Alright. I can't get my act together to put up another blog post. But! That doesn't mean I don't have something important/irrelevant to say. So, heeeere goes another filler. (Just so you know, I've begun and not finished three different blog posts about three different things. I am, officially, a lazy bum.)
Enjoy!
Q: Should America or other powers charge for liberating the oppressed in other countries?
A. No.
The root of "liberation" is "to liberate" - to make free, to unburden. If we begin charging for actions we take when "liberating" another country, then we totally undercut the meaning of what we're actually doing. Not only is the meaning lost, but so is any trust between countries.
Take Germany during World War I. A bunch of pompous megalomaniacs sat around a table and pushed chess-like pieces around on a map, totally and utterly removed from any of the horrendous events on the battlefield. When the Treaty of Versailles and the demand for 132 billion Marks in reparations came down on the Central Powers in 1919, the German economy was destroyed. The exchange rate was 1 Trillion Marks to the dollar. It was cheaper to burn money than buy wood. The people were starving, hurting, and resentful toward the global community. It wasn't their country that had done this to them - it was the Allied Powers. It was the U.S., Britain, France, and (seemingly) the entire rest of the world.
So what happens when a country's population is starving and angry? They begin to believe whatever will get food on the table, and Hitler offered that on a silver platter. He gave people jobs, which gave people money to buy food. Hitler was a savior to them, and they paid him back with evil deeds for their full bellies.
But after World War II, someone learned a lesson from what had happened before. Though it was the advent of the Cold War, the late 40s saw some exemplary negotiating happen between the U.S. and other world powers. They realized it was not the people, who had mostly been unwilling to go to war as they had in World War I, but the government, the institution, acting independent of the populace. When Germany was split up into Capitalist and Communist areas, the U.S. poured money into Allied countries to try and combat similar events to the post-WWI era. And it worked. Democratic Germany (not to mention other countries affected by the change in attitude) still stands today and is one of the U.S. foremost allies - as well as one of the strongest economies in the world.
Iraq is the same way. And honestly, what could they pay us? Their currency value is far less than our own, and it doesn't make sense to go in and rob the treasury when they can't even stand on their own two feet at this point.
Think of places like Darfur, with their own ongoing holocaust. Should we liberate them? Absolutely. Scores of people are dying everyday from the world's inaction and lack of willingness to commit to helping them out of this crisis. But should we really expect them to pay us back? After all the suffering? Money is only money, and the rest of the world runs on more money than they can handle. This is when paying for liberation becomes purely symbolic.
That's what it really comes down to. What can places like Iraq and Darfur really give us? To places like the U.S., Britain, and most of Europe, the money they give us is ink on paper, not gold-backed currency. Asking for payment is not only unnecessary- it's insulting. It is sending a message to the world that our mercy is for sale, and whomever can pay is whom we'll save.
Wherever there is human suffering, there should be a helping hand. Not a bill.
Sorry for the hiatus, folks, but I'm back at school and fighting the hectic currents of school, work, friends, and family.
This last week I had to write a mini-essay over the definition of freedom and what I think it is. At first, I tried to be funny about it. It's the kind of essay prompt you give to elementary school kids, not college students. At least, traditionally. While I don't think that second graders should seriously be contemplating freedom instead of learning history and English (how will they really understand what freedom is if they don't learn about the past and where and what we came from?), that's how it usually goes. Despite how good of an exercise this could have been, I hated it.
So, like I said, I tried to have a sense of humor, but the assignment just seemed all wrong. Is "freedom" really only worth 1 1/2 pages? Dissertations have been written on it, and I was expected to sum up what freedom means in a page and a half? It seemed like a cheap assignment. Then again, I don't know what's more telling: that we were only to write 1 1/2 pages on something so fundamental to the American way of life, or the trouble I had writing it.
It's not that I can't define freedom. I can think of many ways to do so. The problem is that I can't really grasp how my definition of freedom can be anything but a regurgitation of Webster. In my sorry paper, I went ahead to say that I was a product of freedom (I fall into a combination of "minorities", "statistics", and "exploited" groups that have received some sort of freedom, limited or otherwise), but that's as personal as I could get. It's hard to define freedom in the U.S. What we perceive as injustice and unfairness is often nitpicking, and what the majority perceives as what is right and fair is often where the real infringements are. I relied on that majority vision of freedom. Otherwise, it would have been a moody, stupid paper.
But I did go so far as to say that a free country would not allow the beliefs and ideals of one social group dictate the laws and limits of the American people. Was that a shot at evangelicals? Yes. If I had to choose one social group in the United States that has an ultimate agenda with a planned tangible outcome, evangelicals - especially those who dabble in the political arena - would be it. In fact, Huckabee, the champion of those whom I have accused, said this on January 14 before the Michigan primaries:
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, to amend the Constitution so it's in God standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."
In a roundabout way, here is my point: I can't define what freedom is until I've pointed out all that I believe freedom isn't. What Huckabee describes, what many Americans feel is right and free, is exactly what I'm scared of and what I don't want and what I believe freedom not to be and what I wish people could see as no different than the unjust indoctrination of communism, fascism, or any other -ism. What Huckabee proposes is what I wanted to relate to my professor in my 1 1/2 pages as exactly what this country was meant to stand against, not for. But, instead, I took my shot at evangelicals and ran away from it like it was radioactive. For the most part, that's because I can't read my professor, and I don't know whose "side" she's on. But there is a small part of me that desires civility to cheap shots - that I've got to give everyone the elbow room they need to pray, punch, or "apathize" without my meddling. In other words, I don't want to make myself a target by being so openly critical of any and everyone around me.
In the end, the assignment made me learn something powerful about myself: I'm just as susceptible to the politics of fear as anyone else. I'm willing to go with "the other guy" as long as "the other guy" isn't directly threatening me. But what does that say about me? That I'd rather fly blind than knowingly get in a plane with a faulty engine? It just means I'm an ignorant sheep, and not as critical as I should be of what's going on around me.
I've been fighting, trying to find a grad school, trying to scramble and be ready for my journey, and figure out where I want my life to go.
And I'm anticipating it all collapsing while I'm still trying to figure a way to hold it all up.
I am excited. Deep down. But on the surface, and perhaps a bit deeper, I am puzzled by feelings of regret, anxiety, and resentment.
I think it's a combination of all things life and spiritual. But I've been so disheartened lately that I question my own longevity to experience the meat of my life. People say it's gone by; I say it hasn't begun.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of an era. Tomorrow, I begin to understand. Tomorrow, I begin to grow in presence, in strength, in understanding. Tomorrow, I begin to find the answer - if I am woman, if I am man, if I am androgyny personified, if I am human, if I am spirit, if I am goddess, if I am child.
Tomorrow I begin to see the world.
No longer will I be caged. I will taste freedom, and I will covet it, cherish it, and hate it, because it will have ruined my senses for this dimension I have escaped, for this path I have walked, for this air I have cycled. I will hate it and love it and become one with it and part from it - all at once. Once after once after once. Once will turn into a moment, and the moment will last forever. I will be in limbo with my existence, and it will swallow me and spit me, and I will welcome and despise it.
To a land of past, present, and future I travel. Where I find myself I cannot wait to discover.
