Crowd Control

By Shuggiefisher

I don't envy any major policy maker in China. Every national policy decision affects 1/5 of the worlds population. Any egalitarian ideals forces a yuan to split 1.3 billion ways. It's precisely the same conditions that make China the world's factory that keep men and women in poverty even through endless hours, days, weeks, and months of labor. There's just too many damn people. A college degree in boomtowns like Shenzhen will earn about $250 a month. They move thousands of miles for this kind of wage. Anything less can easily place in a factory making 50 cents an hour, fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week. They also move thousands of miles for this wage.

China's population is set to hit 1.5b by the end of this decade, which has China adding something like 1/3 America's population every year. So what's a policy maker to do? Welcome to one of two One-Child Policy nations on the planet (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Vietnam is the only other one). Because the Communist Party of China isn't the strong top-down structure most people think it is, government policy is enacted differently in different parts of the country.

In Shenzhen, the policy seems only to act as a tax to the super rich. 1/3 to half the kids at my (boarding) school have brothers and sisters, if that's any indicator. I've read that most farmers get away the practice because they need the financial help that multiple children bring once they're old enough to work. In Tianjin, I have a friend who's father lost his job as a teacher because he had three girls to finally have a son.

Officials in Guanxi (the province of Guilin/Yangshou) took things a bit too far though. The NY Times writes that, "officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort fetuses." In addition to this, "[they] slapped fines starting at 500 yuan and ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had violated birth control measures anytime since 1980."

"The family-planning officials were just like the Japanese invaders during the war. They took everything away, and destroyed or tore down the houses if people could not pay the fines," said one villager surnamed Wu.

"In some families, even the gate and bowls were taken away, leaving them with an empty house." [Washington Post]

______

"....gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people’s homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers,” [NY Times]

The villagers responded by, "clash[ing] with officials and police armed with guns and electric cattle prods, pulling down a wall surrounding the government office, turning over cars and burning part of its main building."

"The government office was a big mess," a villager, who witnessed the scene, said by telephone. "The big gate and two cars near it were all burnt and black, and broken glass, bricks and rubbish were everywhere." [Washington Post]

The People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt 2: Commuwhat?

One of my biggest pet peeves here is hearing people say, “that’s just communism.” I can see where they get the impression. There’s a Stalinist power-structure in place that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party that certainly has Marxist roots, but it has about as much a connection to communism today as the Republican Party has to the ideals of the old Roman Republic. Tenuous, at best. Not even very superficial really. One thing I’ll give credit to The Party for is not pretending to be something it’s not. Doublespeak is not a fixture in Chinese politics. Typically, the leadership says what they mean and means what they say and they say the revolution's dead, folks. They sent the memo in ’78, didn’t you get it?

Mao did create a communist society for a short while. During the Great Leap Forward in ’58 the villages were all leveled and rebuilt as communes. This might have actually worked except that alongside this came the remarkable idea that China was going to match England’s steel production in eight years. Wait, no, 4! Wait! Two years! We can do it in two! Someone said two months? Let’s do it guys! Just melt your shovels, hoes, rakes, plows, and jewelry in backyard steel mills! And then, you know, watch your crops die with thirty million dead peasants following. That's a tenth of the the current US population, by the way.

That didn’t work out so hot and his power slipped a bit. Plan B. Anarchy with communist characteristics. Ten years of it during the Cultural Revolution. Class struggle as defined by neighbors “struggling” against that bastard whose father was a rich peasant or whose brother served in Kuomintang along with your generic book burning, banning anything but revolutionary music, and sending anyone with an education to work as a farmer in the countryside. The general consensus is that it was Mao making a last ditch effort regain power and solidify his historical role as not just The Great Helmsman, but God Amongst Chinamen. Mao died. Happens to everyone, right?

Things changed very, very quickly after that. Deng Xiaoping, probably the most pragmatic political leader I’ve ever read about, came back from his small engine repair shop where he was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. He had a few ideas. The first, and most important today, was that “poverty is not communism.” Maybe sending educated people to the countryside for a few years can have a positive effect after all.

Well… turns out maybe poverty is communism when there’s not a lot of wealth to be shared. What’s a pragmatist to do? Rename communism, that’s what! But what to call it, what to call it… teacher! Pick me, pick me! If you said “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” you won! What does it mean? Well, whatever the hell it needs to mean. That’s its beauty. Did you notice how well the word “socialism” kept the relevance of the “communist” party. Didja also note that “Chinese characteristics” could mean anything? It’s kinda like saying Trey-style Chinese Cooking.

For Deng, it meant two things. Take notes, this well be on the test. First was that “to get rich is glorious.” Hmmm, interesting. That’s a bit of a change from the class-struggling fervor of Mao’s Little Red Book, the only literature allowed only five years earlier. The second was the pragmatic counter-weight, that “some must get rich before others.”

Right there communism died in China and the Chinese Communist Party was given a second chance to prove itself useful to the Chinese people before things got nasty. Nothing but pain came from the previous two decades of rule. While Mao started off on the right foot, The Party and its army was on its best red behavior while running from and fighting off the worse than useless KMT in China’s heartland, he left psychic and physical scars on this nation that will never be healed. Try to find a temple older than your grandfather in this ancient land.

So if China isn’t communist... what is it? That's for Part III: Survivalism.

People's Democratic Dictatorship, Pt. 1: My Bias and Observations

This might be taking it too far, but here goes. I'm reading a lot on the subject and really want to express my thoughts. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it here and after talking with a friend in the Party I think I know where the lines are. Here's hoping I still have a visa next week.

Democracy. China. There... cat's out of the bag. Let's chat. For a censor reading this, please note this is an attempt to explain a situation to the Western reader and not some foreigners idea of how to change China.

I'll start with my own bias and ground observations. Liberty, fairness, and responsiveness are more important to me than the tools of democracy like elections. I'm inclined to think that elections are the most efficient ways of delivering those values to the people, but it's not a universal. Hong Kong is a good example of a place that never really had elections through most of it's modern history and today only grants the right to vote to a few millionaires and academics. Hong Kong citizens experience a great deal of liberty, fairness in law, and have an extremely responsive government.

Compare that to a place like Manila where elections are common but so are troops to harass socialist leaning parties wanting to represent the squatters and poor. Corruption is even more rampant in the Philippines than in China. Lonely Planet, in fact, advices backpackers to not report crimes to the police. You'll somehow loose important belongings before you leave their offices. Elections do not cure everything.

