Be Better
I was recently at a meeting of the Minneapolis chapter of Amnesty International.
My objective was to support a colleague in getting the organization to do more for the Venezuelan diaspora in Minnesota.
Suffice to say, I should have known how things would proceed when the group agenda referred to the war in Gaza as a genocide and by how they portrayed Israel as no better than Saudi Arabia.
We also wrote letters to the king to argue for a stay of execution for two young men charged with terrorism on flimsy grounds.
As a reminder, I am part Nicaraguan, albeit a quarter at most. Because of this, I happen to pay a bit more attention to the country than the typical American might.
Another reminder, one of my distant relatives had to flee Nicaragua and claim asylum in the United States because they reported COVID-19 numbers that did not make Daniel Ortega look good.
At the Amnesty International meeting, a woman dismissed reports of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Maduro regime in Venezuela or otherwise blamed it on the United States response. She was also dismissive when I attempted to explain to her that a distant relative of mine had to flee the country, claiming that what has been reported about Ortega’s regime is just propaganda based on what friends of hers from Nicaragua are saying.
Needless to say, I stopped trying to reason with her.
I could infer from how oblivious she was to the facts that she supports Putin in his war of conquest in Ukraine.
I understand why so many people in Latin America hate us, and frankly, much of that hate has been earned.
That being said, letting China and Russia take America’s backyard is an even worse idea.
The answer is not going into an isolationist stance and letting totalitarian regimes dictate a world order that would lead to chains and mass graves.
Instead, we as Americans must be better.
This means understanding that with the power possessed by the United States, we collectively must learn how to use this power wisely.
Cheesy as it may be: with great power comes great responsibility.
And much of America currently fails to understand what to do with or even how to wield this enormous power.
More often than not, running away from the messes you made via isolationism or letting someone else take complete control is just as destructive as abusing your power.
As awful as our foreign policy record has been, the free world led by the United States still offers the best hope for humanity.
Look at how North and South Korea have diverged. The country with the higher standard of living embraced our ideals, while the less prosperous rival descended into totalitarianism, starvation, mass graves and gulags.
Even today, there are still great disparities between what was once East and West Germany based on Cold War history.
Fortunately, we have examples on how to wield this great power with care and resolve. Look at President Harry Truman and how he stared down Stalin, laying the foundation of America’s Cold War policy while helping set the Democratic Party as we know it on the path to where it is today by being the first president to speak to the NAACP and desegregating the armed forces.
Don’t compare us to the almighty, compare us to the alternatives. We must be better.