A new star in the firmament

Igor Panarin has a dream. Or rather, a prediction. He predicts a break-up of the United States, a repetition of what happened to his own country.

Igor, you see, is a professor in an academy that trains Russia's future diplomats. But his résumé also includes membership, during his halcyon USSR days, in the KGB. While most serious Russian foreign policy experts dismiss Panarin's ideas as absurd, Kremlin-controlled state television has been avidly discussing his predictions twice a day, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Russian government is showing strong interest in Panarin's thoughts.

In summary, here lies our American future: A civil war next fall, triggered by mass immigration, economic problems, and "moral degradation." The dollar collapses. In late June or early July, 2010, the country breaks up into six pieces, just as did the USSR twenty years earlier. Where will you live?

1. The California Republic. Includes the seven western states. Annexed by or a protectorate of China. "Niihau, dudes!"

2. Atlantic America. May join the European Union.

3. The Texas Republic. Includes Texas and New Mexico, and most of the old South. Annexed by or a protectorate of Mexico.

4. Central North-American Republic. From the Rockies to the Ohio. Will either be annexed by Canada or become a Canadian protectorate.

5. Hawaii. Will be annexed by either Japan or China.

6. Alaska. Tough lucksies, Gov. Palin. Alaska rejoins Russia. Mr. Panarin has a satellite photo of the Bering Strait in his office. "It's not there for no reason," he grins.

Very interesting. Although I wonder how much Igor Panarin knows about domestic fault lines in the United States. Why, for example, would Georgia and Alabama join the Texas Republic and eat fajitas and quesidillas, while North and South Carolina would join New York and New England in an Atlantic America? Would the good citizens of the Palmetto State really submit to bureaucratic regulations issused out of Brussels?

But in the off chance that Igor is on to something, I think it behooves us here in Seattle to tweak his predictions in the most advantageous manner. Canada has spent decades on the verge of disintegration. If Québec ever breaks off, many question whether British Columbia wouldn't also seek some form of independence, something that would distance it from Ottawa's stifling control.

The good people of Seattle and Portland have more in common with Vancouver than they do with Cleveland or Miami. Vancouver residents have more in common with us than they do with Montréal or Toronto. Washington, Oregon and British Columbia should jump at the opportunity presented by any Panarinian chaos to unite into their own union. Maybe we should also grab some of the choicer parts of northern California while we're at it, but always remembering the caution that Los Angeles begins at San Jose.

We could form our own Swiss-style confederation and republic, or even retain ties to the Crown if that would satisfy sentimental urges of former Canadians.

Think of the advantages. An open border to Seattle's north. No more Homeland Security agents roaming around our highways, checking for illegal immigrants -- terrorists, probably -- from Yellowknife, Prince Rupert and Saskatoon, and searching our cars for weed in the process. Tidy customs posts in the Siskiyous, ensuring that Californian motorists are visiting only as tourists and don't plan to immigrate. (We would still grant residency to highly educated Californians who are long-time members of the Sierra Club, and who pass psychological tests designed to ferret out Californians with stereotypically loud mouths, annoying whines, and aggressive tendencies.)

Every cloud has its silver lining, even dissolution of America as we know it. Hail to thee, Evergreenia! Live long and prosper!

Map © Wall Street Journal (12-29-08)

------------------

After publishing the above post, I discovered on Google a number of citations to the "Evergreenia Republic," a camp in Kyrgyzstan for teenagers from the former USSR nations, designed to teach them how democracy works. Obviously, my proposed Evergreenia Republic in the Pacific Northwest has no relationship whatsoever to this worthy project.

More snow in Seattle

In Which a Lad of Very Little Brain Watches the Snow Fall and Wonders How He Will Ever Get to California for Christmas

"Hallo, Eeyore," said Christopher Robin, as he opened the door and came out. "How are you?"
"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing." >
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

A Good Hum

(such as is hummed hopefully)

The more it snows

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom),

The more it goes

(Tiddely pom),

On snowing.

And nobody knows

(Tiddely pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely pom),

How cold my toes

(Tiddely pom),

Are growing.

© 1928 E. P. Dutton & Co.

A Winter's Tale

On the street where I live ...

Snow's so infrequent in Seattle that it's fun and exciting when it arrives. As it did this morning, beginning at 5:30 a.m. The flakes started falling with two gigantic explosions of thunder and lightning that made my hair stand on end. And that caused my cats to leap from the bed and duck into wherever they've located their bomb shelter. It's been snowing ever since, and now, in mid-afternoon, we have about four inches here in my neighborhood. Lots more in the surrounding suburbs, especially the hills. More snow is expected, and temperatures below freezing are anticipated until Christmas.

Snow also is infrequent enough that it causes major transportation problems when it arrives. I hear laughter from around the country. "Four inches? Transportation problems?" But yes, such is life here in Little Eden that "weather" is almost synonymous with mild temperature and gentle drizzle.

I have a personal stake in our local transportation problems. I'm scheduled to hop on Amtrak's "Coast Starlight" Sunday morning, at 9:45, for a 35-hour ride to Los Angeles, en route picking Jesse up from UC Davis early Monday morning. To do so, I need only show up at the King Street Station at the appointed time, waving my ticket.

Aye, there's the rub. How do I get there? I planned to take a taxi, but they've been reported to be in short supply -- and unreliable in making their appearance -- during this confluence of snowy weather and Christmas travel. Shuttle Express is accepting no more reservations until at least after Sunday. The Metro bus that runs along the arterial nearest my house would be an obvious alternative, but that line has been re-routed during the inclement weather, so as to avoid having to struggle along its usual route up and over Capitol Hill.

I'd risk driving, but there's no long term parking near the train station. I'll be gone for over a week, which guarantees I'd be towed from any illegal parking space I squeezed my car into.

I guess I'll try getting a cab Sunday morning, and, if I can't, I'll trudge for a mile and a half with my baggage to the nearest functioning bus stop. This hardly makes me a martyr in the eyes of residents of Cleveland or Buffalo, but I'm a spoiled West Coast guy. If you don't see any posts on this site during January, please ask the Seattle police to search for my frozen carcass.

In Christmases of yesteryear, folks just snuggled up in a blanket, letting their sleigh glide over the river and through the woods, when to grandmother's house they went. Life was simpler then. More Christmassy, too. (I suppose some poor, cold, underpaid serf had to harness the sleigh to a horse -- I never worry about details like that in my fantasies.)

Aw, shucks. Maybe I'll just pray that it warms up and rains by Sunday!

Order of the Shoe

Muntadhar al-Zeidi is quite the hero this week around the Middle East. No, make that around the world. He's the Iraqi journalist who lobbed his shoes at George Bush during the Great Decider's final triumphant "Mission Accomplished" tour this week.

Insofar as the shoes represented any threat of injury to President Bush, I'm sure virtually all Americans, including me, would deplore the assault. My understanding, however, is that Muntadhar al-Zeidi's intent wasn't to assassinate or even physically harm the president, but to express his utmost contempt and disapproval. The sort of "expressive conduct," like flag burning, protected by the First Amendment here in the USA.

