A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power

[lightreads]

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Grinding, grueling, exhausting account of a series of genocides and the United States's response – or generally lack thereof.

Other people have criticized this book at length for failing to address the ways the United States was actively complicit in genocidal violence through support of its perpetrators. The criticism is accurate, though I think it's a product of the focus of this book very specifically on passive complicity.

I had read excerpts of this over the years, and I'm glad I finally sat down and went through all of it, cover-to-cover. But this is a first generation book, and now I want the fifth generation, or the seventh generation, if you know what I mean. Because Power spends a lot of time documenting American disinterest in mass death, and some time talking about the reasons, but the reasons are very . . . cerebral. This economic interest, that political exigency, a few general comments about racism.

This book made me think a lot about pain, and being the observer of it. I mean, most of us catch glimpses of indescribable anguish out of the corners of our eyes all the time, but we've developed defensive emotional blinders. But once in a while, someone looks at the newspaper headline that ten thousand other people read and forgot, and that one person is seared. Irrevocably changed just by knowing that five thousand people halfway around the world were "disappeared." I've known some people like that, and worked with them. One of them was the first person to make me read excerpts of this book.

I want the book about those people. And the contextual, psychological, physiological, etc. differences between them and the rest of us. And the book that takes a deeper, more honest look at the psychology of passive complicity, not just its economic logic. Because Power wrote mostly about when and where and who, and left me pretty messed up over why.




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Comments

[norah]

Have you read anything by Philip Gourevitch? Not exactly what you're talking about here, but closer.

[lightreads]

I have not. Thanks!

[norah]

He digs into some of the nuance of genocide from the aftermath on the ground in Rwanda.

I just, there's not a lot written about the people who don't. There's Zimbardo, and Kristian Williams has some great books on torture/policing and the impact on individuals of existing within power structures that allow or encourage evil, but what you're asking is more like, what makes Paul Rusesabagina That Guy who does what he does? We understand the literal moral gravity of these things - like, under what circumstances the average individual's morals will be pulled downward, but not whatever forces there are that might act against it.

If you find anything like that BY GOD I WANT TO READ IT.

[lightreads]

Right, exactly. I'm up to my eyeballs in stuff on the toxic effects of systemic evil, or just systemic indifference. I can think of work on the effects of dissenter voices, but it's in other contexts -- juries with one hold-out, that sort of thing. But nothing on the personal psychology of, well, counter crimes against humanity. Hrm, hrm.

[norah]

Have pinged my friend who studies this stuff with the question, maybe he will know? Copied you at LGI at gmail, that's right, innit?

[lightreads]

eolianbeck at gmail -- the other was taken.

[avendya]

I picked up this book based on your review, and yes, you're absolutely right about it. I am glad I read it, but there are so many things that I now have questions about -- for instance, in the Rwanda section, she lists all the early warning signs, but doesn't put those in any kind of context. Do warnings like that always indicate imminent genocide, or are there situations that have sparked such warnings that didn't result in mass death? If so, what steps were taken there that were not taken elsewhere?

I'm also a little dubious on Powers' view of America as people that can and should act to respond to threats to humanity -- possibly I'm biased by coming into politics in 2008 or so, but: we let Americans die all the time for preventable reasons. (Health care comes to mind.) It's certainly not genocide, but: when people don't do anything when people they see & encounter on a regular basis are dying, why is she at all optimistic that Americans will save strangers' lives?

But I am very glad I read it -- as someone brought up in the 90s (better yet, in a Republican household), I knew next to nothing about the Khmer Rouge. I didn't even know much about Bosnia -- save that it was a war -- until I spent some time on Wikipedia a couple years ago.

[lightreads]

Yes, after reading this I made a note to go digging through all my old college crap. I took a truly fantastic course on international human rights, and I want to see if I can find the syllabus with all the reading again, because I think I would find it helpful after this book. I remember we read some much more empirical work in a blend of history and sociology that got at some of the questions you're asking.

...Argh, this will involve resurrecting a hard drive, won't it?

[avendya]

Oh, that would be much appreciated, if you have time/inclination to upload that -- I would like to continue reading in the field, because it felt like we got one very specific perspective from Powers (and there are almost certainly other perspectives).

Out of curiosity: in what format do you read books? Do you listen to the audiobook/listen to a computer-synthesized reading of the text/read in Braille/other thing which I have not thought of but I'm certain exists? I've been listening to audiobooks far more than reading lately (my written comprehension is shot right now; not sure if it's medication-induced or what), but the selection of interesting books about politics/international relations/recent global history is making me a bit sad, and I thought you might have recs if you listen to audiobooks. If you read in another format, feel free to disregard the question.

[lightreads]

I used to read a lot in digitized speech -- the artificial voice doing a dsy file (it's the standard markup for making a document navigable when reading by voice). But a few years ago I upgraded handhelds and suddenly proper audio was feasible, so I mostly do that now. I've found it's less mentally tiring, and also much easier to follow human-voiced narration in loud environments like the train, which is where I do my reading. But the problem is I still have piles of TBR in dsy, and it's great stuff, but as you noted, no one has bothered to record it yet. There has been a big push in the past year to record a lot of older scifi and fantasy, which is great. Contemporary nonfiction has a pretty good shot at being recorded, though obviously the more obscure stuff that doesn't get Ny Times buzz is hit and miss. But I've found the back catalog of politics/policy in particular is slim.

My main audiobook sources are Audible (somewhat evil, but damn useful, and the annual plans are quite cost effective), the National Library Service (not sure if you would qualify to be a patron, but if you do, they have an excellent and growing online library), and a third source which I will not mention here, but that I'd be happy to tell you about in pm if you're interested. ...ahem. I also get occasional audiobooks from my local public library -- I think in some cases you can borrow audio by Kindle or otherwise download.

You can be 99% sure that any book I talked about in the last two years has been made into an audiobook by someone, somewhere. But if you want the source on anything, just ask -- I probably remember.