Book Review--Peter Hessler, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

I can not say enough good things about Peter Hessler's 2001 book River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, published by Harper Collins in 2001. Hessler wrote about his experiences as one of the first Peace Corps volunteers in a small town in the province of Sichuan in China. Hessler, now the Chinese correspondent for The New Yorker and National Geographic, writes brilliantly about his experiences there and should be read by most anyone interested in the transformations of China, the interactions of westerners and Asians, and those with an interest in travel writing.

I should disclose to those that don't know that I spent a year in the mid 90s teaching English in South Korea, in fact almost at the same time that Hessler was in China. Thus I related to many of his experiences and wished that I had engaged the culture and language of Korea like he did with China. You can't change the past, but reading River Town made me somewhat nostalgic for being in Asia and made me angry that I did not take full advantage of the opportunity that I had.

But even if you've never been to Asia, you will value this book highly. A couple of quick examples. Hessler writes beautifully in chapter 2 about teaching English and American literature to Chinese college students. For these kids, everything is infused with Chinese politics and propaganda and while this obviously makes teaching complicated, the literature also means a lot more to them than to most American students. If you have any questions about this book, pick it up and read this chapter. His discussion of the building of the Three Gorges Dam, which flooded part of the town where he lived, the complications with crazy women wanting to marry a Westerner, trying to fit into the ridiculous drinking rituals that help define Asian masculinity, living with the pollution endemic to Asian cities (In Seoul smog made clearly seeing the buildings across the street challenging on some days), the bizarre and amusing respect Chinese have for both Hitler and Jews, and living through the seasons in a new land all make interesting reading.

But it's not just a book on a westerner in Asia. Hessler also provides enlightening discussions on both the meaninglessness and sometimes vital meanings of Chinese propaganda, stories of survivors of the Cultural Revolution and how that time changed China, the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and the lives of people of all classes in the town that he lived. Really, this is a topnotch book.

NAACP & IRS

Embedded fairly deep in this story about the resignation of Kweisi Mfune as head of the NAACP is a bit on how the IRS is investigating the organization's tax-exempt status because of an anti-Bush speech Julian Bond made. In its letter to the NAACP, the IRS stated that "tax-exempt organizations are legally barred from supporting or opposing any candidate for elective office."

It's good to know that the government and the IRS are being fair and balanced here. After all, if you don't count the thousands of churches whose pastors made pro-Bush speeches, there are hardly any tax-exempt organizations who are blatantly organizing for the Republicans.

Notre Dame=Stupid

It amuses me to no end that Notre Dame fired their football coach Tyrone Willingham today. Do they actually think that they are going to get a better coach than Willingham? The man who made Stanford a Pac-10 contender is as good as Notre Dame is going to get. They may go hire Urban Meyer from Utah, but is he going to be able to turn around that program? He did a fine job at Bowling Green and at Utah this year, but he's only been at Utah 1 year and he inherited all the players from an already good team. I don't think he's proven that he's the man who can take Notre Dame to a national championship.

Why this is so amusing to me is that the fans of Notre Dame are insane. They really think that in today's world of college football that they should compete for a national championship every year. And that's just not going to happen, no matter who the coach is. The only teams that can really do that are Miami, USC, Oklahoma, and Texas--all because they are in centers of amazing high school football with good weather. There's no way that a team from Indiana is going to bring in enough recruits to South Bend, Indiana to compete every year. But because their fans are off their rockers, they are going to fire the best coach they've had since at least Lou Holtz. I will laugh for the next several seasons as Notre Dame again does nothing at all and then fires Urban Meyer or whoever else they choose.

Republican Candidates, circa 2008

Check out this interesting link to possible Republican presidential candidates in 2008 from The New Republic. These are all candidates not usually mentioned--no Frist, Jeb, McCain, Giuliani, etc. And yes, there are candidates on there who would probably be worse than W. Care to think of what a Rick Santorum administration would look like? How about Sam Brownback? Or even Colorado's resident lunatic, Tom Tancredo? (And you thought I was talking about Wayne Allard) Time to get those Canadian immigration papers ready.

Ukraine & Russia

I'm in agreement with Lawyers Guns and Money and Matthew Yglesias on the Ukraine situation. Clearly we need to support the pro-western candidate, both because he did win and because he is more committed to our values. I guess what I find interesting is the desire among the Russians and the pro-Russian areas of the old Soviet Union (Belarus and eastern Ukraine primarily) to revert to a Brezhnev-era government. What is the appeal? Is it the sense of order? Is it a belief that that period represented a time when the Soviets were a world power and thus Putin and his minions will lead the Russians back to being a world power?