Liberty does exist in China in a limited form. People aren't terrified of talking politics and dissing old leaders like Mao in private. I've heard people in very high positions tell me they're not a member of The Party because they "don't believe communism will be actualized." Where it stops is the right to go into the street with a big sign that says that. Or march on Tiananmen Square. Or try to convince people of your ideas in public forums. There are no North Korea-style microphone systems hidden in people's homes that send the Gestapo in to throw you into re-education camps for bringing up your ideas inside your home or even office.

Fairness and responsiveness are two things the government in Beijing openly discuss and the leaders frequently cite as major policy goals. They know theres a fire brewing in the countryside and they know that it poses the greatest threat to the future of The Party. The cities are content if not happy as a whole. There's education, health care, jobs, and smart people can potentially make a much better life for themselves. None of that can be said of the countryside. Instead they deal with rampant corruption and stagnant incomes while the coastal cities boom.

Corruption isn't just about having to pay off the local cop to get out of a traffic ticket. It's about having your small plot of land appraised at a certain value. The developer gives the local government the appraised amount to buy the land from the farmer. The farmer maybe gets ten percent of that appraised amount, then the land is resold for tens or even hundreds of times more than the appraised amount [of which the farmer only got the sliver of]. This happens all day, every day. Add to this steep taxes on produce that are only now being revoked and you have a land of very edgy farmers that have been known to tear apart government offices.

Officials reported 74,000 demonstrations, or "mass incidents," in China in 2004, up from 10,000 in 1994, with the number of participants rising to 3.8 million from 730,000. - UPI

What's happening now is Beijing knows this problem needs to be addressed but there's no clear solution to it. The corruption isn't necessarily happening because of bad people in administration. It's happening in large part because bureaucracies are both bloated and underfunded. The previous president tried subsidizing rural administration payrolls and quickly learned it would bankrupt the national government. Cutting back on the bloating has serious political consequences within the party, as it creates more work and removes layers of separation between cadres and the unruly peasants.

Limited democracy had been one of their approaches. Contrary to popular belief, there are some relatively free elections in China to small assemblies for townships. Even non-Party members can run and often win. In effect it's giving a blow-off valve to the most disaffected without seriously disrupting power structure. It gives voice without much authority. And

Book Review: The New Emperors

Pete Salisbury's The New Emperors is one of the best history books I've ever read. In reads like a Bill Bryson take down of one of the most complicated subjects in contemporary history: the rise and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party through the lives of it's two paramount leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. It tracks the Party's rise against the odds - even the Soviets were backing the Kuomintang - to eventually take over and completely remold Chinese society. The remolding might be one of the most brutal yet intriguing social science experiments of all time: the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This is where the books shines.

Instead of just telling you that the peasants were melting their farm tools in backyard steel mills during the Great Leap Forward while the crops rotted, it describes through firsthand account and interviews how these things happened, what Mao was thinking, and how his lieutenants fueled it. It shows the beginnings, starting with Peng Dehuai, of the purging that would define the Cultural Revolution. Like a soap opera it sets up the characters just to watch them fall. Perhaps venturing a bit too far into speculation, but supported with Mao's own words, Salisbury claims what was really going through Mao's head were literal pipe dreams. The opiate-laced sleeping medication that the old warhorses were dependent on fueled the imaginative perceptions of what flipping an entire society on its head would bring.

The book changes direction to chronicle the less interesting but more relevant story that brought Deng Xiaoping out of small tractor repair shop where he was sent during the Cultural Revolution and into Beijing to topple the Gang of Four. Like Mao, the book starts soft on the imminently flexible and results-oriented leader and ends with the rigidity and tragedy of his latter days, culminating in the Tiananmen tragedy where the author was an observer.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the roots of today’s China. Though I didn’t think so at the time, it was worth the Beat Reader I traded it for at Friendly’s Guest House in Manila. Get it.

Yellow Smocks

Before I went to Amsterdam I'd never seen a prostitute before. Well, I have a memory of a prostitute coming and putting her leg on our families rental car when we were in Miami in '93, but that's just too weird to have really happened. In Amsterdam they were more like zoo exhibits than anything else. They were presented as tourist attractions. I'd never seen one in her natural habitat though.

Even on the famed Emerson and Phillips intersections in Jacksonville, which I once lived not too far from, I never saw one. Ever. Everyone said they there with the crack dealers but I never saw them either. I think my parameters of "normal human behavior" are just too wide to spot someone dressed eccentric enough to scream, "approach me for solicitation of sex and drugs."

Everyone claimed that the late nigh barber shops in Tianjin were all sin dens, but every time I looked while driving by they were doing legitimate business. But Shenzhen. Wow. Different story. Obvious isn't even the word. Apparently, we compete with Thailand on the sheer numbers of women coming to look for work and deciding the indentured servitude at a factory just wasn't what they had in mind when they left the farm.

Within a five minute walk I could count at least ten businesses of scandalous intent. Juries out on what they really are, precisely, but they're neon lit establishments with big glass windows with couches overflowing with bored young girls in short white dresses. There's always one booth for cutting hair and not a single customer. For that matter, I've never seen anyone coming into or out of one of these places. They're just kinda there. Existing.

Though prostitution is against the law, I've never seen a crackdown on the brothels like I've seen with street vendors [or reporters, or...], so it came as some surprise to read this in an article about prostitution in China in the International Herald Tribune today:

At the end of November, officials in Shenzhen, the southern boomtown, got the bright idea of reviving the Cultural Revolution for the purposes of temporarily cracking down on its prostitutes.

This came to pass as a face-preserving measure after a regional television station broke with decorum by mentioning the existence of this industry in a city famous throughout Asia for its sex trade.

To send the message that Shenzhen was actually a clean and proper place, the police dressed several dozen prostitutes in identical yellow smocks and marched them through the streets of Futian district, to be shamed by a jeering crowd and have their names and hometowns announced to all.

What's even stranger is no one I know had any idea this happened until we read about it on international websites. The news here is strictly "happiness abides," so things like this rarely get reported. Curious though, ey?


Tags: Treyopia current events news prostitution Shenzhen China Chinese Asia Cultural Revolution persecution

At this very moment, and no other, I support Bush on Iraq

In January of 2003 my friend Abe and I drove to Washington, D.C. to be a part of massive anti-war demonstrations. I came away disillusioned with my fellow doves. The moment I heard 50,000+ chanting "Free Palestine, End Zionism," I knew this had little to do with actual policy considerations. My reasons for being there were very different than almost everyone else's that I met. People there just didn't like war. I can respect that, but I can also see when war is necessary. In my estimate, this war wasn't necessary and I felt it was going to severely compromise our national security. Chemical and biological weapons were of little interest to me. Even if he had them, he couldn't use them without overwhelming retaliation.