"This is a farewell kiss, you dog," al-Zeidi yelled in Arabic as he tossed his shoes at Bush. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

As do many other Eastern cultures, Arabs consider the human foot -- and by extention the shoe, especially the sole of the shoe -- to be "unclean." I'm not sure of the exact symbolism when a shoe is thrown at someone, but I suspect it's like thrusting your stinking feet in the target's face. In any event, Arab commentators tell us that no other act could have been as insulting.

From our point of view, the merits of the Iraqi invasion can be argued dispassionately, taking into account not only American self-interest, but an entire range of geopolitical and economic factors. Just as from the British point of view, as we all recall from our high school history books, policies adopted to regulate and tax the American colonies were intended to benefit not only the British motherland, but also the American colonists themselves -- to maintain good government and to prevent the colonies from being overrun by Indians, by France and by other imperial powers.

Our response, when British statesmen explained these grave matters of colonial and foreign policy to us, was the Boston Tea Party, our hit and run terrorism at Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence, and several years of warfare, both conventional and guerilla. What if, in the midst of all this conflict, King George III had had the chutzpah to come sailing into Boston -- smirking and glad-handing and and pinning medals on his generals and admirals -- and telling us colonial hicks how bloody lucky we were to have England on hand to protect us?

Well, we weren't as sophisticated and cultivated back in those days. His Majesty would have been lucky to have gotten out of Boston free of tar and feathers, and with his wig still in place. He would hardly have noticed a couple of shoes tossed his way by a colonial newspaperman.

So let's go easy on the impetuous journalist. Save one of those shoes and have it bronzed, Mr. President. You can brag to future guests at your Texas ranch that it's the "Distinguished Order of the Shoe," presented to you by the grateful people of Iraq -- a people whom you saved from themselves.

Simplement une pensée

Elitism is spelling "élitism" with an accent.

Merely a stray thought of mine, inspired by the New Yorker's weighing of elitism (or, as the magazine's editors would have it, élitism) within various presidential administrations. The writer concludes -- by counting Ivy League graduates who held cabinet-level appointments -- that Gerald Ford had the most élitist administration of the past forty years. Clinton had the least élitist.

"LEET!" as young dudes (who probably never even touch the New Yorker, don't you know?) might exclaim. "1337!"

Wishing you a frozen Christmas

Talk of your cold!
Through the parka’s fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we’d close,
Then the lashes froze
Till sometimes we couldn’t see;

It wasn’t much fun,
But the only one
To whimper was Sam McGee.

Photos this week of New England -- the lush and beautiful New England I visited in August -- have displayed a world embedded in ice. No power for 1.5 million homes, probably for days. We can only imagine families wrapped in blankets, huddled with no light and no heat. Just before Christmas.

Here in the Northwest we feel pretty safe from natural calamities, barring the occasional earthquake or volcanic eruption. This fall's been unusually mild, with highs in the 50's and lows in the 40's virtually every day. But -- lest we get too smug -- an Arctic air mass is moving in tonight. Very cold temperatures are expected for at least the next ten days, with snow falling most days next week.

The weather honchos are predicting a low of 11 degrees Monday night. That may seem comfortably moderate to all those poor suckers who've spent their entire pathetic lives in Buffalo, Bangor or Boston -- or to Sam McGee and his fellow Yukon prospectors. But around these parts, eleven degrees is very rare. It's the kind of temperature that allows kids to skate on lakes, just like in olden times, instead of on a rink at the mall. It's the kind of temperature that runners won't run in, for fear of freezing their lungs. It's a world in which mittens become mandatory, when even the most determined teenager won't walk to school in a t-shirt!

But still it's exciting, especially at Christmas. It allows us to join with our East Coast and Mid-West brothers and sisters in a frozen solidarity. It recalls Christmas scenes of an earlier, Dickensian London. It plucks us out of our bland Northwest drizzle and places us into a real life snowy Christmas card or into a painting of Hans Brinker racing on silver skates down frozen canals.

Yup, I love the picturesque. I can ignore for a week the sound of the furnace burning oil unceasingly, and I won't mind at all having my fingers grow numb and my nose red whenever I run down to the store. I don't even mind negotiating a bit of snow on the road as I dash downtown for last minute shopping.

But please -- no multi-day power outages.

A modest proposal

Nothing but trouble comes out of Serbia? Don't you believe it. The country that gave us Gavrilo Princip -- the assassin who started the ball rolling for World War I -- has now redeemed itself by giving us Rod Blagojevich, a governor whose conduct may offer a whole new paradigm in state government financing.

Gov. Blagojevich's snuffling around in the muck for the juiciest truffle he could get in exchange for Obama's former Senate seat -- an appointment that he found himself happily holding in the palm of his trotter -- may seem distasteful to the brahmins and puritans among us. But once you hose off the slime of personal greed, the Illinois governor's conduct actually suggests a wonderful remedy for state insolvency, especially in these harsh economic times.

For several years, a lot of states have relied on state lotteries to help themselves balance their books. These lotteries have, in fact, proven excellent sources of revenue. Unfortunately, lottery profits come disproportionately from the elements of society least able to afford them -- and they shield the wealthiest members of society from increases in their own state income and property taxes.

The Blagojevich Plan -- for want of a better term -- would avoid this regressive effect. Each state government would put Senate vacancies, as they occur, up for auction. The seat would go to the highest bidder. The auction would be managed by the state treasurer, with the governor obligated by law to give the winner his formal appointment. All proceeds would go to the state's general fund, together with conventional tax revenue.

At present, the Seventeenth Amendment would permit this method to be used only for Senate vacancies occuring in mid-term. But radical right wing groups have been agitating for repeal of that amendment, permitting state legislatures once more to appoint Senators. Liberals can join that movement, while urging states to use their new freedom to adopt the Blagojevich Plan. There's no cash to be had from making appointments for political rather than economic reasons, and so the states can be trusted to make the rational decision.

Will the the Blagojevich Plan cause a decrease in quality of our esteemed Senate? Don't be silly. Take a look at who's sitting in the Senate under today's system!

Don't send Blagojevich to jail. Give him the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Burning dim

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
--Sir Edward Grey (August 3, 1914)

As I wandered around downtown today, observing the wonders and curiosities of Seattle, Sir Edward's famous words kept circling through my brain -- at times, I found myself almost humming them. Those lines were uttered by the British foreign secretary in the opening hours of World War I, as he pensively watched a lamplighter light the gas street lamp outside his office window.

Downtown Seattle looked beautiful, as it always does at Christmas. I passed one upscale shop after another, all lavishly decorated for the season, selling every luxury anyone could desire or imagine. The streets and shops were bustling with shoppers. The only gaps, the only places along the sidewalks not lined with prosperous-appearing shops, were the construction sites, marked by giant cranes. Skyscrapers, mixed-use buildings designed for both retail and residential use, continue reaching for the sky.

The usual homeless hung out on the sidewalks, holding their hand-written cardboard signs. But if we overlook them, as we in fact do, life could hardly look finer in the great Pacific Northwest.

So it was in Europe in 1914. Only the old folks could remember a time when life hadn't been peaceful and prosperous. Everyone was excited by new technological advances, scientific wonders. The arts were thriving. Everyone looked forward to the future. The lamps of civilization burned brightly.

But then ... the armies began to move.

