Give People the Games

by Donna Schoenkopf

Aristotle said, “Tyrants will say, ‘Give people the games.’”

This means that a tyrant will try to divert the people’s awareness of his devious plots, keeping the people from seeing what is happening in the body politic. This allows the tyrant to have free rein (reign?) in his actions, without the bother of the people.

Politics (from the Greek word poli, meaning city) is the study of the interaction of people in a society. In my humble opinion, politics is the highest human endeavor. It is basically about thinking about somebody besides yourself. And, since we are herd animals, unable to live completely on our own, it follows that we should be intensely interested in and involved in politics.

But most people think that just the WORD politics is evil. They don’t want to think or work or deal with politics in any way.

How did this happen? We’re the oldest functioning democracy in the world and our people have tuned out.

I hear people saying that all political parties are the same, that politics is a crooked game, that you can’t change anything. And what’s REALLY important is which football game, which singer, which desperate housewife is going to win or lose.

But not to deal with politics is a dangerous thing.

Bad things can happen when the people don’t pay attention. And good things can happen when people do.

I remember my dad being mad at Truman for saying that he, Truman, went to bed and slept well after he had used the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That WAS pretty shitty of Truman to say, let alone feel. Yeah. How COULD he sleep that night? What was he? Crazy?!?

The civil rights movement made me alternately ashamed and proud to be an American. Martin Luther King’s words filled me with a great desire for justice. For all. He died for us.

I literally watched John and Bobby Kennedy get shot. Dead. They died for us too. I still cry for them.

I lived through the 1960s and the Free Speech Movement (Fuck YEAH!! My tongue and mind were freed in one giant HOLLERED word!), the Peace Movement filled my Catholic heart with love for humanity, and I sang with a million people in the Mall in Washington, as Nixon’s militia, on the people’s buildings, aimed their rifles at us. I felt as though I were two feet off the ground, floating above the Earth, as one with the People!

I lived through the Reagan Years, his stupid smile burning an acid hole in my heart as I listened to him say that if you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all and that “those” students were the enemy of the people.

Today I eat organic food when I can find it, resist chemicals in my daily life, march, sing, talk, am a pain in the asses of friends and foes alike, and get involved in causes that inspire me to act to promote the general welfare.

I’ve become a communist, an atheist, a pacifist, an environmentalist, a union worker, a feminist, and remain a Catholic, a Democrat, a Liberal, a teacher, a mother, and a woman.

Caesar, Machiavelli, Richelieu, Napoleon, Churchill, Kissinger

Today my concern is for Haiti.

Haiti was a slave colony of France. It wrested its independence from France, the only slave colony to ever do so. It was at great monetary cost, Haiti paying “reparation” until the 1940s.

But monetary cost wasn’t the only thing to happen to Haiti. The Duvalier family, one of the cruelest, most decadent ruling families ever to be in power, happened to Haiti.

In fact, Haiti was ruled by tyrants and despots until the unlikely election of the “Little Priest,” Jean Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically elected President.

For years Aristide worked with the poorest of the poor. He was beloved. He gave the people hope. The powerful few pushed back with all their might. But Aristide won by a huge plurality.

Fr. Aristide became the President of Haiti. Then he was ousted by the powerful. Then returned. Then ousted. He’s presently in South Africa, an honored man there, thanks to another great man, Nelson Mandela.

Now Aristide wants to go home to his people and help rebuild.

But nothing is easy. I say this because I just read an article in Wikipedia about Aristide, trying to get my facts straight after learning about him so many years ago in the 1980s.

And I am here to tell you that those facts are (mostly) wrong. Through many misspellings and grammatical errors I was able to determine that whoever wrote those “facts” had an agenda that was to make Aristide a monster. In my mind, I imagine a member of the elite gentry of Haiti writing the Wikipedia entry. Her property (I do not know WHY I think of the writer as female) has been threatened by Aristide, and she’s pissed. She worries about her property and her power. She hates the Little Priest.

Just sayin’.

Aristide was and is, a Liberation Theologist, which is the left wing of the Catholic Church. This branch of the Church takes Christ’s teachings about helping the poor literally. They do what Christ wanted his followers to do when he spoke of Faith, Hope, and Charity and said that Charity, or love, was the greatest of the three.

“By their works ye shall know them,” Jesus said.

Liberation Theologists were scolded by Pope John Paul II. Pope John Paul followed the advice of Cardinal Ratzinger. (Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict and is the kind of conservative Catholic who is all about rules and regulations. He doesn’t think the social order should be upset.)

Liberation Theologists were told back then that they couldn’t run for office, couldn’t get involved with politics. They were to just stay in Church and keep their mouths shut.

But, being Liberation Theologists, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. They became, and are, the engine of good works in Latin America, and have enabled the poor to develop water and sanitation systems in their barrios, and start small businesses and self-help groups.

Aristide is one of those people. He thought the higher good was to follow Jesus’ teaching rather than the dictates of the Pope.

He was scolded by the Pope, too. He left the priesthood, got married, got elected, got ousted, got himself to South Africa.

This is an important backstory, especially since we are involved with our neighbors‘ well-being.

I worry about what we Americans will do about Haiti. Very few people know about Liberation Theology and Aristide and Haiti here in the United States of America. The vast majority of people are watching American Idol or football or Desperate Housewives. They are being amused. Constantly. Like a drug. They catch the drift of a feeling, a catchy slogan, a buzz word, and from this is built a crazy quilt of half-baked ideas. To horribly mix metaphors.

Imagine the great political story of the world as a soap opera. If you don’t know the plot, haven’t followed it for some time, you’ll MAYBE get a little hint of what the story is when you jump in. But you won’t know the whole story. You won’t know the “why” of anything. And that can be a dangerous thing.

I watched Fareed Zakaria’s GPS television show this morning and saw a great example of setting the record straight when you know the story.

Naomi Klein, a New York Times reporter and book author, was responding to David Frum, neoconservative and book author, who had just spoken of those bad, bad poor people who took advantage of the Bush “Home Ownership” program and bought houses without being able to afford them, wrecking the economy of the United States of America.

Naomi shot back. She knew the backstory on the housing bubble and she said that President Bush wasn’t really concerned with people being able to own property when he declared the “Home Ownership Age.”

The Bush Administration, she said, was essentially concerned with the profits to be made for the housing industry and the banking industry and the credit industry ... not the welfare of the people. As a secondary benefit for Bush, the “Home Ownership” policy would help to end public housing. It was, she said, crony capitalism at its worst.

If Naomi Klein hadn’t spoken up, Frum’s commentary would have stood, unanswered, as it has so many, many times this past year. Pundit after pundit who, I suspect, have very nice homes, have lashed out at people on a lower economic rung, who bought houses with no money down, and low interest rates. God bless ’em, they thought their ships had finally come in.

So, Dear Reader, turn off your amusements, at least some of them, and turn on the news or CSPAN, read a political book, talk politics in polite company, wrestle with ideas, get the backstory and then push for justice for Haiti, for the poor, for yourselves.

Politics is good for you.

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