PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS AS TABOO (FIREWALL)

I. Introduction

Part of the title of this essay is taken from the famous 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer titled The Ugly American.[1] The book was highly critical of the foreign policy or dealings of the United States Government with a fictional Southeast Asian country called Sarkhan, and by extension critical of all relationships of the United States with nations around the world, especially relations with nations in similar predicament of social convulsions, poverty, and violence under the influence of the Soviet Union. In fact, there was an effort to ban the book, The Ugly American, or limit its distribution by Senator J. William Fulbright in concert with the Eisenhower Administration United States Department of State, and the United States Information Service.

Later in 1963 when the book was made into a movie, there was another attempt by the Agency for International Development to tone down the criticism against United States government officials. It is amazing to me that there is still a Fund, for some time now, established in 1946 by Congress for �scholarship� in the name of Senator Fulbright, a Senator who had put up tremendous anti-scholarship effort to censor and eradicate the views of highly intelligent individuals by smearing their reputation as unpatriotic. The irony of it all is that you find recipients of such funding doing some very impressive work promoting our understanding of the complexity of life on our very diverse human universe. An ominous dark cloud often has silver lining too, to paraphrase a clich�.

The main argument of the authors of The Ugly American was valid in 1958 as it is still valid to a great extent today. The authors were simply stating the obvious that American foreign policy should be formulated in such a way that there be mutual benefit for both the United Sates and the people of the foreign nation or nations that have relationship with the United States rather than the United States Government being one sided in promoting the ideological interest of the United States only. The Authors were pointing out the failure that ensues if the United States through its diplomats pursues a policy to promote or impose United States� national self-interest on other nations irrespective or in disregard of the interests of the people of such nations�a point that irked Senator Fulbright and the Eisenhower Administration. The main stumbling block against mutual understanding, as was the case then and is true now, is the arrogance of American policy makers and government leaders. The arrogance and presumptuousness of Americans across the entire population is a fact less acknowledged even by radical local thinkers.   

I will start my discussion with the mythical statement that �people get the government they deserve� that had been attributed to many authors including Shakespeare in his play Julies Caesar, Montesquieu in his monumental books The Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Law, and Alex de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America. In a book review I wrote, I asked the same rhetorical question:

Are governments the mirror images of the people they govern? Thomas Carlyle wrote in a Chapter he titled �Captains of Industry,� in his exquisite small book of a collection of his essays, PAST AND PRESENT, (London: Chapman and Hall, 231, 1896), �In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.� Other than being an admirer of Carlyle�s great writing skill, whose prose sublimates into poetry, I trust his wisdom as ageless too. After all, he stated in another Chapter, �The English are a dumb people.�  [Carlyle, 135] Nevertheless, there were others who expressed similar sentiments, such as Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), the Papist, "Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle m�rite." [LETTRES ET OPUSCULES IN�DITS," (1851) vol. I, letter 53 of 15 August 1811.] In addition, our own contemporary Lester Lave, professor of economics, rhetorically expressed the same idea, �People deserve the government they get and get the government they deserve.� In fact, numerous people had expressed in similar forms or slightly modified version of the same idea countless times. [2]

For the purpose of this article, it is not that important to dwell on such question, for all of the authors who stated or alluded to the idea that �people get the government they deserve� are wrong. For the sake of clarity, I will state categorically that government structures could not be items of entitlements. Nevertheless, I do not believe that people deserve anything; however, people do affect their future including their governments. The problem with the type of reductionism that we discern in the concept that �people get the government they deserve� is the obvious fallacy in assuming some form of inverse causal connection between such diverse populations with one single outcome, which process is ontologically or existentially impossible.

It is only in a very superficial sense that �the people� of the United States maybe seen deserving of the Government of the United States on the ground that it could be argued that the People in the United States have a hand in the election and the establishment of that Government. In fact, it is possible to develop a far more reasonable counterargument on the basis of such aphorism that the People living in the United States do not deserve the Government of the United States. The brutality and the violent nature of the American society is a deeply seated historically embedded fact. This is one clear example of a disconnect between reality and the perception of that reality.  Even those leaders, such as Wilson, Roosevelt et cetera, often identified with progressive international organizations and liberal democratic programs were not as benign as very many people believe them to be. A recent observation by Jonah Goldberg in a book titled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Doubleday, 2008, seems to suggest that the distinction often made between totalitarian and liberal leaders is a murky one.

