How can you tell that Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has gone over the edge? When he blames justifiably angry Russian protests against his rigged election on Hillary Clinton.
Her offense? On Monday, in Bonn to attend a meeting on Afghanistan, Secretary Clinton stated the obvious: “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted.” Her words were diplomatically parsed and cool, in light of the shameful “irregularities” in Russia’s recent election. Called on the carpet by the Russian martinet, she explained today in Brussels that “the United States and many others around the world have a strong commitment to democracy and human rights. It’s part of who we are. It’s our values.”
Bravo, Hillary! At last, the international wing of U.S. cultural policy is asserting the values of cultural democracy.
Ever since we declared the Cold War, the Unites States’ foreign policy establishment has mainly been what we Yiddish speakers call a shandah (שאַנדאַ) — a more powerful term for what in English we more blandly call “shame and embarrassment.” The bland English word would not do, because of the deplorable moral and material costs of U.S. foreign policy from the Fifties right on through Bush the Younger’s regime. In the name of protecting America’s interests (read “American corporations”) abroad, our CIA and military have been the undoing of democratic movements throughout the world. Untold tens of thousands have died, and millions deprived of democratic hopes for their own countries by the very military-industrial complex (with its oxymoronic “intelligence” apparatus, where the brain and heart should be) that President Eisenhower warned us to contain.
This has begun to turn around, at long last, with the Obama administration. Though we are still mired in Bush’s ill-conceived War on Terrorism, and its irrational “hot” wars in Southwest Asia, Obama’s Secretary of State Clinton has appeared all over the world, doing what we should have been doing all along: promoting and supporting democratic principles in a way that riles up not only oppressive tyrants abroad, but the radical Right who dominate the media here at home. (In case you missed it, she did a similar thing on Tuesday in Geneva, asserting our intent to protect the rights of sexual identity throughout the world.)
It’s no surprise that Vladimir Putin and his American fellow travelers Limbaugh, Gingrich, O’Reilly, Palin — well, the list’s too long to mention — have staked out the same end of the political spectrum vis-a-vis our Secretary of State. Demonizing Hillary is of course nothing new: a graduate seminar on political science recently required me to relive the vilification of the Clintons in Eric Altermann’s fairly biased What Liberal Media? While I was disappointed that Hillary’s husband, the only Democrat elected in the 30 Years’ War (and counting) declared by the Reaganistas, not only failed to harvest the surprising consensus in 1992 that we get ourselves a national health plan — and downright disgusted four years later, when he tore a huge hole in what was left of the social safety net (on this, see Michael Katz’s excellent book, The Price of Citizenship, pp. 317-328) — Altermann shows that he was never given a chance by a media establishment dominated by corporate interests.
One can only imagine the kerfuffle we’re about to hear from the fat cats in rightwing American media as they jump aboard the Trash Hillary bandwagon. By and large, they are of course more easily imagined chasing a secretary around a desk, but Secretary Hillary seems perennially able to get their thoughts out of their proverbial pants and back to their weapons of mass-media destruction. Let’s hope that we the American people allow our hearts and minds to lead on this occasion, not follow.
We can and should do much more to assert principled leadership for democracy throughout the world. We’ve said we were doing this all along, though our record since World War II has been a shandah. Just as one person — Secretary Clinton in this case — cannot be blamed for rousing the Russian masses to anger against political corruption in that country, neither is it plausible, as American media pundits assert, that Obama can be blamed for the 30-year war of attrition that the Right has been winning — with the rest of us losing — as most of our own votes have been bought off by propagandizing Republican administrations.
Cultural policy is about identifying the values that ought to guide public action — cultural development. Thank you, Secretary Clinton, for deploying the “V” word in describing the policy that should be guiding the United States citizens’ real interests abroad. Let us also hope we’ll be able to take this to heart and begin to develop a culture of democracy where we’re best able: here at home. There would be plenty of jobs in it.
Posted by Don Adams on December 21, 2011 at 9:55 am
Secretary Clinton’s keeping it up. From the State Department Web site:
“Recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. And this is part of a deeply troubling pattern. Egyptian women have been largely shut out of decision-making in the transition by both the military authorities and the major political parties. At the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and by extremists.
“Marchers celebrating International Women’s Day were harassed and abused. Women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse. Journalists have been sexually assaulted. And now, women are being attacked, stripped, and beaten in the streets. This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people.”