QOTD: Chris Hayes
by digby
To say another country or another country’s leadership’s record is complicated is not to issue an apology for wrongdoing. We shouldn’t simply be neutral in the face of beatings and disappearances and state repression or bullying. But condemnation and outrage are no substitute for knowledge about the world and other countries’ politics which are tangled and complicated just like our own. And I can’t help but think there’s a relationship between our tendency to know nothing about a country other than if they are bad or not, and the fact we spend more money on defense than the next 13 countries combined.
If all we see are Hitlers we will forever be at war.
I love the show — I think it’s essential, actually — but I miss reading Chris. The humanity and humility that comes through in that quote is who he is, to be sure, but it really comes through, very elegantly, in his writing.
Click to the link to read his entire piece and watch the whole discussion on Hugo Chavez. It will make you realize you really didn’t know a damn thing about it before.
Update: Here’s one interesting way to go about increasing your knowledge of Latin America: watch South of the Border:
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region.