I have spent a lifetime looking for remedies to all manner of life’s problems—personal, social, political, global. I am deeply suspicious of those who offer simple solutions and statements of absolute certainty or who claim full possession of the truth.
A cynic might read these words and assumed they were directed specifically to a certain person who had attained unthinkable heights of unreasonable power using the loopholes in the United States Presidential election system allowing for the person fewer votes than his opponent to be declared the “winner.” Albright is here looking forward with great prescience, not backward with 20/20 hindsight. The book was published in 2012 while Barack Obama still occupied the highest elective office in the land. Nevertheless, it is impossible to reach this point in the point at which the author has begun to sum up everything she had learned without a knowing nod to and a sympathetic ear to her fears and her suspicions.
Given the events described in this book, we cannot help but acknowledge the capacity within us for unspeakable cruelty or—to give the virtuous their due—at least some degree of moral cowardice. There is a piece of the traitor within most of us, a slice of collaborator, an aptitude for appeasement, a touch of the unfeeling prison guard. Who among us has not dehumanized others, if not by word or action, then at least in thought?
Which is not to suggest, of course, that Albright doesn’t look back. It is a memoir, after all, and a memoir of a remarkable life shamed and formed in the crucible of the most unspeakably hideous event of the twentieth century. The title derives from the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis when Albright was just a young girl. The book provides a history of horror with a wonderful surprise ending: the young Czech girl rises to become the first female Secretary of State to the American President. The acknowledgement of a sinister dark lurking within the heart of every human directly juxtaposes her own story of aspiring toward the better angels of the nature of that soul.
What fascinates me—and what serves as a central theme of this book—is why we make the choices we do. What separates us from the world we have and the kind of ethical universe envisioned by someone like Havel? What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart? What separates the bully from the protector?
Give the woman some credit: she just laid out in explicit terms the overarching theme of the story of her life. That’s one less bit of work students have to do when writing a paper on the narrative. It is also another example of how prescient an educated person who understand and embraces critical thinking skills can seem simply by observing the world around them, noting the facts and applying the past to the future. Many times throughout this 2012 publication, Albright can seem as though she was writing in response to events which would not take place for another four years or more. By dint of having been an eyewitness to the fascist intent to destroy decency in the world, she is able to seem as though she is predicting the inexplicable decision by millions to embrace what seems like safe shelter offered by a bully whose attack against is others is misperceived as protection of themselves. She speaks to the idea that choices are always made and evil flourishes whether the choice is to support the bully or simply look the other way during the bullying. Vaclav Havel becomes a point of strength against which the decision to look away as well as the decision to bully is juxtaposed.
