Asleep Awakes

I fell asleep last night while thinking tiring thoughts.

Anglo-Saxons still carry the burden of their past, the unsettling lack of fit between empire-building and empire-burning. I looked across the darkling plain, as Matthew Arnold puts it, and saw ignorant armies clashing by night on the battlefield of the spirit.

How else to explain the contempt, revulsion, fear and disgust that comes out of the USA as it used to come out of Victorian England? There is a kind of socially-mandated or oddball respect for the ancient cultures of China, India, Persia and the rest of the cradle of civilisation — a cradle that runs from Asia's western border with the Mediterranean and Africa to its eastern border on the Pacific, rocking on its base in the Indian Ocean. But there is also a visceral horror at the purported barbarism and inhumanity of the evil Oriental who can be found throughout the region.

This is why the United States of America, while speaking peace and joy, still wants to keep bases in the Indian Ocean (where the US really doesn't belong), float navies in the South China Sea (which has been the Nanyang or Southern Ocean to China for centuries), and neutralise the Persian Iranian nuclear programme (despite the fact that Pakistan and India, just round the corner, already have nukes ready to go). They deny the overwhelming desire to obtain and keep a resource-rich empire, with very British precedent, while lusting after the kingdoms of the world.

Such an insecure power. When the crude but much-trumpeted beginning of that power came in 1776, my ancestors had left China and settled elsewhere already. My ancestors lost the use of their Chinese language before the USA was more than a dream. By the time the present 50-state confederation (with protectorates and assorted imperial fragments) was formed, English had become my mother tongue — but not American.

But America has a right to be an Eastern Pacific and Northern Atlantic power. Where it fails is its oil-driven hunger to be a Middle Eastern power (meddling through proxies) as well. This meddling in Asia is what did for Britain eventually, and may yet do for the Pax Americana. It ain't healthy, cowboy.

America the beautiful, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. But stay out of other people's seas, do.

The Curious Morality of Doomsday

The United States of America maintains forward bases all over the world. The list of such bases is extensive, a hand of many digits grasping the lands of all the world. The USA maintains these bases in the interests of its own national security, and as a distant secondary, the occasional security of its allies.

At bases like Diego Garcia, a US-occupied atoll which is actually part of the British Indian Ocean Territories, this hegemonic power maintains hundreds of cruise missiles capable of delivering extreme munitions (think 'weapons of mass destruction') to sites anywhere along the periphery of the inhabited rim of the Indian Ocean.

Why should that concern us? It should concern most of the world because the western edge of that rim is the east coast of Africa, the northern edge consists of the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, and the eastern edge is south-east Asia. If you take the time to map out the locations of American bases where they shouldn't be, you will find that the US is the one nation able to visit doomsday upon any other state in the world.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the hypocrites who are pointing fingers at relatively harmless (I say 'relatively', mind you) states such as Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan for possible possession of nuclear weapons. It seems not to concern us that the world's policeman has the policy of 'we get to carry weapons and nobody else does', while at home a large proportion of their people says that everyone should have the right to bear arms.

They are also the most ostentatiously 'Christian' nation on earth, excepting the Holy See. I wouldn't mind if they were less ostentatious, because the nature of their ostentation is one that Jesus calls attention to: it is the ostentation of the white-washed tomb, the public announcement of charity, the display of holiness. And a lot of them would hate to be called Christian anyway, it seems.

In this age, it is more like the silk suit of the gangster or the gold chain of the pimp. Which is not to say that all Americans are bad; rather, they have created such a large and powerful rogue state that it is the default 'good' of this benighted world. It reminds me of what Sir John Harrington said a long time ago: "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

America, if any state could be so, is the Babylon of the age, the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar beholden to the power of evil. What it needs is the moderating influence of a Daniel, and more. The solution to an evil world is not to have a greater evil come along and blow it up while saying pretty things about democracy.

Random Thoughts on US Election Day 2008 (Part III)

Polls just closed over the entire great country (excepting the secessionists of Alaska). More random thoughts come to mind...