Tocqueville wrote, with keen insight, about the national characteristics of Americans, which characteristics are a far cry from that assumed by Americans themselves. He wrote:

Americans, in their relations with foreigners, appear impatient at the least censure and insatiable for praise. The slimmest eulogy is agreeable to them and the greatest is rarely enough to satisfy them; they pester you at every moment to get you to praise them; and if you resist their entreaties, they praise themselves. One would say that, doubting their own merit, they want to have a picture of it before their eyes at each instant. Their vanity is not only greedy, it is restive and envious. It grants nothing while demanding constantly. It is entreating and quarrelsome at the same time.� [3]

What particularly is noteworthy, as a universal reality of the human condition, is the fact that violence and brutality is not in any meaningful magnitude minimized due to enlightenment and wealth. A leading example as evidentiary proof for my assertion is the case of the United States. The United States has thousands of schools, colleges, universities, and institutions more than any country in the World. It has public libraries and museums serving millions of people. And yet the United States is a violent society with a yearly murder rate close to twenty thousand and tens of thousands of other felonious crimes committed by millions of people. Some of the most heinous crimes in the World were committed by individuals in the United States. The Government itself is the world�s most notorious exporter of violence. There is no other country in the world that has deployed its military forces through out the world to such great extent and intensity and engaged in actual brutal use of force killing and often murdering civilians not involved in any armed struggle against such occupation force. What is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan is a clear example of the use of brutal force by the United States Government. The excuse of self-defense because of Al-Qaida�s attack cannot be accepted after witnessing the disproportionate violence against hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis death and national destructions. The deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany, Japan, and South Korea is the other face of the aggressive conduct of the Government of the United States. 

II. �The Jewel Box� and Human Rights as Taboo (Firewall)

My use of the catchy phrase �the jewel box� as part of the title of this essay is a reference to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of the Constitution of the United States (Diamonds), the case laws and statues (Rubies and Emeralds), the democratic institutions (Sapphires), and the many American citizens in voluntary organizations (Pearls) that truly distinguish the United States. [One may recall also that �the jewel box� is a reference to an open cluster in the Crux Constellation (Southern Cross).] A number of individuals would point out the nuclear weapon arsenal, the skyscrapers in cities, the rich farmlands of the Midwest et cetera as the might of the United States. But such items are only the exterior manifestations of a far more profound interior structure that is truly the foundation of America�s might and wealth: items I indicated contained in �the jewel box.�

I believe that the claim that the principles of human rights are a result of enlightenment is totally wrong or misleading. The development of human rights and democratic process is due to human kind�s primordial reaction and guard against the proximity of barbarism and the subsequent real harm of complete annihilation to a community, rather than as a result of enlightenment or intellectual and cultural progress. In the same way, for example, that taboo against incest developed because of the proximity of such infraction between family members that would have been disastrous for the maintenance of the family structure, we can also easily identify the development of taboos where proximity of infraction of tremendous barbarism and extreme violence by a society is a close possibility. The proximity of real harm to society always is deflected or is suppressed by a wall of powerful taboos. [4] Therefore, the belief (assertion) that human rights principles are a result of progress and enlightenment is a mistaken belief or assertion that so many generations of political scientists and philosophers held. I believe the opposite is true, that the development of such rights simply represents a particular community�s last primordial stand against an existing threat of extreme form of violence: the annihilation of the community.

We applaud the West as having developed principles of human rights as part of its social and political structure. But such views represent shallow judgments. What ever we consider to be Western principles of human rights are in fact the taboo structures erected by a threatened society due to the pervasive possibility of such society sinking into utter barbarism and violence because of its primordial tendency of violence, which is far more pronounced than those to be found in other societies. My rule of thumb is that where ever you find great human rights principles and safeguards in practice in our modern World, there too you find also the proximity of falling into barbarism and violence at its most threatening primordial undercurrent or stage; thus, the need for a strong taboo (a firewall) against the occurrence of such barbarism and violence. Whereas in societies where the degree of violence is not of the type of total annihilation, the safeguard is also much less of a taboo with occasional limited blood letting (human rights abuse), nothing to compare with the degree of violence in the West if its taboo of human rights is breached as was the case in the two World Wars where over a hundred fifty million people were killed.

