Word: quo
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...Americans rallied outside the Pentagon to protest our involvement in El Salvador; it took years before one-tenth that number bothered to cry out against the war in Indochina. The combination of fairly aggressive media coverage, the involvement of the Catholic church, and the degeneracy of the Salvadoran status quo was enough to focus attention for a few months on the nation, and enough to check our government's action to some extent. But it was a very few months, and the popular indignation never transcended the case of El Salvador. Once again the left had failed, won a skirmish...
...Democratic Revolutionary Front of El Salvador represent most of their countrymen. Like the Poles, they face repression of the severest sort. In fact, one can argue that the situation in El Salvador, where 12,000 dissidents were murdered last year, is in some ways worse than the status quo in Poland, where so far the authorities have gone no farther than jailing union members...
STILL, SOUTH AFRICA need not settle for the morally reprehensible status quo of apartheid. The West could encourage such reform. Gradually and peacefully implementing Black rule is far more sensible. It could negotiate with Pretoria to provide economic support in return for South African adoption of a restricted franchise based on educational criteria--with free education available to all. In this scenario--utopian as it may be--more and more Blacks would gradually gain voting rights; eventually, they would take over the reins of government...
...negotiation may be an unnatural medium, one that goes against the centrifugal force of things. On the other hand, almost every human transaction (sex, marriage, politics, for example) and even human traffic with the divine (religion), is a form of negotiation, the everlasting mating dance of the quid pro quo. Those engaged in negotiation, even when they are the bitterest of enemies, are held together within a membrane of hope and desire and (presumably) enlightened selfishness...
Students played a major role in first questioning and then opposing American involvement in Vietnam. That movement began with mass teach-ins not unlike this month's event. Then, as now, the individuals who rejected the status quo--despite explanations as to why things could not be otherwise--arrived at the truth before everyone else. Popular opposition will contribute to the necessary goal of ending the arms race...