Shanghai Slim

I’m currently visiting the Whore of the Orient…no, silly, not a person but rather the city of Shanghai. I’m here attending a conference for work but will have  a few days off to explore a little. More content to come.

Exceptionalism Cont.

Damon Linker of the New Republic has an interesting, intelligent response to the National Review article I linked to recently in defense of American exceptionalism. I particularly liked this remark about President Bush:

Lots of conservatives turned on George W. Bush by the end of his presidency. But here we see that if Bush didn’t exist, the right would have had to invent him. His proud parochialism, his simple-minded and insecure suspicion of intelligence, his swaggering self-righteousness—all of it is the natural expression of contemporary conservatism’s outlook on the world.

Couldn’t agree more.

National Review has responded to Linker’s criticism, as well as other reactions, in this piece. I take exception- pun intended- to this comment about left-wing support of mass transit:

Contrary to our least literate critics, nothing in that passage suggests that we consider subways an infringement on our liberty. Nor does it mean that we are skeptical of mass-transit subsidies because the policy strikes us as European. It means something closer to the opposite: that we suspect that much of the enthusiasm for these subsidies among liberals is based on mass transit’s association with Europe.

Emphasis mine. This statement has it exactly wrong. Speaking as a liberal, my enthusiasm for subsidized mass transit comes from the fact that mass transit programs are environmentally sound, reduce dependency on foreign sources of energy, and are typically more efficient in and between urban areas than automobiles. These reasons derive from having empirically observed mass transit systems in action while living in foreign countries, and thus wishing subsidized programs to be implemented in the US.

The NR piece appears to accuse liberals of believing in European exceptionalism, when in fact the opposite is true. The conservative opposition to mass transit exists largely because it is less prevalent in the US than in Europe, and therefore in their twisted ideology must be better.

NR concludes with an absolute whopper of a statement. To wit:

Victor Davis Hanson notes that one reason for American exceptionalism may be that we did not inherit from England “a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs.” Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche.

The shocking part of this sentence? Hanson is actually a professor of history. This remark would embarrass a fifth-grader. But in their effort to keep any contrary evidence from interrupting their precious pet theory of American exceptionalism, NR somehow tries to argue that slavery ‘never became part of the national psyche’.

The mind boggles. I realize contemporary conservatives disdain intellectualism, but in publishing this piece shouldn’t an even cursory understanding of basic American history be required?

I realize I could probably devote hours of my time to reading mind-numbing right-wing screeds and rebutting them, but I think this question of exceptionalism cuts to the very core of how right-wing and left-wing Americans view our country. And as I’ve argued earlier, exceptionalism has a central position in contemporary Chinese politics as well.

Bibles for Porn

It appears that a group of atheists in San Antonio, Texas, have launched a program in which college students can swap Bibles and other religious texts for high-class pornography. The idea is for people to equate the two rather than to actually promote porn. Clever? No doubt. Effective? I’d say no.

As an atheist, I’m well aware that our popularity ranks somewhere between Dick Cheney and herpes. Voters would almost certainly elect a transsexual murderer president, so long as he was a believer, over an atheist. I’d like very much to be able to put my weight behind an effective pro-atheist movement.

Bibles for porn isn’t it, for a few reasons. For one thing, it reinforces the image of atheists as a group of licentious libertines who would spike the school water supply with LSD given half a chance.  Hardcore Christians like to think that their morality derives entirely from faith, and that ergo those without faith somehow lack a morality. This idea is of course wrong, but handing out porn is hardly the way to disprove it.

The second thing I object to is the notion that the Bible is ’smut’, as the program’s manifesto calls it. Hardly. The Bible is a book upon which the foundation of Western culture is based. For that reason alone, it has immense historical value. Rather than trading Bibles in for porn, atheists should actually sit and learn it. The world would be better off if people were to analyze ’sacred’ texts critically rather than simply adopt their tenets wholesale.

Far more effective were the light and breezy ‘atheist bus’ campaign that made a slight stir in England last year.

Dignity or Humiliation?

It appears that our fair city of Kunming has received international press attention, though not for its beauty, good weather, or fine food. Nope, Kunming’s claim to fame may now be it’s dwarf theme park, which since last year has been open to the public. From the New York Times:

Chen Mingjing’s entrepreneurial instincts vaulted him from a peasant upbringing to undreamed-of wealth, acquired in ventures ranging from making electric meters to investing in real estate. But when he was 44, the allure of making money for money’s sake began to wane. He wanted to run a business that accomplished some good.