In Seattle, today, not all is well behind the glossy surface. The shops are crowded with shoppers, but actual sales are reported to be unnervingly poor. Towering buildings are being erected by mobs of hard-hatted construction workers -- but, if you notice, no new construction has begun within the past six months, maybe even a year. The streets at lunch hour are packed with office workers, but each day the newspaper carries stories announcing new lay offs.

Washington Mutual, one of Seattle's proudest jewels, employing thousands in its glittering new national headquarters building, has collapsed and has been acquired by Chase Manhatten; eighty percent of WaMu's Seattle workforce have received their termination notices in place of a Christmas bonus.

Still, for most of us, life continues normally. The usual happy family Christmas lies ahead. We know all about the banking crisis, the stock market crash, the auto manufacturing crisis, the layoffs around us -- but so far we are safe. Our stock portfolios are down, but we'll be patient. The stock market hits a bear phase every so often, right? The bulls then return and the stocks climb even higher than before. We can wait.

And in August 1914, as the young men -- boys, really -- marched off to war, everyone cheered and said the war would be short. The boys would be home for Christmas. But it wasn't. And they weren't.

We read the news, but so far the news -- well, it just hasn't hit home. But when you're fired, as our neighbors are being fired, you don't buy luxuries, or maybe even necessities. And when you don't buy goods and services, the businesses that sell can't meet their payroll. And when they can't meet their payroll, more employees lose jobs, who in turn stop buying. Pretty soon, that wave of distress, sensed in the distance, draws close. It hits and washes over you.

It took us quite a few years, but that's the kind of economy we've ended up with, an economy that hits the rocks when people stop buying. Even when they just stop buying things they don't need. Because we can't keep a full economy going selling just goods and services that people actually need. This is the inherent contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx said would eventually cause its collapse.

What results is called a deflationary spiral, and that's where many economists think we're heading. Once it starts, it feeds on itself, because people who are scared don't spend. They hang on to whatever money they have. Women don't buy haute couture dresses and gowns, men don't buy Hummers, when their families may need that money just to eat. Unless something breaks the spiral, we end up all unemployed and all hungry.

Christmas 1915 was not a happy time for most British families. I wonder what Christmas 2009 will be like here in Seattle? In America?

I think the lamps may be going out.

The studio saved by a dog

This blog generally aims at topics of universal interest, but its author is, after all, human. And when you have a close relative employed by a major film studio, matters related to that studio draw your attention. And so I break with usual practice, and base this brief post not on my reading of a book, but on my reading of a book review. Not a practice that I'm proud of, to be sure, but our world is entering a depression, and I'm not inclined to go out and spend the $50 list price just so I can more fully do the book justice.

When we see the Warner Bros. logo, I suspect many of us think of a certain rabbit with a carrot. "Eh, what's up doc?," and all that. But a new coffee table book, available for Christmas purchase (only $31.50, actually, from Amazon), shows that the studio -- founded by four brothers named Harry, Abe, Sam and Jack -- was once exemplified by a much nobler animal. A dog, a dog whose popularity saved the studio from bankruptcy. The dog's name? Rin Tin Tin. The famous canine hero, much later popularized in a television series, was the star of Warner Bros. in the 1920's, and the subject of 19 films, most, unfortunately, now lost to history.

According to the review, the book suggests that for most of its existence, Warner Bros. films were notable for telling bleak stories with unhappy endings: a long line of gangster films, Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, the films of director Stanley Kubrick, and even some of the later films including some of Clint Eastwood's. These films, according to the book, were marked by an "existential chill, the air of fated hopelessness."

Whether this early reputation continues for a studio that has released, in more recent years, such films as March of the Penguins, The Polar Express, the Pokémon movies, Scooby-Doo, and the entire Harry Potter series, I'll leave to the reader. Certainly, however, the Batman films and the Matrix series display a darkness of theme and ambiguity in resolution that would be worthy of the studio's Casablanca days of the 1940's.

So if you have the spare loot, buy the book, read the history, enjoy the scads of photo stills from nearly a century of movies, and -- for Tawny's sake -- plunk down the price of admission to the next WB film that shows up in your local theater!

-------------------------------

Richard Schickel and George Perry, You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story, Running Press, $50. Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek in today's NY Times.

Musical legacy

Seattle is home to one of the world's finest private collections of classical violins, violas and cellos, including six violins and one cello crafted by Stradivari in the early 1700's. The collector, David Fulton, has trimmed his collection down in recent years to the fifteen instruments he likes best, including a violin built by Guarnerius del Gesù, the "Lord Wilton," valued at $10 million.

Who knew? I certainly didn't until last night, when I viewed a documentary ("Homage") that Fulton arranged to have filmed on the stage of Redmond's Overlake School, showing off each instrument, both visually and audibly. In the film, violinist James Ehnes chooses and plays a short piece that will best display the characteristics and capabilities of each violin and viola. Sound and cinematography are both outstanding.

Both Fulton and Ehnes were present at last night's showing of the documentary -- on the UW campus -- to subscribers of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. Both offered introductory remarks and took questions following the film. Fulton explained his purpose in making the documentary as a desire to preserve for posterity the sound of each instrument as it plays in 2008. He noted that the sound of a string instrument gradually changes over time, as it ages and its physical condition changes. Musicians today would love to know what these famous violins and violas sounded like a century ago, when they were already about 200 years old.

The music was dazzling. But Ehnes's commentary, before he played each number, drove home to me how superficial my own appreciation of music remains. Ehnes observed how each instrument's musical "color," tonal volume, and relative musical flexibility or rigidity made it most appropriate for the chosen piece. I was fully conscious that he could have played the same violin number on each of the violins, one after the other, and I would have been unable to perceive the difference.

Appreciation of any composer, any performer, any musical instrument increases radically with one's study and experience. Enjoying a Schubert piano sonata as background music on the radio is pleasant, but offers a far less rich experience than listening to it with a score in hand, and then hearing it performed by different pianists. And such appreciation as an informed listener is a far less rich experience than having mastered the sonata on one's own piano, which in turn is less rewarding than having subjected one's own playing to the critique of an experienced teacher. I suppose that a defining characteristic of a piece of "classical" music is that you could study it indefinitely and always find new aspects to appreciate.

With classical music, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. The same is true with the appreciation of wine -- a dinner beverage that I tend to swill down without reflection, intent on my conversation with other more discerning guests who are themselves savoring the nuances of the particular vintage. Fine dining offers the same opportunity, as do the visual arts. And as does, to some degree, any other pursuit whose appreciation increases with one's knowledge and experience. I suppose that I do appreciate reading a well reasoned and well written legal brief more than would many attorneys. Comparing legal work with classical music may startle, but such greater appreciation, if it exists, would result from the time I have invested in writing such briefs myself.

Our age encourages a superficial enjoyment of many pursuits, and many pursuits offer much enjoyment even on a superficial level. But, as a viewing of Homage suggests, it would be a shame to go through life without finding at least one pursuit worthy of deeper study, resulting in the ability to enjoy the work of others from many angles, and on multiple layers -- that is, to appreciate fully the purpose and intent of the artist or artisan who himself has created the work.

USC flips off UCLA and the NCAA

USC coach Pete Carroll said his team will violate a NCAA rule and wear their red home jerseys Saturday against crosstown rival UCLA, thus forfeiting two timeouts since as the visiting team they are required to wear white, ESPN reported.