What brought me to Washington was remembering how our reception was when US forces were deployed to Beirut and Mogadishu. In Beirut we lost 241 Marines in one day and I'm sure everyone's seen Black Hawk Down by now to know what happened in Mogadishu. In both cases, we went with the best of intentions. We certainly we're going to be entering Baghdad with even a shred of the nobility of those two previous Middle Eastern missions. The biggest difference in hypothesis and reality is that the Iraqi's gave us about two months to get our act together before they rebelled. I assumed the masses would be resisting us from day one.

When the war started, I refused to participate in any more demonstrations. I went to a candlelight vigil to honor all of the fallen - American and Iraqi - but I refused to demand a withdrawal of American forces, something almost all of activist friends wanted. When I asked what they thought the outcome of a sudden withdrawal might be, none of them had an answer. It was just a solution that sounded right.

Foreign policy does not have an "undo" button. During the Democratic primary debates in 2004, one of the candidates put it best; "saying 'I told you so' isn't a foriegn policy." As happy as I am about the Democratic sweep of Congress, I'm very worried about their Iraq policy. I don't think it's progressed much beyond the activist rhetoric or told ya so. Don't get me wrong, it feels good, but it isn't.

Where stand now is that the Democrats are preparing to push for a quick phased withdrawal. The biggest proponent of this, Rep. Murtha, is poised to become Senate Majority Leader as a reward for letting Americans be able to openly admit they want to quit. If a hawkish vet can say we lost, then hey... so say we all. Well, at least about 60% of the public anyway.

Bush has a different idea. If the rumors are true, he wants to make one last push to secure peace in Iraq through military might. He wants to call a regional summit send an additional 20,000 troops in an admittedly last ditch effort to secure Baghdad before calling it quits. Read that last sentence again. Bush is ready to call it quits. He wants one more shot before packing up. Know what? I support that idea 100%. We owe it to Iraq to try once more. Bush knows this is his last shot and he's going to give it his all.

A rapid American withdrawal right now would be disastrous for Iraqi civilians. There would be no governing power beyond militias. Staying for another four years is equally bad, but getting the best minds together for one last try, one last push to make things work, gets all the support I can give. This should be something we can all agree on.

The biggest thing the Democrats could do for peace - real peace, not just leaving the fight - is to make sure Bush invites Syria and Iran to the regional summit. Take a look at the map. When we leave, they'll be holding all the cards. Ultimately this is about them giving us a chance to have a say in Iraq's future, not, as it would seem, the other way around.

Tags: Treyopia China politics current events Bush Murtha Pelosi Iran Syria conference summit regional Democrats James Baker ISG Iraq Study Group Syria Iran War Iraq Withdrawl withdrawel defeat loose quit support protest activist ideas

Thank You, America

A personal "thanks" for all of you who voted the right way. I am supremely grateful to the American people for sweeping out the trash that's been in Washington too long.

I'm not talking about the people who had ideas different than my own [admittedly, bleeding-heart liberal] leanings. American is a land with many ideas and they should all be represented in a democratic forum.

I'm talking about the overtly corrupt, inept, and horrifically partisan jackasses that put out negative campaign commercials taking the public for idiots by trying to tie their opponents to child molesters, Osama, and perhaps provide Photoshopped© images of them suckling at the man-goat hybrid teets of Satan himself. I'm talking about those that have allowed spending to go unchecked and policy unexamined for so long. I'm talking about the people who would name legislation written FOR the logging industry the "Healthy Forest Initiative."

Let's hope this new batch of freshmen Dem's do the right thing and work with the Republicans still in office to change the tone in Washington and start fixing the massive problems facing our nation.

For those who want to know just how bad things had gotten, Matt Taibbi did an excellent write-up for Rolling Stone: "Time to Go! Inside The Worst Congress Ever."

I end with this question, though: What changed? Besides Katrina and Foley, most of ineptitude and corruption were the same in 2004 as they were in 2006. According to the polls at the time, people were already getting disillusioned with the President and his party. They didn't like Bush, but they sure as hell didn't like Kerry and the Democrats enough to actually vote for them. Taking both houses of Congress was unimaginable even a year ago. What changed that?

Tags: Treyopia politics current events China Election 2006 mid-terms democrats republicans thank you analysis questions what changed

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [Review]

I picked up John Perkin's latest book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man in Hong Kong this week. It was a hefty sum - 115 HK dollars(!) - but I needed more books. I'd seen this one referenced around MetaFilter and picked it up when the bookstore we were visiting failed to produce any substantial modern fiction.

Perkin writes a cloak-and-dagger account of being an obviously underqualified "Yes Man" economist for one of the original multi-national construction and energy companies called MAIN. He outlines a clear and systematic approach of trapping developing nations like Indonesia and Columbia with massive loans to develop their economies in the early 1970's. His company specialized in energy so his job was to invent electricity demand forecasts, tie them in with potential GDP growth, and use the reports to justify massive loans.

The loans themselves were too massive to be repaid. That much is obvious today when countries like Argentina and Ecuador are spending half of their national budgets supporting ancient loans. Furthermore, the loan money never made it down to those most in need because it circulated amongst the corrupt government officials and the American contractors who planned and built the power stations and electrical grids.

Anyone who follows current events closely should know this. There's not much of a confession yet, at least not a useful one. So what we get out of the book are two contentions he makes from this. The first is that this was on purpose, the second is that the NSA was involved.

I think the first contention is very plausible. American companies and the US government colluded to shackle developing countries in massive debt so they could be easily manipulated later for UN votes, military bases, and other services. His first boss at MAIN pretty much verified this when he said that, "what John's book says is, there was a conspiracy to put all these countries on the hook, and that happened."

The NSA contention is sketchy at best. He draws as his only source for NSA intrigue was that he was profiled and offered a job by them before he decided to join the Peace Corp. Someone in his wife's family sets him up with the interview and tells him it's OK that he's going to go into the Peace Corp because there will likely be a lucrative job at the end of his service. When he gets offered the lucrative job, he assumes it's an NSA front. He wavers in his own belief that this was the case, but ultimately he sides with it when he outright calls his first MAIN boss and recruiter an NSA liaison. Furthemore, a State Department rebuttal of the book is correct in saying that the NSA is a cryptographic [codes] and SigInt [tracking telecommunications] intelligence agency and isn't involved in the same kind of intrigue as the CIA.