The United States is the most regulated nation in the World. There seems to be some local, Statewide, or Federal statue, along with citizen�s interest groups (vicious groups like the KKK or some modern form of it, Minutemen et cetera), dealing with every facet of life of the individual and his activities living in the United States. There is some confusion between what experts think is �regulation� when they are merely referring to a totalitarian structure as opposed to the minutely managed life left to the individual freedoms of self-regulation that the individual is entrusted with as a free member of the American society. I do not find the latter particularly complementary because it is just as terrible as the former. It is in fact the same taboo factor once again in play why the United States is the most regulated and litigious society. It is the taboo against the primordial tendency of Americans for lawlessness why the United States is regulated (self-regulated) to such great extent. This statement is not some wild generalization, but supported by numerous incidents of criminality and hooliganism recoded whenever there was even a slight breakdown of the system due to blackout, natural disaster, shortage et cetera in cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington DC and several others around the United States. [5]

III. People I Know in America

Tocqueville, who is applauded for the depth of his comments based on his travel observation of the young United States, is often quoted for the purpose of heaping accolade on the people of the United States. Hardly anyone quotes him for his astute critical observation of the people of the United States and his evaluation of their characteristics, which is far closer to the truth than any of his statements on democracy, religion, or education in the United States.

It is also my observation that a number of people here in the United States are not exactly who they think they are. I have lived in the United States more than anywhere in the world. Living in a community for over thirty years would give anyone insight into the factors that bind such a society as a coherent whole. Such long familiarity and exposure to a culture would result in far more accurate understanding of that culture than the touristy impression one gets as a passerby within a limited time. Despite the fact that Tocqueville is unparalleled in his observations of what he saw in the United States for someone so young; nevertheless, he remained a jaded observer overflowing with good will for the young nation and his idealistic reading of the �democratic� government of the United States. He was only 25 years old when he arrived in May of 1931 in New York City, and he stayed for just nine months visiting several States studying the prison system (a mission the French Government sent him for) and recording on the side his observation of the political, economic, and educational systems of the United States.

There is a deceptive veneer of attractive qualities of the United States that shields it from scrutiny. The dangerous volatility of the society and the nastiness of its most influential individual members deep within its national characteristics are effectively camouflaged from observation. Having lived most of my adult life in the United States, my knowledge of �Americans� is quite different than that of Tocqueville. Despite the fact of astronomical development in human value dealing with civil rights and human rights in the United States since the time of Tocqueville, as individuals I find most Americans I came across to be extremely self-centered, miserly, vindictive, unforgiving, materialistic, ignorant, and extremely violent. These are not promising characteristics of any people. America, despite its outward invincibility, is a nation sitting on a ticking bomb of numerous fault-lines of conflicts between ethnic groups, races, social status, economic standing, religious affinity, fascism et cetera. The freedoms practiced here in the United States are not a result of enlightenment, but primordial buffer systems (taboo firewalls) that prevent the society from immediate descent into Hell.

Let me develop my observation of Peace Corps volunteers in Ethiopia from events that are familiar to my generation of students in high schools in the 1962-65 periods, in a way to show the misrepresentation and poor judgment about Ethiopia by such foreigners. It was a period that hundreds, mostly young, Americans served as Peace Corps volunteers. There is no doubt that there was some element of romanticism in the program supported by a very young and promising President Kennedy, who tragically was assassinated a year into the program. I have limited fond memories of a couple of volunteers i.e. of an English Grammar teacher and a Physics teacher. Over all, I was not that much impressed with the work of the Peace Corps members. Those with whom I came in contact with, in general impressed me as immature and too judgmental of our poverty and lack of worldly goods thereby undermining our humanity and totally overlooking the richness and depth of our spiritual life and moral content. 

Yes, the members of the Peace Corps who had served in Ethiopia (and Eritrea) have a social organization called Ethiopia & Eritrea Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (E&E RPCVs), an affiliate of the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA). The organization is a modest information exchange center for members who served in Ethiopia/Eritrea. Have you ever heard any one of such volunteers defending Ethiopia�s territorial integrity and sovereignty in connection with �Eritrea� and its illegal independence and occupation of Ethiopian Afar Coastal territories and territorial waters on the Red Sea?. Instead what you find posted in their Website are a couple of photographs meant to draw some distinction between the benefit of colonialism represented in a picture of a Main Street in Asmara and contrasted with a picture of some shabby sheds representing Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I find such representation to be unethical and a disgusting cheap propaganda!

