The Rubicon
I’m rarely able to say, “I was right” because I say so many weird, at times contradictory things. It’s easy to always be right if you ignore all the things you were wrong about*. But I have a decent track record, at least in my own internal monologue, about dictators and would-be autocrats. I keep a mental score of their human rights abuses, and draw invisible lines in the sand, making note of when they’ve well and truly crossed the Rubicon.
This note taking doesn’t just include right-wing dictators. The world of the extreme Left was pleased for a time with the actions of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. He said the right things about Socialism and Marx. He declared war on the rich. He took control of the means of production. I suspected no good would come from it given that it never has and never will. Sure enough he eventually took control of Venezuelan media outlets and shifted irrevocably from a supposed man of the people to a dictator. He never did distribute the wealth he’d taken control of, he kept it for himself and his cronies. Once he’d silenced the voice of opposition in the media I thought to myself, “self, you just watch and see, this is not going to end well.”
And the crisis in Venezuela did not end well. In fact it ended so badly that it hasn’t even ended, despite Chavez’s death from cancer in 2013.
I watched our previous president, Trump, with the same terrified skepticism. Sure, some said, he was uncouth, but maybe that’s what we all needed, a little straight talk. Uncensored. A return to the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-never style of American bombast. There were dozens of lines he crossed in my mind, but the first one he could never retreat from was a relatively under-reported comment he made during his run for president. It wasn’t about grabbing genitalia, although that should have been immediately disqualifying. It was in response to the beating of a homeless man in Boston by two Trump supporters who’d been riled up Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. His off the cuff response, which after being scolded by his handlers he later amended, was to say, “It would be a shame. . . . I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
That this was his gut reaction told me everything I’d already suspected, and presaged the rest of his career in politics. Violence in his name, and in the name of his nationalist policies, would be encouraged. It presaged January 6th. I had an argument with a good friend who was leaning towards supporting Trump, and who happens to be an immigrant from Colombia. I asked if Trump’s supporters, who he’d praised as “passionate,” had checked the man’s immigration status or country of origin before they beat him with pipes and then urinated on him. Or if Trump cared one way or the other.
I’m wondering if Trump’s repeated praise for Vladimir Putin is that line for anyone still idiotic enough to support him.
When Russia hosted the Winter Games in Sochi, I refused to watch. Just as I’ve refused to watch any of the games since then. The reason was that Putin had moved beyond bare-back machismo and well into full on thuggery before those supposed games of peace began. He’d long been in Chavez territory by silencing media critics. Journalists who criticized him had a way of falling off high balconies. Correlation is not causation, they say, though humans regularly visit high places and the majority do not leap to their deaths. I don’t have any figures, but I suspect that of those who do make the leap, most don’t share a single occupation—outside of Russia.
But Putin could be directly tied to attacking and imprisoning LGBTQ Russian citizens. A year before the Winter Olympics, in 2013, Putin backed a law making it illegal to “promote” homosexuality. It was a broad brush. Anyone speaking publicly about their non-cis sexuality was subject to arrest. Voices for gay rights had their doors kicked in and were imprisoned. Since the law passed, hundreds of LGBTQ activists have been arrested for protesting this law. That the international community ignored these flagrant human rights abuses and helped celebrate the games anyway absolutely baffled me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Though I’m marginally pleased the world seems to be shocked, shocked, that Putin is now killing anyone who stands in the way of him taking over Ukraine. Today, Sunday the 27th of February, the Ukraine Interior Ministry said that 352 civilians have been killed since the invasion began, including 14 children.
We’ve turned Martin Niemöller’s famous quote into a meme these days. I’m pretty sure I’ve said something along the lines of, “First they came for the pumpkin spiced lattes, and I did not speak out—because I don’t like pumpkin spiced lattes…”
But the time has come to put aside childish memes. When autocrats and dictators of any stripe tell us who they are, we should really start believing them.
*Credit goes to Mitt Romney, who was roundly jeered—including by, ahem, me—when he said during the 2012 presidential campaign that Putin was the biggest geopolitical threat to the world. I’m still glad Romney didn’t become president, but I don’t think I should have rolled around laughing and pointing at him like I did.