"Say 'hello' to all the apples on the ground"

I am reading Dinesh D'Souza's "What's So Great About America," which has actually been very timely for my international politics class- I read his summary of Huntington's theory of the clash of civilization's the same day a classmate presented on it (though D'Souza and I feel differently about its ability to describe reality). I am working on articulating my thought on it. It has, at the least, pushed me to put my thoughts on my own American-ness as someone who has spent time in Germany, Egypt, and especially China into words.

I am reading another excellent article by a scholar (John Lewis Gaddis) which is tugging at similar strings of my identity. And a historian from the State University of New York at Buffalo was here last week and gave an excellent presentation on his current quest to understand world history and China's place in it. I am hoping to write a coherent post on my American identity when all of these things have percolated in my mind a bit longer, but I am thinking I will probably wait until I get to Korea after my semester ends and post then. I have started writing it three times now and am still struggling.

The essence of what I want to say is this: America has been the center of world civilization for at least half a century, and it's Western predecessors for centuries before that. D'Souza spends a lot of time on why this is justified, and makes a number of important points. However, a central civilization, a model nation, are not what the world community is looking for. As far as the principles of science, democracy, and capitalism (the three principles that D'Souza argues are Western civilization's greatest contributions, and justifications for their leadership) are concerned, they have found a model. What we are trying to find is not the country that everyone wants to live in, but a way for all of the countries in the world to work together.

I know that my voice is a very recent addition to the academic conversation on these topics, but I simply do not believe we are living in the same world as we were two centuries ago, and I don't think that my perspective can be dismissed entirely as naive. We are not living in a world where any one civilization or nation will be The Source of learning and progress- D'Souza is right in saying that in many ways that is the role the West has been playing. Humanity is developing to the point where we are learning how to function as a whole.

... I'm definitely gonna post on this again when I am not painfully aware that I have a lot of other homework to do.

In other updates: I am loving my International Politics class. I am learning so much. I am loving the many perspectives and the deep thinking in our readings and after every lecture I feel like my brain is on fire with thinking. Shi Bin is a fantastic professor. My other classes are all decent.

My Chinese is improving, but slowly. My vocabulary is still frustratingly limited but in my conversations, especially with Xiaoxuan and Rong Fan, I am finding myself more and more able to at least describe a word or concept, even if I don't know the translation.

I am going to Shanghai with Shirin tomorrow (so yes, I should really be doing homework). I love train rides. I'm very excited.

I have had a lot of lovely conversations, in English, in Chinese, through Skype, through email, and in person, this week. It has been really good.

Today's title brought to you by The Nurse Who Loved Me by Failure

Countdown to landing in Korea and seeing Christian Yetter: 29 days.

Walking around town, lyrics solidify as titles in my mind, but they don't always stay

Jon Huntsman, the US Ambassador to China, visited our center today. He spoke well, and it was nice to have another Important Person tell me that I am doing something smart by being here at the Center studying China. He said some interesting things about the history of Sino-US relations, nodding to some of his ambassadorial predecessors, but the thought that is most stuck in my mind right now has to do with US politics. Mostly.

He was appointed by president Obama earlier this year (and has just been in China for a few months). He was happily serving as governor (of Utah, I believe) before that, and talked about his phone call and subsequent conversation with Obama. He said that he knows why they built the Oval Office: because it is impossible to say 'no' if the president asks you to do something while you are in the Oval Office. He mentioned being honored and humbled by being asked to serve. He also mentioned that, despite his being a republican and Obama a democrat, that they have very similar ideas and goals when it comes to China. He said that relations with China have involved thirty years of bi-partisan cooperation.

That made me very happy, on the one hand (though, thinking about it, I suppose many developed international relations HAVE to be bi-partisan, or they are simply incomplete). On the other hand, it again underscored to me how foolish partisan politics are. And I don’t think I’ve formally recorded my thoughts on that in super-official blog form, so here I go!

I guess I should start by saying that what the ambassador said really is true, and I have felt it in this Center. The terms “conservative” and “liberal” have some small meaning, but they are usually more useful describing differences between countries; the words “republican” and “democrat” have almost none (here referring to my interactions with other students). China itself does not have a political line dividing its citizens into opposing camps (that is also not to say that I’d trade the US political system for the Chinese one. I definitely wouldn’t).

I get very worn out very quickly in political debates, and I appreciate that many of the folks that I know realize that they are not a good base for relationships, and even when y’all talk about political things, try to keep it from being personal. But it is silly bordering on ridiculous in my mind that people are divided up based on what they think the best political decisions might be. As if we don’t already have enough differences to sort through, enough veils separating us from each other. I mean, of course we have different opinions. There are, in fact, upwards of 6 billion human brains on the planet. Hopefully we have different thoughts. I don’t think that they can even be grossly summarized into two camps, and I think that dividing ourselves into groups and slapping labels on each other does a lot of harm.

What I mean to say is, I love you all very much, and I hope that you have your own ideas. I’d really like to hear them, especially if we can agree that having different ideas doesn’t make either of us less human.