The one abominable mission of foreigners visiting Ethiopia is to take pictures of the most degrading conditions they could find ignoring all the great historical and cultural attributes of Ethiopia, as if all of Ethiopia could be stereotyped with such limited number of pictures of poverty, primitive living conditions, ugliness et cetera. I could write books on this subject of misrepresentation by overgeneralization by foreigners visiting this great ancient civilization. Their misrepresentations of stereotyping amounts to subversion promoting the �superiority� of colonial culture over the great value Ethiopians invested in their (our) freedom and independence for thousands of years. In fact, one of the many reasons that soured my outlook toward the Peace Corps and by extension to Americans in general was this one incident with a Peace Corps teacher in 1964. That particular Peace Corps teacher paused to us in one of his classes (American literature) a rhetorical statement that South Africans under the Apartheid system were better off than Ethiopians in our freedom. I objected to that statement and explained to that dimwit Peace Corps volunteer that freedom and national pride cannot be evaluated in terms of wealth. At that time, our W/o Seheen Comprehensive High School was graced by the presence of two refugees from South Africa, ANC members, who were assigned to teach history and geography.

In my young mind, I formed a distrust of all Caucasian foreigners coming into Ethiopia then and then. I also told my Father and Mother what the Peace Corps teacher said. They told me to be respectful to all my teachers who ever they maybe, but also to remember at all times the fact that my Grandfather was executed by Mussolini�s Fascist soldiers and very many relations including my own father fought and sacrificed their lives to maintain our freedom. Above all never ever to forget that Ethiopia is the land of heroes and great pioneers who brought spiritual freedom to all of us. I affirmed year after year in my intellectual journey that the one indigenous civilization that survived from its ancient beginnings of over four thousand years ago to date without ever being conquered or overrun by an outside conqueror is our Ethiopian Civilization. I came to realize, late in my life, that I had primarily struggled all my adult life to subdue my profound dislike of people who are not from Ethiopia. My aversion to foreigners has nothing to do with ethnic or racial identity but with culture and individual morality. To a great extent, I have transcended such nationalistic prejudice in favor of appreciating historical facts and the universal human condition without blinders. 

Because I was very frustrated looking at all kinds of degrading pictures of people and places in Ethiopia taken by Peace Corps volunteers, media vultures seeking sensational stories, misguided aid volunteers, touristic tourists et cetera, I drove to West Virginia and all the way to Florida several years ago to see for myself the wealth and fabulous lives of Americans across the board. It was an eye opener drive for me, for I saw real people in unflattering conditions of life, and I took pictures of shanty towns, barefooted dirty boys and girls with unkempt appearances, old men in shabby clothing sitting in front of shakes talking or doing nothing, discarded and rotting garbage, outhouses et cetera, in short I saw a number of Americans both African-Americans and White Americans living in utter poverty. In Washington DC, New York City, Atlanta et cetera, I have seen hundreds of homeless people begging passers by, and some such homeless Americans eating out of garbage bins. I sent such pictures to family members in Addis Ababa and informed them the pictures were of America. They said that they did not believe me, for the images they have seen in glossy magazines before my pictures arrived were of Americans with big cars, living in big cities et cetera and not of poor people who look like some of our own poor people. The fact is that all poor people look the same way, as is the case with all rich people.

I am disgusted with Americans in the United States who had lived in Ethiopia as advisers, professors and aid workers for years, and not making public statements of support of the Ethiopian cause. As far as I know, even Dean James Paul, who at one point served as Vice President of HSIU, and finally ended up as an arbitrator on the civil claims Tribunal between Ethiopia and �Eritrea,� has never once written or publicly stated his support of Ethiopian sovereignty and territorial integrity vis-�-vis �Eritrea� on the injustice of taking away from Ethiopia its historic Afar Coastal Territories and its Territorial Waters on the Red Sea. For all I know, he may even be part of the conspiracy that ended up cutting off Eritrea and landlocking Ethiopia. However, Theodore M. Vestal may be considered as the exception from all those Peace Corps volunteers for his numerous articles and presentations and a couple of books on Ethiopian history and its legitimate history of nationhood and independence. [Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999; Freedom of Association in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Boston University, African Studies Center Working Papers, W.P. No 210, 1998).] We may add also Paul Henze to a limited extent to that list of individuals who may be considered helpful to Ethiopia�s cause. May be it is just unfortunate that most of the Americans I came across in my life happened to be seriously flawed closet racists, maybe even brutally violent individuals. However, I recognize John Spencer as the only American who truly stood up for Ethiopia in time of its greatest needs. I suggest we erect a statue for such noble man right at the Meskel Square in Addis Ababa.

