Every day we are told that we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good. This is the Obama mantra. I agree with this in principle, however over the last weeks it has become clear that it’s current usage has a subtle but crucial difference in meaning. In current parlance, it means "do not make the bad the enemy of the worse".
It means "eat shit and like it".
An anecdote. I am about to wrap up my time working in Sri Lanka, a country where human rights abuses are commonplace: 20,000 civilians killed at the climax of the civil war, 200,000 civilians locked up in the world’s biggest internment camp, daily killings and disappearances, no freedom of association and no freedom of speech.
Despite the situation here, it’s almost impossible to persuade the international community that they ought to do anything about it. Yesterday I heard about a meeting in which local aid organisations briefed a representative of the French Government on the human rights situation, trying to persuade her to take a stronger stance. Her response?
Hey: it’s not as bad as Sudan.
So, more than 60 years after the declaration on human rights, Sudan is being held up as the standard by which other nations should be judged. If this doesn’t thoroughly depress you, then you are too cynical to live.
But that’s the age we live in, one where, paradoxically, you have to be too cynical to live in order to survive.
I know we’re in things for the long haul. I know this is a fight that never ends. I know that we’re still learning how to use our power as a grassroots movement. I know that compromise is inevitable. But we should not lose our standards.
We have to fight those who tell us that we can’t be better than this. We have to fight those who offer us cynicism and tell us that it’s pragmatism. The moment we abandon our principles is the moment we lose, because at the end of the day those principles are the only thing we’re fighting for.