Shame

I hate to say this, but there have been numerous times over the years when I've been ashamed to be an American, white, male, privileged, whatever. I'd prefer to not be ashamed of the people I come from, but I suppose that it means I have a conscience. Tonight we finally watched "Hotel Rwanda" (we'd had it from Netflix for like 3 or 4 weeks, but just hadn't felt "in the mood" to watch it, finally decided to just do it tonight). It's not even over yet, and yet I already feel sick to my stomach. I knew the basics of the story before seeing it, but as any good movie does, it's made me feel it in a way none of us would unless we had been there. And there's a big point--none of us were.

I was pretty ignorant of this crisis back when it happened. I sort of followed the news, I'd heard about it, but like most people, I couldn't even comprehend it. As I spent my time getting drunk and having fun, people a half a world away were chopping each other to pieces. Because of some arbitrary distinction between people (incidentally, created by white folks) who were really family. Because people who have nothing will fight over the little they have, and because there's always some asshole who's willing to stir the fire and stoke the hatred and violence that always seems to be lurking too close beneath the surface of people.

Even now at the end of the movie, I only have a cursory understanding of what happened. But what I do understand is that we who could have helped did not. Americans, Europeans, we decided that it would be too difficult to do anything to stop this madness. The government (governments I guess, not just us) didn't want another Mogadishu, Americans dragged through the streets, and so we let a million people die. The UN was there with their blue helmets on (I sure hope they weren't like Nick Nolte, although he was okay), but apparently peacekeeping doesn't involve actually DOING anything with force. I'm sure they saved a lot of lives by helping people move from place to place, but it wasn't enough was it.

It's shameful that we did nothing, just as it's shameful that we did nothing in the Sudan, and how many other places where people have had no protection against madness like this. And I feel ashamed that for all the times I've watched things like this and cried and raged and ranted, I've done nothing. I sit here in comfort and write my silly little blog, but I've done nothing. There are people who devote their lives to helping others in these situations, who give something, and all I've given is empathy and outrage.


Here's a man who did something. Paul Rusesabagina (the main character of the movie) saved over 1200 people in the midst of all this. He put his own life on the line to save his family and his neighbors. It's easy to say 1200 vs a million, not a big dent, but then I realized, every life is saved one at a time. The millions of children who die in poverty and hunger, every one of them is worth saving. When you start to add people up into sums, blocks of people, percentage of populations, you take away their individual value. The 2100+ American soldiers who have been sacrificed for this criminal war in Iraq deserve to remain individual people whose loss hurts their family and friends and community. The million Rwandans and six millions Jews and thousands of Iraqis, all of them were individual people whose presence in this world was extinguished because of hatred, and to think of them as simply part of a sum makes it easy to dismiss their loss. When you stop and think about each person who could be saved, that's when you would be inspired to do something.

I have no faith in the idea that the "West" will do anything to stop these kinds of things. We cited Rwanda as we talked about Sudan, and we still did next to nothing. We hide behind negotiations and agreements, and wait till it's safe to step in and do something. I'm sorry, I wish I could believe that things will change, but I just don't think they will. Even if we were rid of that criminally retarded moral reprobate in the White House, we as a people won't ever choose to take a risk in order to save people that we don't think are as good as us.

I was really planning to post an adorable picture of the dogs tonight and blog about them. But I suppose it's a bit of irony that I had to choose between my own little comfortable life and something that seems overwhelmingly bigger. I'll save that for tomorrow, when I've conveniently forgotten about this whole Rwanda thing and can go back to pretending like nothing like that ever happens.