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December 15, 2012

The Other Deficit: Credibility of American domestic policy abroad.

America should calm down and examine its own gun-control policy.

--One Chinese commentator yesterday

This morning, Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker who lives in Beijing, gave us a good general rule: it takes "a lot" to make China's government look good, even to its own 1.3 billion people, when their government is compared to the federal government of the United States. Osnos of course is referring to the corruption, control by special interests and lack of accountability that are hallmarks of the day-to-day business of running The People's Republic of China.

But, as of yesterday, Osnos, continues, when both China (which bans private gun ownership) and America (which does not) experienced attacks on school children by an armed madmen on the same day, America may finally be doing just that: making the PRC look good.

It's a useful observation. Developed "elite" democracies like the U.S. may have internal and domestic policies that are seen by outsiders as inferior to those of authoritarian states. Gun control, in the case of America, is certainly one of them. Do read Osnos's article, "China Watches Newtown: Guns and American Credibility". Excerpt:

As an American overseas for the last ten years, I’ve watched as other countries struggle with the curious fact that the most prosperous, successful, and emulated civilization the world has ever seen lives with the certainty that every few months one of its troubled citizens will casually acquire the tools to massacre a large group of his neighbors: shoppers in a mall, moviegoers, voters meeting their congresswoman, a kindergarten full of children.

Even to those who desperately want to be American, this special brand of American madness lies not in the banal fact that deranged men attack children, but in the shame that the rest of us, all of us, allow our laws to enable it.

After the Newtown attack, a Chinese commentator with a nationalist bent wrote, “When I see these democratic elites pretending to condemn the murderer, it seems absurd. You are the people who sustain the gun policy. You are also the people who condemn the shooter.”

Duckwalking like Yanks: Chinese Military Honor Guard.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2012

Does the travel industry miss the whole point of London?

Should London be redesigned and redeveloped to look like one of those cute, sterile and bouncy customer-friendly shopping centers in the American Midwest where I grew up? Reuters is reporting that "Tourists Find London Unfriendly, Dirty and Expensive", an article in large part based on a TripAdvisor tourist poll. But Surly, Grimey, High-Priced London has been London's reputation, job description and part of its dark-side charm for most of its mercurial 2000+ years.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Rozann Stayden.

My friend Rozann Stayden died on February 24 this year. We met in Cincinnati as students in 1977 and, a few years later, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she eventually attended law school.

In both of these very different cities, Rozann Stayden knew everyone. And she seemed to meet anyone interesting, compelling or promising before anyone else did: the rich, poor, powerful, famous, struggling, bohemian, academic, literary, political, young, old, displaced, exotic. She was attracted to the genuinely interesting.

That Rozann was a lawyer does not begin to describe her, or help in the least to explain her influence on every man or woman who ever met her. That fact just gets in the way of the portrait. At best, that was a small, possibly important and probably amusing detail. Lawyer-ness wasn't finishing or defining for her. In others, without a lot more to show for themselves, it simply did not impress her. It was like a high school degree.

She demanded much, sometimes too much, from herself and others. She had way too much energy, moxie and wants for one human. Passionate, smart, funny, driven, opinionated, difficult, organized, fearless, hopelessly irreverent, inpatient, kind and warlike. She was never politically correct, thought of it as a comical but unfortunate character defect, and tended to dislike people who were.

Rozann intrigued and startled you. She came on strong, was opinionated and often frightened, especially at first, all but the strongest men and the most curious, discerning women. She had hundreds of longtime friends from all walks of life in the United States, Europe and Asia. She laughed a lot, and uproariously.

Rozann, words like authentic or original to describe you fail in understatement. You were Self-Made in every respect. You were "highly-correct" even when we fought, disagreed or misunderstood each other. Happy Birthday, Girlfriend.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:21 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2012

This Mexico Business: Gringo Madness Interrupted. But throw in Hope, too.

Even more than old enduring good ideas, and new compelling good ones, I remain in love with human beings at their best. I love, in particular, their resilience and courage when they are confronted with the worst. I feel that way even as humans continue to disappoint us all. A problem: most of us sell ourselves short. We live in fear, and in a comfortable fog of conformity. To remedy that uneasiness, we blame others for our refusal or inability to grow. We make excuses. We hate.

Sometimes, though, humans surprise me.

It's been a long time--about 6 years to be exact--since my European clients or friends on business or holiday in the U.S. asked me excitedly to whisk them in the Mexico-ready vintage Saab or a rented car down to Baja California, Mexico (25 minutes tops from where I now live) to Puerto Nuevo or Ensenada for a drive and a lobster dinner in a close-by extoic venue. They no longer ask.

The reason for that doesn't seem to be going away. The lowest estimate of those killed since 2006 in the Mexican Drug War--something that scares even Western veteran war corespondents--is now just shy of 60,000. The trip into Baja, once all the Gringo rage, doesn't come up much anymore in conversation with folks who live in Bonn, Cardiff or Kent.

But articles like one in The Telegraph last week give me hope. See "Mexico's Drug War: A Poet and the People Fight Back. It will be especially interesting for you to read this if you are unfamiliar with the fact that Francisco Sicilia Ortega, son of the famous poet Javier Sicilia, was killed by a Mexican drug cartel in March 2011 (apparently for no reason connected with his father's notoriety) along with six friends.

The new "people's movement" in Mexico against the cartels is even more risky and brave than the anti-Putin protests in Russia during the holiday season last year. When mom-and-pop movements around the globe gain momentum, they are very hard to stop. Humans at their best and bravest.

Photo: The Telegraph/Noah Friedman-Rudovsky

Posted by JD Hull at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)