29688: Simidor (reply): Re: 29684: Durban (comment): On Kawonabo's Anti-Bourgeoisie Rant (#29660) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

> Lance Durban wrote:
>
> So what accounts for the difference in country
> performance in the last
> 200 years?  My own belief is that we American's owe
> far more to our
> country's founders than is generally appreciated.
> As for Haiti, it
> could be argued that an almost total lack of
> enlightened and educated
> founders set the stage for a rather tragic 200 year
> history.  To try
> and turn the Haitian ship of state now is an
> enterprise of no small
> magnitude, but blaming the relatively few who are
> best placed to do so
> is simply counter-productive.

Durban is comparing apples with oranges.  The US is an
incredibly vast and rich country built, one could
argue, on genocide and slavery, raw exploitation and
international plunder, and welcome from the get go
among the nations of the world.  Haiti on the hand was
an anomaly from the beginning, a pariah nation to be
shunned, a negative example to be isolated and
destroyed.  It is tempting for white Americans who
have benefited from this terrible equation (even those
whose American lineage only goes back a generation or
two) to indulge in a bit of revisionist history -- a
virtuous life, education and hard work in this here
God?s country, v. ignorance and sloth in voodoo Haiti.
 Just how more ?enlightened and educated? were
Washington and Jefferson, compared to Toussaint and
Christophe?

One doesn?t have to advocate ?manger le bourgeois?
(eat the rich) as a way out of the crisis in Haiti, to
see how much Haiti?s peculiar bourgeoisie is more part
of the problem and not part of the solution.  Without
going back a century or more, the dominant class in
Haiti had the opportunity during the post-Aristide
transition to begin even in a small way ?to try and
turn the Haitian ship of state.?  Instead they went on
another binge of grabbing every bit they could grab
while the country sank even deeper dans la merde.  So
where are the ten just Haitian bourgeois types who
will save Haiti from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Daniel Simidor

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