Censored!

Now this is really odd: I can write on my blog here in China but I can't read it! It's censored! Amazing.

Shanghai

I've just arrived in Shanghai after being nearly kindapped by over-zealous hotel employees at the airport in Beijing who couldn't speak a word of English. It's my first time in China and I am impressed, awed, and awfully confused. I've discovered life in Shanghai sort of resembles life in the rainforest--at the ground, on the street level, there is one form of life--that of dingy shops, dirty streets, bicycles and hordes of people. As you move up vertically, everything becomes more glitzy and glamorous. First come the massive, multi-lane highways that criss-cross like vines and sweep across the sky over the city streets. Above this level, comes the most advanced system of life in the ecosystem--the collassal, ultra-modern skyscrapers that dominate the city's skyline. Shanghai, and China as a whole, straddles a very strange position in the world. Somewhere in between first and third worlds (landing somewhere like 2.1, if we can make such gradations) and full of contradictions. I have never seen such a visible clash of wealth and poverty, tradition and modernity, city and country, business and state. And being a Westerner on the street is endlessly fun: it's the only place I've ever been where being stared at in the street comes not from contempt, but from benign curioisity and interest. It's one of the few places where being American still brings you a somewhat privileged tourist status.
(Photos mine).

"A Drag Queen Impersonating a Fascist"

I've never been exactly sure how to react to the lunacy of Ann Coulter. By getting angry at her, by letting her hurt my liberal "feelings", I seemed to grant her some credibility, grant her the possibility that her position actually merited a response. But how can such a widely-known and widely-read figure simply be ignored? And if Coulter does merit a response, how does one react to a bully without becoming a bully oneself? I like Andrew Sullivan's approach:

"The minute you take her seriously, you lose grip on her reality. She's not a social or political commentator. She's a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don't even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It's post-modern performance-art."

Perfect. Anne Coulter the post-modernist. She is post-rationality. Post-humanism. She calls us back to a time before the evils of liberalism destroyed the sanctity of religious dogma and the surety of power and force as modes of human interaction. She is an existential artist, a Schmittian decisionist.

Maybe. But she probably doesn’t even know what existentialism is.

Coulter embodies the sickness of America today: tough-skinned, jingoistic patriotism that blends a militaristic ideology with religious dogma to defend a country whose very advent was intended to counter such ideals. The defenders of America today should read and re-read the classics of liberal political theory that informed the thought and writings of this country's founders before staking so much political capital on religion, public morality, and attacking the "Godless church" of contemporary, American liberalism. Sullivan's approach to Coulter remains my approach, for lack of better option. But it is a dangerous one. If people actually listen to such megalomaniacal, self-made demi-god, than dismissal of her public game as meaningless "performance art"--as accurate as this characterization may be--is not sufficient.

The New Somalia?

I'm not sure what to think about the purported capture of Mogadishu by Islamist militants today. My first reaction is terror: an Islamist state with little to no centralized government would prove a petri dish for Al Qaidaesque terrorist training camps for the new generation of Islamists coming out of the street war in Iraq. But is some government in Somalia better than no government? Even if a new Islamist Somali state proves to be a thorn in the side of the U.S., would it at least promise an end to the anarchic violence that has gripped the Horn of Africa for years? If the Islamists are the best hope for the creation of a semi-stable Somali state, what are the ethical implications of opposing them because their newly-formed government simply proves a threat to our interests? Of course, we ultimately hope for a strong secular Somali government. But if the Islamists can create a working Somali state that can curb the ultra-violence of clashing warlords and factions and thus improve the lives (and life expectancy, now at about 48 years) of Somalis, on what ethical ground do we stake our claims for its illegitimacy other than on our own strategic interests? I'm still terrified by an Islamist Somalia, particularly since its so-called Islamic Courts allegedly protect Al Qaida terrorists. But the problem seems to go deeper than this: Islamism seems to offer clear promises to states torn apart by violence, corruption, mismanaged government, etc. It seems like we should be more interested in addressing the conditions that allow for the rise of Islamist governments than in simply giving arms and money to the factions battling the Islamists. But we saw where our good will got us in Mogadishu in 1993.

Eye Banking

When I mentioned something about i-banking to a friend the other day she cringed and looked at me with a funny face. Her reaction came not from an (admittedly self-righteous) indignation at the overweening popularity of financial careers with our generation, but because she couldn't imagine what a bank full of eyes would look like. She figured an i-bank was like a sperm bank, but instead full of eyes ready for transplantation. I know what the I stands for (I think) but I know very little else about what goes on inside the belly of an i-bank. I guess I should read up now that Henry M. Paulson is secretary of the treasury and Goldman Sachs has officially taken over the world.