October
11, 2002 1:00
p.m. While
You Were Out
Taking
in the news.
single day's news sometimes looks like the distillate of an irony factory.
It's there to remind us of contradictory human behavior on almost every
scale, reaching back into history, and projecting paradoxes for tomorrow.
On the broad
scale, we get Argentina. It has defaulted on $140 billion in bonds outstanding
to the private sector, and faces now its debt to the International Monetary
Fund. The news is that that's being worked out, a rescheduling of a debt
that reflects the profligacy of Argentine policies dating back to the reign
of Juan Peron. It seems nowadays incredible that only 50 years ago, Argentina's
level of income exceeded that of France.
Sharing the news
is Brazil's impending election of a far-out leftist as president. Brazil's
socialists have working for them the starkness of the contrast between
those who prosper, and those who suffer a dire poverty. But Brazilians
are being ushered into one more chapter in attempts at political alchemy,
the substitution of political for economic means of achieving economic
progress. Yes, and the same day gives us Venezuela, with 1 million protesters
against the socialist and autocratic rule of Hugo Chavez. Populist revolts
against left-minded government rule are unusual, because the structure
of left policies is designed to appeal to the appetites of the many, leaving
us with another political cauldron in Latin America.
Meanwhile, China is exhibiting its two faces in its attempted evolution
into a mercantile state with fundamentalist Marxist passions on the matter
of religion. We have a 15-year sentence handed out to a banker charged
with bribery, and life sentences handed out to three leaders of an underground
Christian church. The new China seems to be saying: We will not tolerate
crimes by businessmen because that inhibits the growth of capitalism,
which we are encouraging. But do not mistake the new China. We are not
sentimentalists who tolerate the single true enemy, the cultivators of
religious faith who hold entities higher than the leaders of China as
the sources of moral authority.
In Moscow, the retreat
from Communism is marked by the supreme irony centering on Lubyanka Square.
When the Soviet regime was overthrown in 1991 the first statue to come
down was that of Feliks Dzerzhinsky. He was the great father of the KGB,
the patron of executions by the thousands in the prison at one end of
the square, and of millions sent off to the Gulag. The mayor of Moscow
proposed the restoration of that statue, the equivalent of raising a statue
to Himmler in Berlin. But the reaction has taken an exuberant political
turn: A member of parliament proposes erecting a statue in that square
to Czar Nicholas II, a kind of symbolic apology for the Bolshevik sin
of executing the czar, his wife, and his children. That should make for
a great national debate.
The domestic news
features, of course, a great national debate on Iraq which, however, reflects
less than a great national division, since the supporters of Mr. Bush
are heavily preponderant. The interesting skirmishes are in the Outback.
In California, challenger Bill Simon mistakenly alleged that a photograph
of Governor Gray Davis accepting a check from a political support group
was snapped in the governor's office. In fact, it was taken in a private
house. Gov. Davis, who spent $20 million this summer portraying Simon
as a crook, ran into the problem that the civil conviction of Simon was
overturned by the courts. Now, Davis affects a bride's dismay over her
honor impugned. Barrels of money to Gov. Davis aren't blanched by virtue
of having been conveyed off-premises, but institutional catechisms are
deferred to — it's okay to eat meat but not on Fridays.
The candidate running
against Max Baucus for the Senate seat in Montana pulled out of the race
the same day because, he said, his reputation was now ruined by a Democratic
ad suggesting he was gay, far from the truth, but mortally effective.
We didn't intend any such imputation, the Democratic spokesman insisted.
But after the ads came out, the challenger's negative ratings more than
doubled. In Montana, it is not yet safe to be gay and run for higher office.
Thus are the rules defined, or lived by, in California and Montana, and
the contradictions faced on which presence should preside over the square
in Moscow, and whether secure property rights and the rule of law should
yield in Brazil and Venezuela. And in America we struggle along, weaving
our way about the paradoxes of time and place, contributing our own.
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single day's news sometimes looks like the distillate of an irony factory.
It's there to remind us of contradictory human behavior on almost every
scale, reaching back into history, and projecting paradoxes for tomorrow.
