Posters around town said there would be a meeting about Nicaragua at the local senior center. The speaker, “Director of the Municipal Art Gallery” in a large California city, was going to show slides taken during her recent two-week tour of Nicaragua. It, of course, turned out to be a propaganda session. She had gone to Nicaragua not as an objective artistic observer, but as a supporter of the Sandinistas looking for confirmation of her views—every picture was used to justify or soft-sell the Marxist rule.

The art director’s commentary with the slide presentation was rich with that special moral language which justifies police states. We were told U.S. corporations giving jobs to South American Indians means exploitation. We were told Communist Nicaragua had “banned capital punishment.” There were pictures of the Nicaraguan Communist government making a staged “redistribution” of land to the “people,” lined up before the camera to show their ornate deeds of title. However, the art director’s most subtle argument, repeated so persistently that it constituted the underlying theme of the evening, was that no matter what doubts anyone may have about the revolution in Nicaragua, the government it overthrew was so terrible that anything is better. In that line of argument, it is simply inconceivable that new governments may be worse than the old.

The art director brought a cell of supporters to the meeting. They scattered throughout the room, but by the end of the meeting it was clear who they were. They had come to witness the truth righteously bestowed and to play the role of chorus in a classic drama—with the dénouement that the solutions to the problems in Central America are Marxist totalitarian dictatorships. The one seated next to me nodded and smiled with the joy of heartfelt affirmation when the art director told us the people of Nicaragua should be free to determine their own destiny.

During the “question and answer” period at the end (don’t worry, if you can’t think of a question, one of them will), when it became clear to them my questions weren’t those of a naive country bumpkin waiting to be led in the right direction, two of them lost their bearings and began screaming at me. I was surprised. After all, this was a good old-fashioned cadre of revolutionaries. Maybe they were so emotionally drained by the responsibility of saving Central America that they didn’t have the mental resources for good sense, much less civility. One of them yelled in a rage that since I hadn’t gone on the (two-week guided) tour of Nicaragua, what right did I have to disagree? But propaganda meetings are primal scenes to revolutionaries. What matters is not knowledge or “truth.” What matters is the priceless joy of indignation.

The art director’s strategy of appealing to the compassion and “artistic sensibilities” of the elderly audience was forgotten, derailed by painfully obvious questions. Why did the Miskito Indians rebel against the Sandinistas? Why are there 8,000 Cubans in Nicaragua? If they represent the people, why don’t Sandinistas allow really free elections like several other Latin American countries? Why does Qaddafi send money to Nicaragua? Why did the Sandinistas send arms to El Salvadoran guerrillas?

The meeting ended in an uproar as they leaped from their seats to shake their fists and shout revolutionary slogans. “Death to Contras” and “Death to Samosa.” Death and vengeance was the final translation of their message. I left the meeting in that state of special grace granted those who succeed without trying.