I thought I had said all I wanted to say, or all that needed to be said, about the recent deaths within days of one another of Jeane Kirkpatrick and Augusto Pinochet. One languishes in the obscurity of right-wing intellectual iconography, the other awaits entry to the dictator room in hell, and neither are grieved over except among Americans of a decidedly right-leaning political bent. Glenn Greenwald has a wonderful (as usual) dissection of a Washington Post editorial that heaps accolades upon the dead dictator, placing it into a context that makes it less surprising than it might otherwise be. As the right has defended numerous Cold War dictators - with the "intellectual" backing of Kirkpatrick - and even now defends the Bush Administration's (admittedly mild in comparison) edging towards authoritarianism, it is no wonder that numerous American right-wingers mourn the passing of one whom they could call their own.
What makes it all the more interesting is that, in Chile, you know, the country Pinochet ruled for seventeen years, when news reached the street that Pinochet had shuffled off this mortal coil, there was celebration in the streets. There were, as the media duly reported, apparently under the rubric that there actually are two sides to any story, a small group of former supporters (I say former because you can't support someone who's dead) who gathered to publicly mourn, but their numbers were small and their presence insignificant. Indeed, the celebrations were initially described as riots in the press, because North Americans don't know what it's like to have a chance to give the final finger to one who held you under his thumb for so long. We would rather remind the Chilean people, who apparently are too carried away with the joy of freedom, that they have the most stable, most economically vigorous nation in South America as a result of Pinochet. The hubris of the American press knows no apparent bounds, as we lecture the ungrateful Chileans on what they should be thankful for. After all, through the CIA and Kissinger, we gave them seventeen years of capitalist heaven when they could have been saddled with the horrors of Democratic Socialism under Salvador Allende, one of the first of thousands of victims of Pinochet's rule.
There is a moral equivalence (if I can use the word "moral" in this context) between the Post's school-marmish lecturing and Kirkpatrick's turgid prose praising dictatorship. What, after all, is wrong with authoritarianism, since it leaves traditional elites in charge and does not threaten the social contract? So what if people are oppressed, jailed, disappeared, or killed? So what if the masses are left in poverty, while elites sate themselves at the public well? Democracy is a messy business, and people may make decisions that harm our, I mean their own, interests, after all. These same "arguments" are still trotted out by some on the right who want to replace the current elected government in Iraq because it has made decisions counter to American interests, or who are angry with the Palestinians for electing Hamas to leadership positions, or who are angry with Lebanon for electing members of Hezbollah to the parliament. It would be som much better if these people acted in our, I mean their own, interests and elected people to please America. People like Pinochet.
I wish I could find a link to this, but I remember a story that emerged a year or so after Pinochet left power and Chile began to emerge from its long, national nightmare. A former prisoner told a story about being flown in a helicopter over the Pacific Ocean. There were other prisoners with him. As he watched, the side hatch of the helicopter was opened, and an interrogator began to question the prisoners. When the first man either refused to answer the questions, or gavea answers the interrogators didn't like, he was summarily pushed out the open hatch. The helicopter was miles from land and close to a thousand feet above the ocean. This is what Pinochet did. This is what Kirkpatrick defended. This is what the Post dismisses in its editorial heaping praise upon the bloated corpse of a self-made President.
The moral vacuousness of such a view is stunning. The ability to rationalize horror is breathtaking. Is it any wonder the right is held in such contempt?
UPDATE: Apparently, Glenn was as angered as I was, judging by this post. The decline of any moral sensibility at all among our "elites" is truly a breathtaking thing to behold. While I know it is wrong, I will say it once again. I do solemnly hope Augusto Pinochet is burning in hell.
Virtual Tin Cup
