The crowd chants the name of the valiant hero as he prepares to make his entrance and address the rabid crowd of 80,000 who stand jam-packed in the stadium in anticipation of his arrival. A fighting song is played and the wrestling superstar makes his way to the stadium where he is greeted by thousands of screaming fans. In his speech, he vows to prove his opponent wrong at their big showdown. As he finishes, the crowd again cheers “OBAMA, OBAMA! OBAMA!”

Wait, Obama? I thought we were at a wrestling show. Truth be told, I love professional wrestling with a passion despite its theatrical, fake plotlines. But I can’t help but notice the similarities between modern-day American politics and wrestling. Not only do election campaigns incorporate elements of professional wrestling, it seems wrestling is willing to incorporate political elements into its “sport.”

Take, for example, the 2008 Presidential campaign. Barack Obama made an appearance on the April 21, 2008 edition of WWE RAW, where he, alongside other presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and John McCain, were shown campaigning via pre-taped videos. The Pennsylvania primary imminent, the three decided to send special messages in order to boost voter appeal and gain extra political points. Clinton, in fact, promised then-WWE champion, Randy Orton that “if things get a little tough [in Washington], I may even have to deliver the People’s Elbow because this country is worth fighting for. Now, I promise to stick to the political arena, so don’t worry, Randy Orton; you’re safe for now.”
Although elected officials might cringe at the thought of appearing at professional wrestling events, it’s not uncommon for wrestling shows to deal with important political and social issues. In fact, it happens on a pretty regular basis.

Perhaps the most brazen attempt to on tackling on a hot political issue occurred in September 2002 on Smackdown. That month, wrestler Chuck Palumbo asked his tag team partner Billy Gunn for his hand in marriage. The elated Billy Gunn happily accepted his partner’s proposal and not one for long engagements decided to hold the wedding the very next week. Initially, WWE got a lot of positive mainstream press for taking this issue on, even receiving praise from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Sadly, the WWE took a 180 degree spin and one week later turned their relationship into a typical pro-wrestling storyline. During the show, Gunn and Palumbo admitted that it was all a publicity stunt and that they weren’t actually gay. If that was not enough, WWE had Gunn and Palumbo portrayed as good “straight” guys and the gay storyline was soon forgotten.WWE’s next attempt at tacking the political issues of the day came on the April 14, 2003 edition of WWE RAW when Christopher Nowinski, a 2000 Harvard graduate, debated fellow wrestler Scott Steiner on the issue of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Nowinski’s side of the debate was a well-articulated critique of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and war effort while Steiner’s argument featured such moronic lines as, ”I’ve wrestled a lot of countries” and “The Dixie Chicks and all those Hollywood numbnuts can go straight to Hell or France, same difference.” As you can probably tell, WWE took advantage of Nowinski’s Ivy League background and cast him into the role of the snobby Ivy League elitist intellectual. Although I commend WWE for raising awareness about the Iraq War, I regret that they make the liberal, more informed position “nerdy,” unrelatable, and stigmatized.

In late 2004, WWE tried to address racism in America, but unfortunately began endorsing racist policies. In December of that year, it introduced a new character, Muhammad Hassan (portrayed by Italian-American Mark Copani), through a series of vignettes as an Arab-American who was tired of facing racial profiling after the September 11th terrorist attacks. When he first debuted, the Hassan character had well-articulated points about racism in America; however, after a couple months, he had already became a caricature who merely cried “racism” at every given opportunity. His racist opponents were even portrayed as heroic. Upon encountering Hassan, Stone Cold Steve Austin proclaimed, “I see sand people.”

WWE eventually decided to cast Hassan as a villain by making him excessively bitter about the racism he encounters. The character quickly devolved and his last appearance on television came on July 7, 2005 on WWE SmackDown. On this episode, Hassan and various masked men attacked The Undertaker and then proceeded to simulate the beheading proceedings depicted in the various videos of Iraqi militants decapitating American hostages. Needless to say, this would offend any member of the Arab-American community.
See? Pro-wrestling has been far from quiet when in comes to politics. It really comes at no surprise then when we hear of former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, wife of current WWE CEO Vince McMahon, is vying for the Republican nomination for one of Connecticut’s US Senate seats. Yet in spite of a spotty record as an employer (McMahon had actually abolished mandatory drug testing for WWE employees in 1996), McMahon leads her primary opponent by ten points.

Despite many of the problems with the WWE shows, it is surprisingly good at engaging the public political in politics. In 2000, the then-WWF launched the “SmackDown Your Vote” campaign, designed to encourage 18-34 year olds to register to vote. The campaign made an appearance at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and asked George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on their television shows (though both declined their invitations). “SmackDown Your Vote” continues to this day and in 2008 began to receive notice from politicians as evidenced by Obama’s appearance on WWE RAW.

See? Pro-wrestling and U.S. politics are starting to go hand in hand. In fact, one could draw several parallels between the two: both feature larger than life characters, displays of power, mass influence, and homophobia and racism. Obama’s popularity is equally mirrored by that of wrestling superstars.Let’s just hope Linda McMahon doesn’t lay the “smackdown” on Connecticut’s “candy ass.”

Whether you’re Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Allied (LGBTQA) or anything else (XYZ), this week has certainly been a spectacle of sexuality: men dressed as women, women dressed as men, androgyny, genderbending. Once again Dartmouth has had an educational, fun-filled, and successful PRIDE Week. Our celebration here in Hanover was not a part of a national PRIDE holiday—Ally Week, Day of Silence, International Drag Day, and National Coming Out Day—so considering our independent effort, the full schedule of Dartmouth PRIDE Week was something of which we can all be proud. Despite the inopportune weather, our rainbow-spangled banners were still there looking better than ever. Can’t rain on this parade!

This year’s PRIDE week events ranged from the inspirational Bishop Robinson talk, the fabulous gender-bending fashion show TransForm, and the hilarious Drag Bingo Night, to the slightly underwhelming Dartmouth CookOUT and 24-hour SpeakOUT chat, to the downright deplorable Denis Dison’s keynote address. PRIDE week had its weaknesses, and sure, Frank Karger may not triumph in his campaign to become the first gay president in 2012, but just like Jesse Jackson before him—or any pioneers for that matter—we all have to start somewhere. Without a doubt, continuing these pioneering traditions will lead to important advancements for the LGBTQ and straight communities of this College and the nation.

Here at the DFP, we support the LGBTQ community in its quest for equality. The goal of PRIDE Week at Dartmouth is to allow the students and faculty to evolve and develop into a more inclusive community. Bishop Robinson said it best: PRIDE Week is not only a celebration of how far the LGBTQ community has come, but also a reminder of how much work there’s left to do. PRIDE Week promotes visibility and discussion of LGBTQ issues.

The College has hosted numerous famous speakers in the past—Urvashi Vaid of the Arcus Foundation and writer and trans activist Kate Bornstein—and it added New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson this year. These speakers had distinct voices, and have shared their ideas for making the world better for LGBTQ people by offering real solutions.
The Dartmouth PRIDE committee also hosted an online chat that was designed to create an open, anonymous environment for students’ opinions on queer topics. Unfortunately, the chat was poorly designed, and the premise of anonymity, while it certainly allowed people to speak freely, interfered with any focused conversation. For the first hour, most of the contributions were either egregiously homophobic or whimsical remarks about lesbian porn. We should not assume that people wouldn’t want to participate in a forum just because they must be responsible for their own opinions. The LGBTQ community is brave, and we should have let its members speak for themselves. Anonymity, here, sent the wrong message about the confidence and pride of today’s LGBTQ community.