• Alaska is a huge place. It's the largest state in America, about 1.7 million square kilometres of mineral goodness. The Yanks bought it for what in this year's US dollars would be $360m. It boggles the mind.
• Haha, the moment polls closed, they gave the West Coast to Senator Obama. He's at 324 electoral votes now and counting.
• In retrospect, this marks the true beginning of the Internet Era. The anti-Internet, anti-blogging, anti-freedom-of-speech, anti-intellectual cabals and agencies of the past age have just lost one major battle in the culture wars.
• Apple machines are very cool. And so is Apple stock.
• The senator from Illinois may yet hit 378 EV. They haven't quite called Indiana, North Carolina, Missouri, Montana, Colorado, or Nevada yet. Soon.
• Obama will have won a victory 'from sea to shining sea'.

Actually, you might as well have the full lyrics. America isn't always quite so beautiful, but it sometimes can be.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Heatwave

Where I'm sitting right now, the average temperature is about 33°C and the droning of grasscutting equipment fills the distant air. It's a vengeful onslaught presaging a really hot summer. Or so you would think, if you hadn't just had a really cold rainy few days prior to this.

It's hard to think about higher average temperatures when you've been having the occasional bout of record-breaking lowest-ever local temperatures. It's hard to think about global warming when everyone seems to be wondering about nuclear fireballs. It's easy to think of American strategy in the Middle East as an aberration of foreign policy.

But the average temperature is going up, the desire for nuclear playthings likewise, and American strategy in the Middle East is something we've come to expect from certain kinds of administrations. Back in the latter part of the 20th century, America backed India with arms shipments (which India then used to absorb the smaller states of Goa, Hyderabad and so on) then switched to Pakistan as a counterbalance (and supplied them F-15s, believe it or not). Thus, the two big South Asian democracies (yes, India is indeed the largest democracy in the world) were put at each other's throats to the benefit of the US military-industrial complex.

Who do you think is to blame for the fact that both Pakistan and India have some kind of nuclear capability? Maybe China; it's convenient to blame them. But the first arms traders to make a killing in South Asia were the British, followed by the Russians and Americans. And the killing hasn't stopped.

I think the problem that Americans have in seeing all this is that Americans don't have a very detailed mental map of the world. The Onion's Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth (73rd Edition) is a masterpiece of lampoonery directed at mainly American stereotypical perceptions. Unfortunately, the fragments which substitute for a mental map are indeed a lot like the funny bits lovingly assembled by The Onion's team.

And so outside my window, the heatwave continues. The haze rises off the ground, and you can see little of clarity beyond it. The drone of the grasscutting machines fills the air with white noise and green flecks. And everything hangs, uncertain.

Parallels

The word 'parallel' is Greek in origin, from 'para-', which means 'beside and distinct'; and 'allo-' which means 'in like manner or positional relationship'. A parallel, then, is something that is not the same as, but virtually equivalent to, that to which it is parallel. Greek prepositions are many and varied, but combining two in one word always leads to interesting vocabulary.

Here are snippets from a parallel universe, upon a summit one might vaguely have thought of as somewhat Olympian.

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"There is," said the elder statesman (now retired), "an institution that prides itself on putting up eagles in every courtyard, that puts its principles on display and violates them with impunity, that sets up a condition in which rule of law maintains order, but in which the law is an instrument constructed and administered by those intent on maintaining power and control.

"For where we speak of conflict, the word which our first speaker omitted must also be mentioned - and that word is power. It is a sad fact of our non-ideal world that many institutions perpetuate the power of those who no longer possess the right to power, the will to power, or the fact of power. These are old powers, no longer relevant to the modern world. What they have left is positional power, entrenched by decree, and they hang on to it ruthlessly.

"I am not speaking of the Roman Empire, although this might have applied equally to them."

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"It is a small entity," said the minister, "With the good fortune not to have any resources of note, except the will, mind and ability to sweat. I say 'good fortune', because human nature is such that if it had any resources to exploit, those in power would have wanted to attain positions of power to dip their hands into its cookie jar, or to rule and subjugate it.

"But it is a realistic entity. It functions on three principles: 1) that the world is not an ideal place (although it is a place for idealists); 2) that it can be of help to many and thus cement a place for itself; 3) that it can achieve far more than its resources seem to allow, by ingenuity, wit, patience, determination, and good humour.

"It cannot lead the world or drive global culture or revolution. But it can survive, thrive, and act as a model that others can see and be inspired by."

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Parallels are funny things. Sometimes, we see as through a glass darkly; sometimes, as face to face. (This is called optical dichroism.) Sometimes, we see with blinding sight, that happiness is not an affliction and sobriety not always a virtue. And sometimes, we are enlightened in all humility, and we reflect that the world is indeed a better place for people who can laugh at themselves.