(if I were the) King of the Forest

It has long been my contention that the first African American President and/or the first female President in America will be a Republican, for the simple reason that minorities and women who work their way up to levels of prominence in the Republican party tend to be there for reasons concerned with general economic growth, individual liberty, and social stability. Whether you think those concerns — and resulting platforms — are good or bad, they tend to be concerns and platforms that appeal to a broad centrist populace.

The chaos we are seeing — on the ground and in our own thinking — reflects the dissolution of the “nation” into more fluid and less tractable identities and spheres of interest. Al Quaeda is not a country, and yet in many circumstances it seems to define and control a “nation” of people who pledge it their loyalty. Iraq was not Al Quaeda, but were they really distinct — two “nations” apart — or were they part of the larger Arab — or was it Islamic? — “nation” to which both claim allegiance and from which the “clash of civilizations” is arising? Is the UAE a country allied with the United States, or is it a culture allied with Arabia or with Islam?

Last summer Bernie Weinraub wrote an article in The New York Times on ratings problems at The West Wing, the popular television show about a fictional Democratic president and his administration. The article covered all the expected problems with a show late in its run, with characters and ideas getting stale and audiences tuning out in favor of more exciting and novel fare. But in the discussion of why ratings were suffering I thought he left out one critical frustration factor that affects my viewing more than any other.

A friend of mine, Ira Goldman, is the inventor of the KneeDefender™, a small plastic device that fits on the tray table in an airplane and limits the ability of the seat in front of you to recline. His reason for creating such a device was the number of times his knees had been crushed by a sudden recline while penned within the claustrophobic confines of a coach class seat (and I thought “cruel and unusual punishment” had been outlawed by the Constitution).

The KneeDefender™ is one of those items about which no one seems to be neutral. To some it is their salvation; to others it is an outrage; to many it is a horrible sign of moral degeneracy and social decay – but one that they nonetheless find too useful to forswear.

Sometimes, it just seems the world has gone mad. At times like those, I write things like this, and hope it makes things better. So far it hasn’t.

I was in the process of preparing this for submission to Newsweek for their ‘My Turn’ section when the attack on the World Trade Center made the topic page one news everywhere. Submitting it suddenly seemed pointless….

Another week, another killing spree, or so it seems.

Following the disputed presidential election in 2000, and continuing into George W. Bush’s presidency, die-hard ‘liberals’ — and I use the term with reluctance, because I consider such labels inadequate to the task of identifying a consistent political ideology these days — put forth a concerted effort in the media to dispute his legitimacy, deride his authority, and torpedo his agenda. I am no fan of either George W. Bush or Al Gore, and find much to criticize in our new president, but I find this liberal intransigence both disrespectful of our institutions and divisive in a time of social and political fragmentation.

Last week’s massacre in Chiapas, Mexico of dozens of people by a paramilitary strike-force involved in the Zapatista uprising has once again brought into our living rooms, accompanied by jaded shock, ignorant analysis, and color photographs, the man-made horrors that plague our world. We get the initial reports, rushed to us in a frenzy to be the first on-the-air, with contradictory eye-witness accounts, blustery and ignorant official positions, and the inevitable (but inaccurate) body counts. We get periodic updates, each contradicting its predecessor and claiming to be “the truth”. We get long-winded speculations on motivations and responsibility, and a running scorecard on who is helped and hurt in the political aftermath, as if it was all some kind of game, another edition of Monday Night War. And as with so many reports of such inhumanity, we are led to heights of indignation and despair by the revelation, in hushed and horrified tones, that some of the victims were women and children. They killed women and children! The bastards! Women and children!

On August 24th, 1997, one of my oldest and dearest friends was killed in a motorcycle accident in the hills overlooking the Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco.

It seems to me the most important thing we can teach our children, future drivers, riders, and walkers — and future employers and employees and leaders and teachers and neighbors, and future voters and politicians — is courtesy. We must all share the roads. We must all share in society. Your duty in driving, and in life, should be to minimize the chaos and disruption in your wake as you strive toward your destination. Your guiding principle should be: always assume the other guy is going to do something careless or stupid. If that means sometimes ceding your right-of-way — what have you lost but a bit of pride?

My name is Augustus Percival Lowell. Pert Lowell was my Grandfather.