Words&Dirt

“The occupation could not be done humanely; there is no humane way to rule people against their will.  There are two choices, Beauvoir wrote: accept occupation and all the methods required for its enforcement, ‘or else you reject, not merely certain specific practices, but the greater aim which sanctions them, and for which they are essential.’  The same stark choice is available in Iraq and Israel/Palestine today, and it was the only option in the Southern Cone in the seventies.  Just as there is no kind, gentle way to occupy people against their determined will, there is no peaceful way to take away from millions of citizens what they need to live with dignity––which is what the Chicago Boys were determined to do.  Robbery, whether of land or a way of life, requires force or at least its credible threat; it’s why thieves carry guns, and often use them.  Torture is sickening, but it is often a highly rational way to achieve a specific goal; indeed, it may be the only way to achieve those goals.  Which raises the deeper question, one that so many were incapable of asking at the time in Latin America.  Is neoliberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goals that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing, followed by human rights cleanup operations?”

––The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein, pg. 157

“‘I began to consider, whether husband rightly meant owner, or protector and friend.  I had a thousand uses for the dowry, and refusing it meant the old man profited by his wickedness.  But it was the only way.’

‘You must have brought contempt on yourself as a wittol,’ I whispered.

‘A wittol’s wife is his property, only a property he rents out,’ he hissed back.  ‘This eternal curse of property!  We own our brethren––our wives too are chattels––’

‘You would practise community of wives?’ I asked, shocked to think Ferris might be the author of that very pamphlet over which I had quarrelled with Walshe.

‘You miss my meaning entirely!  This selling the girl off was––was a second rape, and no remedy for the first.  Why are good people so slow to see this?  Many of my friends, calling themselves Christians, urged me to stand aside and do nothing.’  He was agitated.  I patted his arm and he went on, ‘It would have come right.  On our wedding night she put her arms round my neck and wept.  I wept also, and told her that I would never reproach her with the child.  I loved her, and what the godless and the heartless said was nothing to me.’

He had turned his face aside; I heard him snuffling and struggling for breath.

‘And then,’ he forced out, ‘she died, and her father was safe.  He never came to see her on her deathbed, or me afterwards.  I buried her and the baby––it was a girl––sold up, left the money with my aunt, and joined the army.’

On his cheek were tears, which I wanted to dry but dared not touch.  I held his hand, feeble and hopeless.  I was quite unable to speak.  How might a man like me comfort one like him?  He had said simply that he showed mercy where he could, but excepting mere brute strength, he was beyond me in every way.

We sat together in silence as the fire burnt down and I thanked God inwardly for showing me what a Christian might be who, like the apostle Paul, considered Charity as the chiefest virtue.  I vowed that if I ever had the chance I would atone to my wife and brothers, and I thought how both Izzy and Ferris, neither of them fighting men, had yet endured much to protect those they loved––but that way lay great pain for me, and I got off it.  We turned in for the night and after a while I heard Ferris’s breathing light and rapid.  He was perhaps with his Joanna, for he laughed once or twice in his sleep and it was such a joyous laugh as I had never heard from Ferris the soldier.  Sleepless, I watched the fire.  When the ardour of my prayer had cooled, I found in my breast a sneaking wish that I had stopped his talk.  After such an outpouring I could never, never tell him what had passed between myself and my wife, and sooner or later he would ask.”

––As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann, pg. 122-3