POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
There has always been a strong distaste for Haiti in America.
When Napoleon sent a French army to put down the revolt of the slaves, Thomas Jefferson actually extended American assistance to him. It was an extremely bloody event, and the French, of course, lost, which Jefferson much regretted.
It was only one of many episodes in Jefferson’s career exposing an extremely dark character under the glossy front of words on liberty.
Jefferson, as was true of so many life-long slave-holders, was terrified of slave revolts. A great many Southerners slept with pistols or daggers near their pillows.
In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, American Marines invaded Haiti and occupied it for a fair time. Its affairs were run by the US.
Only in recent years, the U.S. effectively invaded Haiti and deposed its elected president. The true reason: policies which led to too many Haitian boat people heading towards American shores.
As for Pat Robertson who has made an idiotic comment on Haiti, his career contains a long string of idiotic statements, much in the fashion of that late bulk, Jerry Falwell After terrible hurricanes in the U.S., the good Rev was saying America’s decadence, especially with respect to the behavior of gays, had aroused God’s wrath.
Imagine, this man, Robertson, took a serious run at the Republican presidential nomination.
But then so did Bush.
And there’s that chicken running around the barnyard without a head, Sarah Palin.
Of course, we also have Rush Limbaugh making a tasteless comment. For some reason, mainline media have never held that "big, fat idiot" accountable for his words. Only now, there seems to be some effort to hold his unqualified nastiness up to the light.
