Member-only story
The military carried out a coup d’état this past week in Myanmar. The news is everywhere.
Here is but one report:
What happened in Myanmar is, as viewed through the oft-cloudy lens of the Western understanding of democracy, tragic.
At first blush, it seems it didn’t have to be this way. But, as Mark Twain (1835–1910), American writer and humorist, once observed: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
We don’t know what transpires behind closed doors in our own country. How can we be expected to know what goes on behind the doors of another?
From reports, what led to the coup was the Faustian bargain the leader, 75-year-old Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, made with the military, ostensibly for political gain. Kyi went from democracy icon (she won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize) to leader of an elected government. But she also became a surprising defender of the 2017 slaughter of Rohingya Muslims, during which many were killed (both executions and rape) and close to 750,000 driven from homes into refugee camps in…
