Martelly speaks in front of the crumpled National Palace, a symbol of a broken country ravaged by an earthquake last year and perpetually suffering from high rates of illiteracy and unemployment.
— Haiti's new president, America's new Haitians. They had a presidential inauguration in Haiti this week. The inauguratee was former pop singer and night-club proprietor Michel Martelly, aged 50.
Mr. Martelly may be a diaper lover, like the aforementioned Stanley Thornton*. At any rate we are told that in his stage act, during the pop singer phase of his career, Mr. Martelly sometimes performed wearing nothing but a diaper. On other occasions he wore even less than that on stage, which is to say nothing at all. Apparently this is considered highly creative in Haitian pop-music circles. Along with minimal clothing, Mr. Martelly's stage act featured maximal profanity.
Sixteen years ago, in fact, Mr. Martelly publicly joked that if he were ever elected President of Haiti he would dance naked on the roof of the presidential palace.
Well, in March this year Martelly actually was elected President of Haiti. The inauguration took place May 14. There will be no roof dance, though. The palace still lies in the ruins to which it was reduced in the great earthquake of January 2010. Much of the rest of Haiti is in a similarly distressful condition.
Not that Haiti has ever, in its 200-plus years of independence, been in an enviable condition. Last year's earthquake had been preceded by devastating hurricanes. It was followed, later last year, by a cholera epidemic. Fewer than one in four Haitians graduates from high school. The nation imports all its energy and most of its food; it exports only small quantities of textiles and minerals. Haiti's most significant economic activity is in fact the consumption of foreign aid.
The thoughtful, humane commentator hesitates to talk about Haiti because it's so hard to find anything positive to say; and saying something negative just seems like piling insults on misfortune — what my parents' generation used to call "mocking the afflicted," a species of gross bad manners. In a way, though, it's really Haiti that is mocking us, or at least mocking the fantasies of human possibility and human transformation nursed by our liberal elites.
Certainly Haiti has endured many misfortunes at the hands of Mother Nature. Other nations have too, though — most recently, Japan— and they don't present the spectacle of misery and destitution that was Haiti even before the earthquake.
We're supposed to believe that all men are equal, that all nations can rise to any level of civilization, given self-government and the opportunity to trade, create, and build. Yet there sits Haiti giving us the finger, mocking all such dreams, making a lie of the noblest liberal ideals and most cherished liberal beliefs.
We look, we pity, we commiserate; yet while looking, pitying, and commiserating, we can't altogether silence that subversive voice whispering in our heads, asking us whether, if the population of Haiti were to be swapped out for an equal number of, say, Koreans, the place would continue to be such a miserable slum. Or that other subversive whisper telling us that the sole and only proper objective of U.S. policy with regard to Haiti is and must be to prevent a mass exodus across the Caribbean to our shores, and that our politicians, for all their lofty humanitarian rhetoric, undoubtedly organize our Haiti policy around that imperative.
Still, while our pols know that the spectacle of a couple of million Haitians coming ashore at Miami would seriously impact their electability, their passion for diversity makes them not at all averse to settling Haitians in the U.S.A. a few ten thousands at a time, when it can be done by stealth.
At the time of the earthquake in January last year there were 48,000 Haitians here illegally, having either snuck in by boat or let their visas expire. Homeland Security gave them Temporary Protected Status, meaning they could not be deported. It only lasted eighteen months, though, so its term has almost expired. It might be good to send them back to help with the rebuilding of their country, except that nobody in our political or bureaucratic elites thinks like that.
So on Tuesday we got an announcement from Janet Napolitano of an extension for another eighteen months for this 48,000. Not only that, she also awarded Temporary Protected Status to a further ten thousand Haitians who've arrived illegally since the quake.
Give me a shout-out if you believe there is anything temporary about this Temporary Protected Status. Ready? Shout! [Sound of crickets chirping.] That's what I thought.
* read the full post or listen to the podcast: http://johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2011-05-20.html
No comments:
Post a Comment