"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." ~ Yevgeny YevtushenkoThree decades ago I picked up Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and couldn't put it down. It's a fairly massive volume of story after story of the horrors committed in Soviet Russia under communism. Without a free press, a whole system of atrocity could exist. It was a horror, and not the way civilized peoples were meant to co-exist in "the good society."
Solzhenitsyn detailed a brutality limited only by the imaginations of men. These are the kinds of things one imagines Kurtz was referring to in Conrad's Heart of Darkness when he uttered that verdict on the nature of his heart: "The horror." Yet Kurtz himself simultaneously confides, "I had immense plans."
Conrad's story is a work of fiction, though often fiction can be a better mirror of reality than what passes for non-fiction sometimes.
The twentieth century has been filled with horror. Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Ottoman Turks' efforts to eliminate the Armenians, Mao's starvation of 35 million Chinese peasants in the fifties. Much of what was going down occurred because in these dark places there was no free press. There was no light.
But when the lights were turned on at Abu Graib, it made us uncomfortable to discover that our country had been similarly making horror. When the pictures hit the Internet, Americans winced. That's because our Eighth Amendment to the Constitution states: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This kind of thing could not be condoned. Yet in other places, out of sight and out of mind, horrors will continue unabated. On another front, the fighting continues in Gaza. The Israeli army has fired on aid trucks and a Red Cross ambulance trying to help the wounded. Innocents are starving, but who will intercede? The U.N. Security Council has called for a cease fire in a 14-0 vote (the U.S. abstained), but will there be any action taken? At least in this situation, there are cameras rolling, and people of conscience can at least see what is going on, if they would but look.
No wonder Dylan once wrote, "I've seen the kingdoms of this world, and it's making me feel afraid."
2 comments:
It's so much easier and safer to talk against what the kingdoms are doing on the other side of the world from which you're living on, than to talk against the excessive bails, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments that have been/are going on in your own back yard.
In Duluth, MN, a DWI arrest for driving that resulted in no (zero) accidents or injuries, costs several thousand dollars, plus at least two years' probation.
Piping back at "The System" at age 16-17-18, has gotten hundreds of under-aged people "diagnosed", and forcibly drugged, in St. Louis County, Minnesota.
Where can you read the truth in Duluth, MN, USA, except on this blog, eh?
Like the guy said, "When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
Yes, there are lots of things that are shrouded in silence here. And probably it's much easier to look at injustices across the seas because no one wants to offend someone locally, especially when you have to do business face to face.
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