Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne’s book Why Americans Hate Politics was published in 1992. In his clear, gentle but firm style, the book spells out how the left-right ideological chasm that sprang up during the 1960s led to an increasingly wider divide between word and deed in how politicians campaigned and their subsequent actions in office. People sensed they were being gulled, and large numbers of them responded by tuning out the political sphere entirely. Unfortunately, the situation continued to deteriorate throughout the double terms of the next two presidents.

I’m a strong supporter of Obama in part because I think he knows how to fight tough but do it in a classy way, something the Democrats haven’t seen in a long time. One of the more interesting battles being waged these days is over control of the American narrative. Ronald Reagan won the last round, but I think Obama and Biden are just getting warmed up. Dionne is on that beat, and it’s worth following.

A town hall meeting on repairing California’s dysfunctional government was held the other night in the peaceful valley where I live. The state senator who ran the meeting and the panelists he had assembled were all smart, knowledgeable, down-to-earth and articulate about the systemic roots of the problems we collectively face. I have lived in California all my life, and it was instructive to have empirical data laid out supporting my perception that, in a relatively short amount of time, we’ve degenerated from top-tier status among the 50 states to appallingly low ranking in critical areas such as public education. The crowd that turned out on a rainy night to participate in the discussion ranged from rednecks to lefties, united in a desire to constructively work to fix what’s broken.

California has long had a reputation as an experimental cauldron where new ideas get tested. When they’re successful, they tend to radiate out across the country for widespread implementation (when they’re not, they either retreat into the shadows or get added into the ongoing mythology about Left Coast Loonies). The idea coming into vogue now is that, after all the pyrotechnics and questionable ethics that have dominated American politics in recent decades, real change is going to have to come from the ground up. Read more…

Several months ago I ran out of cinnamon, which I like to put in my hot cereal. When I went to the store to replace it, I found that a popular brand has stopped calling it plain old cinnamon. Now, it’s “Saigon Cinnamon.” The label reads “We’ve searched the world to gather the most exotic, premium herbs and spices so you can create an authentic flavor adventure all your own.”

“Was it worth it?” immediately popped into my mind — tongue-in-cheek, of course, because the no-brainer answer is “No.” Forty years ago, my brother Bill had recently returned from Vietnam. He spent the rest of his life plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. When he died of a sudden heart attack three years ago, I had to settle his affairs and sort things out with my niece and nephew, who were like a pair of wild animals living down in the LA urban jungle.

My nephew broke his collarbone in a motorcycle accident a few months ago. He called me from some emergency room down in the desert near the Arizona border, and the combination of tough guy stoicism with a bid for sympathy really tugged at my heartstrings. When I called to follow up with him a week or so later, I asked him what kind of health insurance coverage he had and he sheepishly responded that he didn’t have any. I read him the riot act about getting his butt into Kaiser ASAP and lining up a basic policy. It was the starkest reminder to date that the surrogate parent role I was thrust into after Bill died was not a temporary affair.

But hey—maybe forty years from now “Iraq Cumin” will be on the market. Will everyone then be grateful to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for their keen prescience about the urgent needs of American society? Somehow, I doubt it. I’ll give the history profession greater credit than that. There are many questions that invite significantly better scrutiny than they’ve received to date, starting with how the hell, after everything that went down during the Vietnam era, was the fiasco in Iraq ever allowed to happen?

A childhood friend of mine spent a year each in Baghdad and Tehran during junior high school because her father, who headed the journalism department at UC Berkeley, went over there to teach (this was a couple of years after the Free Speech Movement took place at the Berkeley campus). Around the same time, the Jewish family I babysat for named their tortoise-shell cat Ferdowsi, after a renowned tenth century poet who wrote the great national epic of the Persian people. There was a spirit in the air back then of limitless possibility and opportunity, as if the Great War was behind us and the best of the world’s cultural traditions were melding together to usher in a new, global Golden Age.

Then it all turned dark, as Vietnam consumed increasing amounts of attention and resources and differing factions of our society brought the war onto home turf. We descended into an abyss from which I think we’ve yet to fully emerge. Exhibit A, for me, is the Iraq war: if Americans had learned the lessons of Vietnam, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would never have gotten away with what they did.

There’s a revolution currently underway in Iran, although if you rely on the mainstream media for news these days you could be forgiven for thinking that the only interesting thing going on there is whether or not the bogeyman du jour is going to get its hands on the material to make nuclear weapons that might threaten our sanctified way of life. But President Obama did something truly groundbreaking a handful of months ago, in a speech in Cairo, when he openly acknowledged the history of America’s dirty dealings in Iran’s internal affairs. It took the election of the first African American president for our country to formally begin redressing the age-old American penchant for shadow projection. Read more…

8/11/99 — “On the flight from Osaka I met a very interesting mushroom-munching Arab gentleman who, even though I am a heathen and an infidel, was kind enough to show me a part of Bangkok that I had not seen on previous trips. Bangkok actually has an equivalent to Telegraph Ave., although it is not nearly as influenced by the Christian right wing conservatives.

“I am going to spend a couple of days here absorbing the local culture before I move on to Calcutta to skinny dip in the Ganges and hopefully get a motorcycle. I think I have a scheme where I can get a bike there for very little cost, and dirt bike climbing Mt. Everest will be the ride of a lifetime, if I can pull it off.

“…don’t worry, I brought my lucky rabbit’s foot and a four leaf clover, and just to be safe have bought a charm blessed by Lord Bushnahara.

“I’ll write again soon.”

Bill

King of the Jungle

I’m part of a demographic for whom the Nobel Peace Prize has been tainted goods ever since it was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1974 for belatedly taking steps to end an obscene conflict he had worked for years to prolong and escalate. From an anti-war perspective, that event seemed to epitomize everything that was wrong about the mainstream Establishment: namely, that it was more interested in symbol than substance.

My generation was raised on narrative accounts praising the heroic individuals throughout American history who had stood up to forces of deceit and tyranny in order to uphold principles such as honesty, integrity and justice. But, during the Vietnam era, when we tried to apply the lessons of history to contemporary events, we too often found that authority figures didn’t universally welcome our insights, regardless of the merits of our arguments.

I think we are incredibly lucky that Barack Obama came along and was willing and able to slug and cajole his way into the presidency. I got caught off guard by our system’s ability to change course so quickly after the fiasco of George W. Bush’s presidency. Bush, to me, represented the nadir of what the Baby Boom had to offer: a spoiled frat boy who took it as his due that family money and connections would buy his way into whatever perks he wanted and out of whatever messes he made. With the election of Obama, we have shown the world that the American ideal of a meritocracy is alive and well. This doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that Obama can do no wrong. He’s a fallible human being just like the rest of us, but he’s also a decent, smart, and gifted man. I fully believe he has the humility to understand this. It’s one of his great strengths.

Awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize at this stage of the game, though, doesn’t do him any favors. It seems more a manifestation of a wholesale cheapening and erosion of institutions and awards that has been underway for a long time. Nepotism, patronage, faddishness and such are not hallmarks of quality and endurance. Obama the man has substance and integrity, and I believe he has the potential to accomplish great things. But he has inherited a system that has been badly damaged by years of abuse and neglect, with problems that are deeply entrenched, and he’s not a miracle worker. Obama the symbol is apparently in vogue around the world, which is what this award represents. But, given the complexities of the global situation, having what supposedly is a major, prestigious award tout the idea of one man as a heroic savior is troublingly simplistic in this day and age. Particularly when that award has a less than stellar history of holding individuals to account for the totality of their actions over time.