As tough as it is discussing these issues at Dartmouth, a college with a long history of lagging behind in gender/sexuality issues and a Greek System that lives and breathes heteronormative values, we must insist on pushing the discourse into the open. With the exception of one or two sororities and fraternities that have begun to support the PRIDE movement, we have yet to see any large-scale participation by Greek organizations. Even if these organizations think they are separate from PRIDE issues and do not consider themselves “alternative social spaces,” they are still responsible for representing their LGBTQ membership, which is present whether they acknowledge it or not.

Even students who are convinced they hold no responsibility for gender equality and sexual freedom for others can benefit from educating themselves of the values and motivations of the gay community. Is the LGBTQ community more concerned with acceptance or changing society? Where is the modern gay rights movement heading? What is the ideal vision of queer people within society? These questions concern queer and straight people alike, and the queer community cannot answer them alone.

It’s unfortunate that this year’s keynote speech with Denis Dison was so poorly attended. Dison is the Vice President of External Affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee that helps train LGBTQ political candidates. We admit that the Victory Fund is not very well known, and we don’t necessarily agree with the Victory Fund’s blanket support of LGBTQ candidates. Nor do we claim that his speech would have produced any goosebumps or sudden changes of heart. But potential audiences couldn’t have known this beforehand, and the meager attendance therefore hinted at our campus’ disinterest in having a discourse about the emerging role of LGBTQ people in politics.
There is still much work to be done. Bored at Baker is full of homophobic comments. The 24-hour SpeakOUT blog was host to numerous trolls spewing anti-gay remarks. The Greek system at large is still too heteronormative and gender exclusive. But we should be able to recognize and rectify these issues while celebrating the achievements of the LGBTQ community: the addition of gender-neutral housing, for instance, or the formation of an LGBTQ mentor program, OUTreach. This week, we can celebrate: dress in drag, play bingo, and dance. But come Monday, we must continue the push to raise LGBTQ awareness on campus. We’re here, we’re straight and we’re queer, so get used to it.

New England is cold. But even so, saying ice was one of the region’s largest industries in the early twentieth century sounds more like a joke than reality. Truth is often stranger than fiction, however, and in truth, ice production in New England was not only a huge industry—it was a cross-country and sometimes international one as well. This amusing factoid is one of many presented by Dartmouth professor of Geography, Susanne Freidberg, in her new book, Fresh, In it, Freidberg investigates the history of perishables in the American economic and physical landscape. Fresh explores the curious history of food preservation and transportation, covering how improvements in technology changed the American diet and what people could afford to eat.

Fresh is an informational book in several respects. Freidberg explores ways in which attitudes towards food preservation have changed over time. Some seem jarringly different from what we’re familiar with now—for example, with most foods, it is now unthinkable to not have them neatly preserved in cold environments. Previous generations had a vastly different view, however, and there was a longstanding hostility in American society towards refrigerated food. Part of this hostility can be explained by bad press and marketing; since “fresh” foods went for higher prices, merchants only refrigerated soon-to-spoil (or spoiled) food in a bid to keep them for longer. Thus, anything that came out of a refrigerator was usually already long past its prime.

Another part of the stigma against refrigerated food was suspicion as to what it would mean for the consumer welfare. Eggs, for instance, easily keep in refrigerators, but this wasn’t seen as a virtue for old-time American consumers. They instead saw it was dangerous—after all, how could one figure out if an egg is truly “fresh” if refrigerated eggs keep and are indistinguishable from others that didn’t undergo the “tainting” influence of a refrigerator? Refrigeration also had unintended economic effects as well. Since it allowed certain foods to be available during more times of year than before, consumers just saw this as meaning that merchants didn’t have to sell low during gluts.

Despite all of these misunderstandings, Fresh is effective in showing how similar the fears of consumers back then are to those expressed by American consumers now. Americans didn’t see freshness as simply lack of spoilage or low bacteria counts—they saw freshness as something more, a fantasy where one could imagine, by drinking milk or biting into an apple, the farm next door that grew and produced it. Never mind that the actual business of farming is a messy and difficult one—the image is what the eaters were after.
In the past, freshness meant local. And without the science, that was the only way they could be assured that their food was wholesome. As such, consumers wanted, supported, and took a long time to be convinced that a California fruit was just as good, if not better, than a Vermont one.

Today, locality matters, but for different reasons. We have the science, so instead of vague notions of healthy “stuff” we assert lack of pesticides, genetic-modification, a small carbon footprint, or a host of other qualities that the term “local” appears to imply, whether or not this is actually the case. These aren’t arguments that the early American consumer would have recognized, but the result is one that is all very much the same.

Fresh is an important book because it is a comprehensive history of freshness in a digestible, reader-friendly form. Beyond the factoids, it paints a story that shows us why we are here today—not in the manner of angry diatribes or by invoking exposé-style disgust in readers, as books like Fast Food Nation or other recent investigations about food and the American diet are prone to do. It instead shows us what our food is, and presents the deeper complexities in the messy world of growing our food. From this, we can decide what we truly want to change—and what is merely a fantasy of a time of pure food that never was.

Last week I visited my hometown of Burlington, VT to conduct an interview with Senator Bernie Sanders (I -VT). Seeing as he is the longest standing independent congressman in American history, and that I also consider myself independent on most political issues, I was excited to ask him about what I consider the most important progressive issues in politics right now.

His office stood on the second floor of the largest building at the top of Church Street. I couldn’t picture the bustling cobblestone avenue in the years before Sen. Sanders took office as mayor of Burlington in 1981, when the paved Church Street had no pedestrians, no national chains, and no fancy restaurants to speak of.

My first impression of Sen. Sanders was not what I had expected from a seasoned United States Congressman: His rapid-fire Brooklyn accent had a rugged intensity, and his wispy white hair spilled over his forehead irregularly, more like an edgy professor than a politician. I couldn’t tell whether his unadulterated appearance was authentic or just a well-crafted persona. Either way, he conveyed a genuine interest in our conversation. In order for the reader to experience some of his presence, the interview below is unchanged from its original form.

DFP: How did you develop your “no bullshit” persona? A lot of people view your persona as being very straightforward. Is there a specific reason why honesty is so important to you?

Senator Sanders: Thank you for the compliment. It’s just kind of the way I am. I sometimes think things aren’t as complicated as people make them out to be. You have to be straightforward and tell people what you think. Even if people disagree with you, they appreciate you if you’re being forthright with them. Now we don’t have a lot of time, so let’s get down to the questions.

DFP: OK. One thing that seems to be on your mind a lot is how you think the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ben Bernanke, appointed during the Bush Administration, needs to be replaced. Why do you think that and what kind of person do you think should replace him?