I just wished he'd leave his NSA hunches as just hunchs and stuck with the facts. Perkin delivers in showing what happens when the "jackals" come out when politicians don't play the game: air crashes, riots, and coups. These aren't mere conspiracies, but documented practices of the corporocracy in action. He demonstrates vividly the links between government and the companies that get massive rebuilding contracts. Cheney being CEO of Haliburton is just the latest in a long history of tainted dealings in "development" and "aid." Americans need to know what's been done by their government and business leaders in the name of altruism and modernity.

Tags: Treyopia news current events current events book reviews John Perkins Perkins confessions of an economic hit man globalization development aid China NSA corporocracy

The Situation

There's not a lot about living in China that worries me. The situation in North Korea worries me a little bit. As I'm sure most of you are aware, the People's Democratic [Super Free and Happy] Republic of Korea has announced its intentions to conduct a nuclear test. Some are speculating that it might come as soon as this weekend.

So what is it about this affair, besides nuclear weapons exploding next door, that worries me?

Statements like this [Washington Post]:

"[North Korea] can have a future or it can have these weapons. It cannot have both."

"We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea, we are not going to accept it."

- Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill

Woah, slowwwww down cowboy. Gettin' a bit existential, are we? North Korea can either test a weapon or it can have a future? It will cease to exist if it tests a weapon ... this is our response? [pssst, we've tested over 1,030 nukes - the last time less than 15 years ago]

That's an open declaration of war if I've ever heard one. Test it and die. Perhaps we can ponder whether Mr. Hill meant something different saying that America annot live with a proven nuclear armed N. Korea. Perhaps he meant something more polite when he said that N. Korea will not have a future if it proceeds, but this administration isn't known for it's subtleties is it?

So what happens when N. Korea tests? Are we going to sanction them [more]? Perhaps we could punish monks by depriving them of sex. Either Bush is blowing a lot of hot air or he plans a military response. A military response would be, in a word, horrific. We can run down a million scenarios for how it could be carried out, none of which involve open-heart surgery precision and the world cheering on our daring raids that didn't involve Seoul being pounded for weeks by 155mm artillery buried in the mountains along the DMZ.

China's relations and involvement with these issues are complex to say the least. I don't even fully understand them. I won't pretend to fully understand them. China has strongly rebuked N. Korea over this. It was front-page news in the state-sponsered media yesterday. Something is about to happen and China doesn't want it to happen. I hope China's response is something along the lines of what the Ralph A. Cossa recommends:

"Beijing should also note that economic sanctions imposed as a result of a nuclear test will be accompanied by an "open border" policy and the establishment of UN-sponsored refugee camps on the Chinese side of the Yalu River. China, at North Korea's insistence, presently forces most refugees to return, where they meet a most unpleasant fate. This policy must change."

and

"Beijing should also set a certain date for the next round of six-party talks, while making it clear that a "six-minus- one" session will occur if the North refuses to come."

My fear is that an American military response could send my coworkers and I home. China is a country where politics and popular thought can change on a dime, having gone from fuedalism to collectivism to free market economy in a single generation. The Chinese still haven't forgiven the Japanese for World War II and in fact openly hate them today. I wouldn't want to be around here when the public reacts to an unpopular American military campaign against a neighboring country. I also wonder how the Chinese Communist Party would respond and whether or not work visas would be a front in diplomatic warfare.

My own take on nuclear proliferation is simple: every nation deserves the right to self-defense in accordance with international norms and it's threat situation. Every permanent member on the UN Security Council including the "leader of the free world" is armed to the teeth with nuclear warheads with no intention of getting rid of them. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NNPT] cuts both ways - that current non-nuclear nations withhold from going nuclear and that current nuclear nations make serious efforts to create a future free of nuclear weapons. No such effort has been made by the current nuclear armed countries, so why should we expect follow-through from the non-nuclear signatories? It's a mute point now with N. Korea, because it legally removed itself from the treaty.

If the White House wants a nuclear-free Third World, it needs to make serious overtures for liquidating existing stockpiles in the developed world.

Like any sane man, I think it's obscene that the DPRNK spends so much money on it's arms industry while it's citizens starve. I have no desire to see men like Kim Jung-Il possess such power. The fact of the matter is that he's daily threatened by a nuclear power with troops massed on his border and having a nuclear weapon is his only viable insurance policy to prevent an Iraq-style "regime change."

Scales

This has nothing to do with China, but this is why I love MetaFilter. From this thread come these links:

- Visualize what it means to say you are one person in 6.5 billion.

- Evolutionary timeline.

- Scale of an atom [from proton to electron cloud - 11 miles!]

- Scales of stars and planets.

Contradictions

I had to draw a map of the eastern half of the United States and the name of my hometown to make my point. Above the name of Jacksonville I wrote out "Andrew Jackson" and explained that the name of my town was a French way of saying Jackson's Town. My town, indeed, had been renamed after Andrew Jackson's exploits.

Those exploits were a consistent policy of genocide. If he had been a Balkan general in the 1990's, he would have been an "ethnic cleanser." He wanted nothing less than the wholesale relocation of the native American population to somewhere more convenient. Death, to him, was even more convenient.

I illustrated on my ad hoc map that I drawn on my Chinese language book where the mountains of North Carolina were. I drew a line showing how far Jackson had pushed the Cherokee Nation. I explained the conditions under which thousands perished on this hike, and many more after the relocation. I entitled this part of map the "Trail of Tears."

I then showed another line moving from west of the Mississippi River down into Florida. This time to persue and slaughter escaped slaves and other Natives hiding in the swamps of Florida who had rebranded themselves as Seminoles. I erased the line seperating Florida from the rest of America to show how he annexed Florida in the process of trying to slaughter even more Natives.

The point of all this was showing the contradictions in the national character of both China and America. I was extremely surprised to learn that Chinese textbooks very clearly explain that the Cultural Revolution was a terrible thing. How it is taught that Chairman Mao was a very good man during the Long March, but not such a great leader once in power. This is the official history. This is what children were taught in school. Students were made to memorize the missteps leading to the creation of the People's Republic.

I told my Chinese teacher, Dorothy (most Chinese working with Americans adopt an English name), that issues like the Trail of Tears were only briefly touched upon in American History textbooks. That no citizens really speak out against having there town named after a genocidal maniac. Likely this is because so few Floridians know what the Trail of Tears was and even fewer would know that Jackson was behind it. The same freedom that allows us to remember and talk about such events is the same freedom that allows us to willfully forget or shrug off as unimportant.

America, Home of the Free, chooses to celebrate Columbus Day and forget that there used to be a people called the Arawak. People can speak of such issues, but they largely do not. It is an inconvenient truth washing away the illusions of an illustrious past. It is mud in some uphill creek version of American history that we are people on the way to Providence... that every mistake we make is OK, because it's part of a progressive trend. After all, America would have never arisen as a world power capable of doing the world good without first building itself up with slavery, right?