The other issue concerning how to think about Russia and its surrogates is nuclear. Is it better to have a stable if corrupt and pointless authoritarian government or an unstable democracy when we're talking about a nationalistic nation that is aggrieved about losing its empire and has the world's most powerful weapons? My heart says that I want the people of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to have free democracies but my head is saying that maybe my life is more secure with Putin as the head of Russia and some flunkey of his leading the other 2 nations.

Post-Traumatic Stress & Iraq

Check out this sobering, if not surprising article, on post-traumatic stress disorder among British soldiers returning from Iraq. Interesting how we're not hearing much about this in America. Oh of course it's because Americans aren't pussies like the Brits rather than because the media is just choosing not to talk about it.

Praise the Evangelical Lord

It's amusing to watch David Brooks try to say that Jerry Falwell doesn't represent the Christian fundamentalist movement and then praise another preacher who holds the same basic beliefs as Falwell but who doesn't publicize himself like Falwell. Makes you think Brooks is going to convert to Christianity to get away from his own people, those relativistic amoral Jews.

Violence and Basketball

A couple of things on the Pacers-Pistons debacle on Friday.

1. This is one of 2 huge reasons that I stopped watching the NBA several years ago. I hate this gangster shit that dominates basketball. Why do I want to watch this? The other reason is that the games are so boring when compared to the 80s. For that I blame Chuck Daly and Pat Riley, but that's another rant.

2. All this talk of "Oh, what are we going to do about these interactions between players and fans" is hypocritical bullshit. The answer is easy--ban alcohol from sporting events. You do that, these confrontations probably decline by 90%. So long as alcohol is sold at sporting events, this will continue. Tell the professional sports league to get out from under the tit of the alcohol cow and we can get back to civilized sporting events.

3. Artest (and certainly Jackson) was wrong, but he was hit in the head with a cup of beer. Those fans should be prosecuted, and not get some suspended sentence bullshit like what happened to those lunatic White Sox fans who attacked Royals 1st base coach Tom Gamboa a couple of years ago, left the poor guy with hearing loss in one ear (as if coaching the Royals wasn't pain enough) and got off with nothing. Totally unacceptable. Jail time for obnoxious fans is another key to stopping this shit.

If it sounds like I blame the fans for this, you're right. Artest is a punk and his suspension is justified, as is Jackson's. But they didn't start it either. The players have been rightfully punished for their part. Now it's time for the fans to be punished too.

UPDATE: In a related story, both Clemson and South Carolina have announced they will refuse any bowl bids after their brawl this weekend at the end of their game. Glad to see administrators crack down, even if they probably only came to this decision as a result of the NBA.

Smoothing Relations Over

Do you think it's a good idea for the bodyguards of the world's most powerful leader to get into shoving matches in foreign countries over whether they can accompany their leader to dinner on a trip in part designed to smooth over relations with the part of the world that is your traditional sphere of influence after ignoring them for 4 years? No, you say--well you can't be part of the Bush administration. Good job America!!

Safire, Who Do You Buy From?

I ask this of Bill because he clearly smoked some really good crack before he wrote his column in the Times today. Safire claims that changing the Constitution to allow Schwarzenegger to run for president is a civil rights issue. Not that Safire has ever really come out strongly for civil rights before. He must have had an epiphany. I'm sure he's also now for reparations to African-Americans too.

He also seems to believe that the Hispanic population is going to be heavily motivated by changing the Constitution to allow immigrants to run for president. Yes, Bill, I'm sure that Juan and Roberto who are fixing my roof really give a flying fuck whether or not some relation of some bastard who terrorized their families in Guatemala can become president here. I'm sure that's really going to get them to the polls.

Finally, Safire shows how far out of touch he is becoming with political reality in this country. He claims that when this amendment is passed in 2007 (he seems to forget that Democrats still have some power in this country, at least in the states) that Arnie will become VP to McCain or Giuliani. Que??? First, does he really think that McCain or Giuliani can survive the Republican primaries in the South against Jeb Bush or Bill Frist? Second, does he believe they will do better than Arnie? Third, does he really think that Arnie would be willing to be a vice-president?

Then to top it off he says that if this amendment were passed, Peter Jennings could be the Democrats VP candidate. Maybe Safire picked a good time to stop writing for the Times.

Republican Racism

It was good to see the latent racism of the Republican party come to the forefront with the failure to overhaul the intelligence system. Bush and his boys are going to learn a hard lesson that you can't use hate as a campaign method and then turn it off once you win. Actually Jim Sensenbrenner has a point about needing to stop immigration. If we had just not let those krauts in the country, we wouldn't have to deal with idiots like him in powerful political positions.

Chilean Protests

The conventional wisdom about Chilean politics has been that the Pinochet regime killed that nation's long legacy of political protest and that in the post-Pinochet years, Chile is the most pro-capitalist nation in Latin America. But as South America wakes up from its 20 year long activist slumber and social justice again begins to play a major role in regional politics, the Chilean people are waking up too. As Bush visits Chile for the APEC summit, thousands of protestors are rallying against Bush. Chile has a long way to go to return to the level of social agitation of the Allende years, but at least a new generation of activists are beginning to work.