Senator Sanders: Well, it isn’t my job to come up with a name but I do think that the chairman of the Fed is a very powerful position. The primary function of the Fed is to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system. It is very clear almost by definition, because under Bernanke’s watch we came very near to a financial collapse. The second goal of the Fed, an important goal, is to try to provide as close to a full-employment economy as we can. Obviously, we are very far away from that—we’re in the midst of a major recession. So I think what you need at the Fed is somebody whose main interest is protecting the interest of the middle class and the working families of the country, rather than just the powerful interests on Wall Street. That is what I believe Bernanke’s record has been. You need to use the tools of the Fed—which are very many—to help ordinary people rather than just large banks.

DFP: Do you think the Goldman Sach’s fraud issue speaks to Bernanke’s failing policies?

Senator Sanders: Yes, I do. I mean, that is precisely what the job of the Fed is. The Fed is there to protect the safety and soundness—well, you’re not going to have safety and you’re not going to have soundness when major, major financial institutions are, according to the SEC [Security and Exchange Commission], engaged in fraud. In this case, they worked with a hedge fund manager to put together securities which are designed to fail, so that the hedge fund managers can place the bet that they’re going to fail, while investors are buying thinking that they think they’re going to make money because of the value of that security. So that’s fraud, if the SEC charge is correct. And frankly, I think you will see that charge leveled against a number of other financial institutions as well; I don’t think Goldman Sachs is unique. But, to answer your question, where was the Fed during all of this? Clearly they were not doing their job.

DFP: So you’re saying this might open up a whole new slew of fraud issues?

Senator Sanders: I think what people have been talking about now is mostly the recklessness and irresponsibility of Wall Street. This is the first major charge where there is not only recklessness and irresponsibility, but there is fraud as well. What I’m saying is I think this will not be the last major charge against financial institutions. My own guess is that fraud was probably rampant.

DFP: I know you serve on the Congressional Committee of Energy and Natural Resources. You also just received a grant of $3.2 Billion for alternative energies.

Senator Sanders: Right. What that was about was that I helped write legislature with Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) which is called the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. It’s a national program, and what it does is to provide money to cities, states, and towns to help them move to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. In the stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the president put $3.2 billion into that program, and that brought $12 million dollars into the state of Vermont, and billions around the country. I think it’s going to help us transform our energy system, and in the process involve people at the local level to think about how they could best go forward in terms of energy sustainability and efficiency.

DFP: Is that related to “Smartgrid”?

Senator Sanders: Well, there’s a lot of money coming down the pike, and there are a lot of programs. This is a separate program. What it has funded, for example, in the state of Vermont, is promoting energy efficiency. You’ll have older buildings that will be able to use this money to be able to add new insulation, new windows, a new heating system, new roofs, when necessary. Also, communities can use it for photovoltaic, geothermal, and wind, biomass, and so forth. So it gives communities a wide range of opportunities to move in the right direction. On top of that, there’s another large grant coming into the state for $79 million which is called “Smartgrid”, which will allow some 90 percent of buildings in the state of Vermont to have meters, which will allow them to identify how their energy is being used. We know that can help in a significant way in making energy use more efficient.

DFP: In some ways, your ideas on energy are against the current in Washington. For example, Obama just funded loan guarantees to build two nuclear reactors in Georgia. Do you think the Obama administration’s energy policy is headed in the right direction?

Senator Sanders: Well, what you have to understand is that the answer is yes and no. The Bush administration’s policies on energy were a disaster and refused even to acknowledge the reality of global warming. [On the other hand] President Obama understands that global warming is real and it is a very serious problem for the planet. He has, in the last year and a half, invested far, far, far more than we have seen almost forever in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, so that’s the good news. For example, generally speaking we spent $200 million a year as a nation on weatherization, which is helping lower income people retrofit their homes to make them more energy efficient and save fuel. In the stimulus package, we put $25 billion. It was a huge increase in the amount of money we spent on weatherization, and that is a positive step forward. It’s cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions; it is saving consumers money; it is bringing us to energy independence. The president is also appointing Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who is very good on energy issues and very good on global warming issues. I disagree with the president when he provides loan guarantees for nuclear. We still haven’t solved the issues of how to get rid of nuclear waste, not to mention that nuclear construction is a very expensive proposition. I’m also disagreeing with the president on his view on coal sequestration. But, having said that, in terms of sustainable energy and energy efficiency, they are making some very significant steps forward.

DFP: Do you think Obama really is pro-nuclear—because I know he has come out against it before—or do you think he is just pandering to the Republican Party?

Senator Sanders: No, I think he really is pro-nuclear. Energy is a big word. I think he can take credit for moving the country forward in some very progressive ways. I mean, all of the money that is coming in to the State of Vermont is a result of his initiatives, and support from those of us in Congress who are moving in this direction. That’s a positive. On the other hand, I think there are areas in which he’s moving in the wrong direction.

DFP: Some people are still saying that the healthcare reform bill is a socialist development. As an Independent Senator and self-proclaimed Socialist, do you find the Healthcare Reform Bill to be leaning towards some Socialist ideas by your standards?

Senator Sanders: No. It’s a pretty conservative idea. It’s using primarily private insurance companies to expand health care to many people who do not have health insurance. It is raising Medicaid by raising the level by which people can qualify for Medicaid. So you’ll have another 15 or 16 million people getting Medicaid, which is a government run health insurance program. But the other people are going to come in the subsidies or private insurance companies. I voted for the bill. It is not a particularly strong bill, but it will provide health insurance to some 30 billion people who don’t have it today. I think it has to be improved over the years, but I support it. Socialism has nothing to do with it.

DFP: Yes, I don’t really see why it would, but there are still people out there who call it that.

Senator Sanders: Yes, it has been called that by Republicans to scare people. But what people don’t know that there are countries around world who have socialized or national health insurance programs which are much more cost effective than our system. We are the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide health care to all people as a right of citizenship.

DFP: Do you think if we open up trade to Cuba, it will stay a socialist country in the future, or do you think that it will open up to capitalism and go back to the way it was.

Senator Sanders: A few weeks ago we had the Ambassador from Denmark, which would not consider itself a socialist country, but which has very progressive social programs. It provides health care to all people without virtually any out of pocket expenses, college education there is free, every worker there has six weeks paid vacation, they are very strong on the environment, workers are overwhelmingly in unions, and so on and so forth. So I look to countries like Denmark, Finland, Sweden as models we can use as models and learn from. Cuba is obviously a small, developing country, which is an authoritarian Communist country which has done some good things in terms of health care. I haven’t studied it lately but I think their education system is pretty good. I think what you will see on votes in the House and the Senate in recent years is a desire to establish a more normal relation with Cuba and ending the embargo. What I think American businesses understand is that countries all over the world are investing in Cuba, and businesses in the U.S. can’t do that. So there is pressure to open up to allow businesses to invest in Cuba, to have Americans to freely visit Cuba in a normal way. The question is, if you can’t have normalized relations with Cuba, then how can you have normalized relations with a country like China, which is of course a Communist country and is also much more powerful.

DFP: Do you think there is ever going to be a time when the progressive voice on issues like these—financial regulation, energy policy, health care reform, and US-Cuba relations—can have a strong voice, not just as a third party, or the “other,” but truly included in the dialogue?