This isn't some rag-on-America-history essay. As I told my history students in America, every nation has horrors in its past. Almost every nation that exists today has at its roots one people who displaced another violently. What is noteworthy though are the contradictions that arise almost daily when comparing China and America. In the land with less freedom, there is more historical criticism. In the land of the free, a shiny white gloss lays dense on all but the most recent historical events. It is sad to think that it takes an "official history" to make people aware of their own heritage.

Tags: Treyopia China Stories Life Students Teaching Jixian politics Cultural Revolution

The Other Gulf

[submitted to Folio Weekly as a backpage op-ed piece]

This wasn’t like the tsunami. These were Americans… and not just any Americans. Southerners. They spoke my tongue in my vernacular on streets that I have walked in and loved with complete surrender. This wasn’t like September 11th. We saw this coming. It was sick torture as the hurricane gained unprecedented strength, aimed squarely for the Big Easy. Then landfall. Then the blackout as the storm rolled over.

Lights on. It’s Monday afternoon and the storm chaser’s videos pour in, so do the stories. Gulfport is leveled. Biloxi casinos have moved inland. New Orleans took a battering, but the “worst-case scenario” we were talking about over the weekend didn’t happen. They eye had passed just west of Apocalypse. Another potential catastrophe averted

Monday evening we hear strange rumors that a levee broke and some water entering certain neighborhoods. Tuesday I have my high school classes talk to two amateur storm chaser friends of mine who went through the storm in Gulfport. The Worst Case never happened, so it’s fair game to portray hurricanes being as fun as they are dangerous. I share with them videos I took from inside the eyewall of Frances last year.

After that is some sick and slow blur of a self-inflected torture through my television. A wound opened and exposed to endless hours of cable news and obsessively checking the news online while at work. The images and sounds blur together into a single memory: the angry dreadlocked man at the convention center staring into the lens with his voodoo stare before leading the hungry and sweaty mob behind him into a coordinated cry for help; Coast Guard helicopters dropping rescue divers on roofs, tearing holes into them with axes before pulling people out; the front page papers showing a chemical slicked lake with rooftop Lilly-pads spread out in front of a crippled downtown island ahead; the grandmother quietly pushed into a corner of the Superdome with a blanket gently laid upon her decomposing body; behind her, another body; and above all, the underlying horror in the voices of those there. You could hear it in both the survivors and news anchors, you could hear it in Anderson Cooper as he choked up and attacked Senator Mary Landrieu for “patting politicians on the back” after he had watched rats eating a corpse all night because there was no means of disposing of Katrina’s victims.

You could hear it in the voice of a husband as he described his home splitting in half as the water came, then his wife slipping out of his hands as she told him to take care of the kids. “I don’t know what I’m going to do… I don’t have anywhere to go. I’m lost,” were his last words as the camera panned him walking off into the dismal abyss of Biloxi.

On Thursday the horror deepened as I heard in the voice of another CNN anchor asked Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown about the deteriorating situation at the Convention Center. On air, he responded that “we learned about that [today], so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need.” This was the same FEMA director that didn’t ask for military help until Tuesday evening. This is the same FEMA director whose pre-government career was in Arabian horse breeding. He somehow managed to get fired him from that job and hired into FEMA.

Horror turns to anger. We hear that National Guard troops were playing cards as New Orleans reverted to some sick Hobbesian nightmare. Upwards of half of New Orleans fire department and police department have not reported for duty. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, may he run for President one day, is on the television speaking the words right out of all of our minds, “Don’t tell me 40,000 troops are on the way! They’re not here! Get off your asses and do something and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crises in U.S. history!”

Insulated 3,000 feet above the carnage was the detached horror of our Commander and Chief as he asked his pilot to fly low so he could take a peek at the anarchy below. When he finally got back to D.C., his words of wisdom were to buy only as much gas as is needed. Though perhaps it’s to be understood he hasn’t had to fill his own tank in at least five years, perhaps an advisor should have informed him what $3 a gallon feels like to most America. Perhaps the full effect of the tripling of gas prices during his blood-soaked tenure isn’t quite clear to him yet. We’re not buying any more gas than is absolutely necessary.

Could Bush have tried harder to séance Nero as he strummed his guitar during a photo op in San Diego as the storm came ashore? Perhaps his round of golf Wednesday, closing out a five-week vacation, was an outdoor emergency cabinet meeting? Could his approval of the handling of the response be anymore disconnected from reality when he told the FEMA director, “"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," as he toured Biloxi.

As the skies clear and the waters recede, the focus is sharpening. Despite calls for restraint, it’s time for blame. We knew Saturday that this was a massive and growing storm that was heading towards the Mississippi Delta. On Sunday, I listened to an LSU professor tell the world that there was a 50/50 chance we’d be saying on Monday, “Dear God… we’ve lost a city.”

Despite the National Geographic articles and a clear disclaimer from the Corp of Engineers that the levees were only built to handle a Category 3 storm, we learn now from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that no plans existed to deal with the flooding. Despite Mayor Nagin’s mandatory evacuation because of flooding threats, Chertoff found the destruction "breathtaking in its surprise." None of this was surprising to any regular reader of current events.

The sheer incompetence of the relief effort will be the subject of intense national debate in coming months. Already I hear people blaming victims for staying town, ignorant of both the logistical impossibility of emptying a major city in two days and the lack of transportation available to those who were worse hit. The partisan lines are forming.

Republicans must answer for cutting funding for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Program (SELA), which would have reinforced the levee system. The Corp of Engineers will have to answer for not pushing for long term solutions to the Mississippi River Delta, which will completely disappear by centuries end if the existing system isn't dramatically redrawn. FEMA and Pentagon must answer for not mobilizing days before the storm.

It’s time for heads to roll in Washington for all the dead bodies in 7th Ward attics. It’s time to start thinking the consequences of our decisions and think progressively about the long term problems that face our troubled nation. It’s time for an end to this goofy optimism that God will only bless America. Someone must answer for the horror.

Sex, Drugs, and Milkweed

As a deist baptized in a protestant church and separated by the Catholic Church by at least two generations, I withhold as much opinion as possible concerning the impending selection of Pope John Paul II’s successor. It’s simply not my place to interject my own theological ideas into a debate whose churches I have stepped into only as a freshman touring European with Core Abroad. My inquiries into whereabouts of the “Sunday school” rooms were in the St. Jean Cathedral in Lyon attests to the breadth of my native ignorance of the Mother Churches ways.

