Our driver for a recent Uber ride was Tunisian. Her English was perfect and pleasant to listen to, and she said she also spoke Arabic and French. She was proud that Tunisia, a small country on the Mediterranean’s North African coast, had sustained its democracy beyond the Arab spring, when other countries in the region had reverted to authoritarianism. I asked her what made the difference. Cheerfully, she said, “We have no oil.”
The driver’s answer struck me as tragicomic. Absence of oil means that economically powerful countries aren’t tempted to meddle in her country’s politics the way they have notoriously done in the Middle East, leading to the 1953 downfall of a budding democracy in Iran and today’s uncomfortable alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
This is just one of the insights I’ve gained from Uber drivers and hospital staff in the past two years. In a 2023 essay he wrote about aging for the New York Times, Richard Rosenblatt marvels that as one passes into the country of the elderly, “one’s social circle” becomes a hospital’s staff. My frequent trips to doctors’ offices means that I meet a variety of people who would otherwise be near-ghosts in my impressions of the city where I live, New York. They take me beyond mainstream news outlets, whose integrity I generally trust, as well as the conspiracy mongers at Fox and elsewhere to perspectives only the citizens of other countries can offer.
Once a Belorussian Uber driver, a man in his sixties, claimed that Mikhail Gorbachev was the worst thing to happen to his country. I assumed that someone born and raised in Belarus would be proud that his country had attained independence as a result of Gorbachev’s dismantling of the Soviet Union. But no, not in his case. It seems separation into independent countries has made contact between family members across the border more difficult. Among other things, his wife can’t easily stay in touch with her Ukrainian relatives. For our driver, the end of the Soviet empire meant disruptions in his family and, I infer, a way of life.
Meanwhile a Ukrainian ultrasound technician I’ve seen numerous times believes his country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, conspired with Vladimir Putin to return Ukraine to Russia. He cited Zelensky’s ceremonial opening in 2022 of an amusement park near Ukraine’s border with territory that Russia occupied in 2014. I don’t quite follow the logic, but it’s along these lines: Why would Zelensky schedule an event so close to that border when Putin was about to invade the rest of Ukraine? There’s more to the technician’s conspiracy theory than this. However, I cannot accept the argument. It seems to me that Zelensky has done everything in his power, and then some, to help his country retain its independence. Yet the technician is an intelligent and humane man who agonizes over the fates of his fellow Ukrainians. I cannot doubt his sincerity.
I notice I listen more sympathetically to claims like those espoused by this Belorussian and Ukrainian than I do supporters of Donald Trump. I believe Trump’s supporters don’t realize he’s an aspiring authoritarian, or else they really do feel America needs someone to take dictatorial control. They’re hardly the first or only people to embrace dictatorship. Decades ago, a Spanish colleague of my father’s, a man I revered for his charm and kindly manner, asserting that the people in his country needed a strong man as head of state. He was justifying Spain’s then president, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, whose dreaded police, the Guardia Civil, openly suppressed his people’s freedoms. Events have proven him wrong, although there are Catalans who might disagree.
Yet many Trump advocates and conspiracy mongers are as likable as the cab drivers and hospital staff I’ve met. Visits to my in-laws in Texas make me aware that the best neighbor you could have might well be a Texan, even though that Texan votes for a repressive state government and, of course, Trump.
I listened to my Belorussian driver with a degree of detachment. He’s talking about a country where I have less invested emotionally. Yes, I deplore Putin and agonize over what he did to Aleksei Navalny and the destruction he’s inflicting on Ukraine. But my disagreements with people on the American right are much more personal. When I listen to right-wing Americans and try to find something to respect in their beliefs, it doesn’t take long for me to get frustrated. How could they willfully ignore the signs of Trump’s monomaniacal aspirations? How can they champion the so-called right to bear arms against the right of victims of mass shootings to live? Words like “stupid” and “idiots” come to mind. Not helpful.
Immigrants driving us to our appointments and hospital staff trying to ease our ailments remind me that so-called polarization isn’t unique to America, even if the issues that divide us differ country to country. Susceptibility to iron-fisted leadership isn’t American, but a widespread human fallibility.
When I look for hope among the conversations I’ve had with New York City’s immigrants, I come back to the Tunisian driver who recognized that her country prospers precisely because it has none of the natural resources more powerful countries seek to horde. Tunisia’s situation is hardly ideal. Its democracy is no more perfect than ours and is perpetually at risk. In fact, the country has been under a state of emergency since 2015, and just this month an opposition leader was sentenced to six months in prison for insulting an official. Its economy is such that one of its highly intelligent, highly motivated citizens is driving a cab in a foreign city. But unlike the case with most of its neighbors, tiny Tunisia still maintains the basics of democracy. There are, after all, opposition parties. I’d like to hope that Tunisia can keep improving as a democracy. Maybe one day it could serve as a model for nations whose influential citizens want to do right by their people, not just by themselves and their friends.
Leave a Comment