Senator Sanders: Well, you’ve seen that take place in a number of countries around the world. For example, if you go up to Canada, which is just an hour away from here, and you go up to the most conservative person in parliament up there and you say ‘do you think you should abolish your health care system,’ which is a single-payer health care system, and in fact they have a conservative government up there, none of the conservatives think they should abolish it. So the idea of saying, so in Canada, the idea that health care is a human right is a part of their culture. I think that’s what you’re asking; whether progressive values become a part of people’s culture. That’s certainly true all over Scandinavia and many European countries. We have a long way to go. There are millions of Americans and, you know, many people in Congress who do not believe health care is a human right, that quality education should be a right regardless of their income. So we are behind many other countries in achieving a culture in which progressive values are accepted. We have a long way to go.

You’re in a foreign country. Water, food, and supplies are rationed. The Government deliberately starves people yet everyone is unquestionably loyal to the political party in power—the only party in power. This may seem like an Orwellian dystopia, but for those living in North Korea, it’s reality.

On April 6th, 2010, Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and its Dartmouth chapter, the North Korea Project (NKP), hosted a screening of the documentary Inside North Korea. Inside North Korea differs from other documentaries in that it tries to vividly show the lives of North Koreans, albeit only the privileged ones, as opposed to Kim Jong Il’s craziness or the lives of the refugees. Considering the dearth of information about the most secretive nation in the world and its people, a peek into the lives of North Koreans was a rare chance to understand the political situation in North Korea.

But of course, North Korean officials did not grant such a rare chance graciously. In the documentary, Kim Jong Il invites Dr. Sanduck Ruit to treat 1,000 North Koreans suffering from cataracts in order to maintain the loyalty of his people. Ruit, a Nepalese eye surgeon, regularly travels to third-world countries to heal penniless patients. Because North Korea is hostile to foreigners entering the country, especially American journalists, National Geographic Explorer host Lisa Ling accompanies Dr. Ruit into North Korea disguised as a member of his medical team. Six North Korean officials accompanied Lisa Ling and her cameraman, escorting Ling, Ruit, and their crew from Kathmandu, Nepal to Pyongyang, North Korea and back. Any suspicious activity endangered the entire medical team.

Despite the constant supervision of the officials, the footage Ling and her cameraman filmed officials is nothing short of shocking. Ling paid particular attention to the extent in which North Koreans were brainwashed to believe in the greatness of their Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Ling’s cameraman was almost kicked out of North Korea when he lay down to get a single shot of the 82-feet statue of Kim Il Sung. The officials warned in rage that no human being is worthy to take a picture of the Great Leader while lying down.

In another scene, the officials allowed Ling to visit one of Dr. Ruit’s patients, a privileged North Korean citizen. But in the house, Ling didn’t find family photos or pictures of beautiful landscapes. Instead, numerous portraits of the Dear Leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung decorated the walls. Ling asked the family members a few questions about Kim Jong Il. When asked what the hardest part of being blind was, the patient replied without hesitation that her blindness prevented her from admiring portraits of the Great Leader. When Ling asked what were the origins of North Korea’s willingness to stand apart from the entire world, one family member replied, “Our unity is stronger than nuclear weapons, and we serve the greatest leader in the world.” Finally, Ling inquired whether Dear Leader Kim Jong Il could ever be wrong. The family responded with confusion. They genuinely could not grasp the idea of their Dear Leader ever making a mistake or doing something wrong.

The most shocking part of the documentary came towards the end. All 1,000 patients were waiting in an enormous room with a large portrait of each Dear Leader. They had all finished their surgeries in the past week, and waited for Ruit to take the bandages off their eyes and bring light back into their worlds. Ruit walked up to each patient, greeted him or her warmly, and took off the bandages. What ensued was a scene not witnessed in even the most extreme personality cults. Each patient determinedly walked up to the portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, bowed to them, and delivered a brief speech vowing to dedicate his or her life to the well-being of the Dear Leader and vanquish all enemies of Kim Jong Il, including Americans. After each speech, a thunderous roar of applause and cheer followed. Many in the crowd were moved to tears. I couldn’t help recalling George Orwell’s 1984 and Winston Smith’s four last words: “He loved Big Brother.”

Is North Korea a brutal dictatorship? Perhaps. When we normally think of North Korea, we naively conjure up the image of an insane Kim Jong Il oppressing poor, starving people. But Inside North Korea shows that it’s more than just that—Kim Jong Il brainwashes his citizens in order to further his political agenda. He intends to be worshipped as God. It’s hard to imagine an entire population of a state worshiping and defending an individual, especially in America where extreme, blind loyalty to anything is feared and frowned upon. But the message of Inside North Korea is clear: there are millions of people who now genuinely believe in the North Korean political system and are ready to defend the system with their lives. Due to this devotion there is the possibility, often overlooked, that the self-sustaining system of North Korea may continue even after the death of Kim Jong Il.

This message sounds obvious, but it isn’t—the way our governments normally approach North Korea is through unsuccessful attempts at sanctions or coercion through the United Nations. North Korea occasionally or temporarily yields to our demands depending on its needs and wants, but soon reverts back to threatening to test missiles. Of course, I’m not saying that our government is not doing anything productive, but we should also make efforts for longer lasting change in North Korea. And to bring about that long-lasting change, we need a bottom-up, grassroots movement that can change not just Kim Jong Il and his co-conspirators, but also the brainwashed cataract patients whose only wish is to open their eyes up and admire the portrait of Kim Jong Il. That means we need more people like Dr. Ruit who are willing to reach out to North Korea through their expertise and directly interact with North Koreans. We need more Lisa Lings who are willing to venture into North Korea and bring to the outside world more information about what really is going on there, so that we can plan our actions. In order to make this happen, we should take North Korea more seriously than simply giving it an indifferent glance while reading newspapers over morning coffee. We should care.

April 1st is Census Day in the U.S., and as the US Census Bureau continues to collect data, some conservative politicians like Representatives Michelle Bachmann (R- Minn) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) are concerned that census questions may be “too personal” and “invasive.” They think the census counts as “government intrusion.” But their criticism is more likely aimed at how the census has changed over the past two centuries, and their claims are less substantiated by fact than by paranoia (C’mon, your telephone number is “too personal”? Yeah, right!) Though silent on the issue, these conservative politicians are probably more peeved by the increasingly LGBTQ-friendly policies adopted by the US Census Bureau in order to make sure that data on LGBTQ people is collected. Bachmann’s argument that the census isn’t private enough is in opposition to society’s push to do the right thing and “queer the census.”

LGBTQ people must be aware of the covert homophobia laced throughout Bachmann and Paul’s condemnation of the census. Although their attack on the census may be a shallow ploy to win political points and galvanize the conservative base, it’s ultimately demeaning to the community. It’s a position whose logic suggests that we can’t count LGBTQ people, which makes gathering hate crime statistics even more difficult.

Ever since the census was first conducted in 1790, it has always asked questions beyond the number of people living in each household. Bachmann and Paul, in particular, have argued that the census can only ask people how many people are living in their house; anything else is unconstitutional. But this claim has no merit whatsoever.

The first census, for example, asked for respondents’ sex and free or slave status. In 1840, the census asked for the number of blind, deaf, and “insane or idiotic” persons living in each household. And in 1850, it asked for respondents’ race and occupation. 2000 marked the first year multiracial people were counted. The census has always been an indication of the socially progressive direction the U.S. is taking.