Though my knowledge of Vatican II and Canon Law are as profound as my understanding of a woman’s mind, I had a lot of respect for John Paul II. His moral conservatism was of a different strain than what I encounter in America. Though I disagree with his view on abortion, I respected his moral consistency that had him fight against unjust war, torture, and the death penalty just as hard with the same underlying principle that life is sacred.

The only complaint I feel comfortable in vocalizing is the churches ban on contraception. Modern alchemists have turned milkweed and poinsettia plants into one of the most cost effective birth control measures of all time, stopping both STD’s and unwanted pregnancies if used correctly. John Paul, however, issued several fatwa’s banning Catholics from using condoms. Our Malthusian population nightmare aside, one can imagine the decree this has had in Africa, Catholicism’s fastest growing demographic. Over twenty-five million sub-Saharan Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS with an infection rate of 7.5%. It is of unconscionable bad taste to exalt a single command given to a nascent human race over the entire theme of compassion that AIDS; another 2.4 million children are infected themselves. What would Jesus do?

John Paul II’s moral consistency was matched by only by his rigidity. What will taint his legacy more than the scandals amongst America clergy was this iron-willed persistence in damning Catholics who practiced birth control. Granted, God had some good words to say back in the day about fruitfulness and multiplicity. Those words were exceptionally relevant as late as 1492 when the Europeans had just found a new patch of grass to soil and the world population was still under 500 million. I just don’t know how much more fruitful God wants us to be in an age of 6 billion people. The founders of the Universal Church made a decision some two thousand years ago that even though Biblical law required circumcision, things, you know… changed. Three times as many people live on under $1 a day as lived on the planet when the Good Man himself preached in Judea. I think it’s fair to call God’s “Go Forth” campaign a complete and resounding success. We should at least put the program on pause until the polar ice caps melt and become habitable.

There is hope yet. Cardinal Tettamanzi of Milan, Vegas’s favorite to win the papacy, has been quoted as saying, "one African child sick with AIDS counts more than the entire universe." He has called on Western nations to contribute more to the fight. His economic stances are in line with international calls to de-commercialize the AIDS-drugs industry and provide zero-fee licensing for generics. It would be an amazing step forward to make a religious imperative out of treating AIDS victims, as Tettamanzi suggests. I counter that preventing the disease is even more important. The pride of the Church is at stake, especially after taking such a hard line for so long, but the next pope could slowly back off the official. He doesn’t need to recant the Church’s contraceptive policy – merely shying away from reinforcing it every chance he gets would be a tremendous help. After all, would Jesus spend more time arguing for the banishment of modern hygienic techniques or would he spend his time preaching love for all?

Terry Shaivo [unfinished]

Originally, I wanted to make this column another partisan rant about Terri Shiavo in league with everything else filling the airwaves and op-ed pages of newspapers. I wanted to point out the ethical obscenity of a political party that has no problem having Medicaid paying most of the $80,000 a year medical bills of a brain dead women but refuses to discuss the possibility of making healthcare a not-for-profit industry like every other industrialized nation has. I wanted to dwell on how sad it is to see this helpless soul caught in the first bout of 2006 campaign posturing but then I realized I would be playing right into that very game and skirting more important issues.

Despite 65% of Americans realizing that this more a political circus than a morally driven crusade, most of us are genuinely concerned over the repercussions it will have on the American political landscape. This media circus spotlight on Shaivo highlights the deepest philosophical and ethical debate of our time: what is life worth and how equally distributed is that worthwhility?

To break my view of the Shaivo circus down to its crudest and truest form, it is my contention that in a world as ours of finite resources and starvation it is not worth the time or money to sustain the breath of a woman brain-dead for 15 years. Being that she has lost sentience – the ability to comprehend her own existence - she is merely a shell of human life. She is propped like a puppet with tubes instead of strings, complete with involuntary motor reflexes reacting to stimuli that captivate the true believers who desperately want to see consciousness churn beneath her eyes

My own feelings on the Shaivo case have begged difficult questions. Does a paralyzed deaf, mute, blind and severely retarded man have the same right to live as I do? What exactly would be the cognitive cut-off point where someone begins loosing their rights? Who decides?

I don’t think the questions get any easier for the right-wingers backing Shaivo’s parents. One could vaccinate 28,500 children in impoverished nations with the $80,000 a year it takes to keep Terri Shiavo breathing. That speaks nothing of the 43 million Americans without health insurance. The pro-life movement seems concerned with life only when it appears as a glow, a waxing or waning of pre-birth and near-death. What about preserving the life we already have?

Underling this entire debate is a perforated fantasy that almost every American believes in: no human has the right to kill another human. The holes become wider after terrorist attacks and serial killings. The holes become indefinable and smaller when it comes to civilian death in war, “collateral damage,” or unhooking the elderly from breathing tubes, or terminating pregnancies.

All life is not sacred to the vast majority of us. We pick and choose our [unfinished because it was unpublished [Richard wrote an editorial on this very topic to my surprise])

Social Security Reform

After I blew out the transmission in my first car (a Ford, imagine that) my father asked if it was doing anything funny before the final death throw. I told him yes, but that I just didn’t have the money to fix it and would rather suffer the drivetrain oddities than shell out cash from my anemic McPaychecks. He told me something that I’ve followed to this day: fixing problems early is hella cheaper than waiting until the entire system collapses.

Accordingly, I applaud Bush for pushing Social Security reform. Though the devils are in the details and I might not agree with him that the system is heading for guaranteed solvency in coming decades, I do believe the margins of error are too tight for comfort. I applaud him for having the political courage to reach out, touch that political third rail, and look at a problem before it blows up in our collective faces, potentially costing our generation the social safety net we are expecting.

Democrats should take a skeptical stance right now, in contrast to unflinching opposition. This is an assured method to be left out of the negotiation process. I earnestly want to believe Bush when he said he was open to any suggestion that allows for some sort of private account, does not raise payroll taxes, and is not a temporary solution. These are terms that Democrats should agree to on an ad hoc basis for the sake of coming to an acceptable compromise with a hesitant Republican majority.

Much the same as with Bush’s original tax cut proposal, his numbers are elephantine (and economically disastrous) on purpose – starting on higher ground to wage battle so that the inches ceded leave him with a result closer to his original goals. Allowing the Social Security to have its income slashed by 65% (4% of income, which will come out of the 6.2% payroll rate) would bankrupt the system as we know it. Though guaranteeing funding, albeit smaller than current payouts, for current freshman, it would nonetheless axe benefits for the non-traditional students. Already well into their careers, they have subsequently not had time to significantly pay into these accounts before costs exceed revenues in 2012 because of the accounts.