And so last September, Mr. Chen did what any socially aware entrepreneur might do: He opened a theme park of dwarfs, charging tourists about $9 a head to watch dozens of dwarfs in pink tutus perform a slapstick version of “Swan Lake” along with other skits.

At first glance this park appears to be a modern-day version of a circus freak show. But Mr. Chen swears that he’s actually offering a source of dignity to the vertically challenged by allowing them to live where they can be of normal height.

So it is an act of profitable compassion? Or perverse exploitation? Or both? I report, you decide.

American Exceptionalism Revisited

In January I wrote that both China and the United States view themselves as exceptional nations, ones that resist comparison to other countries across a broad spectrum of issues. Members of the U.S Republican Party, I wrote, believe in the superiority of the American system regardless of any metric that proves otherwise.

Five weeks later I’m pleased to have come across a very long article in National Review, arguably the most influential conservative magazine in the US, in which the two authors explicitly cite exceptionalism as a chief American value and argue that President Obama is doing his best to undermine it.

I don’t have time to provide a thorough critique of the piece, but to give you an idea of the authors’ perspective let’s consider this statement from the fourth paragraph of the article.

Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth.

Lest you think I am taking this quote out of context, let me state that this statement is made without even the slightest attempt to provide scientific evidence for the claims. Instead, the authors ramble on for a couple thousand words about why American history proves our exceptionalism. As a polemic, their argument has merit. As a work of political and historical analysis it has none.

Let’s just take two of the claims under scrutiny. One is that the U.S. is ‘freer’ than any other country. The other is that it is the most ‘democratic’. In economic terms, the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation- hardly bastions of Leftist ideology- listed New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia as the five ‘freest’ countries in the world. I wonder how National Review feels about a dreaded European state ranking higher than the US in terms of economic liberty.

NR’s claim that the US is the most democratic country in the world is even more laughable. For starters, lets consider the institution of the U.S. Senate. The Senate grants an equal number of seats in the national legislature to all states regardless of population. This means that Wyoming, a state with a population of less than 500,000, has the same number votes as California, a state with roughly 80 times its population. When you factor in abysmal voting turnout statistics, a remarkably small percentage of Americans have a great influence on political outcomes in the US.

This Economist ranking of countries by their degree of democratization does not list the US in the top 15.  Countries that do make the list include Sweden, Iceland, Norway, The Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, and Austria. All part of, you guessed it, Europe. And the Economist too has never been accused of promoting a leftist agenda.

That being said, there are many things that the United States does quite well without having to resort to the ridiculous claims made in the NR piece. The US has an excellent university system that still attracts the world’s brightest and most ambitious students, many of whom remain in the country. The US also assimilates a large number of immigrants from across the globe with a lesser degree of social acrimony than in many European countries. These are certainly feats to be proud of.

But for contemporary American conservatives, it isn’t enough that the US outpaces all other countries in certain fields. We must be the best in all fields.  And while I (and President Obama) would agree that this ambition is admirable, it is ludicrous to suggest that at present it resembles the truth in any way. As a result the Right expends tremendous effort writing counter-intuitive missives explaining why, in fact, the American health care system or education system or this or that is actually the world’s best despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Golf in China

Dan Washburn is a writer I’ve followed since I arrived in China six years ago. Over the past couple of years Dan has shifted his focus to golf, a burgeoning sport that has attracted a certain amount of controversy in China. To say that few Chinese play golf would be a grand understatement- the percentage of those who could even plausibly afford to play is statistically insignificant- yet golf course development has accelerated rapidly in recent years.

To illustrate just how and why this is happening, check out Dan’s piece in the Financial Times, this photo essay in Foreign Policy, and Dan’s site.

Look at the Funny Minorities

Living in Yunnan we’re treated to the regular spectacle of Chinese tourists from the coastal provinces arriving en masse to indulge themselves in a little 少数民族 exploitation. This New York Times article touches upon this subject, and includes a funny concluding section:

At another table outside were two Han tourists from the city of Chongqing. Zheng Jing, a big-bellied man wielding a Canon camera, was a repeat visitor. He said this park was the only place in the Dai region where he would ever consider staying.

