It’s said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it and that those who do are doomed to know its repeating; I’m not smart enough to know which of those I am, so I’ll just say what I feel the need to say and move on.
We’re in Cambodia this month, which is a beautiful country full of wonderful people. We are teaching English at an international seminary, and the students are joyful and vibrant. I’m struggling to learn names with phonetics I have never used, but they are gracious and patient, and we all get along. I’m even learning some Chinese, which is a nice surprise.
So we went to the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng prison last week. The beauty of a self-guided audio tour is that you can get lots of information quickly. I’m not a historian on Southeast Asia and for the purposes of my writing, that’s okay. I fully admit I have a tip-of-the-iceberg perspective. For this I’m not required to be a historian, I’m required to tell a story.
When the Khmer Rouge soldiers entered Phnom Penh in 1975, They were welcomed by cheering crowds. People thought they were safe from conflict. The next day, they began evacuating the city.
Pol Pot was brilliant, in that way that evil people with an education often are. He recognized the threat that educated people (people who are trained to ask questions, think critically, and are unsatisfied with “because”) pose to dictators. So he convinced people that the educated among them were their enemy, and were to blame for all their woes.
Peace and prosperity were promised, but first, those troublesome “New People” needed to be dealt with, for the good of society. So the “Old People” killed them. In the thousands. People who spoke a second language or had finished a university degree, or owned businesses, these were the enemy of the state. If you had utilitarian value, like fixing the typewriters, you might be kept alive, but if you couldn’t prove that you were useful, you couldn’t prove that you should stay alive.
But before I get ahead of myself, I’ll add that many of the “Old People” died as well along the way. By the end of it, millions were dead. Between one in four and one in five Cambodians (depending on your source) died during the short brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge.
Just pause and think for a second about who you know who has a university degree, owns a business, or speaks a second language. One in five dead, y’all. Just putting this out there, my entire family – all four generations that are currently alive, *including the children*- are on the chopping block in that scenario. Oh yeah, kids too. I’ve seen the tree where they smashed children’s heads in before tossing them into a mass grave. I’ve seen the little shard of bone from a child’s humerus in a plexiglass case with adult long bones.
So why am I bringing this up? Because tomorrow is Election Day.
First, let me just make it plain that I don’t care who you vote for, because either way I’m coming home to a country that is broken. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won’t make America great again, and they won’t fix all the injustices that are a part of our society. It is a lose:lose, and I can tell you that before the polls come in, because I know who is running: human beings. Hitler was charismatic, Mao had great ideas for social advancement, and Pol Pot was a teacher. They were all of them convincing.
I’m bringing up genocide on Election Day, because when it comes to extermination, no one ever talks about it; they just do it. There is so much discord, and there is so much rancor in the politics of this election. It isn’t over yet. The polls open tomorrow.
Pay attention, and see who is tipping their hand. I guarantee you, people are already showing their true color; but you need to step back to avoid missing the forest for the trees. Pol Pot was part of political action groups for years before he took power.
You have choices: vote, don’t vote, write in a third party candidate, write in another person’s name. Whoever you vote for, vote for the person who doesn’t strive to turn your neighbour into your enemy. If you’re a Christian, remember we’re called to love our neighbour, and Jesus was very clear on who that was. It’s a short journey from “I disagree with you” to “you are my enemy.” Not much further beyond that is “I will kill you to protect my position.”
There’s a song by Larry Norman called “Right Here in America,” and I would encourage you to listen to it and read the lyrics. In it, he talks about persecution of the church. There’s a telling line with broader implications and I will take the liberty of rephrasing here:
And to think it might happen right here in America,
I know you think it’s not true,
But if you think it can’t happen right here in America,
Wait ’til it happens to you.
These are the stakes in this, and every, election. Remember that when you vote tomorrow. Because I’ve seen a tower 200 feet tall filled with thousands of human skulls, and I’ve shaken hands with a man who survived the torture prison at Tuol Sleng. I’ve no desire to see it happen at home. Quite frankly, I’m not sure if history is repeating or not.