Bush purportedly has not ruled out raising the ceiling on taxable income. Currently, Social Security dishes out benefits proportional to what workers put in while they worked. In a bit of regressive-tax logic, only the first $90,000 of income is taxable – maxing out at $5580 a year. In raw numbers, that means that most liberal arts UNF graduates will be taxed 6.2% on all income, while an MBA peer making $900,000 yearly is only paying a tenth your tax rate at .62%.

Depending on Republican momentum on this issue, it is likely Democrats will have to make a “deal with the devil” to ensure the survival of America’s largest entitlement program’s. If allowing for small private accounts is necessary to eliminate the taxable income bar and make other steps necessary to ensure the programs solvency, , then that's a deal that should be made.

Iran and Such

Rumors of an impending invasion of Iran are a wild overstatement of what the administration is considering. These rumors stem from a New Yorker article written by Seymour Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib story, that US special operations teams were scouting Iran looking for targets for a potential air strike should negotiations with the EU to close a nuclear power plant collapse. The simple truth is that we do not have the means to occupy a nation with nearly three times the land mass and population as Iraq.

In columns I wrote nearly a year ago I supported such air strikes against Iran. I argued that nations with significant military threats and minimal means of defense have no reason to negotiate away their only deterrence, weapons of mass destruction. Negotiating away even small percentages of our overwhelmingly redundant and oftentimes obsolete array of nuclear weapons can take years to complete even when the tradeoff has been fewer nuclear weapons aimed against us. Consequently, the only way you could take care of proliferation threats is to attack them in their nascent stages, the way Israel attacked Saddam’s Osirak nuclear complex in 1981.

The reason I am more reluctant today to support such a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear facility is because Iran is much more of a position to retaliate than Iraq was in 2003 or Iran was in the same year, when the degree of the nuclear threat became more lucid. Launching a military strike on Iran would be a declaration of war which would be fought both in our own cities and in Iraq. Iran holds many of the cards in Iraq and would no doubt go out of its way to provide the weapons, cash, and intelligence to insurgents. The Shi’ite city of Basra would quickly become the next Fallujah, conveniently blocking major access to the rest of Iraq from logistical bases in Kuwait.

A bigger danger is Hezbollah, the “Party of God” that was founded by the Iranians to spread the Islamic Revolution. Deputy of State Richard Armitage has been quoted as saying that it might well be that al Qaeda is the “B-team” of terrorism and Hezbollah is the “A-team.” They were in large part responsible for America’s withdrawal from Lebanon in the 1980’s, killing 241 Marines in their barracks in 1983. The consequences would be devastating were Hezbollah deployed in America.

We must approach this delicate situation with the respect that it deserves. We must abandon our view that only America and its allies have the right to a nuclear defense, though we should act vigilantly to stop proliferation. We must realize that the more we threaten, the more likely nations will want to deter. We must also accept the danger we will be putting ourselves into should we choose to launch air strikes against Iran.

Rumors of Budget Cuts

The rumors of a possible decommissioning of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy (CV-67) have spread like a nightclub fire through Jacksonville, carrying with it fears that Mayport will go the way of NAS Cecil Field. In a deft political response, Congressman Crenshaw and Senators Martinez and Neilson are drafting legislation making it illegal for the Navy to carry any less than the current number of carriers: twelve. Though aircraft carriers are a vital part of our nation’s defense, having twelve is an arbitrary number set to insure the careers of military brass, defense contractors, and a few congressmen.

President Eisenhower warned us in the 50’s of the military-industrial complex, which is the triad of power between congressmen, the military, and defense industry giants who build the hardware. On one side of the triangle stand the generals and Pentagon brass whose careers follow the success or failure of individual weapon systems. On another side of the triad are the industries that make the weapons and reap in the profits. Finally there are the Congressmen who have jobs created in their districts through the design, production, and basing of all this hardware who often receive direct bribes in the form of campaign donations to solidify support. The obvious problem that arises is there are incentives throughout the entire process to over-order equipment and build extravagant machines with unproven technologies almost solely because of their expense.

The brass at Mayport don’t want the Kennedy retired because it will likely cost them their careers, the congressmen have to fight keep the 3000+ sailors and support staff in town, and the myriad of companies responsible for keeping the 37 year old ship in service another two decades don’t want to loose the business. But who in authority is asking the real questions. Do we need 12 aircraft carriers in an age where we have unquestionable air and naval supremacy wherever we sail? If one carrier were to go, shouldn’t it be the one that requires the largest logistical network (the Kennedy is the only aircraft carrier in US Navy that needs to be refueled at sea during extended tours, the rest are nuclear powered)?

With war comes loss. Along with the nearly 20,000 troops who have lost life or limb in Iraq, we need to start making budgets that reflect the reality of the costs of Iraq. Almost half of Congress’s discretionary spending goes to the military, so it’s the obvious first place to look for waste – and it’s everywhere. We have an anti-ballistic missile system that can’t even hit the easiest of targets and can be easily decoyed, a 90-ship nuclear attack submarine fleet that can be outfoxed by diesel sub a tenth the cost, a two decade program to make hybrid helicopter-airplane that’s met with nothing but blood and failure, and a dozen aircraft carriers built to sink a fleet that’s rusting away in Russian ports. It seems there’s plenty of room for cuts to pay appropriate salaries, buy appropriate armor for troops in field, and make the sacrifices necessary to make victory in Iraq a possibility without breaking the bank.

Keep Your Chins Up Dems

Keep Your Chins Up Dems’

So we lost the election, I lost a $20 bet and my self-worth as an amateur poll-reader, and Fallujah was leveled in the victory celebrations. The victory wasn’t as sound as Republicans want you to believe though. There was no mandate, in fact Bush won with the smallest margin of any incumbent since Woodrow Wilson. The simply truth is half of the American voters wanted Bush the hell out of office. The Democrats have a moral obligation to not let the Republicans walk over them in Washington like they did in the lead-up to the Iraq war. We’ll probably lose most legislative battles until at least 2006, but we need to put up a hell of a fight until then and start looking for good candidates to sell to the American public.

Reframing debates will be an important tool in rallying the public behind our fights. We need to fight like hell to keep judges off the bench who will overturn Roe vs. Wade. In doing so, we need to reframe the abortion argument in libertarian and not feminist language. Though the latter is an important point, it doesn’t resonate as well as fighting to keep government out of doctor’s offices. Furthermore, we need to make absolutely clear that pro-choice is not pro-abortion. I think Kerry carried this point well during the election, but I’m not sure the point has solidified. We need to win over those who disagree with abortion, but also disagree with government intrusion into a very difficult decision that ought to be made by families, not Washington politicians.

