Serendipity
Flags are flying at half-staff in honor of the tsunami victims. Probably this will be seen around the world as another empty American gesture. They don't get our flag fixation. When Luke and I were in Europe, I don't think I even saw a national flag anywhere except on a post office. (Lots of Bavarian flags in Garmisch, but that's another story).
But here, where every other business and homeowner seems to have a flag, and show it, the national gesture will seem into people's daily routines, encourage them to think and remember. The Amazon.com donation system is topping $13 million this afternoon. That represents the "real people" here, opening their Paypal pocketbooks for $20 or $40 apiece. Hokey or not, our flag means something to Americans, which is why other people burn it to be offensive and the offense often hits home. They understand that; I hope they understand the importance of a generous gesture, too.
I hope, but I'm not naive enough to expect it. Count on the Guardian, specifically Polly Toynbee, to make it ugly:
Now, it seems that Polly's equation of Nordic socialism and tsunami victim generosity screwed the pooch, but that's typical. Never let the facts get in the way of a good ideology. It's safe to say I'm closer to America than she is, and I notice the opposite.
It's not a scientific survey or anything, but the U.S. blogs I read offer a wide disparity in their coverage of the tsunami disaster and relief efforts. The gap between left and right is remarkable. Maybe it's just my choice of blogs, but other people seem to be noticing the same thing.
On the left, Kevin Drum's blog has just two short paragraphs on the whole biblical calamity, posted on Dec. 27. Since then he's written copiously about Bush's evil Social Security plan and still found time to play an Iraq = Vietnam drum solo.
On the right, Hugh Hewitt starts every day of posting on his blog with a reminder to donate to a victims' relief fund. His topics often have turned to the subject of the suffering. Michelle Malkin, far to the right of me, has ten posts on the disaster and the relief drives just since the new year. On her blog, not from a liberal site, I read Arthur C. Clarke's letter from Sri Lanka and learned of the generosity of Hollywood figures like Sandra Bullock.
The "right" seems to have been stung particularly by the "stingy" sneer from the U.N. Perhaps that helps ratchet up their focus on the relief work, to play smackdown with the U.N. fool. That could be a partial explanation. But how does that explain the relative lack of interest on the left? Unless you want to factor in its desire to prove that America is, in fact, the evil, niggardly, self-righteous place many of their leading lights tirelessly tell us it is?
More likely the overall difference I notice (if it is genuine, and I am sure there are some left blogs hard at work on raising relief money) reflects the right-left perspective shift that left me often on the "right" side of things.
When I was little, my parents told me to eat my lima beans because it would be a crime to waste them when there are "starving children in India." (I gladly would have given them all the lima beans in the world. Their texture makes me think of diseased dog kidneys.) But now that Indians are rapidly becoming a world-class economy, I look forward to the day when hunger there will be no worse than it is in America, and perhaps even less of a problem.
I think that's great. But when I hear my friends on the left mention India today, it's only to grouse about the evil corporations that outsource "American" jobs there. What, sending lima beans to Calcutta was noble, but giving them jobs and a chance at prosperity is not?
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times notices this, too. He writes about Sam Brownback, the Kansas Senator who he descibes as "to the right of Attila the Hun." He notes his extreme conservatism and Christian fanaticism, and he reports that "I disagree with him on just about every major issue." Yet he writes:
He cites the work of the late liberal senator Paul Wellstone, who "led an effort with Brownback and others to pass landmark legislation in 2000 to battle sex slavery around the world. But since Wellstone's death in 2002, the leadership on the issue has passed to the Christian right and to the Bush administration." He mentions Darfur, human rights in North Korea, immigration reform, prison reform, increased funds for AIDS and malaria, construction of an African-American history museum "and even an apology to American Indians" as issues where Brownback can be found at the political cutting edge.
One of my etymology correspondents today reminded me that the word "serendipity" holds an old name for Sri Lanka. It was coined by Horace Walpole, who said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." The name is from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka, which is transliterated from Arabic Sarandib, which is itself from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa, which means "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."
Lions devour and destroy, and they can kill. But there is another image of the Lion King, one Americans have absorbed in this generation, as powerful but benign protector of the herds, the balancing principal of the "circle of life."
But here, where every other business and homeowner seems to have a flag, and show it, the national gesture will seem into people's daily routines, encourage them to think and remember. The Amazon.com donation system is topping $13 million this afternoon. That represents the "real people" here, opening their Paypal pocketbooks for $20 or $40 apiece. Hokey or not, our flag means something to Americans, which is why other people burn it to be offensive and the offense often hits home. They understand that; I hope they understand the importance of a generous gesture, too.