I consider my years living in the United States as a wasted life, except for a fraction of it that realized the delusion that is the United States. I regret that I ever set foot anywhere outside of Ethiopia, including short visits elsewhere in the World, let alone thirty years of my life among people I despise in general. I blame for all my doubts and apprehensions, which led me to choose a life away from my true home, the government of Haile Selassie and his Bandas, the children of turncoats and 11^th hour heroes, the thug Mengistu Hailemariam, the traitor Meles Zenawi and his sycophantic group et cetera and the larger arada Ethiopian society that made life very uncomfortable to the children of patriots to survive in Ethiopia. Often enough, I have heard from all kinds of people around here, including teachers, with whom I crossed swords on political issues that I ought to be grateful for the life I was able to create here in the United States for myself. I reject such stupid ideas, for I am not grateful for anything to anybody�especially for not being violated of my inherent human rights. It is the least I expect from fellow human beings. Once upon a time the great Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, being asked whether evil existed gave a devastating answer that one does not set up a target in order to miss it. By the same token one does not claim human rights and dignity in order to have it as an item of gratitude.

I am reminded every day, again and again the fact that it is our unwarranted high expectation of Americans as moral agents that is leading a number of people to have all these grandiose images of Americans as benefactors and noble souls. In order to correct such exaggerated perceptions and high expectations of Americans people must first of all reread their history books on the last one hundred years and realize the fact that the American military had instigated and had fought most of the wars and conflicts inflicting unimaginable suffering and destruction all over the world. I suggest also that people visit the Statue of Liberty and read the poem �The New Colossus� by Emma Lazarus that is displayed on a bronze plaque inside the Statue. This poem is eternally true about the types of people who populated this country as waves of destitute immigrants, a kind of surplus population pushed out from Europe, and of late from the rest of the World.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-toast to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" [6]

One may change one�s geography, revise history and lie about one�s family background et cetera, but one cannot truly overcome the dictates of the instinct of survival (by aggression) in the short run. During George Bush�s war, to see a man wearing a United States military uniform stepping with his boot on the head of an Iraqi soldier is a sight to behold. It is possible such a soldier is coming right out of some ghetto in the United States, which Lazarus had described early in the last Century as populated by �wretched refuse.� The United States Government and its Citizens seem to project fear and brutality into the World. We hear all these threat of nuclear attack by United States leaders and its brutal media every time people in other parts of the world try to arm themselves as a defensive reaction to the dominance of American foreign engagement of looting the wealth of other nations, of supporting brutal dictatorships in such foreign countries, stationing violent soldiers in poorly armed small nations around the world. One must not forget the fact that the United States is the only country in the world that actually used nuclear bombs against civilians murdering half a million people outright and millions more in lingering death and life time suffering in Japan. Other nations such as Germany, Japan, Soviet Union et cetera have been extremely brutal and violent too. Nevertheless, those countries do not project the type of menace they United States pauses right now in our World.

I am convinced, having read a number of books on American Presidents and having witnessed the actions of five Presidents, that the brutality of actions and intentions that obviously describe the behavior of American leaders is not something superficial or learned but inherent and far deeply embedded in the genetic make up of the particular population that gave birth to such leaders, which makes American leaders the most dangerous that ever walked our Earth. Like all generalizations, my take on the American society and individuals I came in contact with, has exceptions too. There have been several great American moral leaders who have mellowed down some of the brutal aspects of the American society and brought about much needed changes. One must acknowledge leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, as the exception to the rule for their profound influence in advancing humane principles in the United States. However, such very limited exceptions in no way improve the image of the United States from images of violence and brutality. Ω  

Tecola W. Hagos

Washington DC

March 2, 2008

To be continued:

PART TWO: HOPE AND REDEMPTION

IV. Senators Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton: Redemptive Democracy? 

V. �Snake Oil Salesman� � The World�s Economic Systems

VI. M. Zenawi and M. Alamoudi: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

____________________

Endnotes

[1] Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer,  The Ugly American W. W. Norton, New York, 1958; Victor Gollancz, London, 1959.

[2] Tecola Hagos, �THE SPLENDOR OF HOPE: GEORGE B. N. AYITTEY AND HIS BOOK, [George B. N. Ayittey, AFRICA UNCHAINED: The Blueprint for Africa�s Future, Palegrave, 2005]. https://www.tecolahagos.com/archives.htm as retrieved on Feb 23, 2008

[3] Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Translated by Harvey G. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000, p585. [I consulted two other translations: Reeve, Goldhammer.] 

[4] On the subject of �taboo,� see Jonathan Turner Alexandra Maryanski, Incest: Origins of the Taboo, Boulder CL: Paradigm Publishers, 2005.

 [5] https://slovoto.blogspot.com/2008/01/united-states-cities-by-crime-rate.html as retrieved on Feb 19, 2008

[6] The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-toast to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
                                             Emma Lazarus, 1883