Last week I called and lunched with an old friend- a Guatemalan who I hired years ago as a project manager when I landscaped my front yard, which is mostly rocks anyway. He is a semi-retired contractor, and a former history professor. He and his wife and a grandson are living here in the Southwest in a little ranch he bought 30 years ago not far from the river. He also has a home in Guatemala. For a few months in his teens, he literally took it to the streets. We talked about Bush.
"You're a whining little girl. Go ahead and cry. That'll fix Bush. You have more ability to resist than most truly oppressed people and you can hardly put down your latte and get off your fat ass to protest. Your house should smell like magic marker because you are always making signs. You should know the number to the news bureau. Bush took this whole country down because Rove and Cheney know that Americans expect others to have to march in the streets. Other people have to struggle. You can't march. You might miss a meeting. Someone else at work will take your place. Americans make me laugh. You are all blood and guts."
"I should say me too because I am a US citizen but in my heart, especially these days, I am Guatemalan. Americans will brag and stick their chests out. Americans laugh at the children they see in the streets of other countries throwing rocks and bottles at lines of police. Yet now that you have a president that tortures and pardons himself, now it is time to have a new American Revolution and you don't like to lose your freedoms but you don't have the stomach to fight."
"What can we do?" I was just trying to find some way out of having my ears boxed over this.
"Grow balls," he said. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings. Really. I am just saying. A government gone authoritarian is nothing new. It wouldn't hurt if you read a little history. Happened to Argentina. Happened to El Salvador. Happens everywhere. The main difference here is that you have the tools and the power to fight back but you are unorganized and under-funded and mostly, under motivated. You college boys pound your copy of 1984. Orwell wasn't writing science fiction. He was writing history."
I sat silently. He was right. I would do essentially nothing. I told myself watching Twilight Zone that if this happened to this country I would fight it in the street. I guess like most of us, I never thought this day would come.
"Tell you what, it is not enough to go to a wireless coffee house and write a nasty letter about Bush to other people who also hate him. That's blogging. Today I will read your letter and tomorrow you read mine. That's blogging I think. I might be wrong but that's what it looks like. In Central America, when I grew up, you wrote your letter about the president with a spray can on a public fence wearing a bandana across your face. Now look, I am not advocating that you do something violent. But you don't talk to people like that with blogs. I don't get bloggng personally so maybe I am completely wrong. Blogging to me looks like when Daddy is driving and I have a little toy wheel and so I start driving too. Now I feel like I am driving. Anyway, you blog. You feel better."
I could have picked a fight with him. But I wanted to hear what he had to say. I already know what I have to say.
"You have done nothing with your blogging. You have to be able to stop the trains from running if you want to overthrow a government. You have to get the attention of the old media. You guys won't even march. You won't even march for Martin Luther King and most people believe he was right. You won't do anything. In Guatemala, when a local police precinct captain terrorized townspeople in my area, we popped his tires. We threw rocks through his window. We fought back until he had a heart attack. My daughter is in college in Florida. The student Republicans support war. They wear US ARMY sweatshirts. But they wave a flag they themselves will not defend. Not a one of them has the guts for war either. By the way, in Guatemala, we had those too. We called them rich kids. America is not the only country defended by its poorest. However, one day the authoritarian government they so love may turn on them. That has happened too. The Israeli Army that protected and helped settlers settle in on one day was the same Army that had to drag them back out on another day."
"You hardly have a notion how fragile your freedom is. Americans don't vote. You don't complain beyond a letter to the editor. You are a sheep nation. We are sheep I should say. We bleat loudly. But we are sheep. When I was a kid, I had friends who died protesting a presidents speech."
"You protest when they broadcast the president over your favorite program. That's about it. We did not have the internet. You have instant truth and that isn't good enough for you."
"Personally your biggest problem is that you do not have the fortitude for this fight. The rest of the world looks at the US and just feels contempt. There are people in the world who really suffer but they protest with no cars and no TV and no internet and no money. But they protest. You complain. Who's problem is that?"
"What would you suggest?" I finally
"The next time the president comes to town, block the roads."
"How?"
"How? Park your car and block the road"
"I need my car"
"You don't know anyone who has an old junker?"
"When the President comes to town he doesn't allow open protest," I said.
"Again, when I was a kid, we took that as a challenge. We would raise absolute Hell when corrupt officials came to town. We threw rocks at the Army, the same Army that overthrew Arbents ( Arbenz?). The Army we opposed was supported by America and the CIA. They were coming to overthrow Arbents because he threatened the profits of US companies harvesting Guatemalan resources. Yes, friends died. But it was better than what you do. You blog. What does it say... `when in the course of human events...' A revolution boils down sometimes to men with rocks in their hands."
I asked him "Well you're an American. Doesn't this bother you?"
"Yes, it does."
