Do
you know what people mean when they say someone is “romanticizing” something?
Well, the expression comes from a cultural movement called “Romanticism”, a
movement that valued the relation with nature, and the human emotions, as a
reaction to the excess of rationalism after the “Enlightenment”. Of course they
had some good insights and of course it produced great art. And of course it
could deviate to naivety sometimes.
That’s what “romanticize” something
means. To idealize too much, too see unrealistic beauty in things that are more
complex than they are in our dreams. To illustrate this, let’s imagine a
“romanticized” scene, let’s pretend it’s a movie.
In this movie there’s a Prince, and
he asks his servant Sam to get him some clothes like the ones poor people use,
because he wants to disguise as a poor man and go to the market to see how
people live outside his rich reality. Sam does what he says and there he goes.
When he comes back, he says, “Sam, I
decided that I want to be poor!” “What?”, asks Sam. The prince replies – and
you can hear a lute tune in the background – “Yes, Sam. I want to be poor. Poor
people are so happy! They don’t worry about money, Sam. Yes, poor people don’t
care about material things!”
Of course he is “romanticizing”.
Idealizing things. The reality is not exactly like that. Well, some
romanticizing, at some phase in our lives, can be healthy, sure. But as we
grow, as we mature, it can be a mistake to be too naïve. Specially when we part
of groups of people who have political influence.
Nowadays, the young people in
colleges are absolutely obsessed with race, with skin color. I don’t mean to
say that racism is not an evil that exist and must be fought, but I must remind
you, risking to hurt some Harvard sensibilities: people with dark skin can be
bad too. I’m sorry, but it’s true. They can make bad decisions too.
We must never forget slavery, the
struggle for rights, and the injustices that still must be confronted, but I am
really worried that teachers are using the struggle against racism as an excuse
to set aside some other matters that are really important. The kids, black and
white, have a right to learn about the different ways that political power can
be exercised.
Seriously, are we still teaching
what a dictatorship is? Are we still teaching that antidemocratic, tyrannical
power is an evil thing in itself, don’t matter who is using it?
There’s
this old theory that the oppressed people – the old favorite division was
economical – the poor against the rich – now it is racial, but it works
basically the same – must exert some tyranny for a while over their old
oppressors, so that in the end we have peace in the whole world. But if the
goal is peace, why not try to get there by the shortest way possible? Who is
going to tell how mean the oppressed must be after they gain power – if they do
– before they can relax and look for peace? Are we gods?
Dictatorships
are a disgrace for Humanity. Every step towards dictatorship is a step in the
opposite direction of peace. Dictatorships bring disgrace when they win wars,
they bring disgrace when they lose, to their people and to the others. There is
always a price that will be paid when a cruel dictatorship establishes itself
in power. And as they expand, gain territories, they raise their price.
There’s
always something that the World can and should do about dictatorships. Direct
confront is not always the best move in all cases, sure, but we must clearly
stand against what we think is unacceptable. A single Global Government would
be a terrible idea, of course – if that Government became tyrannical, it would
be very hard for the World to regain it’s freedom. We need a lot of countries
and different perspectives, but we must search for a common sense of what is
acceptable is not, based on the fact that we are all humans, after all.
The
people who are protesting against Israel seem to agree with this necessity,
too. After all, they are protesting, so they seem to believe that there should
be a basic common sense shared by humanity. The problem is that people who are
committed with political extremes are never the best to raise consciousness
about suffering and abuse.
Because
they have a political intention that is driving their speech, they will focus
on accusing they perceived political opponents, and a lot of times they will
consider the opponents of these opponents automatically as allies for their
cause, and will overlook a lot of violence and abuse committed by this new
“allies”.
When
it comes to political extremes, “far left” and “far right”, I remember learning
from a good teacher in school that “left” and “right” were legit in a
democracy, but that the extremes, the extreme left and the extreme right, were
dangerous and evil. They were both forms of Totalitarianism: people cease to be
seen as individuals and become a “mass”.
I
still agree with that. I don’t consider myself as “left” nor “right”, but I
have no problem discussing with someone who is a little more to that side or
the other than me. I hate the extremes. Both the extremes start by proposing
some form of “camaraderie” just to, in the end, erase the individual.
So,
we have to ask, if both extremes are forms of Totalitarianism, what makes them
different from each other? In what are they opposites? I think we can focus on
two main things: “property” and “the past”. In the extreme left, communism and
socialism, private property is wrong, and everything should, in fact, belong to
everybody. To “the people”. Under the care of the State, obviously. In the
right, private property is very much respected.
As
for the past, the fat right praises things that existed and were kind off lost
in the past, like a little story that could go like this: “The Grampa was a
good and strong man, the Dad became a little weaker and lost some battles, and
now the Grandson will recover what his Grampa had, and maybe be even stronger
than him.” Something like this. The socialist thinks that everybody in the past
was a slave to “The Capital”, and everything must change radically.
I
don’t see even one good reason why we shouldn’t consider the Islamic
theocracies as Far Right Dictatorships. They don’t have the intention of
dividing private property, and they value the past in the form of a radical
vision of religious commandments, and a total entanglement of the State and an
extreme version of a traditional religion. Besides, so many things that are so
dear to the modern left, like gay rights, woman rights, are considered evil by
them.
So
why wouldn’t we consider them far right dictatorships? Because people have
brown skin? Does brown skin bring some kind of genetical immunity to Fascism?
Or is it because the common people there are poor and unhappy? Do we believe
far right makes everybody rich and happy?
Let’s
think, please. If these powerful rich religious tyrants want to influence the
West, it is precisely the socialists that they have to conquer ideologically,
because socialists are ideological people. As for the capitalists, well, it
will never be that hard to find someone to do business with, as long as they
have some stuff. It's unbelievable that far right dictatorships conquered the left, but it's true.
Is
all this confusion happening just because of an exceedingly romantic vision
about skin color that leads leftist kids to support fascist regimes? Do we
believe that, in the global scenario, “left” only makes alliances with “left”,
and “right” only makes alliances with “right”, making it all a big global struggle
of “oppressed” versus “oppressor”? Isn’t it a bit naïve? The most powerful
people tend to be selfish and smart. They weren’t born yesterday. And I think
they are not so romantic.
I
think most people are not so naïve. We are exposed to things as we grow. It’s
just that some people choose to close their eyes so they can keep playing the
super romantic in front of the mirror. Are we going to let an artificial and
over simplified vision of the world scenario, as “oppressed” versus “oppressor”
turn us blind to the suffering of a small country that had more than a thousand
of their people murdered, raped, tortured, in the most cruel ways, and more
than two hundred kidnapped, half of which haven’t been returned to their
families yet?
Are
we going to accept it because the oppressed unfortunately (and I haven’t heard
they say “unfortunately” even once) have to be “a little mean” sometimes? Will
we let it all become a numerical discussion, as we are presented death counts,
so we make a simple math calculation and endorse solutions that are totally
blind to the human beings in one of the sides?
Do
this make us more human, or more like “masses”?
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