The sweet sound of the familiar wafts out of the new Obama administration.  Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, in her recent trip to China states that human rights must not get in the way of dealing with the economic crisis.  Although President Obama will be closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he has decided to continue to support the policy of extraordinary rendition which is the practice of having others do your torture for you.  I have more respect for the torturer than the sanctimonious hypocrite. 

But I guess change and a new approach don’t last as long as they used to.  A nation wept with joy and expectation as the first Black man was inaugurated as president of the United States, a country with a horrific history of civil and human  rights abuses.  The hope and the promise was that this would be a new dawning of the American dream; that all humans would be treated equally and with respect and dignity.  How could it be otherwise?  How could a Black man in the United States turn his back on civil and human rights?  How could he compare himself to Abraham Lincoln and use slavery as a backdrop for the significance of his presidency while blindly ignoring slavery in those countries he interacts with?  It seems absurd but few are questioning him on it.  Those who try are pushed to the side by the ‘mainstream Left’ who are gushing like schoolgirls in the glow of the new messiah. 

The masses that enjoy the opulence and relative ease of our society have no stomach for a debate on human rights.  I guess the condition is that rights are good as long as they don’t affect our lifestyle.  For years the United States and its industrialized friends have chided China for its human rights record at Hollywood fundraising events or at galas with other progressive groups while conducting business as usual in the corridors of power.  It is a metaphor for our time.  The ultimate Potemkin Village.  While we swim in the filth of reality we see only the crystal waters of our self-induced mirage.  So who can we really blame, the politicians that encourage our delusion or ourselves for knowingly embracing it?  What is the fear?  Could it be that we know that our society is as cold and uncaring towards us, its own members, as it is toward those who suffer the indignity every day of not being considered fully human? 

I wonder.