Elephant Talk

Liberals may not admit it now, but we are so going to miss this guy when he’s gone. Obama will be too intelligent, McCain dry as a bone. But Bush, oh the laughs we’ve had over the years…

“And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House.”
- President George W. Bush (From the Huffington Post.)

I’m glad he cancelled his trip to South Korea. In the current political-social climate, we really don’t need him fucking things up more than they already are.

I want to marry this woman. But me in Korea… her in Iraq… It probably wouldn’t work out.

If you look at it bleakly, all the recent protests signal — at least in part — a new wave of anti-Americanism, and the Marmot’s Hole has been posting about this reality. At the same time, there’s a certain charm to the whole thing. This article made me laugh about a half dozen times. I could see a lot of the “good Korea” in it, because I see smaller versions of this in daily life all the time.

I particularly liked this middle section:

Besides the lack of violence, what is surprising - even to South Koreans - is that there is no organizer for the already weeks-long demonstration. People took to the streets and formed ad hoc protest groups, usually around 6pm or 7pm each day. This has been bewildering to South Korean civil society, labor unions and opposition politicians - the usual players in such public protests. Tuesday’s rally was the first officially organized protest and had the biggest turnout - police estimate 105,000 demonstrators, while the organizers said the number was closer to 500,000.

Still, one might think it was some kind of mass picnic, until you spot the riot police standing stiff, waiting for a crackdown order. Some people are holding impromptu concerts complete with guitars and violins, singing and dancing. In some cases, entire families have arrived to literally “camp out” in the middle of traffic. Of course they brought tents with them.

Other “protesters” have brought hot coffee to serve anyone who needs it. And high school students have given out roses to riot police, a move that definitely brings down the tension level. Some are distributing water bottles to the aggressive “frontliners” who usually shout more and work up a justified thirst. There are even volunteer medics walking around, shouting “Does anybody need help?”

Young couples use the protest for a romantic outing. They march with hands held tight, and the other hand holding a candle. Local TV footage has shown a man celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday with a protest-candle cake. Other “demonstrators” have brought an outdoor movie projector and are showing the US documentary Sicko.

With the party atmosphere in full swing, the street vendors are enjoying a heyday of extra money and unusual business hours. It’s 2am, and here they are selling kimbob (Korean sushi) or bundaegi (roasted silkworm larvae) right in the middle of roads that have been declared “no-traffic zones” by protesters who’re occupying them.

This is South Korea’s street protests 2.0. Or, perhaps, South Korea’s “postmodern” demonstrations. With some Koreans mistrustful of mainstream media reports on the demonstration, they’ve taken matters into their own hands by broadcasting and reporting themselves. Using high-speed wireless Internet, some “embedded” citizens are using their own laptops and camcorders to broadcast real-time events. There are “citizen reporters” conducting interviews and taking pictures and posting them on their personal blogs and Internet forums. In fact, these news hounds have been so effective that some established newspapers have begun quoting them.

I was leaving a restaurant when I saw the HDTV showing news of the massive protests against President Lee Myung Bak in Seoul. The girl behind the counter pointed at her forehead, smiled, and said “mad cow.” Here’s a picture from the International Herald Tribune, the lead story for the day.

And the story.

The Koreans do protest way better than Americans do, that’s for sure.

Here’s an interesting article on Korean president Lee Myung-bak’s vision for the future of Seoul. The idea is to emulate Seattle and make Seoul more eco-friendly.

Seoul’s population is 10.3 million. Seattle’s is 0.5 million. But I like the effort.

I wasn’t going to weigh in on this mad cow issue between Korea and the US, mostly because I don’t know enough about it. But I had a conversation about it recently, and it made me think a little differently about, not just beef, but Korean-American relations.

A little background, as much as I understand it anyway: About a month ago South Korea relaxed its barriers on the importation of US beef. Around the same time, some Korean doctor or academic released a study that determined that Koreans are more susceptible to mad cow disease because of their “unique” genetic makeup. Well, people went apeshit. There were massive protests. It became the new reason for Koreans to be angry at Americans (as if they need one).