USC would lose one timeout per half.

"I don't care about it right now," Carroll said, in reference to losing the timeouts. "I think it's the fun thing to do, and I think the fans will appreciate it over time."

--MSNBC (12-2-08)

Hey, why not? The Trojans aren't your dad's junior college team, after all. They're a semi-pro team that just plays for laughs in the Pac-10. They used to call our conference "Southern Cal and the Seven Dwarfs," but then Arizona and Arizona State were admitted, spoiling the joke. But not changing the dynamics.

Like Pete says, "It's the fun thing to do." When you live in Los Angeles, who needs further excuse? Especially when you're USC, playing against your hapless cross-town rivals.

"We think it would be the fun thing to do if we also wore jerseys that said "BRUINS SUCK," Carroll said. "And so we will. That'll cost us two more time outs, but who the f**k cares!"

"Also, Tommy Trojan is going to join every huddle, sitting atop Traveler. We've agreed in advance with the Bruins to "kneecap" two of our running backs in exchange. I don't care about it right now. What the hell, the fans will appreciate it."

Negotiations are still underway with the Bruins to permit USC players to wear giant leis of Pasadena roses throughout the game in exchange for ceding three first round draft picks to UCLA next season.

The Trojans are favored to win Saturday's game by 33 points. They can't lose. (When they're not playing Oregon State.)

And a happy new year

Last night -- deep in the midst of my winter's sleep, while the clock struck 12, heard by no one but my cats -- we tripped quietly across the threshhold into the month of December. The time of year when a person of a certain traditional bent has thoughts that lightly turn to -- Christmas Cards!

Those who pay attention to the mores of our age assure us that the sending of Christmas cards is a dying custom, an anachronism in our age of high speed, digitalized communication. And my own experience does seem to bear out their analysis. Each year I receive fewer cards, each year I wonder if I should myself forbear sending cards and, if I did so, whether anyone would notice.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

So preaches the ever-tedious Alexander Pope. And, as always, Mr. Pope's tedious point is somewhat valid. But scratch a rabid American liberal -- such as me -- and you oft find a secret lover of tradition.

I was a kid who eagerly pounced on the daily mail each December, opening the envelopes and poring over each card before my folks had a chance to wrest them away from me. Half the senders I'd never met, or often had even heard of, but the stories of their lives for the past year, their tales of triumph or tragedy, appealed to my imagination -- as did the varied types of designs and messages that the cards themselves presented. And as a college student, I addressed Christmas cards while others were feverishly preparing for finals -- with predictable results for my GPA.

They say you can guess a man's personality by looking at his dog. Christmas cards offer even more transparent windows into the soul. Four cards, each wishing me the best wishes of the season, but each in a distinct style: a Christmas ornament and a piece of tinsel in a champagne glass; Santa with his feet on his desk, downing a beer with his elves; the Holy Family gathered around a manger, with a host of angels back-lit by a starry sky; an impressionistic view of a snowy forest in winter, with two birds and a deer in the foreground. Four senders of Christmas greetings who view Christmas from four very distinct angles.

Sir Henry Cole is said to have sent the first card in 1843, and we've been sending and receiving them ever since. We can not only judge a sender's personality by the cards he sends, but we can also sense the changing moods of society itself by the differences, from decade to decade, in the style, subject matter, and art work of the Christmas cards it creates.

But, anyway, here's a toast to old Sir Henry. If I ever decide to follow Pope's prudent advice -- to go with the trend of the times and give up sending out cards -- well, it certainly won't be this year. I've long ago purchased my cards, thank you. Next, I'll pore over last year's address list, check out who sent me cards, decide whether the year's been one of those good years when I add rather than subtract names, and draw up a final list of the worthies whose lives will be gladdened when they receive my Christmas greetings for 2008. Close friends and relatives will get a short handwritten greeting; folks to whom I haven't written all year will get whatever length of letter I can squeeze into the space available.

Let's face it. Maybe in 2008, with email and Facebook so readily available, no one really does care if I send them a card or not. But I send them for myself, at least in part. Christmas just doesn't feel like Christmas until I carry my stack of envelopes down to the corner and drop them in the mailbox.

You celebrate the season your way. I'm getting ready to tackle my Christmas cards.

Rich mélange of Indian spices

Our world too often seems depressingly homogenized. With only a few changes, a street scene in Seattle resembles a scene in London, which resembles one in Paris, which resembles one in Sydney. It's therefore exciting -- in a guilty sort of way -- to watch a movie like Slumdog Millionaire, a film that reminds us that the world contains vast regions where people still live lives that are not safe, clean and well-ordered -- whose lives are, to the contrary, primal, dangerous, vivid, colorful, scary, horrifying, full of pain and hunger -- and exhilarating.

India is a country in transition. We know all about today's high tech world of Bangalore, the world of software and tech support. We also have vague images of an older India -- beggars, mystics, disease, overpopulation, starvation, and callous exploitation of starving and maimed children.

Slumdog shows us both Indias. The movie opens on the glitzy television set of a Mumbai version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." A young Indian chai-wallah (boy who delivers tea to office workers) named Jamal answers question after question correctly, reaching the highest rung of the show -- 20 million rupees. But Mumbai is not New York. Before the final round, the show's cynical and obnoxious host has Jamal arrested and horribly tortured by the police to force him to reveal just how he's been cheating. Because, really -- all middle class India knows that a boy of his status would be far too ignorant to give the answers that he does.

The police interrogation presents the framework for the story, a series of flashbacks to Jamal's boyhood and youth, re-enactments of the traumatic events that, once imprinted on his young mind, fortuitously provided the answers to the questions posed on the show. We see the squalor of the Mumbai slums, the gangs of young slum children who survive day by day by their own wits, the unbelievable cruelty of adults who live off those kids, and the rich and immensely varied background of India herself -- including even some beautiful scenes set before the Taj Mahal.

This film could easily have been presented as a depressing sociological tract, calling out the need for slum clearance and protection of children. But it's not. Instead, it's a joyous affirmation of Mumbai slum life, showing not only its chaos and all too frequent cruelty, but also the richness and small daily pleasures experienced by those who live there. Above all, the movie is a love story, the story of a boy who falls in love as a pre-adolescent and never gives up his dream, despite impossible odds and years of separation from the girl he loves.

This isn't the kind of movie where it would ever be in doubt, so let me tell you: In the end, Jamal gets his girl.

The movie has been compared with a Dickens novel. It does resemble Dickens in its portrayal of the underside of an urban society, in its focus on the goodness of children (and especially, the innocence and kindness of its hero), in its celebration of great diversity and peculiarity among human types, and certainly in its overriding theme of sucess and happiness as the reward for virtue and perseverence in the face of enormous obstacles.

The ending is, as you may have gathered, happy. The police interrogator allows that Jamal's explanations are just barely plausible -- and that Jamal is too absurdly honest to have been cheating. Jamal returns for the final round and, of course, wins.

And in case the audience remains in any doubt as to whether the movie ends happily, Jamal and his girl friend -- after being reunited in freeze-frame with a chaste kiss -- suddenly join together with a cast of thousands, singing and dancing their way through the streets of Mumbai (and the closing credits) in an improbable homage to every Bollywood film you've ever seen.

