- is the highest, most horrible evil ever committed.

The hypocrisy is one thing. But the inevitably of erosion is the greater threat.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Forgive us our trespasses.

I recall another wartime president who was a passionate defender of freedom. He said,

The nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fiber of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.

Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.

The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are :

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding straight of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations."

-FDR.

Posted: Sunday - January 01, 2006 at 06:15 PM |