More Coffee, Please

I’ve been watching re-runs of The West Wing for the past several weeks, and I’ve finally gotten to season four.

I watch the show for a number of reasons, though mostly because Aaron Sorkin is an amazing playwright. The ability of the man to write dialogue makes me weep, and he’s one of the writer who I shamelessly study with the goal of identifying what works to emulate it.¹

But season four is making me angry.

For those not familiar, the show basically follows a fictional White House which also happens to follow a not-so-fictional genocide in Kuhndu. In season 4, one racial group starts killing every member of the other while the government stands by and assists—and the killing is happening with machetes.

If that isn’t a strong enough parallel to Rwanda, I don’t know what would be.

There’s nothing wrong with that. What does make me angry is that Martin Sheen’s character ordered American troops into the county. It’s an amazing bit of dialogue:

AMBASSADOR TIKI
Mr. President, the U.S. is trampling on the sovereignty of my country and on behalf of Nzele…

BARTLET
I’ve just taken your airport… [shakes his hand] …clearing the way for the 101st Air Assualt to take the capitol. 7,000 troops, 25 battle tanks, 15 Apache attack helicopters, and three destroyers. Strictly speaking, I conquered your country without the paperwork.

TIKI’S AIDE
Kuhndu is in the midst of a civil war.

BARTLET
No, it’s not. It’s in the midst of a one-sided slaughtering of an entire people. Both the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Vatican have pleaded with President Nzele for a cease-fire and both the U.N. and the Holy Father have struck out to the peril of 115,000 Induye men, women, and God knows children, particularly the boys.

TIKI
Who will soon be men and will rise up…

BARTLET
The heads of Ghana, Nigeria and Zaire have similairly been sent packing. The Red Cross has been denied entry on three seperate occasions in the last ten says. President Nzele has 36 hours to give the command to his troops to hand over their weapons to the 82nd Divison Airborne Division of the United States Army. At 36 hours and one minute, I give the order for the 101st Air Assualt to take Bitanga and run up our flag. I skipped breakfast. Anybody want coffee or something?

The part that bugs me? That it didn’t happen.

And it should have.

Rwanda is one of those places where we ought to have done something. Rwanda is one of those places where this country failed to be the nation it ought to be. Rwanda is one of those places where we should have done everything that is in keeping with what America is.

I run into the same thing in education every so often. What we do doesn’t bother me so much as all the things we don’t do because of politics, because of money, because it’s different, or would be a challenge. I’m wondering, if many years from now, a century or so, they’re going to look back at what we did now and be as appalled—or bemused—by what we did in our schools.

Personally, if in 2000 years, they look back at today, if they look at my school, at my classroom, I hope they compare it to Aristotle’s Lyceum: “They did the best they could with what they then knew.”

Wouldn’t it be great to say that, in everything we do? To get through a day and say it and mean it—that would be marvelous.

1 He had me at “You can’t handle the truth!” ↺

Gregarious

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