Ok, this nested series of retweets reminded me of a moment when I learned something important about authoritarian kleptocracy when I lived in Indonesia for a few years in the early 1990s.
I got a gig teaching HS history at the Jakarta International School right out of college. I'd never left North America before. I found myself at age 22 living as an ignorant ex-pat, an undeserving beneficiary of imperialism in a nation struggling to get free of that history.
When I arrived in Jakarta the school rented me a house and hired a woman named Annie to do the cooking and cleaning. (As I said, imperialism.) One day Annie saw President Suharto's picture on the front page of the Jakarta Post and said in Indonesian "I want him to die fast."
I knew Suharto was corrupt and brutal, but as a naive American, I assumed his corruption went unchecked because the Indonesian people didn't know about it. "If only the people knew, then they would be able to do something about it," stupid me assumed.
Stunned to hear Annie say such such angry words about the President, I asked her what she meant...and she proceeded to detail all of the corrupt dealings of the President and his family. Everyone knew. They were not duped. The problem was not a knowledge problem.
Fast forward to 2016 when so many well-meaning Americans saw one story after another come out about Donald Trump's corruption, criminality, and general lack of virtue. "Surely information about this will set us free."
Ok, I don't have any grand take-away for this story. I just want to say that other societies, filled with smart people who knew full well how corrupt their leaders were, became captured by brutal, authoritarian, kleptocratic leaders.
Anyone who's waiting for "the truth" about Donald Trump's corruption to just set the nation free is whistling in the dark.
