I look forward to using this trip as a basis of comparison when I return to explore, say, the Golden Rock, or Myitkyina and the upper Irrawaddy. My guess is that things there won’t get worse. Barring another Cyclone Nargis, I have confidence that the 21st century, along with the Lady and her ilk, will eventually loosen the stranglehold that the generals have on their “subjects” (can’t really call them constituents). It also wouldn’t surprise me if the West’s economic sanctions were removed in the near future. I can’t claim enough understanding of their consequences to know whether or not lifting of sanctions would improve the lot of the average citizen, but I doubt it would hurt.
Democracy has little chance of taking root any time soon. (Keep in mind that the government lists as one of the people’s desires the “Crush[ing of] all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.”) Perhaps the majority would be best satisfied, and maybe even best served, if the country moved toward some version of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”: a repressive regime that allows for a wider and wider piece of the pie to end up somewhere besides its own pockets. Such a future would match my own sense of the people’s desire.
In the end Myanmar wasn’t as weird as I expected. Sure, the men wear garments that to outsiders look like long skirts. And yes, you have to feel despair over the wackiness of its dictators. Yet I also sensed in Myanmar a normalcy that might be a reason for optimism about the future (if it doesn’t become an excuse for inertia).At the risk of sounding like a Chicago Cub fan, it’s just hard for me to believe that a place with this much going for it—assets, history, celebrity—won’t rise again. Any country can have a bad century, right?
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