Only in India. Go see it.

Twilight

No. No review of Twilight. Not in the Northwest Corner.

Even though it takes place in Forks, Washington. (Maybe especially because it takes place in Forks.)

I don't read vampire books. I don't watch vampire movies. I don't review vampire books or movies.

Why not? Because ...

Vampires suck.

Fox finds werewolf

We all know Fox News, of course. The troglodyte channel, the world as seen by angry old white men (and a few even angrier, tight-lipped young white women). The sort who "Lexington," in this week's Economist magazine, says belong to the "party of 'white-trash pride,'" and who "are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders."

But I digress.

Whatever else you may say about Fox, it's a business and a successful business at that. It knows its clientele, and it knows their needs and interests. As a result, a perusal of its website reveals news items that never see the light of day on grayer, more boring media such as CNN and ABC.

For example: today's photo article about Pruthviraj Patil, the 11-year-old wolf boy in India. What? You knew nothing of this phenomenon? Well, I didn't either, but now I do. It seems the lad is covered with fur from head to toe, palms of his hands and feet only excepted. According to the story, he suffers from hypertrichosis, a "rare genetic disorder," more felicitously known as "werewolf syndrome."

The story was newsworthy, apparently, because of an anticipated "cure": Columbia University physicians are experimenting with testosterone injections. Too early for news of any progress, but not too early for a nice head shot of the young werewolf. Thanks, Fox News.

The Northwest Corner is proud to pass on this breaking development.

Tickling the ivories

I took piano lessons when I was a kid, but -- like an idiot -- stopped in 9th grade. I still like fooling around on the keyboard. Maybe I'll take lessons again some day.

When I started this blog, twenty months ago, I wrote those words on my profile. Since then, I've continued, at times, "fooling around on the keyboard." Now I want to do more -- more than just fooling around.

If you want to quit smoking, tell everyone you're quitting. The humiliation of breaking such a public resolution may be just the incentive you need to stick with it. Using that trick as an analogy, I now declare to you, my vast reading public, that I plan to give the old piano another whirl.

During my hours of "fooling around," I've managed to work up a fairly acceptable rendition of the first movement to Beethoven's Moonlight sonata. By that, I mean I've learned to play the notes and I've tried to imitate the phrasing and emphasis that I hear in recordings. I haven't had a teacher to provide feedback. And I still don't feel ready to start lessons.

What I do plan to do is to continue working on the Moonlight sonata, and at the same time learn to play the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique sonata. I tried to learn the Pathétique once before. While the second movement is one of the easier Beethoven movements, it is more difficult than the Moonlight. I got discouraged, and didn't master even the first page.

This time, however, I will not get discouraged. I will work on it every day. Sooner or later, I will learn to play it.

Once I do, my self-confidence will increase. I'll find a teacher and arrange for lessons.

Wish me luck. No, not luck. Wish me determination and perseverence. And maybe even a little bit of musicality? I'll report back in three or four months. If I don't, ask me how it's going. Shame me, if necessary!

Post-electoral depression

Twelve days now, since the big election: the "defining moment" of our times. Where now is the elation?

I gaze out the window at the gray sky ... nah, I went running yesterday, I can't do it again today. I glance at the pages of the New York Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, spread all over my living room floor ... no, I've read it all. I flip on the TV, but the world has not changed. Stories about gang murders and drug busts and wild fires and earthquakes ... along with still more footage of a perky Sarah Palin. Even the Faux News anchors, their pre-electoral fury momentarily doused by reality, sound too dull to be interesting.

Same old, same old.

Every December, the young Rainier96 would count down the days and hours to the magic moment of Christmas. And every Christmas evening, or the next day at the latest, our young hero would feel the same vague, inevitable sense of disappointment. "Is this all there is? I waited so long!" So also feels the corporate employee, I imagine, after he finally makes vice president, and the author after he finishes celebrating the conclusion of his book. Doctors even give a medical diagnosis to the sadness felt by some mothers after giving birth, ending nine months of waiting for their child: "post-partum depression."

Even "defining moments" in history cause only incremental changes in our daily lives. Yes, political decisions have real consequences. They will effect real long-term improvements in our lives and in our children's lives. But the political victories themselves do not validate our lives in any satisfying manner, any more than do the successes of our favorite sports teams. As always -- whether we live within a democracy, a monarchy, a dictatorship, or a tribe -- contentment comes from a sense of belonging within our universe, and from our community with other people.

And even with the most integrated of personalities, with the best adjusted of lives, enjoying the warmest of friendships, we may feel discontent following long-awaited triumph, a discontent apparently hard-wired into our brains.

Some folks handle it by going shopping. Others find it helps to add a post to their blog.

Let's make tracks

Weird, isn't it? "Elitists" used to be a term for fat cat Republicans -- symbolized by top hats, cigars, yachts, and the kids off in prep school playing lacrosse. Now, the term has somehow transmogrified into one of Republican scorn for any Democrats with advanced degrees -- scorn expressed as latte sipping, arugula eating, Volvo driving, and NY Times reading.

And, the latest pejorative is -- believe it or not -- "light rail riding"! Yeah, I read that devastating slur in some right wing article, cast hard on the heals of "latte (or was it Chardonnay?) sipping." And some irascible gent in, I believe, Texas, was quoted as declaring that light rail was just one more cog in a liberal elitist conspiracy to turn us all into Europeans. Not for him, by golly. The good old U.S.A. would do just fine, thank you. "I've never been on a light rail," he declared self-righteously, "and I never will."

W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R!! Anyway, this is all just my grumpy introduction to the great news that the Seattle metropolitan area voted -- finally -- to tax itself to pay for extension of our fledgling light rail system. Readers will recall my anguished lament last fall, when voters defeated a combined rail/highway funding issue. This year's measure, named Proposition 1, scaled back the 2007 proposal slightly, and stripped it entirely of the highway funding component opposed by the Sierra Club The measure was submitted to voters in the three-county (King, Pierce, Snohomish) Sound Transit region.

Proposition 1 passed with about 58 percent of the vote! The measure, along with virtually all taxation measures in the Puget Sound area, passed easily, despite the tanking of the region's economy. The large turnout of Democratic voters supporting Obama may well have produced the needed votes to push all these tax measures over the top.

As a result, Sound Transit's light rail transit line under construction at present, running from the University, through downtown, and out to the airport, will be extended an additional 34 miles -- extensions to the north and south, and a new line across Lake Washington to the east. Commuter train and bus service also will be expanded. Forty years after Seattle first voted down a heavy rail transit system, we finally will be undertaking construction -- at far more expense than the system originally planned in 1969 -- of a comprehensive light rail network that will serve the needs of the three-county metropolitan area.

In Seattle, patience is a necessary virtue for those of us favoring major municipal improvements to our infrastructure. But sometimes, patience is rewarded.

---------------------

Photo: Light rail train on test run through downtown Seattle tunnel.

Bury me on the lone prairie

A glance at the electoral map shows that the Republican party has become increasingly a regional party, finding its home in three rough groupings of states:

1. The Old South, excluding Virginia and Florida, and (barely) North Carolina, with an Appalachian sailent running from Tennessee, through Kentucky and West Virginia, and up into southwest Pennsylvania.

