To serve and protect

Woke up thinking about Amin Abel and people like him who fell by the hand of those who were there to serve and protect. Can you really expect institutions that for decades abused their power to suddenly function wholly. What's been done to society by these "failures" runs deep, it's a culture of abuse that goes from the highest levels of gov't to the lowest streetcorner. Respect, civility, morality. Permissiveness.

"North South East West, kill the best and buy the rest" says a line from Bruce Cockburn's song "Call it Democracy". How many people sold their ideals,... their souls, in order for their families to survive The Cold War. But once you sell them, you can't really buy them back. They're probably worth nothing even if they gift them back to you.

I often think that what happens in Latin America, in small countries like the Dominican Republic, is so deeply rooted, that no amount of "progress" can change it. It's going to take a couple of generations. Trujillo was killed 50 years ago next year, yet his name is still evoked, his wealth is still bragged about, his abuses of women are almost nonchalant statements. ""yeah, our dictator was a badder ass than yours. Yours was a softie, we had La 40, el SIM, Johnny Abbes... We had Porfirio Rubirosa, he banged some of the wealthiest, most beautiful women in the world. He used to pick up girls in El Conde when he was young."
The forgotten ones are mainly evoked by those who have nothing to lose, or who are young and are suddenly inspired by the possible revolutionary fire that once coursed through every young student who saw the oppressive machinery of capitalism bearing down on them.
But the other option, the one offered by the reds turned out to be a bunch of crap. A lot of people died for ideas that didn't deserve those sacrifices. Maybe it was noble, but they left a vacuum that was filled by the not so good, the ones who didn't evolve, but were converted. They didn't reach their ideals by virtue of growing into them, slowly realizing that this and that is not the path. These were converted by the barrel of the gun and an attache case full of cash.
Cars and women, rum and coke, and a glimpse of the American way.

If you sit down and think things through, you have to wonder about countries that are almost as old if not older than the US of A but can't keep a grip on stability. They shifted so much that what's real, what's national pride changes with every generation. Constitutions are written, ripped up, expanded, tripped up, raped which is the same as saying the people are. The People are raped, ripped up, ripped of, hoodwinked, swindled, abused, wiped out, rewritten, reprogrammed.

There are so many distractions nowadays. But what is progress? So you have a mobile phone, playstaion, led flat screen hanging on your wall. Your world is not yet 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. But the distractions. Even the press, that paragon of virtue and integrity is so busy with the "news" that they miss what's going on. But do we really want to know? Does anybody really know what's going on? I don't. Did they just publish another Lindsay Lohan nipple slip? Give me that link.