8 December 2009: Election Day — May the Force be with us!

College chum Ron J.K. and other people have asked me about President Barack Obama’s recent announcement of his administration’s plans for Afghanistan. Some were no doubt trying to bait me, knowing my liberal and internationalist leanings.
Here’s how I have responded.

Unfortunately, Obama and the U.S. are in a no-win situation. If he had announced plans for an immediate withdrawal, conservative commentators would label him a coward, and if he had declined to set any plans for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats in Congress would rebel, and our costly and ill-defined wars would drag on without foreseeable end.

As he has proven with the delay in closing the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Obama can be pragmatic and flexible in trying to follow his principles. The latest surge of U.S. troops is focused on the short-to-midterm goal of properly securing Afghanistan beyond Kabul, and the announced withdrawal date isn’t written in stone and reflects longer-term political goals. I don’t think it would embolden our enemies, as some in the news media have claimed.

Obama’s strategy is far from perfect, but given the conflicting advice that both generals and diplomats have given him, it’s probably the best we can expect. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both candidates said the military shouldn’t be used for “nation-building,” but given the situation Obama has inherited, the effort to justify the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform is worth questioning.

Remember, Afghanistan’s insurgency humbled the Greek, British, and Soviet empires before us, and the mountainous country isn’t as easily partitioned as we managed after more decisive wars in Korea or Germany. Opium production has increased since the U.S. entered Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have merely moved to Pakistan since Pres. Bush declared war on Iraq, and the government in Kabul is corrupt and in power only because of U.S. support. We often bet on the wrong horse.

How do we end the threat of terrorism? By getting to its causes in Islamic fundamentalism, the arms trade, socioeconomic inequalities, and failed nation-states whose borders and oil-rich elites were created by the West. The oft-proposed solution of a permanent military presence in the area would only foster anti-U.S. sentiment, cost more lives and billions of dollars, and weaken domestic and international support.

If the entire region could be disarmed and made into a U.N. protectorate, that could work, but it would still take vision and generations of patience. Why not take a page from the Cold War (and even Ronald Reagan, whom many still admire) and contain our foes and their ideology rather than pursue numerous unwinnable brushfire wars?

I wish the president, our nation, and the world luck in finding ways to resolve such persistent conflicts and minimizing the loss of life. Democracy spread in the 1990s but has experienced setbacks in the past decade. The U.S. should be a leader in promoting freedom, justice, and prosperity for all, but we also have to recognize constraints on the ground and in dealing with rising powers with whom we don’t necessarily agree.

On a related note, as the U.S. begins to emerge from the current economic recession and Congress grapples with health care reform, some politicians and commentators still claim that reducing taxes and regulation is the best way to deal with it. However, “trickle-down” theory has been disproven even as federal and personal debts climb and access to health care is based on class.

You can’t have corporate bailouts, provide payments to states, continue Social Security and medical benefits, and support a large military while at the same time cutting taxes and expect to come out ahead. Worker protections gained by (admittedly often corrupt) unions have eroded as corporations grow ever larger and maximize their rights as legal “persons.” Insurance premiums have risen, workdays have lengthened, and the middle class continues to get squeezed.

Even those of us fortunate enough to have jobs will have to acknowledge that our standard of living is slipping, partly because economic well-being is measured by consumption rather than homegrown production or environmental conservation. The federal government provides an economy of scale in which the costs of unemployment and other benefits can be spread over the largest possible number of taxpayers, reducing the pain for the many to help out the 10% of our fellow Americans who are unemployed.

Sure, big government is vulnerable to corruption and waste. But as the financial crisis has proven, so is big business, which is even less accountable. When Republicans controlled the Congress and White House, they did little to stem the growth of government, let alone reduce the deficit, which is a burden on future generations. Contrarians seem to be rooting for Obama to fail, and while I believe that dissent with and within the White House can be useful to decision-making, for all our sakes, we’d better hope that it’s successful!

Tuesday, 25 August 2009: Virginia vacation

On Saturday, 8 August 2009, Janice and I ran errands in Norwood, Massachusetts,
and had lunch at Minerva Indian Restaurant. The next day, we began the long drive south to see my family. We stayed the night in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

On Monday, Aug. 10, Janice and I visited her grandmother before continuing on our way to Virginia. We arrived in the town of “Little” Washington that afternoon and were treated to my mother’s cooking. After a restful Tuesday, we all went to Charlottesville. My father took us to the pleasant campus of the University of Virginia, where he teaches, and we enjoyed a classy buffet lunch at the Boar’s Head Inn and a cheese tray for dinner from Feast.

On Thursday, Aug. 13, we went to Monticello, the estate of President Thomas Jefferson. I had been there before, most recently a decade ago for the swearing in of my
mother as a U.S. citizen, but Janice had not. I thought the new visitor center was a model of modern museum exhibits, and the tour of the mansion and grounds provided an interesting glimpse into the talents and contradictions of the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, architect, and slave owner.

That afternoon, Janice and I drove from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the suburban sprawl of Northern Virginia. We met my brother Peter, his wife Kelly, and their daughters before heading to the home of Corbin A.Y. & Andria K.Y. and their new arrival, Maia. Steve M.R. & Aleece Z.R. and their children, Connor and Lauren, joined us for a fun fajita dinner.