Data collected by the Census is also used to shape much-needed policies that promote equality. Data related to race is used in our judicial system in order to help rule on cases related to discriminatory voting practices. Asking demographic questions is not invasive; the census has proved, then and now, extremely effective in rolling back past social bigotry. Yet despite the many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people around the country, they are still not accurately represented in the census..

As it stands, there is no question on the census that asks about a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. However, the US Census Bureau for the 2010 Census has enacted some LGBTQ-friendly policies. For example, same-sex couples living together can mark themselves as either “married” or as “unmarried partners,” whichever they consider
themselves in spite of legal obstacles. Previously, if same-sex couples living under the same household marked “married,” the Census would automatically modify their answer to “unmarried partners”—or in some cases modify the gender of one partner. Additionally the US Census Bureau has urged transgendered individuals to mark the sex with which they identify, rather than their “legal” gender.

Although these policies are steps forward for the queer community, they ultimately fall short. Like their heterosexual counterparts, LGBTQ people are far more likely to be single than coupled. Bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships are simply treated as heterosexual. Transgendered people are just ignored. To bridge the gap, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force put together the Queer the Census campaign, which seeks to add a question about sexual orientation and gender identity to the census in order to get a larger, more accurate picture of the number of LGBTQ individuals in the United States.

Of course, even if this question were asked, the census would still underreport the number of LGBTQ individuals on both local and national levels. Given the shame and oppression LGBTQ people face in society, LGBTQ people sometimes choose to stay in the closet. But any number of LGBTQ people, even if it represents less than one percent of the population, means that we know where we stand in terms far more concrete than any approximation can offer. As the old saying goes: “We’re here, we’re queer, get over it.” The census is long overdue to heed this call.

As society has changed, the census has reflected a long history of both demographic and, whether implicit or not, sociological change. We no longer count the number of slaves in our country; they simply don’t exist. And with same-sex marriage now being performed in five states and in DC, same-sex couples can self-identify honestly with state and country. It’s progress, and it’s happening. Let’s keep this going.

Aid and the well being of Africa are so inextricably linked in today’s culture that to question the value of the former seems utterly sacrilegious. However, this is exactly what Dambisa Moyo PhD discussed on April 1 over lunch with the Great Issues Scholars. Born and raised in Zambia, Moyo received her BA and MBA at American University in Washington, D.C., her Masters at Harvard and her Ph.D in economics at Oxford. She went to work at the World Bank in D.C. and now has worked for eight years at Goldman Sachs in debt capital markets, hedge fund coverage and in global macroeconomics. She signed copies of her book Dead Aid for the scholars. Her book expounds on the controversial topic of her talk in Moore Hall.

The simple truth is that Western aid doesn’t help; it actually hurts.

There are three things that everyone can agree on whether one is pro-aid or not. The first is that someday Africa should not need aid. Second, everyone knows that in order for Africa to climb out of poverty, African governments need to be motivated to help their people. Third, everyone knows that aid contributes to Africa’s problems, whether they believe aid should be curtailed or not.

It is important to distinguish which aid is hurting Africa. There are three kinds of aid: emergency or humanitarian aid, charity aid sponsored by NGOs, and government-to-government aid. Moyo argues that emergency and charity aid are not the problem. Rather, government-to-government aid, Moyo claims, is holding Africa back and perpetuating the need for aid in the first place.

Government-to-government aid has been so ineffective that since 1970, Africa as a continent has actually become poorer. Today seventy percent of a billion people—a sixth of the world’s population—live on less than a dollar a day. Yet despite the massive failure that government-to-government aid has incurred, the initiative had noble intentions. In the middle of the twentieth century, government-to-government aid seemed like it would work — the Keynesian model illustrated that savings created from aid would lead to investment which would lead to growth for an Africa newly-emerged from colonialism. In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference lead to the creation of the International Monetary Fund, which oversaw the transactions of huge loans to help nations ravaged by World War II and Africa get back on their feet. For Europe, and much later, India, short but effective aid projects such as the Marshall Plan and the Green Revolution, respectively, helped jump-start economies. However, a continual stream of government-to-government aid to Africa has actually allowed growth to stagnate and poverty to rise. Today, Africa needs to grow its GDP a whopping seven percent per year (almost China’s rate of development) in order to even put a dent into the poverty it has sunk into. At this point, aid is not even scratching the surface.

One reason large scale aid has been allowed to continue for so long is because it’s virtually impossible to have logical discussion about aid. Many of those who staunchly back aid do so for reasons steeped in emotion. Seven African presidents, people elected to represent the interests of the African people, have stated that their nations to do not need this continual stream of aid. However, no one cares about what these elected officials have to say. Instead, it is celebrities like Bono who actually represent Africa in the eyes of the global community. According to the emotional appeals of celebrities, Africa needs aid. Isn’t it odd that the international community doesn’t hold elected leaders responsible for their counties, but it turns to non-Africans for counsel on African interests? Would Americans like it if a foreign pop star represented our interests in the international sphere?
Exactly why does aid not work? Most people think that aid does not work because its effects are stymied by corruption. It’s true; African governments no longer have to be held accountable for their people’s needs and interests. Those in power concern themselves only with holding on to power; aid money doesn’t reach people because it is being stolen by people who will continue to receive aid and remain in power even if they are not providing basic goods and services to the people they claim to serve.

Aid also doesn’t work because it leads to inflation. Too many dollars clogging a small economy make goods and services excessively expensive for ordinary people. People lose their jobs and can’t afford to obtain the basic necessities. Coupled with Dutch disease, the exploitation of natural resources and depressed manufacturing, inflation is the major economic reason for why aid, in the long run, fails. However, an imagined moral duty reminiscent of a modern-day White Man’s Burden continues to prevail.

The problem of dependency also prohibits development since African governments abdicate their responsibility to the people who pay taxes. The governments that depend on aid neglect budgeting and allotting tax money for basic public goods such as healthcare, national security, and infrastructure. This is especially evident when governments don’t lift a finger while waiting on the West to do everything for them. Now the West provides adequate services and billions of dollars in aid. But most of the aid money is squandered on personal gain by aforementioned corrupt officials or is lost in bureaucracy. Western governments are not African governments nor the African people. We cannot be called upon to know an African nation’s needs or do the African government’s jobs for them.

Despite this, the West insists on giving aid to complacent, even corrupt African governments. We maintain an embassy in Zimbabwe and still send aid to Zimbabwe’s government even while we express outrage over the corruption and oppression of Mugabe’s regime. In following our hearts rather than our minds, we are hurting those we intend to help. Africa has the youngest population in the world, but with economic stagnation in many of the continent’s countries there are few job opportunities for these nations’ youth. There is little impetus for these young adults to pursue a degree beyond high school. Disenfranchised unemployed, and uneducated, these youth have little where to turn but to crime and delinquency. Many youths start families early and remain in poverty, in a country with few opportunities and very little economic mobility. Aid has created a continent without a future.

