(Fwd) Re: Transparency of Evil

[Ivo Skoric]

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I married one of those women (in black) that you saw in Belgrade. 
That is quite correct comparison (Vietnam - Bosnia). There is indeed
disturbingly high similarity in behavior of Americans vs. the rest of
the world to the behavior of Belgrade Serbs vs. the rest of former
Yugoslavia: in both cases the former treat the later as their
backyard, not as their neighbors. Milosevic (and Saddam) are mini-
imperialists. Ordinary people are the most dangerous. They still do
not believe mass killings, rape, and torture camps ever happened in
Bosnia, particularly not at the hands of Serbs.  They may as well 
vote for Bush here as they are for Milosevic there for years. ivo



On 9 Jun 2004 at 14:50, Franke Wilmer wrote:

hey ivo -- it is little consolation to live in a desolate place in 
the
mountains (like montana).  societies that refuse to examine their own
capacity to do harm and their history of doing harm are condemned to
repeat such harm-doing.  this is surely one of the darker chapters in
our history.  but in each dark chapter we never, at the time, saw it
that way (slavery until the mid-19th century, genocide of indigenous
peoples mostly in the 19th century, imperialism and imperialistic 
wars
in the 20th century...)

this all feels like the most dismal failure of all of the things i
have spent more than half my life trying to be a force for --
tolerance, compassion, recognition of our interchangeability,
knowledge that the oneness of our humanity is not an ideal but the
most real thing there is, with the most real consequences for our
failure to understand...unaware of the ubiquity of our inhumanity is
the same thing as being unaware of our common humanity.  you cannot
treat others inhumanely without damaging or losing your own humanity,
without dehumanizing yourself.

we celebrate "Martin Luther King" day and have no idea (not being
reflective anyway) how he tried to teach us exactly that.  i am sad,
even depressed, too, by my  sense of failure as a teacher.  the
majority of americans have little understanding of democracy, how
essential criticism and collective self-reflection are to it, nor how
the gang in the white house now is destroying both democracy and the
rule of law...depressing that people are not raging in the streets.
but they are getting better at math and science.

but hey, i am spoiled, like most Americans, particularly white
Americans, by how little we have had to fight.   i keep remembering
two impressions from my first trip to Belgrade in the spring of 1995.

one was the small number of people (women in black) who stood on
Republika square protesting the war an hour every wednesday at 4. 
they
had to get up and fight every day for years against anti-democratic
forces...and they are still struggling.  but they struggled.  and 
they
thought about democracy all the time, as people do when they are
deprived of it.

the other impression was how oblivious "ordinary" people in Belgrade
seemed to be about the atrocities going on not so far away in Bosnia
and how their govt was implicated, and i remember thinking that if 
you
were outraged about Vietnam (as i was in the 1960s) and you were a
visitor to the US during that time, the war in Vietnam would have
appeared just as distant to Americans then as the war in Bosnia (and
Croatia) was to the people in Belgrade 30 years later...as Iraq is
now.
  it becomes normalized very quickly. when a frog is dropped into a
  pot
of boiling water it screams.  but if you put it in a pot of cool
water
and then turn the heat on slowing, it never even sees death coming.
most americans are not even seeing the loss of democracy, or the
connection between Abu Ghraib, Git-mo, the Patriot Act and the loss 
of
democracy.

finally, i remember protesting the vietnam war.  and i remember how
popular the war was until thousands of body bags started coming home.
so i do not delude myself about people opposing a war until they
perceive themselves at risk of losing something, though i do think
there was more criticism and protest in advance this time around.
cause for hope?

sorry  this is so long...thanks for being there to talk to...
franke

On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 10:23 AM, Ivo Skoric wrote:

  Yet there
> is nothing that we can do to change this, except to get out of the
> way of the predictable wave of vengeance, and go live somewhere in
> desolate mountain ranges, perhaps, with no internet. Pretty
> depressing. ivo
>
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* * * * * * * * * * * *
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will
know peace."
                - Jimi Hendrix, American musician and songwriter

Franke Wilmer
Professor and Department Head
Political Science
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717

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