We also need to fight like hell to keep taxes progressive. There’s been rumor floating Washington that Bush wants to rewrite US tax law with either a national sales tax or flat tax. Though it is universally agreed that we need tax reform in the country (for instance: Goodyear, Texaco, or nor Ryder paid taxes during the boom years of the late 90’s), but those two options would become tax cuts from hell. Wherein now tax rates are bracketed such that the rich pay progressively more than those making less, the result of a federal income tax would place a greater proportional burden of paying taxes on those who have the least. These would be the tax cuts from hell.

Democrats also need to stand strong and build a clearer defense policy than “see, I told you so.” America must stand up against all threats, but we also must use proportional force and use it wisely and in a manner that compliments our strengths. Democrats should build and sell a defense policy most Americans can agree with – using our military to strike terrorists wherever they hide, which does not necessitate invasion. Occupations must be an absolute last resort, being that they dive into our biggest military weakness, but also one that is not shirked when necessary.

Keep your chins up, Democrats. We’ve got the numbers to win elections and we’re on the right side of the issues. We just need to find a sellable candidate who can reframe the issues on the table in our favor, someone whose moral backbone stands in stark contrast to those who sell out the American people to the highest bidder.

Open Letter to Jimmy Johnson on the Election

Jimmy,

I think this election was about the relative strength of the Republican Party in picking the right candidates, hammering the right poll-tested themes, and fighting with gloves off against every Democrat that stands in the way. It wasn't really about the popularity of their ideas. Here in Florida, all we saw about Betty Castor on TV was her face Photoshop-ed to wrap around the red letters “TAX” and some less than subtle suggestions that she supports Palestinian Islamic Jihad by not firing a professor at the first rumor that his favorite charity might be funneling some money to Palestinian militants (she instead waited for the FBI to confirm that the charity was a cover). Republicans made low punches from the get-go on favorable issues using a Cuban candidate.

I think the exit polls reflect that Americans didn't vote on policy. 20% of those dissatisfied with Bush’s job performance voted for him, as did 20% of those whose financial lots worsened over the past four years. 17% of those who've lost their jobs and over 10% of those who thought the tax cuts were a bad idea voted for Bush. A third of those who want government to help solve their problems voted for Bush, as did almost 70% of those who think that abortion should be fully or mostly legal. 19% of people who are angry and dissatisfied with bush voted for Bush. Even a quarter of gays voted for Bush.

I wouldn't take Bush's election as a mandate by any stretch. Had the newly-registered and largely Democratic youth shown up to vote like many were expecting (perhaps just hoping) we would have won. Had the GOP not gone on a voter suppression/intimidation offensive against minorities and had the same blacks not been convinced there votes would be thrown out again, I think we'd be looking at a different election result. The senate seats that were taken were largely anachronistically held anyway. Just as a Republican like Arlen Specter still holds Pennsylvania (55%+ Kerry), moderates like Daschle were still holding on to places like South Dakota (like 60%+ Bush).

Democrats needed someone with Dean’s spine and energy but with Kerry's intellect and tact. Instead we just got Kerry's intellect and tact. Kerry would have been the perfect candidate 40 years ago when eloquent yet verbose speeches were expected, but his style deeply contrasted with Bush's public good 'ole boy/straight shooter style that most people respond positively too. The simple fact is that Kerry does have deep values - he just shamefully and unsuccessfully dodged them to appeal to what his advisors told him were the moderates. People saw right through it. That 56% of the electorate thought that Kerry was only telling them what they wanted to hear speaks volumes as to why Bush won.

We lost the game, but our team still made an exceptionally strong showing considering Bush’s approval ratings just three years ago. It’s time to fire some coaches, let in some new blood, and put some leaders in the spotlight. Democrats need a few stars like Giuliani and McCain to put a public face on policy, combined with a political powerhouse like Trent Lott to push legislation internally, and a Karl Rove to manage elections. This election was won and lost because of the people involved, not the policy.

I hope you're enjoying Germany,
- James “Trey” Menefee

PS - I took some time writing this, so I'm turning it into an open letter and putting it on Treyopia.com. Thanks for asking me such a broad question :-)

>From: "James R. Johnson"
>To:
>Subject: Yo
>Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 22:43:43 +0100
>
>So Trey,
>
> What do you think? Thoughts on the race?
>
>
>
>Have fun in the US,
>
>
>
>Jimmy
>

"Fun" Exit Poll Facts - Voting as an Exercise in Ignorance

From CNN's Exit Poll...... 13,000+ sample size

White women voted for bush over Kerry 55-44.

African Americans voted 11% for bush.

Latinos voted 44% for bush.

60+ YOs voted 54% for bush

Income earners < $50k voted 44% for bush.

Income earners < $100k voted 49% for bush.

Union members voted 38% for bush.

Non-full-time workers voted 51% for bush.

No college degree voters voted 53% for bush.

11% of Democrats voted for bush.

Independents split 48-49 for bush/kerry.

Liberals voted 13% for bush.

1st time voters voted 46% for bush.

Jews voted 25% for bush.

Atheists voted 31% for bush.

Current and former members of the military voted 51% for bush.

Gays voted 23% for bush.

People who decided in the last 3 days voted 44% for bush.

People who disapprove of bush's performance voted 20% for bush.

People who think that we are less safe from terrorists voted 14% for bush.

People in a worse financial situation voted for 20% for bush.

People who are angry and dissatisfied with bush voted 19% for bush.

55% of the electorate believe that the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism.

56% of the electorate believe that Kerry mostly says what people want to hear.

People who think that bush pays more attention to large corporations (54% of the electorate) voted 16% for bush.

People who are very and somewhat concerned about the availability and cost of health care voted 41% and 71% for bush (respectively).

People who believe that abortion should be 'always' legal voted 25% for bush.

People who believe that abortion should be mostly legal voted 38% for bush.

People who believe that same-sex couples should legally marry (25%) of the electorate) voted 22% for bush.

People who believe that same-sex couple should have civil unions (35% of the electorate) voted 52% vote bush.

10% of former Gore voters voted for bush (as opposed to only 11% of 2000 bush voters voting for Kerry.)

People who believe that the economy is not good or poor voted 20% for bush.

53% of the electorate did not trust Kerry to handle the economy.

People who don't believe that the US is going in the right direction(46%) voted 12% for bush.

People who want the government to do more to solve our problems (46%) voted 33% for bush.

People who think that the bush tax cuts were bad for the economy (32%) voted 7% for bush.

People who have lost a job (17%) voted 35% for bush.