No On Hillary

I suggest reading Michelle Cottle's editorial in The New Republic on why Hillary Clinton would be the worst possible candidate for the Democrats in 2008. I disagree with her conclusions about why Kerry was a bad candidate. I don't think he was. But she's completely right about why Hillary would be terrible. Why would we nominate the most demonized political figure since Richard Nixon? Conservatives loved Nixon but there's no way he could have won in 1976 had he been able to run. Same with Hillary. Liberals love her but she is simply loathed by conservatives. Republicans could run anyone against her and win. Maybe even the ghost of Richard Nixon.

President Terminator?

The campaign has started for a President Arnie. You may have seen this on the Daily Show on Tuesday. If one Democrat in a state legislature or Congress votes to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to be president, meaning of course 1 particular foreign-born citizen, he or she should be banished from the party.

UPDATE: It seems that David Broder is on board.

Iranian exiles

I'm sure that we've learned our lesson and won't listen to wild claims coming from Iranian exiles about Iran's nuclear weapon capabilities. What, George W. Bush won reelection? Well it's a good thing that I like the weather in Teheran in July.

Harry Reid again

A while ago I posted on my concerns about Harry Reid, the new Senate minority leader. Now that it is certain he will win the position, my concerns are increasing. Not only is he a anti-abortion Democrat, he is also supposed to be even less telegenic than Tom Daschle. Yes, that's right. Less telegenic. Not good.

In addition, it seems the Democrats in the Senate are interpreting their losses as happening because they were too obstructionist to Bush. Reid hopes to be less obstructionist. This is a total misunderstanding of Daschle's loss. My understanding of his defeat is that it happened primarily because Daschle was seen to have lost touch with South Dakota. He recently bought a house in DC where he claimed to be a DC resident in order to receive a tax break. That did not play well in Rapid City or Mitchell. In addition, he had been seen driving around in a Porsche, not a car you see too often in Spearfish. And in western South Dakota, otherwise known as the Progressive Mecca of the nation, he was too soft on killing prairie dogs. In other words, he lost in a divided state on purely local issues. People who voted for Thune might have said that they did so because Daschle was too obstructionist, but those people almost certainly would have voted for Thune anyway.

So in response, we have a weak minority leader who wants to be less obstructionist. The exact opposite of what we need. We need a strong minority leader who will hold Bush accountable for his actions and build an opposition to him. I am happy that Dick Durbin took over the whip slot that Reid vacated. Maybe he will play a very active role. But overall, I find this to be very worrisome.

Perhaps our greatest hope is that since Harry Reid is a Mormon and a Democrat, he is protected under the Endangered Species Act and therefore it's a federal crime for Republicans to attack him.

Setting A Positive Agenda

So I've been taking some flak from people on the post on the use of the military that I posted yesterday. And perhaps for good reason--my ideas on it may be half baked. Only one complaint to my detractors--post your criticisms on the blog damnit!!!

But seriously, though there are certainly legitimate criticisms of my ideas on a Democratic agenda for the military, I do think it's important that we on the left work harder to promote a positive agenda. Too often our actions, whether talking amongst friends, on our blogs, in the newspapers, or on the radio are simply negative. The best example of this is Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, who criticizes the US for not doing anything about the Sudan, but if we did do something would undoubtedly criticize it as well.

It's very easy to complain about how bad things are and I think we should. But I also think that it's very important that we work on presenting an alternative vision of a future society as opposed to only criticizing the one we now have. We have all kinds of critiques of everything that is wrong today but very little in the way of concrete alternatives. I suppose this is because it's easy to find allies in criticism than in positive ideas--I think all of the readers of this think Iraq was a stupid war but everyone probably has a different idea of what we should do now or what we should do to fight terrorism, etc. And of course these different ideas are fine--we would be braindead if we didn't discuss different alternatives. But I don't think we do this enough and I hope that this blog plays a tiny role in alleviating this problem.

Taking Back America, Part 4--Foreign Policy

One of the problems that we have on the left is the Democratic Party's inability or unwillingness since Vietnam to develop a real foreign policy platform. Generally, the left has avoided any real thought of the correct circumstances to use our military. This has left a vacuum on the subject that the Republicans have taken advantage of. Kerry epitomized this. Like most Vietnam-era liberals, he was uncomfortable (until he became a candidate) with the use of the military overseas except with UN approval. Thus he voted against the Gulf War in 1991 when it was clear that Saddam Hussein had no right to just take over another country. If we weren't going to use our military then, when would we? In a New Yorker article on Joe Biden, back in the late spring I believe, Biden tells a story of the discussion to give Bush the right to use the military against Iraq. The real liberal senators, led by Paul Wellstone and Barbara Boxer, simply would refuse to even entertain the idea that we could ever have a reason to invade Iraq or any other country and thus would not consider some kind of Democratic alternative to what was eventually passed.

