Not only is the moral situation often made obvious by the use of hypothetical situations; but how the moral situation intersects with power politics can come to the fore. I set my hypothetical in ancient Rome because I thought the distance would abstract the situation from current ideological confusions. If the human rights intellectuals can't answer the questions in my hypothetical, it is not because they don't understand their point it is because they don't want to reflect on themselves and their own preening and posturing about "human rights."
All of those who live in the U.S. and criticize human rights in Cuba are in the same moral and political situation as my hypothetical Roman. The inability to confront the intersection of morality with politics is the classic situation of the emergence of hypocrisy from ideological thinking. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who cannot even conceive that criticism of Cuba might actually perpetuate or even increase the atrocities committed by their own government in Cuba, and elsewhere, are simply playing games of hide and never seek with reality. Human rights intellectuals in the U.S. who don't even admit to themselves that their government is a major perpetrator of terrorism in the world, including terrorism in Cuba, are unable to understand that their first responsibility is to stop the terrorism that they help to perpetuate and that they fund. Unless we can understand our own responsibilities and for whom and for what we are responsible, it is no use taking on the useless and empty burden of criticizing some foreign government whose people we are attacking. It should be simple. But it is not.
Jerry Monaco
> Just a hypothetical situation:
>
> Julius Caesar is in Gaul, slaughtering whole villages, and killing
> people by the thousands for his own glory and the glory of Rome. In
> the course of Caesar's human hecatomb in Gaul, Vercingetorix surrounds
> a village and kills or expels all of the Romans in that village.
> Vercingetorix also suppresses Roman ecstatic mystery cults and their
> sexual practices in the areas of Gaul he still control.
>
> Julius Caesar writes home to the Senate and the People of Rome about
> Vercingetorix atrocities, including in his report the suppression of
> the Roman mystery cults and its sexual practices.
>
> Meanwhile back in Rome is a leader of the Bacchic cult. The cult and
> its practices has been occasionally suppressed and persecuted by the
> Roman patriarchal rulers, but now is continuing in relative openness,
> because significant members of the ruling classes and their wives
> belong to the cult.
>
> But now the leader of the Bacchic cult , is outraged at reading the
> contents of Julius Caesar's letter. How dare Vercingetorix suppress
> the Bacchic cult and its sexual practices! How dare this evil and
> closed minded regime even exist! It is what she talks about when she
> talks to people who oppose Caesar's war against Gaul. It is what she
> talks about when she speaks to senatorial orators who support Caesar's
> war of slaughter and massacre in Gaul. She is for solidarity with the
> all of the practitioners of the feminine mystery cult. The mystery
> cult cuts across class lines and undermines patriarchal values
> everywhere, and that is why its sexual practices are being repressed
> by the war lord Vercingetorix. She believes that this war lord must
> be stopped.
>
> Meanwhile Julius Caesar continues his slaughter and expands it. His
> slaughter shows a salutary equality of treatment. The people murdered
> by Caesar are murdered only because they resist the Roman suppression
> of Gaul and it doesn't matter to him if such people they have the
> sexual practices of the mystery cults or not. This is called bringing
> Roman values to benighted Gaul.
>
> Thousands murdered in Gaul. And back in Rome our leader of the
> mystery cult talking to the perpetrators of these murders about the
> suppression of her mystery cult in Gaul. All of this is an amazing
> exercise in solidarity with the people of Gaul and a wonderful example
> of a political moral choice in how best to stop atrocity. You figure
> it out.
>
> Jerry Monaco
>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/