Idealism VS Realism

I recently finished reading The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power.  It was another of those books which I bought for Nora for Christmas last year.

For those of you unfamiliar with Samantha Power, she is best known for being the UN Ambassador for the United States from 2013-2017.  (I could comment here that the fact that most people do not know that she was our UN Ambassador, illustrates the problem with how poor is our collective understanding and knowledge of who helps run our government and our relations with other countries, including myself, but...)

Power's story is extremely interesting on a number of fronts.  She was born in Ireland, immigrating to the United States with her mother when she was young, so she has an affinity (I won't say natural as there are far too many first generation Americans who seem to forget that without immigration they would not be in our country, including Donald Trump), for understanding and advocating for immigrants and refugees, knowing full well the difficulties of acclimating to a new home.  Her mother was a strong woman despite her unhappy marriage to an alcoholic, so Power has a wonderful role model in a woman who moved her family, on her own, to another country, defying many norms of the day to do so.  And, perhaps most importantly, she spent the early part of her working career as an overseas journalist, covering some of the worst events of the world in terms of human on human atrocities.

If one could imagine a resume for the perfect candidate to be our UN Ambassador, hers seems to embody the experiences that would be most desirable.

There are an incredible number of passages and chapters in this book, that are both universal in their description of the human experience, and relevant to the issues we are debating and facing today.

The chapter on the Ebola outbreak in 2014-2015 is certainly one of them.  In it, Power describes a concerted effort between government (including the military), medical, and private entities, coordinated by a team of people (led by President Obama) to address the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible, with the least lost of life.  To be clear, the death rate of Ebola was far greater than that of the current pandemic.  Had that disease advanced beyond Africa and around the globe, it would have resulted in a horrifying loss of life.

This is not to say that the two situations are completely similar.  China did not notify the world of the specifics of COVID-19 as quickly as they should have, and is far less isolated from contact to the rest of the world as compared to the 3 countries in Africa which were first effected.  There is no way of knowing that the same process used to combat, and ultimately contain Ebola would have worked for COVID. 

However, in contrast to the rambling coronavirus daily briefings that I watched in March and April, the process described by Power which tackled Ebola head on, in Africa, was inspiring.  First, we cared that it was happening in Africa, as opposed to clinging to an isolationist viewpoint that might have waited until it came to America.  It seems an extremely salient example of why only caring about America, is not only selfish and not in line with our Christian values, but short sighted, in that world problems will almost always effect America. 

Second, there was impressive collaboration between government and medical personnel, as opposed to what we so often witnessed this spring, when medical experts had to walk back the statements of top White House inhabitants and advisers. 

Third, there was real concern in America that Ebola would inevitably come to our shores.  Calls for travel bans emanated from many circles (including the current president).  People even worried that American medical professionals who went to Africa to help treat Ebola patients, would bring the disease back and some, again, advocated even banning them from returning to our country.  As it turned out, two nurses did contract Ebola in Africa, but were flown back to America, treated, and cured, without any spread of the disease.  (Had people like Trump been in charge, they would have most likely died in Africa).

Again, Ebola was very deadly, but not as infectious.  It is not completely fair to compare the handling of both without understanding these differences.  But, it is also true that even in the beginning of the COVID outbreak, Trump was comparing his actions, travel bans, discounting the seriousness, keeping victims or even people possibly exposed (like those on the cruise ships) out of America, while criticizing Obama's response to Ebola.  Obviously, you don't hear those comparisons anymore, since no Americans, that is ZERO, died of Ebola, and over 180,000 have died, so far, in this ongoing pandemic.

Samantha Power's life is a wonderful example of a person who understands the foolishness of only caring about oneself, whether that philosophy is applied to one's own life, family, community or nation.  And, even more importantly, her life is a wonderful example of why people choose to work for the United States government, either in the various, everyday occupations that move our mail, guarantee our food supply is safe, work to expose those who pollute our air and water out of expediency or greed,  monitor the spending of our various government agencies (the GSA) or, on bigger stages, work to establish positive relations between America and the rest of the world.  Yes, those in the deep state, as people who would destroy these institutions, call them, are the meat and potatoes of one of the reasons that America had risen to be the most respected nation on Earth, a nation that would prefer to lend a hand than to launch a weapon.  To me, attacking those people is far more unpatriotic than the current protests playing out in the streets of our nation.

There is a somewhat famous saying that people are more liberal, when young and naive, more conservative when older.  "If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, if you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain".  Oddly, it is usually quoted by conservatives, you seem to think that they are insulting liberals by calling them brainless, unaware that they are referring to themselves as heartless.  At this point in my life, I believe there are far more brainless idealists in heaven, than heartless realists.

Samantha Power's book, in my opinion, attempts to bridge the gap between the belief that it is one or the other, by recounting the process by which she has had to, at times, jettison some of her idealism, to actually get something done, even if it was less than everything she wanted.  That doing good is doing better, and in that case, realism can be embraced so that something good is accomplished.  It is not that one is sacrificed for the other, but combined to create the best result.

It is far too easy to pretend that idealism must be put aside in the face of realism.  In reality, realism without ideals and values is just a fancy word for selfishness.  While idealism is rarely, if ever, achieved, or perhaps even achievable, acting without ideals lowers the bar to a point where humanity is lost.

We need to refute the false equivalency that idealism must be sacrificed to face and navigate in the real world, and embrace Power's non-stated, but obvious goal of marrying the best of both philosophies. 

Perhaps that should be a goal for all of us.