"Well," I pressed him. "What are YOU going to do?"
"Me? I am going to watch Godfather II tonight."
"I don't get it, after all your lecturing."
"I am 87 years old. I have medical problems. And grandchildren who need me. I have already overthrown one authoritarian government. This one's yours. You're still young. Do you vote? I mean there is so little support for your cause that you have to enlist an old man?"
"When you left Guatemala, was it sad to you?" I asked him.
"No. Not really. Because one place is as beautiful as the next. And I have no loyalty to flags. A flag is pattern of colors. What does the flag stand for? That's the question. Your totalitarianism isn't even uncomfortable like most are. Most everyone, including me, can live very well. Don't like Bush? Well at least we have our scones and Seinfeld reruns. I have my little home here too. We are less likely to protest while the shelves are full."
"Is there any hope for America?" I asked him. "Will we ever be the shining star we once were?"
"Hope? There is always hope. I think the problem is not that your government is corrupt. The problem is that the citizens here don't recognize the corruption when they see it, or they don't care. Or they can be talked out of it. You let this happen to you. Remember I taught junior college in the 80s and I can tell you that even back then there was nothing so empty as the head of an American high school graduate. My opinion: we lost when we lost our schools. Yes there is hope. My guess is that this is the beginning of a long slow slide."
In other discussions he said this:
"Most of the time, Americans think I'm Mexican. They don't see any difference and they don't hear any difference in my accent even though Mexicans are everywhere here. How can you be that out of touch to not recognize the difference between my Spanish and the Spanish that Mexicans speak? How can you not notice how I look different? When I correct them, they just look at me like `oh yeah..sorry.' But those are Americans for you. By and large Americans are clueless, uneducated. The boys who died in the Army of the Potomac that marched against Lee had educations. They knew Greek and Latin and history. They fought for a principle they understood. They wrote beautiful poems to their wives between battles, and wrote it in the most flowery language. Our kids play video games between battles. The boys who survived the American Civil War had what it takes to build a nation."
"When Moses inherited the Hebrew slaves, he had people who complained. Some wanted to go back to the Pharoahs. These Hebrews did not know how to feed themselves. They were good laborers but had no leadership skills. Moses didn't wander in the desert for 40 years because he was lost. He wandered because he wanted that generation to die in the desert and new one, tempered by the harsh life in the Sinai, they would go into the Promised Land. Now, go into a mall the next time you're in town. In any town. Look at the kids. Ever attend a focus group and listen to what young Americans say and think? Ask yourself, is this the generation that will pull America back together? This one? The one that thinks the world is 6000 years old and that it's OK to be famous for nothing? Are these kids going to recreate the manufacturing giants that built this country? Remember, revolution comes from men with rocks in their hands, not rocks in their heads."
My friend and I parted. This was easy. Had plenty of time, and took copious notes. He started a conversation with Mexicans at the table next to me. He was talking so much he didn't even notice that I left.
Couple of after thoughts.
Perhaps one day some of us will find ourselves driving cabs in other countries or doing odd jobs and telling the story about how this great country, in six short years became a dictatorship, how the symbol of freedom became an empire of evil. How one day we woke up and America incarcerated thousands, tortured them and most of us thought that was OK. Perhaps one day I will be telling some young man that he has to get off his ass and into the streets. Put down your computers and blackberries and phones. I guess I don't really know, I don't think violence will stop this. No more than violence helped Iraq. Perhaps I should try and become a schoolteacher.
Le me say that I do not agree with my friend that blogging is nothing. It isn't marching in the street. But there is a new street today that wasn't built in his day and it's made out of information. And it's too early to tell if this is a bad strategy. Personally I think we are fighting with what is left to fight with. I mean, Webb has caught up to Allen in Virginia because of blogs. That Republican plant Gannon was exposed because of blogs. Almost every major scandal has been blogged before it was scooped by the press, and blogs have held more feet to the fire in this scandal plagues administration than even the paper of record. Part of his disaffection for blogging is probably his age. Then again, I prefer vinyl records to CDs.
He also said this: "The Democrats and other naive Americans are expecting an election to make it all better. There will be a tipping point I hear people say. No. It will be a slow grind. It will take years and years to get to the truth, and when it comes out, the next generation won't care. Democrats in Congress are not much different than the Republicans. I mean think about this. With Republicans not even liked by Republicans, the Democrats cannot find a champion that everyone agrees to. Probably this country will look like Argentina. Slow creeping paramilitary control that stifles everyone. And then one day it all slowly unravels. In Argentina, like in the US, the Police look just like the Army Special Forces. Sometimes they are the same. It helped Argentina when the British defeated them at the Falklands Island War. It will take something big like that to start the movement backwards. That or possibly a progressive church movement will turn America around the way nuns saved El Salvador."