Is this the natural order of things when reformers take over from a dictatorship? They become the new bad guy?
I have read books about Iraq, multiple stories of people celebrating in the streets when Saddam took over in 1979. They thought it meant an escape from the misery of the old system, and celebrations didn’t last when people figured out the new guy was worse than the old guy. Same with the communist revolutions in Asia, or the revolution against the Shah in Iran. People celebrated, then were miserable because meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
But I guess I hoped Suu Kyi would be different. But with the creeping authoritarianism and the ethnic cleansing, I guess not. I remember a decade ago she was revered almost like the Dalai Lama, as a peacenik fighting against an oppressive system. She likely isn’t as bad as the military Junta, but she isn’t the person she was made out to be either.
Live and learn I guess.
There have been reforms where the reformers who came after a period of chaos and oppression weren’t the bad guys. Spain after Franco. Germany after Hitler. Japan after the Emperor. Much of Latin America transitioned from military dictatorships to fairly liberal democracies in the last few decades. Many eastern European nations after the soviet union fell underwent dramatic reform in favor of human and civil rights. So it does happen, it happened all over latin america, eastern europe and among post WW2 axis powers. The cruel, authoritarian regimes fell and better (but still not perfect) regimes came up.
I am seriously bummed. If I’d had a girl, I wanted to name her after Aung San Suu Kyi. I’m glad I had a boy. That, and my husband really didn’t like the name. He said, “Why not just Susan”?
Like I said, glad we had a boy, named John, after my oldest childhood friend, of blessed memory. Last time I saw him was when DH and I stopped to see him on our honeymoon.
I was a huge admirer of hers. But she always did say that she used passive resistance because she thought it was the most effective thing for her purpose, not because she believed in it philosophically. If shew thinks it doen’t suit her purposes now, she’ll abandon it.
But I thought she was smart too, and politically savvy.
You were an admirer of hers? You did not know much about her then. The fact she was a big Burmese nationalist and had sympathies for Buddhist extremists was well known to anyone who read about her for more than 5 minutes.
People outside Myanmar, where he is the Father of the Nation, never mentioned Daddy’s rather pragmatic approach to Belief: founder of the Burmese Commie party, revolted understandably against the British hold on Burma, joined with the Japanese in WWII who made him War Minister in the Japanly-freed Burma, joined with the British once Japan was going to lose, became a premier of Burma under his new chums, got murdered by a previous premier, stopping him from future switches.
I am uncertain why his daughter should have been regarded as a natural choice to become leader since Myanmar is not an oligarchic republic, where wives follow husbands as presidential candidate or sons/brothers follow fathers.
Yes, there was a recent profile of her in The New Yorker, and one of the things pointed out in the article is that she never expressed sympathy for minorities in any interviews, ever. Somehow nobody noticed this while she was being admired as a hero.
here lies a toppled god
her fall was not a small one
we did but build her pedestal
a narrow and a tall one
In the end people are people, not gods. Which means a mix of better and worse. All I can hope for is that people learn something along the way, and become better than they used to be. I truly hope that’s the case for myself.
That’s because she was a victim, and victims are presumed to have no moral agency. It was only when she ceased being a victim that she became responsible for her own words and actions.
I can think of only two people who led a successful revolution and then lived up to their high ideals after taking power: George Washington and Nelson Mandela.
Dude, she was the victim the same way the loser of a bar brawl is a victim. She and her family have been nasty pieces of work since always. No one from this region at least is in the least surprised. If anything the junta kept a lid on these undercurrents for a variety of reasons. Suu Kyi’s political support is predicated upon unleashing these pograms. I would also do that she personally approves of it.
What power do you think she holds over the military, esp. once police stations were attacked by Rohingya terrorists/militants in Sept/Oct? Yes, exactly.
What happens if she steps down? I guess we know.
What forces does she have available to contain the ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state? Well, it’s the forces she has available that are doing the cleansing.
all the expectations built on the people or the person acting like the pieces of the literature or the fantasy theory, not the real human being are doomed to the disappointment.
It is why the complaints always about politicians are so stupid. All politicians are is a flawed person in the limelight… expecting politicians to act like abstract theory and not actually be human beings, end in the disappointment.
I think you misract to Alessan, I do not think Alessan was saying “oh poor her” - he was saying accurately that she was cast in the public role of the martyr and in the idealization discourse always around the martyr-victim all was ignored or excused.
People want noble heroes to heap admiration upon, because (a) that’s what they’ve been raised to expect and (b) they so desperately hunger for noble heroes to admire in a world where everyone is turning out to be vile. They will eagerly seek to cast whoever’s confronting the Big Bad as being the Noble Hero – overlooking that you don’t need to be noble or heroic to antagonize the Big Bad.
Plus even noble heroes are flawed. Washington and Mandela were not ascended beings, they were men, with virtues and defects and moral failings.