Genocide (154 hits)
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Submitted by Genko (View user info) at 2006-09-23 21:35:15 EDT
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I remember studying genocide in college. I think it was in World History. I found the genocide section of that class to be very interesting because of how disturbingly wrong genocide appears to anyone who has morals. Committing genocide takes a lot of cooperation from a lot of people and in most cases, when all is said and done, it's hard to figure out how so many people stood by and watched it.
The Ukraine famine was one of the worst genocides of the last century. Ukraine is one of the most fertile areas in Europe, and at the time it grew most of the Soviet Union's grain. There were lots of people in Ukraine who supported separation from the Soviet Union, so Stalin started shipping all the grain out and ended up starving seven million people. On purpose.
Sounds simple, right? Think of all the people that would have had to be involved. Thousands of Soviet officials had to participate in the creation and maintenance of this "famine" in the breadbasket of Europe. It's weird, when you think about it: thousands of KGB officials had to accept that there were millions of Ukrainians being deliberately starved to death despite the fact that there was an abundance of food to feed them.
Not only did all those officials, who presumably had a conscience, have to play a role in this genocide, but they also had to deny its very existence. They had to ship people off to Siberia for saying they were hungry. They had to lie openly to foreign media, and to citizens, and probably to themselves. By lying to themselves and blindly following the orders of those above them, they didn't have to deal with the reality of what they were doing. And maybe that's how they were able to do it at all. As it turns out, the enabling factor in most instances of genocide is good men closing their eyes, looking the other way, and refusing to do anything when confronted with evil.
My name is Dave Stevenson and my story isn't a story about genocide. It's about secrets, lies, the utility company, and a good man who made a choice when confronted with evil. It all started when I came to this town.
The first thing I did when I got into Marengo, Iowa, in the summer of '87 was read the welcome sign. 'Our Town...Make it yours.' the thing read. I thought it was clever, but never figured anybody would take it literally. I talked my way into a position with the public works department as a glorified metal detector. You know those 'call before you dig' signs? If you called in Marengo, you got me.
I worked in that position for a few years, driving around the sticks and explaining to people why they shouldn't dig up the gas lines and why hooking up the septic tank to the weeping tile drain wasn't a good way to "save some diggin.'" It paid the bills and they gave me a nice city truck to drive around, but I wanted something cushy, with an air-conditioned office, so I left that job and got hired on as the Utility Billing Clerk.
Now let me say before I continue that I moved to Marengo to escape the big city. I was jaded and had become tired of living the urban lifestyle. When I first heard about the Iowa County Safe Haven Site, I assumed it was a building that junkies could go to for free clean needles and a place to shoot up. I asked one of the old ladies in town how Marengo could stand for a government endorsement of heroin use. As it turned out, the Iowa County Safe Haven was what city people call an animal shelter. The ensuing discussion I had with that old lady was one of several awkward conversations I had during my transition to a mindset that included small town values.
It came as a great surprise to me, then, when one of the city councilors walked into my brand new office and explained the deal that they had with the previous Utility Billing Clerk. Apparently it seemed that certain members of the city council, as well as selected citizens of Marengo, had been receiving "special billing arrangements" for quite some time. It had been the first revelation of any kind of wrongdoing in this town. Every once in a while somebody would have a few too many, stagger down Main Street and get arrested for public drunkenness, but other than that I'd perceived the town as spotless. That was, of course, up until my meeting with a certain councilor.
I'm just a normal man. I knew that refusing to go along with this little scheme would probably end me up at the back of the unemployment line. I'd worked too hard to give up my prestigious position as a billing clerk in a town of two thousand people. It doesn't sound very prestigious if you say it like that, but it was the life I wanted.
I liked my small town life, so I played their game. The members and friends of the city council got a whole bunch of free electricity that year. The year after, too. I made up for the missing voltage wherever I could. Hospitals, the Iowa County Safe Haven Center, even the concession stand at the Little League Park. A few bucks extra here and there on those bills and the people of Marengo never knew the difference. I'd by lying if I said if never weighed on my conscience, but I just shrugged it off.
Like I said, though, I'm just a normal man. Like any normal man, I have my limits. When the town council decided to close down the Little League because it was costing too much to run, I'd had enough. Now that might seem like an odd place to draw the line. They rob the hospital and I do nothing, but they try to close down the Little League and I draw a line? I know, it sounds silly. Of all the battles to pick, right?
If it hadn't been the Little League, it would have been something else. I figure the important thing isn't so much where I chose to blow the whistle, but that I chose to blow it at all. I filled an envelope with all the evidence I could collect and sent it to the State Senator. Then I cleaned out my office and put my house on the market and waited. I figured I'd probably go to jail or something for my part of it.
Well, the state came in and shut the whole thing down. They're launching an investigation into the city's dealings with the electric company. A few high-level people in the Marengo government ended up going to jail, and a whole new breed of "honest" politicians sprung up in their place. I pled out and got a big fine and a few hundred hours of community service. I lost my job, of course, and I haven't gotten a new one yet. Nobody really wants to hire a criminal, which I guess is what I am, despite having been forced into this from the beginning. I'm volunteering at the Little League under court supervision, and pretty soon my mandatory hours will be up.
I don't have the audacity to compare what I witnessed to what went on in the Ukraine or at Auschwitz. But in the end, maybe they're not so different. Evil, executed on any scale, is something that requires a lot of grunt work, and those who become the grunts have to make a choice. I had to make a choice to conceal all those records. Every uniformed KGB officer had to make a choice too. If enough of them had agreed to do the right thing, there never would have been a famine in Ukraine.
Sometimes choices come with personal sacrifice. For me, it would have meant being fired. For the average KGB guy, it probably would have meant being executed. Some might defend all those underlings, saying that they had no choice. I say that's inaccurate. They had a choice: follow unjust orders or die. I don't think that death is reason enough for good people to do nothing about the evil they see in the world. Thinking that it is is the sort of thing that causes genocides.
My name isn't Saint Dave. I don't know if I could have stood up to Hitler or Stalin. I'm just a good guy who saw some wrongdoing and decided to do something about it. I know it doesn't make me a hero, but I suppose that at the very least, I avoided my own personal genocide.
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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:24:50 EDT (#)
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