In most African countries there is virtually no middle class—only a huge gap between the rich and the poor. As a result, there are constantly coups in African countries, as different groups of people revolt and try to seize the Presidency and their only chance at a decent life. The high political uncertainty and instability engendered by the economic problem of aid is not just a domestic problem, but an international problem. Restless and unemployed—or worse, underemployed—youth will not only turn to crime and rebellion but will become pirates and terrorists. The hijacking of cruises of the coast of Somalia or the Ugandan underwear bomber is just the beginning. We will only see more of these cases if the question of systematic poverty and negligence resulting from problems that aid engenders is not addressed.

Yet such aid continues to be wasted for reasons not easily grappled with. The international community simply does not expect Africans and black people in general to be able to fend for themselves. There is a quotation from President George W. Bush which (believe it or not) adequately describes this notion: “Beware the soft bigotry of low expectations.” India and China, both with populations larger than a billion, each have a greater percentage poor people than that of the African continent. Yet, we do not see charities trying to entice donors to give money using pictures or videos of Chinese or Indian children on the internet or the television, as neither the Chinese nor the Indian government will allow this, and for good reason.

African children are the poster kids for aid even though that aid probably will not improve their futures. There is obviously a double standard similar to the outright paternalism and racism of old. We need to beware the pity that hides the smug smile of superiority. We cannot feel we are doing our best with the band-aid of aid. We cannot be so comfortable with a perpetually impoverished black continent. And yet, there would be a huge political backlash to any political candidate who suggested ending aid. The West should take a stand and let African nations know that over the next ten or twenty years, aid will gradually decrease and finally come to an end. If people are paid, they should be paid to innovate and thrive, not merely survive. Most importantly, if Africa begins to clean up its act we should reward it economically, not in aid, but in further investments, so that African economies can continue to grow.

There are already hints of an economic overhaul in the making. Kenya and Tanzania have already entered the global market, obtaining budding credit reports. More impressively, under the charismatic leadership of President Kagame, Rwanda has rebounded from the horrific genocide the nation experienced in 1994. Most Westerners only know Rwanda as seen in the film Hotel Rwanda. Yet Kagame’s Rwanda has jumped 63 places in the world economy since 1994. This drastic improvement is the result of a few big changes catalyzed by a simple motivation.

If aid is greatly reduced and Africa is allowed to succeed, the whole world will be better off. No longer will Africa be the ‘sick man’ of the global economy. No longer will we have an entire continent with GDPs lagging behind everybody else’s. Africa not only has great potential for investments and new capital, but also the many intellectuals who could be brought out of poverty and obscurity in order to give back to the global community. All it takes is a belief in the African people, a belief that they are people just like any other people, a people looking for economic and social opportunities for themselves and their children.[cap

Healthcare reform has become the law of the land. This is a momentous, yet tumultuous time in America’s history. A great victory has been won but like all great victories, health care reform is controversial. The great majority of Republicans have sworn to roll back healthcare. The Democrats have a huge struggle on their hands, but they have history on their side. Katrina Swett, wife of former Congressman Dick Swett and current Democratic candidate for Congress visited the Dartmouth College Democrats on Monday, April 13th. She believes healthcare reform is just one of the many aspects of a decent society. Democrats fought hard to erect socially progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Civil Rights Equality throughout the twentieth century. All of these reforms, now sacrosanct in our society, met fierce backlash when they were first introduced. However, just like it is hard to imagine a United States of America without a commitment to racial equality or Social Security today, it will be hard to imagine a world without a better health care system tomorrow.

The healthcare reform bill is not perfect. Some Democrats feel this reform hasn’t gone far enough. And of course the reform bill will face modifications and improvements in the future. However, healthcare reform is a big step in the right direction when it comes to addressing the wrongs of so many insurance company abuses or making health insurance affordable to millions of everyday Americans. Here is exactly what healthcare reform offers, in case anyone is confused. According to http://www.healthcare.BarackObama.com:
1) 5.6 million people with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied insurance. Starting this year, no child will be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition, and by 2014, discrimination against adults with pre-existing conditions will become a thing of the past.

2) Starting in 2014, tax credits for up to 29 million individuals will help pay for health insurance. Individuals and middle-class families who cannot get or afford health insurance through work will be eligible for tax credits that will provide affordable coverage through new health insurance exchanges.

3) 3.5 million small businesses that offer employees health coverage can receive tax cuts of up to 35 percent this year and up to 50 percent in 2014.

4) In 2007 medical expenses were the cause of 62% of all bankruptcies in the US. Healthcare reform will cap the annual-out-of-pocket spending on insurance in order to save 500,000 families from bankruptcy each year.

5) Most importantly, 48 million uninsured Americans will have the opportunity to purchase new, affordable insurance options. Young adults will now be covered by their parents’ insurance until age 26 instead of age 21 (something very important to many college students) and many Americans who were once denied healthcare or couldn’t afford healthcare can be covered, thanks to fairer insurance policies, tax credits and affordable health coverage at lower rates.

There’s definitely a lot of good in the healthcare bill. Yet despite this big step, there are many people who would just as much like to take an even bigger step backward. The new G.O.P slogan is “Repeal and Replace.” Another, less official slogan is “Fire Nancy Pelosi.” On the eve of the historic vote, tensions ran high. Immediately preceding the passage of healthcare reform, thousands of protestors descended on Capitol Hill. On Saturday, March 20th, House Democrats passing through the Longworth House office building were subjected to abusive and derogatory remarks and behavior. Members of the Tea Party spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), called Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) a faggot (in offensive lipsy screams no less) and called Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights activist, a nigger.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) commented on the mob-like mentality of the day, saying “It was absolutely shocking to me … I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit-ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.” He later received an anonymous fax with a picture of a noose. The next day, a brick was thrown through the front office window of Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-NY) district office. On Sunday night, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) “in the heat and emotion of the debate” shouted “baby-killer” at conservative Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor. Neugebauer later claimed he was referring to the healthcare bill and not Stupak. That weekend a number of calls for President Obama’s assassination appeared on Twitter, Facebook and signs carried by Tea Party protestors. Death threats have been sent out to Democratic congress people, threatening to harm them and their families.

Frankly, having to resort to epithets and death threats only illustrates how very desperate Republicans are. Swett is also alarmed at the direction political rhetoric is taking. Vitriolic language steeped in extreme Republican ideology is not healthy for the overall body politic. This hyperactive hate towards healthcare reform does not produce an environment people would like to live in, much less discuss the issues in. The Republican Party and the Tea Party seem to want to keep their base whipped up with enough fear, hatred and paranoia to carry them over to November’s primaries. Threatening behavior is conducive neither to compromise nor to intellectual debate. However, while the Republicans are involved in an emotional, vengeful discourse against what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky calls a “raft of sweetheart deals that were struck behind closed doors,” Democrats continue the fight for more accessible healthcare in a cool and collected manner.

