We just had some out of town guests over the weekend. It was rather impromptu. Our long term house guest has a friend from Cote D'ivoire who has settled in Ohio. He has to come back periodically to the embassy in DC. When he does he always visits V. His mother just flew here into Newark, so he drove to pick her up and then drove down here to visit. They had to crash here because they just don't have enough money for hotels, etc. Airplane flights are very expensive and budgets are extremely tight. He also brought his wife, his not-quite-two son and who I thought was his sister but she's really a cousin, who is studying here in the U.S. It was a lot of people to host for 4 days. They are extremely nice people and very grateful. However, English isn't their native language so conversation can be kind of awkward. But also I think I am discerning something in African culture. They love to have long conversations with anybody! I felt this as a weakness in my own culture and my own introverted tendencies. I can't maintain 4 hour long conversations (and not small talk!) with people I don't know all that well. The intensity of their sociability is daunting to me.
But one thing we learned about was the state of things in Cote D'ivoire. It has fractured into political rivals and the whole society is crumbling because of it. Corruption is rampant and if you oppose one side and wind up in a bad situation, you might very well end up dead. When they were freed from colonial rule, their first president was one of those presidents for life. Never a good idea! He was great at ramping up the economy though so for his long reign the country did fairly well compared to other African countries. However, opposition was brewing against him and when he died it broke loose. They had a tragic civil war that they are still recovering from. The chaos and desperation brought on more corruption. So that now you can only get anywhere if you have connections and can grease the palm of everyone along the way. There's no rule of law that is honored.
At the same time, they've never thrown off their colonial exploiters. Cote D'ivoire is the biggest exporter of cocoa and yet there are no manufacturing plants. It's mercantilism all over again, this time not forced by a colonizing country but by big multi-national corporations. The money these corporations give to differing factions are what fuel a lot of the intransigent corruption.
I fear our own country is becoming so divided to a frightening degree. We really can lose all that we have in this nation, respect for rule of law, peaceful change of leadership, freedom of religion and speech, opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Trump does it by inflammatory language, his stupid tweets, his revolving door of cabinet appointments, his alliance with questionable people like Steve Bannon, his shut down and his national emergency. The left does it through it's stupid 'resist' movement (resist what? It sounds like they want violent revolution. Come up with better policies and win the voters.), through their obsessive and hysterical, media coverage, through their mob mentality, through their hostility to religious freedom and freedom of speech.
Both sides are so roiled up and so emotional they talk past each other. One side will see a legitimate instance of racism that happened somewhere in the hinterland and blow it way out of proportion, while the other side will find an instance of a racial hoax and use that to refute the other side's claim.
Political stability is a balancing act. We benefit from the institutions and respect for law our forefathers established. But we can disrupt all this. We've had civil war before and we can again. The default for mankind is turmoil, brutality and power struggles. We need to guard our first principles and stop demonizing the other side.
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