Tank Man

34 years ago today, June 4, 1989, the Chinese government sent in the People’s Liberation Army to crush a student led human rights protest in Beijing, China which had started in April of that year. As the tanks rolled through, one lone Chinese student stepped in front of a row of Army tanks in Tiananmen Square. “Tank Man”, they called him. He was making a statement to the Chinese government and to the world, ‘give me liberty or give me death.’ He also gave the world an iconic picture of defiance, and what freedom actually looks like. The protests were crushed, thousands of protestors were killed and thousands more thrown into prison never to be heard of again, like Tank Man, disappeared without a trace. 

 ‘That will never happen here,’ you may say. ‘Our leaders are different than the dictators and the despots that litter human history.’ Really? How so? Do any of our leaders not have human DNA? Are they not made of flesh and blood? Are they not corruptible? Are they immune to abusing vast amounts of political power because they happened to be born in the United States? Our very Constitution is an acknowledgement that all political leaders are corruptible and are capable of the worst abuses with the power entrusted to them.