I hope, but I'm not naive enough to expect it. Count on the Guardian, specifically Polly Toynbee, to make it ugly:
"Charity begins at home" is the mean-minded dictum of the right, unwilling to spend on foreigners, unwilling to spend on those outside the family fortress at home, either. But there may be a lot of truth in the old maxim. Countries that tolerate vast wealth gaps are unlikely to concern themselves greatly about the poor even further from their door. Countries that give most - the Nordics - are the ones that have created the most socially equal societies at home first. Can America be anything but unjust in dealing with foreigners when it cares so little about the third world poverty within its own borders?
Now, it seems that Polly's equation of Nordic socialism and tsunami victim generosity screwed the pooch, but that's typical. Never let the facts get in the way of a good ideology. It's safe to say I'm closer to America than she is, and I notice the opposite.
It's not a scientific survey or anything, but the U.S. blogs I read offer a wide disparity in their coverage of the tsunami disaster and relief efforts. The gap between left and right is remarkable. Maybe it's just my choice of blogs, but other people seem to be noticing the same thing.
On the left, Kevin Drum's blog has just two short paragraphs on the whole biblical calamity, posted on Dec. 27. Since then he's written copiously about Bush's evil Social Security plan and still found time to play an Iraq = Vietnam drum solo.
On the right, Hugh Hewitt starts every day of posting on his blog with a reminder to donate to a victims' relief fund. His topics often have turned to the subject of the suffering. Michelle Malkin, far to the right of me, has ten posts on the disaster and the relief drives just since the new year. On her blog, not from a liberal site, I read Arthur C. Clarke's letter from Sri Lanka and learned of the generosity of Hollywood figures like Sandra Bullock.
The "right" seems to have been stung particularly by the "stingy" sneer from the U.N. Perhaps that helps ratchet up their focus on the relief work, to play smackdown with the U.N. fool. That could be a partial explanation. But how does that explain the relative lack of interest on the left? Unless you want to factor in its desire to prove that America is, in fact, the evil, niggardly, self-righteous place many of their leading lights tirelessly tell us it is?
More likely the overall difference I notice (if it is genuine, and I am sure there are some left blogs hard at work on raising relief money) reflects the right-left perspective shift that left me often on the "right" side of things.
When I was little, my parents told me to eat my lima beans because it would be a crime to waste them when there are "starving children in India." (I gladly would have given them all the lima beans in the world. Their texture makes me think of diseased dog kidneys.) But now that Indians are rapidly becoming a world-class economy, I look forward to the day when hunger there will be no worse than it is in America, and perhaps even less of a problem.
I think that's great. But when I hear my friends on the left mention India today, it's only to grouse about the evil corporations that outsource "American" jobs there. What, sending lima beans to Calcutta was noble, but giving them jobs and a chance at prosperity is not?
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times notices this, too. He writes about Sam Brownback, the Kansas Senator who he descibes as "to the right of Attila the Hun." He notes his extreme conservatism and Christian fanaticism, and he reports that "I disagree with him on just about every major issue." Yet he writes:
Members of the Christian right, exemplified by Brownback, are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad - thus creating opportunities for common ground between left and right on issues we all care about.
So Democrats should clamber down from the window ledges, roll up their sleeves and get to work on some of these issues. Democrats have been so suspicious of Republicans that they haven't contributed much on those human-rights issues where the Christian right already has staked out its ground.
He cites the work of the late liberal senator Paul Wellstone, who "led an effort with Brownback and others to pass landmark legislation in 2000 to battle sex slavery around the world. But since Wellstone's death in 2002, the leadership on the issue has passed to the Christian right and to the Bush administration." He mentions Darfur, human rights in North Korea, immigration reform, prison reform, increased funds for AIDS and malaria, construction of an African-American history museum "and even an apology to American Indians" as issues where Brownback can be found at the political cutting edge.
Brownback recently told me insistently about his trip to northern Uganda and urged me to write about brutalities there. I was disoriented. I thought I was the one who tried to get people to pay attention to remote places.
One of my etymology correspondents today reminded me that the word "serendipity" holds an old name for Sri Lanka. It was coined by Horace Walpole, who said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." The name is from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka, which is transliterated from Arabic Sarandib, which is itself from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa, which means "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."
Lions devour and destroy, and they can kill. But there is another image of the Lion King, one Americans have absorbed in this generation, as powerful but benign protector of the herds, the balancing principal of the "circle of life."