Democrats need to believe in and continue fighting for healthcare. The battle isn’t over. In fact, it’s just begun. Throughout the blogosphere and news cycle a number of dark and gloomy predictions have been voiced over the Democrats’ future. One commentator believes that by throwing in his lot with House Speaker Pelosi and by resisting smaller reforms, President Obama has opened a Pandora’s box. Not only has he widened the gaping hole of the great partisan divide, but he has sharpened the Republican argument against him. Before, the Republicans were saying “no” just to get by. Their party had no real rallying point. After their tremendous loss in 2008, the Republicans were back at the drawing board, trying to revitalize and re-center the party with women and youth. Some even said the party was dead; now the Republicans have found their calling card. They hope everyone will look at the messy, drawn-out journey to healthcare and wonder how this perversion of democracy hacked together by a weak majority with socialist leanings ever became law. In contrast, a few disappointed liberals think that letting healthcare reform fail and then blaming “the party of no” for it would have been a better way to save face. Many in this apocalyptic camp, right and left alike, think that in betraying pro-choice (the President signed an executive order to cut funding for non-rape, non-incestuous abortion in the healthcare bill in order to please Stupak and other conservative Democrats), and in throwing the public option under the bus, only to still enrage the right, President Obama will pay in the ballot box, come 2012.

Yet to succumb to pessimism is to look at only one side of the coin. On the other hand, the Republican Party’s groundless, and stubborn behavior united The Left behind a call to action. Healthcare reform was long overdue. As candidate Swett put it, it was embarrassing to see that the US had fallen behind every other developed nation when it came to healthcare. The long ideological battle allowed President Obama to find his inner FDR and LBJ. The nation got to see President Obama use not his “celebrity status” but the wits and calm demeanor we elected him for. He was also fortunate to have powerful and determined allies such as Pelosi and Congressman Reid. After Brown won Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, many liberals were ready to throw in the towel and run away from healthcare reform. But Obama and Pelosi were not fazed by the loss of the coveted majority. They bounced back. During last summer’s raucous town hall meetings, as his approval ratings were falling and his fresh-out-of-the-election political capital was dwindling, many said that President Obama’s campaign would live or die with healthcare reform. And healthcare reform lived. President Obama won.

By pushing healthcare reform through Congress, no one can hit President Obama with the “did-nothing” label. Come this fall, the Democrats can come before the people with a promise fulfilled. The elderly, the freelancers, the uninsured, the college students, the single moms, and the working class parents cannot forget what President Obama has just done for them. President Obama will be forever remembered for bringing healthcare reform to pass. As Paul Begala put it, “When David Obey swung that gavel—the same gavel used to hammer home Medicare—and struck it on that historic rostrum, it made a joyful noise unto the Lord. And I for one said, ‘Hallelujah.’”

The aftermath of healthcare reform will be rough but it is certainly not hopeless. The Democrats need to continue to believe that they have done something great for this country, even in the face of severe criticism. Eventually, everyone will come to realize that there is no going back; we can only move forward. Healthcare reform is here to stay.

Over Spring break, I went to Ghana on behalf of WomensTrust, a microfinance institution, to help fix their operations. Yet, I didn’t go as a white knight. I was not the savior for a poor, ignorant people, nor were the local people on the staff supplicants to my “developed world knowledge.” I was a partner, someone who had a few specialized skills that could help them and at the same time learn from them. I did not sweep in to grandly dictate to them how things should be. To do so would be to disregard the fact that they were intelligent human beings who knew the situation best—they were, after all, the ones living in it.

Although affording respect to these local people seems obvious, it has not traditionally been the way that Westerners have approached any type of “aid” when they visited upon Africa. The old model involved broad, context-less decisions made by detached overseers from the developed world sitting in temperature-controlled, wood-paneled rooms, sipping tea or coffee.

It was believed that just because something worked in the developed world, it would work anywhere. Pronouncements from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and their precursors created monoculture cash cropping, paradropped aid, and numerous other disastrous policies that numerous critics (including Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, who recently visited Dartmouth) charge as having done nothing to truly help African countries. If anything, this sort of “aid” held them back. These so-called solutions imposed “growth” from the outside without truly developing the foundation for a healthy economy.

But in recent years, the sentiments of the development community have radically shifted. Microfinance and other “sustainable” forms of aid have been embraced as a market solution to poverty. While sustainable aid is not an end-all solution, ever since Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank demonstrated that the poor could and would repay small loans, international aid has been eagerly embracing this new form of development.

But there is still something in this new attitude towards aid that does not address a fundamental criticism of the old regime. While microfinance attempts to spur economic development through loans, which in turn create small businesses and build those local economies that were lacking before, its administration is still largely unilateral. While the intended target of growth is now bottom-up, the policies themselves are still very much top-down.

There may be some local staff. There may even be some representation in the leadership of these institutions by (rich) local people. But essentially, they are still too many of the same people from the old aid regime, making decisions from the developed world that affect people thousands of miles away.

This isn’t to say that most microfinance organizations trying to help Africa have bad intentions. In fact, I’d be highly skeptical if someone tried to claim that they have done no good at all.

The problem, however, with unilateralism, making decisions on high without local context, is that you ignore valuable knowledge that only people who live there know. The rationale before, which still lingers, is that this knowledge is of limited use—the reason that these people are in the state they’re in is because all they have is this knowledge! Although not stated outright, many aid organizations start with the premise that they are helping the helpless and the ignorant. Part of why microfinance was originally slow to catch on was because aid organizations believed that the poor were uneducated and too “unsophisticated” to put loans to any good use.

A recent book called Portfolios of the Poor reveals the folly of that belief. The researchers who wrote the book followed the lives of various families in developing countries below the World Bank defined poverty line of $2 a day. These families recorded their financial transactions in financial diaries, which the authors then analyzed. With these diaries, the researchers discovered that contrary to popular belief, the finances of the poor are not simple at all. The financial life of below-poverty-line families is actually more complicated than the finances of many rich-world families.

Smoothing consumption and “forced savings” are concepts that we learn in economics classes, and use to some degree in our daily lives—but we do so without the urgency that those in the developing world have. For them, money received tomorrow might mean there isn’t anything to eat today—or until next growing season. For them, finance is a matter of having food on the table or not. It is, in some cases, a matter of life or death.

In the developed world, we can have the best intentions but still not know how to best help. Many microfinance institutions give loans only for “business development” purposes. It’s a rational thing to do, academically—after all, if the poor develop a business that can provide them with income, they’ll have the cash flow necessary to repay the loan and raise themselves up.

Food on the table or other types of “consumption loans” don’t necessarily pass this intellectual muster. But oftentimes, in reality, having enough to eat and thus enough strength to work—or being able to send one’s children in school, or being able to pay for transportation to work, or scores of other “consumption” purposes—would do more for generating cash flow and “raising them up” than buying space for a stand.

WomensTrust is a microfinance institution (MFI) run on the ground by locals who also contribute concretely to the strategic direction of the institution in collaboration with a U.S.-based board of directors. The ultimate goal is to eventually make WomensTrust an entirely Ghanaian institution, a project that led me there in order to help finish implementing a management information system (MIS)—something I had chosen during a project that I headed through SEEDS Consulting (Social Enterprise and Economic Development Society) at Dartmouth. Essentially, an MIS is the combination of the IT systems and human procedures that capture, track, and process information in an institution. In this case, the MIS needed to track active clients, loans outstanding, loans needing repaying etc.—basic information for financial institutions, no matter how big or small.
In accordance with the mission of WomensTrust, however, I did not go to Ghana to just arbitrarily remake their loan processes and change how they did things. Before I could do anything, I had to first learn, observe, and understand why they did what they did—and only then offer changes that I believed would best benefit them. I wasn’t arbitrarily telling the Ghanaian staff how to do its job, nor was I blindly surrendering to how things were currently run. I assessed their needs and offered recommendations, just as a consultant in the U.S. offers his or her recommendations to a company’s management team. I wasn’t dealing with children. I was dealing with people worthy of respect—equal partners at the table who were fully capable of both giving and taking criticism.