2. The central plains, a tier of states stretching south from North Dakota to Texas.

3. Mormon territory, which includes Idaho in addition to the fatherland of Utah.

Other Western states, such as Montana and Arizona, voted for McCain, but are trending blue.

This division of the country leaves the Republicans in control of a lot of red acreage, as shown on the map, but much of that acreage is depopulating (the northern plains), or dying economically (Appalachia, and parts of the South).

If livestock could vote, the GOP would be in a lot better shape.

Republican moderates are now urging the party to repackage its traditional core principles of financial responsibility, small government, and individual self-reliance in ways that could appeal to a new demographic -- young people, blacks and Hispanics, and educated, suburban middle class voters. Something also needs to be done to reclaim traditional Republican blocs (such as business leaders and conservative intellectuals) that are drifting off toward the Democrats. But most Republican spokesmen reply that the party must swing even further to the right, and thus attract voters by force of its idealogical purity. A continuing hemorrhage from the ranks of corporate executives and conservative intellectuals seems almost to be welcomed by a party whose heart lies with small town and rural white voters.

Parties always pull themselves together after electoral disasters, and come back within a decade or two. But the current spokesmen for the Republican party -- one can hardly still call what's left "leaders" -- seem to show little interest in making such a recovery easy.

President Obama

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

If I could talk with the animals . . .

We've all had the experience of talking in a chatroom to someone we've never met before. You type something, and seconds later a reply appears on your computer screen. The conversation can be inane or seriously intellectual, but we take on faith that somewhere in the world, a human being, just like us, is typing replies on his or her own computer.

But what if the server handling the chatroom is not relaying our messages to another human being? What if the server has its own sophisticated program capable of mimicking human responses to input? Such programs have existed for quite a while, of course, but at some point it becomes apparent from the canned nature of the reply that we are not dealing with a human. But suppose the software becomes so sophisticated -- volunteering information, initiating new topics, expressing surprise and humor, responding completely naturally to our own remarks -- that it becomes impossible for any observer to determine objectively whether we are dealing with a person or a program.

Is the program, or the server on which the program is installed, "conscious"? If, hypothetically, there is no test that I can perform at my terminal that would differentiate the mimicking program from a human being, how do we know, objectively, that the program is not conscious? Or, conversely, how do we know that the people with whom we interact daily are not robots -- robots programmed to speak and behave as they do, robots which do not share "consciousness" with us?

And, for that matter, what do we mean when we claim that we ourselves are "conscious"?

All this is a well-traveled road in science fiction, of course. Recall HAL, the computer in the Kubrick movie 2001, Space Odyssey. HAL appeared completely, humanly conscious, even to the extent of disobeying instructions, killing its (his?) wards, and expressing remorse and fear of death as it (he?)was being shut down by the crew. These questions are also familiar territory in philosophy (see solipsism) and in psychology, as well as in the speculation of 12-year-old kids lying out on the lawn staring at the stars.

What brings it to mind is a review in this week's Economist of a book by a Brandeis professor named Irene Pepperberg. (Caveat: I haven't read the book.) According to the review, Dr. Pepperberg lived for 30 years or so with a roommate named Alex, an African Grey Parrot. She taught Alex to learn the English words for about 50 objects, to have a total vocabulary of about 100 words, to count from one to six, to "perform simple addition," and to make use of categories such as "same," "different," shape, color and material. Alex also could combine words in a rational manner to make new words for new objects.

Alex made headlines last year when he died. His last words to his owner were, "You be good. I love you."

Was Alex consciously speaking in the same sense as a young child consciously speaks? Or was he just "parroting" words? How do we know? If we assume that Alex could actually perform the tasks that Dr. Pepperberg claims for him, how do we know if he was merely a computer responding to stimuli as she had programmed him to do, or if -- on the other hand -- he was actually using the speech that Dr. Pepperberg had taught him to express "himself" in the same way that a child would? If he was simply a robot, a black box that spoke back automatically to input stimuli, then are our dogs and cats also robots when they express themselves non-verbally? When my cat approaches softly and puts his cheek against mine, is he simply reacting to expected warmth? Or is his behavior simply a learned response to his past experience that I tend to scratch his itchy head when he does so?

If we grant dogs and cats some level of conscious behavior, and parrots some ability to use human speech as an expression of consciousness, where does that leave the computer program? If a program can be designed to mimic a dog's behavior -- a far simpler matter than my original hypothetical of one imitating a human being -- does the computer have a dog's consciousness? Is the fact that a real dog's "program" is encoded in organic neural synapses rather than in semi-conductors a critical distinction? Why and how?

Hey, I don't have any solutions! And as far as I can tell, neither do scientists. The nature of consciousness, as viewed as a scientific question rather than as a matter best left to philosophy or theology, appears totally up in the air at present. Maybe, insofar as "consciousness" seems to be a purely subjective phenomenon, it is not even a subject with which science can deal.

But I expect we will hear much more about it from the scientific community in the coming years.

-------------------------

Irene M. Pepperberg, Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence -- And Formed a Deep Bond in the Process (2008). The author published a less anecdotal study earlier, entitled The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots (2000).

Sir Barack and the Black Knight

"I'm not afraid of the fight, I'm ready for it," McCain told noisy supporters at a rally.

--Oct. 28, 2008

Welcome aboard!

--The Economist (10/25-31/2008)

The Obama campaign is proving attractive to a number of conservative intellectuals: disillusioned Republicans who are fed up with Bush and find Obama's "pragmatism, competence and respect for the head rather than the heart" to be congenial. So reports "Lexington," The Economist's commentator on American affairs, in this week's issue:

For many conservatives, Mr Obama embodies qualities that their party has abandoned: pragmatism, competence and respect for the head rather than the heart. Mr Obama’s calm and collected response to the turmoil on Wall Street contrasted sharply with Mr McCain’s grandstanding.

Much of Mr Obama’s rhetoric is strikingly conservative, even Reaganesque. He preaches the virtues of personal responsibility and family values, and practises them too. He talks in uplifting terms about the promise of American life. His story also appeals to conservatives: it holds the possibility of freeing America from its racial demons, proving that the country is a race-blind meritocracy and, in the process, bankrupting a race-grievance industry that has produced the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I think Democrats should welcome with open arms anyone who seeks a rational approach to our nation's problems, and who shares certain core values held by most Americans regardless of party -- even if the conclusions of these former Republicans regarding the policies that would best implement those values may differ from current Democratic orthodoxy.

Over the past decade, the essential difference between the two parties has become one of enlightened rationalism vs. emotional tribalism, not such traditional issues as their varying approaches to tax policy or tariffs or even immigration reform.

So -- Welcome to Colin Powell and Chris Buckley, and to all the other Republicans who may be wavering as the GOP ship begins to sink.

Indian summer

But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
--James Whitcomb Riley

As faithful readers, you are well aware that the Northwest had a cold spring and a not-much-better summer. Winter now is fast approaching, and 2008 was beginning to feel like a wasted life, an awareness of lost opportunities with the chill of death already on the horizon. But Nature's taken pity, and granted us an Indian summer.

No one really knows where the term originated. I've always assumed it came from English colonists who observed the Indians harvesting their crops and preparing for winter. A more sinister theory is that an Indian summer provided war-like natives a spell of additional good weather during which they could continue their attacks on the colonists.