Although I respect Wellstone and Boxer, this is wrong. We need to retake ground on foreign policy debates. We need to define what our self-interests are and what we will do to defend them. We need to give a message to the American people that we are willing to use our military and tell them when and how we will. John Kerry began to do this in his campaign but the message was not particularly clear, in part because of W's slanders on him, in part because Kerry wasn't always effective at delivering this message, and in part because the Democrats are still trying to figure out what that message is.

Here's what I think the message should be.

1. We will always use our military to protect our citizens when attacked.
2. We will never use our military to invade countries without a clear reason and with an exit strategy.
3. We will always work to build alliances with other nations.
4. It is our duty as the most powerful nation in the world to protect people from genocide.
5. We will keep the interests of the nation's soldiers as an extremely high priority.

Let me expand on a couple of these. #4 would give us the justification to invade the Sudan. We would have to work on a reasonable exit strategy and hope like hell another Somalia didn't happen. But nonetheless, it's clear that the American people are generally willing to accept the rhetoric of giving freedom to the people of the world. Where is that more necessary than in the Sudan? It would be easy to demonize the government of the Sudan and get the public support to invade. We could save hundreds of thousands of lives, work to build a democratic ally in the region, and thus advance our national interests in a humanitarian way. We could do this with an international alliance and hopefully even UN approval. At the same time, we would make it clear that our primary mission was to protect the people of the Sudan from their own government and that we had no interest in controlling whatever resources the nation has (Do they have any?) or to establish military bases or a puppet government in that nation. It could be the kind of mission that Afghanistan should have been.

We could really hammer the Republicans on #5. Not only is there the issue of the National Guard and now the recall of the discharged soldiers, but also the poor treatment that US soldiers receive. I think that if the public knew that our soldiers had to buy their own uniforms, that they had to pay for their meals when they are wounded, and that their medical services and other benefits are being reduced by the Republicans, they would be outraged. We can use this to our advantage if we come out with a pro-soldier platform, as opposed to a pro-military platform.

I clearly don't have all the answers here and I welcome discussion on these points. I think it's an important discussion that we need to start having. But in general, we do need to come up with a real policy of military intervention and engagement with the rest of the world. We need to show America that we are strong on foreign policy and the military and that we will act more in the interests of the United States and more responsibly worldwide. I think that if we can come up with a coherent policy encompassing these points, we can go a long way in taking back America.

Next, Part 5--Economic Issues

Book Review--Glenn Altschuler, All Shook Up: How Rock 'n' Roll Changed America

Historians are increasingly viewing music as a legitimate subject of their studies. Undoubtedly this has happened in large part because music fans, and especially rock fans, have reached tenure and can write books that might not be so accepted by stodgy academic departments looking down upon such studies. After all, why study the history of rock and roll when there's another book on the Gadsden Purchase to write?

I just finished the Glenn Altschuler's recent history of rock and roll, All Shook Up, published by Oxford in 2003. This is a fine overview of the history of 50s rock placed into a social and cultural history context. Altschuler does a good job discussing the kind of racial and sexual fears that rock and roll caused and how artists had to reign themselves in in order to be recorded and played on the radio. For example, the original lyrics to Little Richard's Tutti Frutti was "Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it don't fit, don't force it/You can grease it/make it easy." Not sure that could get played on the radio today.

In general though, while Altschuler clearly doesn't want to write a dry book he doesn't make a history of rock in the 50s as exciting as it seems that it should be. Perhaps this is something that academics have to deal with when writing about music. Music is something that seems far away from our lives as academics, when we write about it as academics it's hard to not fall into that writing paradigm. On the other hand, we don't want to write fan biographies or to write a book without real analysis. What would be the point of that? I have no answers for this question.

My other criticism of the book is that the conclusion seems a little thrown together. Altschuler strives to show the lasting power of rock music. But he keeps his analysis of rock largely as part of youth culture. While we cannot question that youth culture and rock music are still deeply intertwined, of course people in their 30s and 40s are still listening to new rock bands as well. How many 35 year olds buy the latest Radiohead album? A lot, I would venture to say. So the expansion of rock culture doesn't really get any kind of analysis.

Nonetheless, if you are interested in how rock music intertwined with the social history of the 1950s, particularly analysis of its racial and sexual components, this is a fine book and would also be a useful book to someone wanting to teach a history of American music. Probably not useful to assign, but certainly a useful reference book with several good stories and the kind of analysis that would make a history of music relevant and interesting.

1200

There are now 1200 American families with a dead relative thanks to the idiotic foreign policy of George W. Bush. They should all thank him.