Tired yet?

My sentiments exactly: http://www.easterwood.org/hmmn/?p=88

Recommended Viewing

The movement of Chinese peasants from rural areas to the cities has been called the greatest migration in human history. But not all Chinese peasants are moving to the wealthy eastern coastal provinces in their search of a better life. Han Chinese from Sichuan are also looking for higher wages in China’s far west – Xinjiang and Tibet. Ning Ying’s (寧瀛）documentary Railroad of Hope（希望之路）travels with migrant workers from Sichuan along the 50 hour train ride to the cotton fields of Xinjiang where they can earn more in two months picking cotton than in a whole year at home. The stories and images are searing. I highly recommend it to get a sense of what life under pressure is like in a rapidly globalizing society. The film does not touch upon what happens when these migrant workers get off the train in Xinjiang and come face to face with local non-Han communities. Maybe that is the subject of another documentary.

含羞草 Shy grass

In Taiwan there is this plant that grows all over the place called hanxiucao (the shy plant) Mimosa pudica that folds up when you touch it. I had always thought that it was native to Taiwan, but according to Wikipedia, it actually originates from Brasil. Then I heard on the POV documentary The Tailenders (a disturbing documentary about American missionaries who have made it their mission to bring “the Word” to everyone in the world in their mother tongue – I’ll save my rant against the evangelical impulse for a later post) that during the Pacific War, the US military introduced it to the Solomon Islands as a way to visually track the movements of Japanese soldiers in the forest. Fascinating.

Random Links

The New York Times notices that not all gay folks are into the marriage thing. A lot of straight people aren’t either.

I’m usually predisposed to keeping essential services public, but in this case, things should be kept private.

Legacies of Empire

Priyamvada Gopal, lecturer at Oxford, in an editorial on the Guardian website, writes:

Indeed, one legacy of European colonialism that we all reckon with is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the “clash of civilisations”. The claim that east and west are bound to come into conflict is merely an extension of imperial practice which found it useful to seal off porous cultures into fixed categories.

So how do we get out of this “self-fulfilling prophecy”, this vicious cycle fueled by power grabs masquerading as religious piety, scripted media epic melodramas of global battles between good versus evil, and erosion of security and community by successive waves of neoliberalism?

“Being a Black Gay Man”

Video from the Washington Post series ”Being a Black Man.” Nothing earth shattering, but I’m glad QPOC issues are getting covered in mainstream media.

Social Isolation and the Rise of Neoconservatism and Christian Nationalism

The WPost has an interesting article on social isolation in the United States. According to the results of the National Science Foundation’s most recent General Social Survey, published yesterday in the American Sociological Review, the number of socially isolated Americans (those who do not have a close relation in which to confide personal matters) has more than doubled since 1985. The data, gathered from survey last conducted in 1984 show that only half of respondents had someone close to talk to.

I think this is a major trend underlying the popularization of neoconservative ideology and Christian nationalism. People who feel alone are vulnerable to ideologies that preach individualized morality and discipline and strict adherence to supernatural authority as perceived antidotes to the alienation of living alone in a “dangerous world.” More than any other political movement, the Right has been able to capitalize on this feeling of isolation among the exurban residents that comprise the majority of the US population. For the US left/progressive movements I believe addressing this suburban American loneliness is one of the critical steps towards turning the tide in this country. It’s not just about defending the social safety net of goverment programs such as Social Security, public education, etc. but also about reinvigorating the idea of the social itself, the importance of friendships and community that intertwine and extend beyond the nuclear family unit. The Right provides a false atrophied version of this in the Church, but I think it’s up to the Left to articulate a vision of a social America that includes Churches, but also other community formations as well.

So how can the US Left do this? How do we take on the challenge of reinvigorating social life in the sprawling exurbs?