The United States government response, with media in tow, is falling back on United States logic and common sense. This mostly involves reassurances that the beef is safe, that mad cow is extremely rare, and that steps will be taken to ensure that there are no problems. Foreigners here cite the bird flu epidemic in Korea and therefore call the anger over safety issues hypocritical.

I met a really smart girl this weekend and I asked her about this issue. She put it to me this way: It has nothing to do with beef. What Americans don’t understand is that anytime something like this happens, it’s yet another example of how Koreans aren’t in control of their own destiny. They feel as if the United States is continually strong-arming them into doing something in the US interest and not in the interest of Koreans. US beef will not help their lives, it’s strictly an issue of economics. The politicians go along with it because they know that they’re under the protection of the US militarily and economically, at least in part.

So to her it feels like another manifestation of US colonization. Koreans want to live their own lives and make their own decisions. But the politicians always seem to fall back on US decisions. So people get angry. It’s not about beef, it’s about self-respect and self-determination.

Now… yes, Koreans are nationalistic and ethnocentric. But this argument made sense to me, and it helped explain a lot. The Unites States is always seeing things through its own often arrogant code of logic and common sense. It’s reflected in politics, in economics, in the media, and in public opinion. If a good argument is made, the action is justified. It’s Occam’s razor in action: disregard nuance and you can make tangible policy. You simply need to make the other side to see things more clearly.

This, incidentally, is also why the United States is failing to stifle terrorism. It’s a mistake to believe that if everyone could simply come around to our view of things, they would see the benefits. There are many places in the world that do not have the same worldview. And these people are not stupid.

Sorry, I’ve jumped into something I know very little about. But I had to get that out of my system, because it goes directly to the heart of a lot of the inter-cultural problems I experience here.

A couple months back, I was having late 삼겹살 with some friends and we were talking about the election. Some were saying that if Obama didn’t win the nomination, they would vote for McCain. I came to her defense, saying that it’s not only a historical opportunity to have a first female president but that we need a democrat right now.

Hillary is making it very difficult for me to continue in that belief. She’s clearly a liar; she can’t hide the fact that she has a rabid thirst for power; and she seems to have a personality change whenever it suits her purpose. Now, in the ultimate of pot-and-kettle statments, she’s running around calling people elitists. She did it to Obama when he merely stated the obvious about working class Pennsylvanians. And now she’s saying it about economists who criticize her gas tax proposal. Mrs. Clinton, you are an elitist. You’re just pretending not to be because your edge over Obama is working class Democrats.

Incidentally, Obama’s right, the “elite” economists are right, and your gas tax proposal is backward and useless. As Thomas Friedman said, “If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies.”

Hillary’s alignment with McCain on this issue is part of trend I see in her. I don’t watch TV, but I read. She’s changing her style and even her policies to align herself with what is her fresh new advantage over Obama. For her, it’s not about vision, it’s not even about the “experience” thing anymore, it’s that she’s becoming a white man. She’s suddenly Mr. Tough Average Joe, talking about obliterating Iran and calling people elitists. A while back, I wrote that Obama’s popularity shows that America is more sexist than it is racist. Well, thanks to Rev. Wright, Obama is becoming more black and Clinton is becoming less female.

She is crafty, I’ll give her that. But I’ve changed my tune. I will not vote for Clinton if she wins the nomination, not so long as she continues to be an average white man. I won’t vote for McCain either. I will vote for Obama, as a write-in.

American voters are idiots. They’ve — we’ve — proven that over the past two presidential terms. And we’re keeping the trend going into this primary process. When I say “idiots,” I don’t only mean uninformed, myopic and misguided. Yes, there is that, and Europeans love to remind me of that all the time. But more to the point, Americans are idiots because they allow themselves to be manipulated by what the media suggests — through repetition and a thirst for ratings — is important. They’re suckers.