My own images of Indian summer, however, are all warm, happy and romantic. One of my books as a kid had a favorite illustration of a boy and his grandfather looking out over a hazy autumn cornfield, next to a pile of burning leaves that the grandfather had finished raking up. A huge harvest moon hung on the horizon. The old man was telling stories to the boy, while the boy stared out at the field and imagined the shocks of corn to be Indians dancing about their camp fire. Another book, a child's book of poetry by James Whitcomb Riley, had atmospheric drawings I liked looking at, while my mother read the accompanying poem about an Indiana farm boy's love of autumn days when the frost was on the pumpkin, and the corn was in the shock.

No shocks of corn around my house, I'm afraid, and the pumpkins are all stacked in front of Safeway. But when I go out, I feel the morning air still cold, the sun warm. The leaves dazzle with all the colors of fall -- yellow-green, yellow, orange, red, burnt umber, brown. Across the street, a neighbor's tree turns a brilliant scarlet for a week, before the leaves drop and blow away. Mixed smells of dead leaves and smoke hang in the air.

The squirrels frantically gather nuts, and squirrel them away. The morning sky shines a brilliant blue, far clearer and deeper than any hue of summer. College students walk toward the university with purposeful strides, invigorated by the crisp early morning. Old people seem more alert and friendly, out walking their dogs.

As the day goes on, temperatures warm into the upper 60's, and walking in a sweater becomes uncomfortably warm. At the same time, the sky starts to cloud up. I fear rain, and winter. But the next morning brings yet another brilliant day of Indian summer.

Some philosophers say life seems precious only because we know we are mortal. Knowing that death is certain, but that for now we are alive, provides an occasional sense of intense joy that would otherwise escape us. The same with the seasons. Hawaii has no Indian summer. Every day in Hawaii is summer, and every day is the same. Who cares if it is July or January? But Indian summer to us in the Northwest is intensely pleasurable; we know that we're living on borrowed time, that we're enjoying one final fling before we fall into the cold and dark of the months of winter.

This year's mid-October is beautiful and exhilarating, even yet more beautiful because we sense November looming ahead.

Scouring the Shire

WASHINGTON - Rushing to ease endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office, U.S. Interior Department officials are trying to review 200,000 comments from the public in just 32 hours, according to an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has called a team of 15 people to Washington this week to pore through letters and online comments about a proposal to exclude greenhouse gases and the advice of federal biologists from decisions about whether dams, power plants and other federal projects could harm species. That would be the biggest change in endangered species rules since 1986.
. . .
Environmentalists said the move was the latest attempt by the Bush administration to overrule Congress, which for years has resisted efforts by conservative Republicans to make similar changes by amending the law.

"Somebody has lit a fire under these guys to get this done in due haste," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive director of Defenders of Wildlife and the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service under former President Clinton.

Well, isn't that sweet! One last chance for George W to gut our environmental protection laws before that damn bunch of tree-huggers takes office! More goodies for his corporate base. "Après moi, le déluge", says our very own Texas version of Louis XV.

Kind of reminds me of "The Scouring of the Shire," that second to the last chapter of The Return of the King, a chapter that the movie omitted. All about Saruman's final revenge against the detested hobbits after they defeated his lord, Sauron of Mordor. He and his henchmen appropriated for themselves everything of value in the Shire. And wantonly ruined whatever they didn't want.

So I guess that will be Bush's final legacy. Like Saruman's revenge for his own loss:

I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.

But, like hobbits, we are resilient, and we will eventually recover from this nightmarish eight years. And, of course, Bush has never had either the intelligence or the malice of Saruman the Wise. He is just a weak, little man who continues to be manipulated by persons and powers stronger than himself. Oliver Stone probably portrayed the whole sorry picture pretty acurately in his current movie.

But it's almost over.

Fifteen days and counting . . .

It's nail-biting time for political junkies. And finger-crossing time for us Obama supporters. I mailed in my ballot yesterday. Now comes two more weeks of waiting.

On the surface, everything seems to be going great guns for the Obama campaign. Obama and Biden were the consensus winners of all four debates. The economy tanked at the best possible time -- one almost suspects that the Bush administration itself pulled the plug, as one final shot across McCain's bow! The polls for the past month have consistently shown an Obama lead.

The electoral college map looks even better. The interactive map accessible from Yahoo's home page goes so far as to show a 344-167 Obama lead, with North Carolina remaining as a battleground state, but leaning to Obama). (Another six states with no polling data available are virtually certain to break 20-7 for Obama.) Other estimates are more cautious, but still favorable. The Bush presidency has record low approval ratings, and an initial burst of enthusiasm for Sarah Palin has died for everyone except the true believers.

More good news over the weekend: Colin Powell endorsed Obama. The endorsement came two days after the Oliver Stone movie "W" was released, portraying Powell as the only member of the Bush team with any intelligence and integrity. And the Obama campaign announced that it had raised an incredible $150 million during September. Obama has purchased all available TV time between now and the election.

And yet, I'm uneasy. Very uneasy. Living on the West Coast, surrounded by Obama supporters, I feel very insulated from whatever's going on in the heartland of America. All my information comes from the national media, which, even to me, appear biased toward Obama (except for Fox News, which lives in a bizarre parallel universe of its own, and is even less credible).

As Newsweek recently noted, the spread between the two candidates, shown by the polls, is strangely small considering all the factors that should favor any Democratic candidate this year. Although polls vary, the spread actually seems to be narrowing slightly. I've always been concerned about the so-called Bradley effect, but I sense a simmering hostility toward Obama that really isn't explicitly racial. Newsweek describes it as a fear of the "different," the "who is this guy, anyway?" effect.

The election may be an Obama landslide, but it just as easily could be a McCain upset.

So I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've signed up to be an Obama observer at the polls. (My county is one of the last two Washington counties that still provides polling booths for those voters who prefer to cast ballots in person -- after this election, the entire state will vote exclusively by mail.) Washington historically has had little problem with voter fraud, and an Obama victory is a foregone conclusion in this state, so I don't see my day of service as actually contributing much to the cause.

But it's just the only way I can think of to ward off anxiety by doing something, anything. Aside from crossing my fingers and biting my nails .

Guilt by association

And the Pharisees and the Scribes murmured, saying, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
--Luke 15:2

The Republican campaign continues to gasp with alarm over Obama's association with Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obviously, the Republicans are grasping at straws to attack Obama's credibility, and obviously there is no evidence that any radical or racist views by either man somehow rubbed off on Obama, affecting any decisions he would make in the future.

But that isn't really the Republican argument. Republicans argue that Obama's willingness even to associate with these men -- regardless of any effects on Obama's policies or opinions from that association -- is sufficient in itself to prove his lack of good judgment. In other words, one must not merely think correctly himself, but must also not associate with those dangerous people who do not think correctly.

Consider also McCain's outrage -- real or feigned -- at Obama's willingness to talk to the Iranians without "preconditions." And at Obama's meeting with Palestinian leaders when he visited Israel last summer.

A common psychological thread runs through these attitudes.

