At the conclusion of the bloody Nicaraguan civil war between the American-backed Contras and the Marxist Sandinistas, I was sent by our government and the American Federation of Teachers to teach democratic values to teachers representing two unions. One union supported the Contras and the other the Sandinistas. Many of the teachers had attended workshops on communism in Cuba. My wife came as a translator.
Nicaragua had been ruled for decades by the dictator Somoza, had experienced a revolution, Marxist rule, and then civil war. An earthquake had destroyed much of the capital, and it was the second poorest nation in our hemisphere. Nicaragua was in worst shape than America now and more divided. The people were killing each other.
I taught democratic values with an emphasis on respecting people who hold different opinions and accepting election results without resorting to violence. Other teachers were very surprised when I told them that the presence of police reassured me because they were used to police being an instrument of whichever political party was running the country.
I met a woman who had the title “Mother Heroine of the Revolution” because her son had been killed fighting for the Sandinistas. Despite that, she supported the Contras.
She told me they were mostly peasants fighting for land against the corrupt, urban-based Sandinistas. Her perspective was totally different from what American media was reporting. Eventually, these teachers taught other teachers about the value of free elections. The Sandinistas were voted out of power, but now are back in power all through non-violent elections.
After communism was overthrown in Romania, I was sent to that new democracy to teach democratic values to teachers. One night, at dinner I asked a leader of the teachers’ union why the communist dictator and his wife were executed without trial.
“Why should we have tried them when they never tried anyone they had killed?” he answered.
There had been no independent legal system in Romania. The secret police had been feared and hundreds had died in overthrowing communism.
The point of these two stories is that both nations were more divided then America is now. What the people lacked was a learned democratic value system. Their education systems did not teach respect for opposing points of view and the value of political and economic liberties. I believe that the difficulties experienced during this election cycle reflects the weakening of our educational system where instead of emphasizing good citizenship and the transmission of democratic beliefs and practices to the next generation, the goals of success on standardized tests and learning the absurdities of Common Core have become dominant.A child who is not taught to respect opposing points of view will grow up to be an adult who regards people with different opinions as the embodiment of evil, a “deplorable”.
I knew a man named Joe K. who survived slave labor at Auschwitz. He was a teenaged male assigned to work. The elderly, most women, children, and the disabled were gassed immediately. All 80 members of Joe’s family were murdered in the Holocaust.
Joe told me that if Americans had experienced even for a day what he had, they would get on their knees and kiss the soil of the greatest nation on earth. Of course we can never actually feel what they experienced on an emotional (as distinct from an intellectual) level. However, based on several other people I knew who were in the camps, including one whose sister was murdered by Dr. Mengele, I can say it is time for the American people to grow up.
Our system worked. Would you rather have an absolute ruler like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Louis XIV, or Sadeem Hussein? Would you rather live in America under Trump with our system of checks and balances, federalism, an independent legal system, a free (if flawed) press and media, thousands of clubs and organizations not run by the government, and people giving money freely to causes they believe in, or in Mosul under ISIS? The world did not end on election night. No one should be self-centered enough to believe that a disappointment in an election is the end of their world.
Joe K. told me that the most important thing in life is not to hate.
Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried. John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher, wrote that we should never believe that we are infallible in our opinions. We should reflect on that, and remember that we do not have to be a unified nation in our beliefs in order to be a great and kind country.
Rick Sirvint lives in Rindge.