Here’s a quote from an article in the International Herald Tribune, from a grocery store food stocker in Maryland: “It’s the stuff about his preacher … and the thing he said about Pennsylvania towns, how they turn to religion.” …the stuff about his preacher. You’re not supporting Obama because of the stuff about his preacher? Stuff about his preacher, what the hell does that mean? Where’s your focus? You’ve merely taken what the media has scandalized and made it your own thoughts and opinions. You, sir, are a dumbass.

What is it about Jeremiah Wright that so concerns you? Hmmm, let me take a guess: He’s black and angry. He’s not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You’re only comfortable seeing eloquence from your black people; this angry stuff scares you. You’re already thinking, somewhere in the back of your mind: hey wait a minute, Obama’s black too, maybe he’s secretly angry too because he’s friends with Rev. Wright.

They’re different people. He’s not Obama, he’s Obama’s preacher. I bet this numbskull from Maryland has a buddy who maybe drinks a little too much and says the wrong things at poker night sometimes. But he’s still your buddy. It’s the same thing here. The only difference is it’s broadcast on television, and it’s repeated, and commentators freak the fuck out and then you say “Oh my god, I must now freak out! This is truly freak-out-able!”

I guess this was bound to happen at some point. The fears of Americans, in this case racial fears, eventually winning out. Even if Obama wins the nomination, which is likely, this will stick with him in the general election. The tragedy will be a loss to McCain because Obama was hurt by what someone else said. Stupid.

This is the way it goes. Howard Dean was the great hope of the democratic party four years ago. He lost to milquetoast John Kerry because Dean overmodulated a broadcast signal because the crowd around him was so loud. That broadcast wormed its way into everyone’s heads and we got a dope for a candidate.

The media loves to repeat itself. So does history.

That’s the question she was trying to ask me. I’m going to stop laughing about such things. And give my students a little more of the respect they give me. This article doesn’t make me feel too great.

It’s MT time again (’membership training’). This actually is funny. Faculty and students go away to some mountain retreat and drink soju until they pass out on the floor. I actually get a kick out of it. There’s lots of giggling, miscommunication, silliness, cross-dressing…

My question is: Is my liver ready?

It’s a beautiful day outside, but I’m spending it inside thinking about the end of the world. I can’t help it. Somehow it manages to seep into everything I experience in the mediated realm. Nearly every film or TV show seems to have a subtext of our impending end of days.

In television, if you take away the reality shows, the top 3 most downloaded shows all have some theme of the end of humanity: In Heroes, we have the constant threat of Earth-shattering catastrophe; In Lost, we have an undercurrent of doomsday; in Battlestar Galactica, we have humanity obliterated except for some 40,000 survivors.

In the news, we get the end of the white man. We have rice shortages in Asia and a food crisis worldwide. The Korean peninsula seems to be edging closer — at least in fist-shaking — toward nuclear obliteration. We have popular books speculating on Earth after humanity. The dollar is shrinking, the ice caps are melting, terrorism shows no sign of being defeated… It’s as if humanity feels so out of control, that there’s a weird kind of acceptance. I wonder if it’s because, at least in the United States, there’s a feeling that it’s about time, that we somehow deserve this through our own inability to show foresight. We can’t make the right sacrifices because we’re confused and powerless. We have a thousand voices telling us how bad everything is. After a while it’s hard to cancel out all that noise.

I think the pervasiveness of media has had an enervating effect on its public. People are constantly overwhelmed with whats, but they’re not given many whys. The chatter that passes as discourse doesn’t offer solutions. To provide a solution is to offer an opinion. Under the protective shield of objectivity, this is a no-no.

So people disappear into their tiny little sheltered worlds, consisting of a significant other, a friend or two, mom and dad, and maybe a dog. Everyone else has their own little world too, and all these little worlds cross paths politely, but no one really connects with our collective greater nature. It’s scary, all that thinking and opining, so let’s all shut up and smile, leave each other to our nightly entertainment, our dinner parties and favorite TV shows. If we’re doomed, so be it. Just make it quick and painless please.

…

I had a point to make in all this, but I forgot what it was.