I sense that many Republicans feel a compulsion to keep themselves (and others) free from any contamination that might result from rubbing up against the wrong sorts of people, ideas and even thoughts. ("He is not one of us!") And they feel this need especially acutely in their leaders. On the other hand, most Democrats, I suggest, feel that exposing themselves to every idea, however outlandish, and to every sort of person, however different, can be only neutral at worst -- and highly valuable at best. If you work the streets as a politician or activist in the black south side of Chicago, for example, you want to learn what motivates the people you are serving, even where those motivations may be unpleasant and despicable. If this means working with 1960's radicals with whom you disagree, or attending a church led by a firebrand pastor -- so what?

Similarly at the governmental level. If the Iranians pose a serious threat to American interests, Democrats believe we should try to understand what motivates them. Does Iran have legitimate interests that motivate its actions, interests that possibly could be satisfied in a less frightening manner? Is the Iranian government motivated by years of American support for the Shah, and, if so, can we do anything to defuse that long-simmering hostility? Is Iran motivated by fear of Israel? By a desire to be a leader in the Muslim world? By nostalgia for the glory of the Persian Empire? Can we help them satisfy any of these psychological needs or compulsions without compromising any of our own interests or the interests of our allies? Are Iranian leaders simply irrational anti-Americans, beyond any hope of rational debate? If so, that would be useful to ascertain as well.

Simply labeling the Rev. Wright or Ayers as dangerous radicals, past or present, should not put those men off-limit to any future contact by responsible citizens. Simply labeling Iran as "evil" -- besides being a gross simplification of any person's or any government's motivation -- does not warrant isolating it from any future contact with our government.

But less interesting than these policy conflicts themselves is the difference in psychology between Democrats and Republicans that may give them birth. As a liberal Democrat (and as an attorney who knows that solutions to most disputes can ultimately be negotiated), my own psychological makeup makes it hard for me to imagine how a policy of "Know Not Thy Enemy" benefits anyone, government or individual. Also, as a brief glance at history suggests, enemies have a way of morphing into useful allies virtually over night.

But not if we have insulated ourselves from all human contact with them in advance.

Reaping what we sow

Even during the war, when I had traveled here, I had thought that if Vietnam hadn't been so beautiful we would not have ravished it, nor would the French have bothered to colonize and plunder it.

--Paul Theroux

For the last seven years we have been at war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. We are still fighting in both countries. Are we "winning"? Are we making the world safe for democracy? If we lose the war in the Middle East, will we forfeit the respect of the rest of the world.

Right now, I'm thinking not of those questions, but of what Afghanistan and Iraq will be like a generation from now. This question comes to mind from my reading of Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. I've mentioned before my fascination with his idiosyncratic travelogue, The Great Railway Bazaar. That book was an account of his four months of travel by train, in 1973 at the age of 32, from London to Japan, through India and Southeast Asia, and then back to London through the USSR.

Thirty-three years later, having turned 65, he decided to repeat the trip -- again by rail -- insofar as still possible. Ghost Train, published this year, is the story of that trip -- a study of cities and countries, villages and peoples, many of which have changed considerably since 1973, and others that have changed little. The book is also a mirror in which Theroux finds revealed the changes in himself, the image of a much older and somewhat sadder individual, again reacting, but this time differently, to rough travel and third-world peoples.

In 1973, his earlier visit to South Vietnam came not long before the Americans finally pulled out, leaving that devastated land in the hands of a corrupt South Vietnamese government that quickly collapsed when confronting the North Vietnamese military forces. We had occupied and fought in the country for over ten years. We dropped more tonnage of explosives on the tiny area of North Vietnam than we had on Germany and Japan combined in World War II. We said we wanted to preserve "democracy" in Vietnam, and did so by propping up a military puppet government. We wanted to avoid the "domino effect" that our "experts" hypothesized would result from our defeat -- the theory that, one by one, the countries of Southeast Asia would collapse like dominoes before the forces of godless, anti-Western, Communist materialism.

Vietnam did fall. Out of spite, we embargoed the starving country and silently supported China in its war with Vietnam. We supported Pol Pot and his genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia when Vietnam tried to depose him. Vietnam prevailed in both struggles. There were no dominoes. Cambodia is now a kingdom. Laos (on which we also dropped enormous numbers of bombs and landmines in a war that Nixon and Kissinger never admitted took place) remains a professedly Communist state that nevertheless welcomes Western business and tourism. Other states in the area -- Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore -- have varying forms of government, none of which is even remotely socialist, let alone Communist.

In 1973, Theroux's train from Saigon had run only as far as Hue, which by then was a desolate, bombed-out city, part way up the coast. It had been a dangerous ride, with the constant threat of attack from guerilla forces. Beyond Hue, the track was cut as it entered Communist-held North Vietnam. Travel to Hanoi had then been an impossible dream. Hanoi was just a target for American bombing.

Now, 30 years later, travel to Hue, and then on to Hanoi, and even into China, was as easy as buying the tickets.

He discovered, as all tourists do, that Hanoi is a beautiful city of French architecture and planning -- wide boulevards, cathedral, opera house, government buildings, colonial mansions and villas --surrounded by the normal chaos of an Asian city. He contrasted the French occupation of Vietnam with that of the Americans.

The French had been humiliated in battle ... and driven out; but at least they had left long boulevards of imposing buildings behind. And we had left nothing except a multitude of scars and the trauma of the whole miserable business, ten years of terror and seven million tons of bombs.

Theroux talked to many Vietnamese -- in Saigon, in Hue, and in Hanoi. He was overwhelmed by their friendliness toward him as an American. He heard their stories of horror, including accounts of the Christmas bombing of Hanoi -- a "genocidal act of pure wickedness," in Theroux's opinion -- ordered by President Nixon in 1972. He saw the quiet, unemotional exhibits in the war museums, displaying the artifacts and consequences of the bombings, presented as the historical facts of an unfortunate time, not as an attack on Vietnam's adversaries.

One of the greatest aspects of the new Vietnam was its compassion, its absence of ill will or recrimination. Blaming and complaining and looking for pity are regarded as weak traits in Vietnamese culture; revenge is wasteful. They won the war against us because they were tenacious, united, and resourceful, and that was also how they were rebuilding their economy.

As horribly as the war in Vietnam affected our military personnel, as well as the Vietnamese people, we were unbelievably fortunate in our defeat. We were defeated by a people who look to the future not to the past. While our cultures are different, the Vietnamese share with us an entrepreneurial, hard-working spirit that makes them an easy people for us to work with. When I visited Laos and Cambodia last fall, I learned that the French had strongly favored the Vietnamese over their other two Indochinese colonies because of the Vietnamese traits of ambition and diligence. (The Vietnamese plant rice; the Cambodians watch it grow; the Lao listen to it grow. --French colonial joke.) Like us, the Vietnamese are a forward looking people who do not nurse grievances.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, I fear that our luck has run out. Do we see anything in their culture that suggests they ever let by-gones be by-gones? Do we feel they forgive and forget an injury? Does the culture of the Middle East in general suggest a civilization that is forward looking and optimistic?

I suspect we will be paying a heavy price -- paying for our torture and bombings, for our half-baked plans to impose our own concept of democracy, for our perceived coveting of Iraqi oil, for the humiliations we have forced upon these proud and hyper-sensitive Arab peoples -- for generations to come.