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Denouncing
Hugo Chavez
And other
sports of the rich, infamous and just plain stupid
by Daniel
Patrick Welch
Nancy
Pelosi apparently has so much time on her hands, and so few
other
issues to address, that she saw fit to unload on Hugo Chavez
following
his appearance before the U.N. in New York. Most readers
are
familiar by now with Chavez' provocative swipes at "Devil"
Bush
and his
comment that the titular head of U.S. empire had left the
place
reeking of sulfur from his earlier appearance.
Is this
run-of-the-mill Pablum of the Poor what angered Democratic
Party
leaders so? It could hardly have been the more substantive
complaints
in Chavez' brief address: the observation that the
permanent
veto of a few mega-powers is an undemocratic throwback that
taints
the entire mission of the U.N. (Gasp! What insolence!). Or
that the
refusal to issue visas to several members of Chavez' staff
reeks of
political payback thoroughly inappropriate for the
geographic
host of an international organization (ingrate!).
No,
denunciations are issued primarily because they are cheap and
easy
political currency, a convenient distraction from events, issues
or
problems the denouncer might otherwise be compelled to address.
Outrage
is seductive; with the world burning around them, the leaders
of the
system and the war machine fed by both parties have nothing
else to
say and nothing to offer, either to their own people or the
citizens
of the world.
Denunciations,
repudiations and other useless gestures have long been
a
substitute for real action and a smokescreen to reassign proper
targets
of outrage. When Nelson Mandela visited the US as the
apartheid
regime was crumbling beneath his lifelong struggle, it was
demanded
of him that he "repudiate" Mohamar Khadafi and Fidel Castro.
Pictures
were circulated of the supposedly embarrassing hugs that
would
make such "repudiation" necessary.
Mandela
refused, of course, clearly seeing the absurdity of bowing to
pressure
from the erstwhile funders of his oppressors to denounce
those who
had supported his struggle for decades. Black protesters of
the
Vietnam War, urged to patriotic duty to kill communists and
children
halfway around the globe, demurred with a similarly poignant
retort:
"No Viet Cong ever called me 'Nigger.'"
But there
is a disturbing lesson in the pattern of those our
politicians
love to hate, and especially in our
toothless
"opposition's" complicity with the real forces colluding to
turn back
human progress on an unprecedented scale. There is
something
unconvincing about the party of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
being
outraged by war crimes, either by the current administration or
around
the world. And ringing even hollower is the self-righteous
drivel
from the lips of the heirs to one of the most nearly total
successful
genocides in human history. Three centuries of slavery,
apartheid
and racist terrorism came to an end (sort of) under their
watch.
Democrats love to absorb these "struggles" and
"victories"
into
their legacy, conveniently forgetting not only that racism was
the
founding tenet of huge sections of their own party, but that
their
desire to claim credit is ill-deserved. Until the very sunset
of
official American apartheid, even those most sympathetic in power
resisted,
demurred, watered down, mitigated and counseled caution and
yet more
patience among the oppressed. Some heroes.
And now,
despite all historical evidence that reliance on change from
the
leadership down is an exercise in futility, rank-and-file
democrats
are nearly giddy at the prospect of gains to be made in the
coming
biennial farce next month. Let's keep our eye on the ball:
Democratic
leaders have more to say about Hugo Chavez than the
problems
he is attempting to address.
Even in
opposition they have almost nothing to say about the hugest
issues of
the day: the near total inability of our society to address
virtually
any of our actual problems caused by the bloated and
counterproductive
war machine. So stuffed with our money that the
machine
hemorrhages billions with barely anyone noticing, war waste
dwarfs
all other items and all other budgets on the planet.
Government
on all levels is completely paralyzed by this fear-induced
blackmail,
even as it has more money than any other on earth. A
crisis,
of course, met largely with silence from Bush's "friends
across
the aisle.” Likewise with support for the ongoing slaughter
and
colonization of Palestine, a festering injustice so obvious that
even the
sleepy US public is starting to wake up to the atrocities.
A million
cluster bombs lie scattered over southern Lebanon, a
million
little ambassadors for the truth behind the US agenda in the
region.
There is no timid or incremental solution to problems that
scream
for radical change. Yet the Democrats with few exceptions,
right
beside their Republican collaborators are so engorged on
corporate
money, so beholden to interests diametrically opposed to
our own,
so convinced of the rightness of their collusion with these
forces,
so full of...well, shit, to be perfectly honest...that they
expect us
to believe that something basic will change when they take
power.
And if they have nothing to say now, will they miraculously
have more
to say once the Made in USA SKU labels on all those cluster
bombs
trace directly back to their own purse strings? Don't hold your
breath.
© 2006
Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit
and link
to http://danielpwelch.com.
Writer, singer, linguist and
activist
Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem,
Massachusetts,
with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they
run The
Greenhouse School http://www.greenhouseschool.org.
Translations
of articles are available in up to 20 languages. Links
to the
website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com.
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