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A scene of destruction in Port-au-Prince following the magnitude 7.0 quake - Source: Reuters -
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As if estimates of
fatalities as high as 500,000 isn't enough; as if the
alternately frenzied and shocked images of destruction don't tell
the story; as if it's insufficient that the President Rene Preval
went on CNN to plead for help because Haiti lacks the medical
facilities to hospitalise and care for victims; confirmation of
this catastrophe's magnitude has come from an American
televangelist.
The geriatric Pat Robertson, in a segment on his show The 700 Club,
which gives his skewed pseudo-scriptural gloss on current events,
blamed this latest disaster to befall Haiti on a pact made with the
Devil.
Here's a transcript of what he said.
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people may not
want to talk about it."
"They were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the
Third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact with the
Devil.
"They said we will serve you if you get us free from the
French.
"True story.
"And so the Devil said, 'Okay, it's a deal.'
"And, us, they kicked the French out, you know with Haitians
revolted and got themselves free.
"But ever since they have been cursed by one thing and
another..."
Blessed are the poor? The meek? Not necessarily. Perhaps the
kneejerk response might be to measure Robertson's version against
Christ's pronouncements in, say, the Sermon on the Mount. Fans of
cheap but immediate thrills may want to do so.
Yet there's more here. The words themselves are only part of the
story. Robertson's demeanour is fascinating, as it's a study in our
assumptions about ignorance. We imagine that hate froths and
ignorance apes, but not all those with a line in jeremiads resemble
Jeremiah. What you see is a kindly-looking aged man methodically
and -with regret- laying out the meagreness of his
understanding.
Is there any truth in Robertson's recounting?
The theme of a Satan-Haiti Pact has had some resonance within North
American evangelical circles. After then-President Jean-Baptiste
Aristide declared voodoo an officially-recognised religion in April
2003, an article in the US magazine Christianity Today fretted that
he would renew the pact with the Devil on January 1, 2004. There's
no evidence this happened.
Nor have I been able to find any conclusive evidence that this pact
is a historical fact, as opposed to a fanciful and self-serving set
of assertions made by people like Pat Robertson.
They do recall Jerry Falwell's suggestion (also made on The 700
Club) that "pagans", "abortionists", "gays" and "lesbians" had
brought the 9/11 attacks on America by their attempts to secularise
American life.
Falwell later apologised. No doubt Pat Robertson will do so too;
with fingers and toes crossed. But he has shown that for some,
watching human misery and anguish on a -well- Biblical scale isn't
enough; the suffering also has to be the victims' own fault.
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