“There are many villages around, and they’re all primitive,” he said as a Han motorcycle club pulled up to Mr. Ai Yo’s house for lunch. “It’s not suitable for us to go there. They don’t speak the Han language. You can’t have exchanges with them.”

That kind of attitude puzzles Dai residents living right outside the park.

“The culture here is the same as inside the park,” said Ai Yong, 32, a rubber farmer in Mannao village. “You’re getting cheated inside. You come out here, you can see everything for free.”

Fortunately Ai Yong is right- Yunnan is still rich in authentic minority life, and given the narrow scope of Han travel itineraries one doesn’t have to go very far outside of the tourist zones to find it. Within a 30-minute walk from the Dali and Lijiang old towns, for example, you can find living and breathing minority towns, free from Han tourists and 50-kuai cups of coffee. Though I’ve spent less time there, the same can be said for Jinghong I’m told.

Anatomy of a Righteous Chinese Nationalist

China Hush has translated a rather long screed in the form of an open letter from an outraged Chinese to President Obama. The letter is interesting not for its unremarkable message but rather because it provides a useful archetype of how a Chinese fenqing, or angry youth, thinks.

Much of the letter consists of a denunciation of the Dalai Lama, whom the author brands as a ‘terrorist’, followed by the usual declaration of China as a ‘peace loving country’ somehow unique in the world.

As I’ve pointed out recently the two concepts mentioned above are interrelated. The Chinese government propagates an image of being a peaceful country so as to distinguish itself from the various foreign powers who carved China up in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as to provide an ex-post-facto justification for why its conquest of Tibet was somehow one of liberation rather than imperialism. In order to pretend that there is no legitimate opposition in Tibet, the Communist Party labels the Dalai Lama as a villain and blames all unrest in the region on his influence.

A caveat, lest you think I’m grouping all Chinese in with this particularly outraged young man. His views are reminiscent of ultra-nationalists and do not correspond to the vast majority of Chinese people. Then again, the fact that over 6,000 others have ‘dinged’ or supported his post indicates that quite a few people in this country feel similarly.

The Critic in Winter

If I may take a break from my usual content, I’d like to direct your attention to this very moving profile of America’s finest film critic, Roger Ebert. Since a 2006 surgery, Ebert has not had a lower jaw. He has not eaten, had a drink of anything, nor spoken a single, solitary word since.

Most Americans my age know Ebert as one half of the eponymous film-critic duo Siskel & Ebert, whose passionate arguments about films both good and bad comprised a much-loved television program that lasted until Siskel’s death in 1999. The two were a study in contrats; Ebert was fat and verbose, Siskel thin and reserved. Their arguments would culminate in an ultimate judgment: was the film worth watching? The two adjudicated this matter by a simple, trademarked gesture: thumbs up or thumbs down. In its day the ‘two thumps up!’ judgment would be displayed more prominently on the print ads of films than any other.

Before the Internet age few outside of Chicago, where Ebert is based, knew that the voluble fat critic was also a wonderful writer. His reviews now appear at the top of IMDBs ‘External Reviews’ list on each major film’s page, and are truly a primer in how to write about film. Many times through the years I’ve struggled to articulate a particular feeling about something I’ve watched, only to discover Ebert had captured it perfectly in his review.

Ebert keeps a journal of his thoughts on film, art, culture, and dying. It’s well-worth bookmarking, if only to celebrate a national treasure while he is still among us.

Buzz Buzz

So a week into the Google Buzz era and…I like it! Seems to be a nice recovery from the Google Wave debacle, which went over like a lead balloon. I think Buzz has the potential to be a nice addition to the social networking sphere- sort of a Facebook without all the extra crap and a more streamlined, intuitive version of Twitter.

But I do have one distinct fear- China does not look kindly upon social networking platforms. Should the Great Firewall rise up and smack down Buzz, there will be some dreadful collateral damage: Gmail. And yes, while a Gmail ban might spur China-based netizens to invest in VPN’s most people aren’t really prepared to do so. A gmail ban would rank far higher on a pain-in-the-ass-meter than the Facebook/Twitter blocks.

So while I like Buzz, part of me wants it to fail so that my precious Gmail account doesn’t get harmonized.