I sat with them. I asked questions. I observed. While on the surface their processes looked like an irrational mess, the reality was much more subtle and complicated—which I would have never discovered had I waltzed in and assumed that I knew everything that I needed to know. I learned that they used a seemingly inefficient and chaotic agglomeration of paper and Excel for rational reasons. For instance, when I asked why they gave paper booklets to their clients with a mess of stapled receipts instead of formal statements like a bank, I learned that otherwise floating bits of paper could easily get lost in people’s busy lives. In a rural village, one can hardly expect something like online banking. On top of that, many of their clients were illiterate and the simplicity of a receipt per transaction, although messy, could be understood far more easily than lines of text on a bank statement. At the same time, the system truly was messier and more chaotic than it had to be, even with these considerations. Thus, after I understood these factors, I engaged the staff to create a new system that would preserve these elements of understandability while improving internal tracking. Although this is a simplified example, it illustrates the two-way nature of the process.

Engaging the local staff in this way, I quickly found that even though they were “unsophisticated people from Africa” who in many cases had little to no formal education, they most certainly knew what they were doing and were more than capable of this type of dialogue. One staff member, for instance, had only a sixth grade education but a sharp enough intellect to immediately grasp the fundamentals of why such data tracking was necessary—and, I might add, point out some omissions that I had made. Many of these concepts are ones that I’ve had trouble explaining to Dartmouth graduate students. The point here goes beyond mere respect for or deference to local context—instead, it emphasizes the need to understand, in situations like these, that outsiders like me deal with rational human beings, not children or “underprivileged people” to be understood in the abstract. It is this type of feedback and response from both sides that makes institutions like WomensTrust a bottom-up solution to the unilateralism that has previously created developing-world dependence on the charity of the West.

Ultimately, exactly what I did was less important than the way I approached what I did. Dialogue, the philosophy that drives WomensTrust and intitutions like it, is the key to successful aid. Even now, after acknowledging the failures of past development efforts, we often make the mistake of underestimating those we are trying to help. The importance of dialogue is slowly catching on as microfinance and other more “economy-building” types of aid mature, and as we discover their flaws when practiced unilaterally. But beyond the practicalities of the situation and whatever economic and psychological incentives underlie it, understanding this principle is a matter of basic respect. We must recognize that thosewe are trying to help are not merely some alien “other”—they are people like us. Far from wallowing in ignorance, these people are making their way in logical, rational ways though constrained by various challenges inherent in impoverished nations. It is these challenges that we should work together in overcoming. But in doing so, we must remember basic respect for these people as people. To do otherwise is not only patronizing on our part—it is crippling our efforts to truly make an impact.

Science is not democratic. Science is not emotional. Gravity doesn’t care if everyone votes against it. Power won’t make itself perpetual for a while if Congress passes a stimulus. Poison ivy won’t stop that itch if you ask it nicely. The virus killing that child won’t stop no matter how hard and how tearfully his mother begs.

Truth is a difficult notion because no matter how “certain” the word sounds, our conception of it is supremely relative. Putting aside any “emotional” or “spiritual” truth, however, empirical truth—what science measures—cannot be swayed by human feeling or belief.

The world turns. Reality is. All science does is measure it. This seems obvious. But if it is, why does everyone try to change or ignore the science, believing that it will impact empirical truth?

Our society’s scientific plight seems to be a recent phenomenon. Many Americans laugh in the face of decades of climate change research. Nuclear skeptics still buy into some updated notion of the China Syndrome, according to which nuclear waste from a meltdown might burn a hole all the way to China. Evolution is widely thought to have “missing pieces,” despite the debate concluding nearly a century ago. And the media likes to shine on popular psychology, often to the detriment of clinical psychiatry.

We have virtually tossed out the careful, systematic study of the world that helped lead humankind away from superstition and into the modern era. It seems like just one generation ago that our scientists and engineers were the ones we looked up to—when they were the subject of a speech by President Kennedy and were our greatest bulwark against Communism. Now, Americans look up to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

But if we look deeper, we might find a startling and terrifying truth. It may have only been during the fight against Communism that Americans put real stock in their experts. In the late nineteenth century, it didn’t matter what anthropologists said or documented—America ignored its poor until Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives. The public was largely ignorant of the meat packing industry’s disgusting conditions before Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. More recently, in the 1960s, we ignored DDT as a potential threat until Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. What these cases all have in common was that they triggered a massive public reaction, one fueled by emotional resonance. The power of these statements was not in their meticulous documentation—it was in their appeal to primal gut reaction over logical data analysis.

Today, we have a vast apparatus of universities, research institutes, and public intellectuals. But no matter how much we invest in them, we can effectively relegate them to being a vestige of the Cold War era considering how they factor into the American consciousness.

Non-experts happily invent data or challenge scientific studies by merely claiming that it doesn’t “feel right” to them. Even in the public health sphere, we see phenomena like Jenny McCarthy—former Playboy Playmate and B-film actor—now being regarded as more trustworthy on a “cure” for autism than researchers and doctors who have studied the condition for most of their professional lives. When McCarthy calls for parents to avoid vaccinating their children because the standard package of vaccinations “causes autism,” thousands of parents listen—making her responsible for single-handedly reviving long-dead diseases like measles and mumps. When challenged with over twenty studies that disprove a link between autism and vaccination, she once claimed that her son is her science.

To the American public, it seems wrong and “undemocratic” to deny someone that argument. Cold numbers can’t replace warm, nice-sounding words, and the “tyranny of facts” almost seems to be something from an authoritarian nightmare. And so, we listen to those who spout on about science, about public policy, and about everything else that they have no knowledge of—and trust them more than those who we pay to be experts.

Maybe it isn’t so surprising that we only trusted our scientists in an era when we accepted many other authoritarian measures in order to battle totalitarianism.
This underlying culture is not something that Alexis de Toqueville, observer of 18th century America and now darling of the health care debate, wrote about. It isn’t something that we rhapsodize about when exalting American freedom.

But it is real, and part of the reason why we so fervently deny the reality that is climate change. It is part of the reason why we still don’t have nuclear plants while the rest of the world goes on. And it is a large part of why more and more of our brightest minds now go to Silicon Valley start-ups, mega-corporations, and Wall-Street instead of dreaming to be NASA scientists, civil engineers, or medical researchers.

Intellectual firepower only matters when you can use it to reach your goal—now money—without giving a damn about what others might think about your idea.
It is a dangerous trend for a country that arose largely because its spiritual originators in Europe were able to shake off irrationalism and religion, forces that acted as intellectual shackles on the people. A tyranny of facts overcame a tyranny of men.

As we watch our society wrestle with bigger and bigger problems, ignoring what the scientific process tells us, one has to wonder whether we will again fall under the spell of irrationalism, tightly controlled and disseminated by a self-interested elite holding onto power.

The more I watch Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and a host of other anti-rational, anti-fact public figures gain prominence, I cringe.

The more I see others who should know better emulate them in order to get results, like the Democratic Party has begun to do, the more I despair for this country.