On Friday, Peter, Kelly, Ava, Lili, and Janice and I took the Metro into Washington, D.C., where we checked out the Smithsonian Institute‘s Museum of Natural History
and the newly renovated National Museum of American History. As always, there were many interesting exhibits. The girls behaved well, despite missing a nap and dealing with the summer heat and crowds on the Mall.

Later that night, the adults watched Confessions of a Shopaholic on TV. It was a frothy, forgettable comedy that wasn’t as good as, say, The Devil Wears Prada. Not my usual genre fare (science fiction, fantasy, comic book superheroes, mystery, etc.), but I look forward to the English-dubbed version of Ponyo, among other autumn movies.

On Saturday, Aug. 15, my parents joined us for a barbeque lunch to belatedly celebrate their birthdays. Janice and I left by midafternoon, grabbing dinner in the Palisades Center shopping mall and stopping for the night at the Spring Hill Suites by Marriott in Tarrytown, New York. By breaking up our travel, we managed to avoid most of the usual end-of-weekend traffic jams in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Since returning to the regular routine, I’ve also been catching up on recorded genre television, e-mails, and gaming. I hope to blog about work, movies such as District 9,
and more in the coming weeks.

TV transitions

In the past few months, the 2008-2009 television season drew to a close with the cancellations of numerous genre shows. I was particularly fond of comedies Pushing Daisies, The Middleman, and Reaper (all of which may wrap up storylines in comic book form). Long-running, critically acclaimed shows such as E R and Battlestar Galactica
(BSG) finished, as did immature ones like Crusoe and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles.

I thought the whimsical Eli Stone, Valentine, and Cupid deserved a chance, and we’ll never know if dramas such as biblical allegory Kings would have lived up to their potential. Space operas BSG and Stargate: Atlantis ended with a whimper, although each promises to have more spin-offs with The Plan/Caprica and Stargate: Universe, respectively.

Thanks to HBO and Showtime’s free preview weekend, Janice and I caught the second
season premiere of vampire melodrama True Blood and the dark comedy Nurse Jackie. While neither was particularly realistic, both showcased the quality of writing that
distinguishes HBO from its many competitors.

I can’t say the same thing for Frank Miller’s live-action adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit. As a fan of the recent comic book continuation by Darwyn Cooke and others, I was
disappointed that Miller chose to emphasize over-the-top violence rather than the wry humor of Eisner’s blue-masked gumshoe.

I’d put the rotoscoped cyberpunk A Scanner Darkly, Brendan Fraser’s juvenile adventure Journey to the Center of the Earth, and comedian Jack Black’s Be Kind, Rewind somewhere between those two extremes. Each of these movies was reasonably entertaining.

The remake of Blind Samurai was interesting, and it’s a shame that Fox didn’t give the speculative fiction Virtuality a chance beyond its television pilot. As a student of Arthurian lore, I wanted to like BBC/NBC’s Merlin but was instead annoyed at the numerous ways in which it dumbed down the characters and plot for a younger audience.

HBO’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and PBS’s latest Poirot have been solid, if not overly faithful to the source novels, according to Janice, who somehow retains plot details of numerous mysteries for years (I suppose my own knowledge of comic book continuities is similar).

Coming soon: The summer TV season begins!

Entry for May 20, 2009: Egyptian and Arthurian fiction

Although most of my attention has been focused on the job search during the past few weeks, I have had some time to catch up on reading and filing.

I recently finished Brad Geagley‘s Day of the False King, the first of two historical mysteries set in Ancient Egypt. I had previously read his Year of the Hyenas, partly because Janice recommended it and partly for running my Pathfinder: “Holy Steel” teleconferencing game. I liked both novels for their plots and archaeologically accurate descriptions.

I also just read The Killing Way, a novel set in post-Roman Britain by Tony Hays that does a good job of blending historical fact and Arthurian myth. Speaking of the legends of King Arthur, Janice and I watched 2007’s The Last Legion, which featured several familiar actors and made a nice companion piece to the 2004 film titled King Arthur.

I have a bookshelf worth of Arthurian stories, references, and analysis, and I prefer the more realistic versions of the tales to the tragic fantasy of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the musical Camelot, or John Boorman’s Excalibur.

On the other hand, I have used the epic version in various role–playing games and have enjoyed approaches as diverse as the BBC’s serious Legend of King Arthur, the comedic Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Spamalot, and the space opera graphical Camelot 3000. Inspired in part by T.H. White’s The Once and Future King and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, I even wrote some Arthurian fiction for Prof. Elizabeth Tucker’s folklore class back in college.

Whatever your preference — romantic and chivalric or Dark Age gritty, comic or tragic — there is a version of the tales for you!

Entry for January 20, 2009: Inauguration Day

Friends, I hope you had a good weekend and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America and the first African-American in the role was a moving event. I thought his speech struck a good balance between somber acknowledgment of the many challenges we face and idealistic hope and faith in our shared values and strengths.

I attended both Clinton inaugurations in the 1990s and have fond memories of the crowd and festivals on the National Mall. I considered going down to Washington, but the expense, leave time required, and wintry weather kept me home. Still, I was happy to watch the event with co-workers.

I wish the new administration, our country, and the world good luck in the months ahead in dealing with the escalating challenges of economic inequality and recession, health care expenses, persistent armed conflicts, and environmental degradation. Crafting and executing policies to address these challenges is a monumental task, but as Obama said, hard-working Americans are capable of uniting to succeed.