Trudeau-Tsai Phone Call Threatens Peace in North America, Likely Affront to America

OTTAWA (5 December 2016): America experts, specialists and the diplomatic community were left aghast on Friday as the President of Taiwan accepted the first leader-to-leader phone call from the North American territory of Canada in decades.

The United States of America views Canada as a renegade state and maintains that there is only one North America, composed of America and Canada. It has consistently protested efforts on the part of the breakaway territory's leadership to form diplomatic ties with foreign countries. Internationally, many countries maintain 'unofficial' ties with Canada but heed America's directive and maintain no formal contact with the territory. Taiwan officially adheres to a "One America" policy and acknowledges the US position on Canada.

The US and Canada split in 1776, when America declared independence from British colonial rule. Historically, Canada and the US were one and the same as before 1776, they were under the same government "since antiquity". Canada is currently governed by a liberal democracy, while the US is not.

The phone call between Taiwanese President Dr. Tsai Ying-wen and Canadian leader Mr. Justin Trudeau lasted 12 minutes. Both the Taiwanese president and Canadian leader congratulated each other on their election wins and expressed their wish for continued prosperity. No groundwork for official recognition of Canada by Asian superpower Taiwan was laid. Trudeau is the leader of the opposition 'Liberal' party, which the US opposes as they feel the eventual goal of Trudeau, and the party, is formal Canadian independence, which they view as unacceptable.

It is unclear how most North Americans in Canada feel about the idea of independence, although a recent study shows they are more likely to identify as "Canadian" rather than "American".

Most America specialists decried the call, saying it "upset the delicate balance of diplomacy in the America region" that has allowed the continent to move forward economically in recent decades.

"This is unprecedented," said America-watcher Li Yi-feng. "It is unclear what Trudeau's motives were, or why President Dr. Tsai chose to call him. Many are saying Tsai simply does not fully understand the intricacy and delicacy of the 'America issue' on any deeper level and simply bumbled into the phone call with Trudeau, or if her advisors arranged it. In any case, the US is likely to be very upset, and managing their diplomatic tantrums is of the utmost importance."

"It doesn't serve Asian interests to give recognition to the territory of Canada in this way," added American diplomat Chen Shu-ling. "Taiwan and the US have strong, but potentially fractious ties. Preserving the US-Canada status quo is best for all involved, especially us, and the US."

Chen added, "Taiwan is a beacon of democracy and freedom around the world. We stand for human rights and self-determination. However, it is important that we maintain our ties with the US. Destabilizing the current balance could lead to war."

"We hope for a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the 'America issue' that will not lead to war."

The US has consistently said that no independence for Canada would be possible, and any move towards independence would result in war.

Some, however, praised the call, noting that it was an important step forward in relations with democratic Canada. "It's hypocritical," said blogger Bichael Burton, "for Taiwan to recognize a non-democratic oligarchy such as the US while leaving its strong ally, both in terms of liberal democratic views and and diplomacy, out in the cold. This call is simply acknowledging things as they are: that the US does not control Canada, and Canada is an important friend to Taiwan."

The US and Canada formally reached an agreement in 1992 that there is 'One North America', but with different interpretations of what that means, although there is no existing documentation of this agreement. Canada has limited observer status in some international organizations and is allowed to compete in the Olympics as American Ottawa.

There has been no US response, as American leader King Trump has not yet issued a statement. America watchers say that possible retribution for the phone chat might include invasion, the nuclear bombing of both Canadian cities, the waterboarding of every Canadian citizen, or possibly dropping a US-made meteor on Canada.

The US formally lodged a complaint regarding the call, reportedly saying that the President of Taiwan had no business contacting the leader of a breakaway state. "If they wish to deal with Canada, it is only right and ethical to go through the US. This is a domestic matter and Taiwan would be wise to refrain from getting involved. The future of North America must be decided internally, by all 356 million North Americans. Our North American brothers across the border must understand this," the communique said. American media called it "a cheap trick" by Trudeau.

Lao Ren Cha did not contact any Canadians for comment. No Canada experts could be found, as it is a narrow issue generally covered by America specialists.

America expert Hsu Jian-ming made the case for continuing the status quo. "There is no clear benefit to pushing for independence for Canada," he noted. "The status quo has allowed Canada to prosper, and has reduced the threat of a US attack to the low twenty percents, at least. It signs trade agreements with the US and has consulates around the world. Just because they are not formally recognized by most countries, must maintain an otherwise unnecessarily large defensive military, are not full participants in international organizations, the US pressures other nations not to engage in diplomacy or trade with it and consistently attempts to meddle in Canadian territorial 'elections' does not mean they are isolated. What advantages would formal independence bring that Canada does not currently enjoy as a result of the peaceful willingness to postpone the dispute from the US?"

A time to break down

I've been working for awhile on a story-like version of this topic: true events told in a narrative about my time away from Taiwan in 2014 and 2015 and subsequent return. But recently two people I know (a friend and a friend-of-a-friend) have taken or will take similar flights, so I felt like writing something more essay-like about it now. Look for the story in a month or two.

Most recently, I returned to the US for one week in order to attend a family reunion, as well as pack up my entire childhood. The reunion and other family visits were especially important as I have two living grandparents, both of which are near 90 and neither of which is in good health. It is a painful fact that every visit I make home could be the last time I see either or both of them.

In 2012, a few years before my mom passed away, she had expressed an interest in the various old and attractive, but not particularly valuable, antique decorative items I'd purchased for my apartment in Taiwan: mostly old carved wooden panels used to decorate the tops of walls and under eaves in houses and temples. So, I bought her a similar panel with carved peaches (symbols of long life) and a stylized 'long life' (壽) character, as we were returning to the US for Christmas that year. It turned out to be our final family holiday together before she passed away in 2014. The irony of this does not escape me.

This past week, after learning that our dad planned to rent out our family home and the house I grew up in for at least a year, and potentially sell it after that time, I asked if I could have the panel rather than see it go into storage. It was an easy request as I'd purchased it to begin with.

With too much in the suitcase, including books, large photo albums and other items, the fragile wood of this panel just couldn't take the pressure. As I was closing the back, I heard a crack. The cut was not a complete severance and could be repaired, but I didn't want it in that suitcase. I put it in my carry-on as gingerly as possible, only for the breakage to complete itself as that bag, too, was overstuffed.

When I took it out of its (inadequate) padding back in Taipei, only to see it completely severed, I was reminded of a favorite song of my mother's which my uncle sang at her memorial service:

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together
I couldn't help but draw some weird symbolic analogies to my long-term expat life - literally as far away as it is possible to go from my hometown - and that antique wooden panel. Bought in Taiwan, gifted to my mother in the US, only for its hope of long life to be dashed in a few remaining years and to crack on the way back to Taiwan, as I leave the home I grew up in quite possibly for the last time.

As you know if you read this blog even semi-regularly, my flight home in 2014 was sudden: I'd planned on leaving for up to a year, maybe two, but wasn't scheduled to depart on the day I did. I knew as I left for the airport with a few hours' notice that whatever happened would not be good: I didn't know if I'd have a few hours, a few days, a few months or a few years with my mom, but no matter how long I did have, I knew I was flying back to the US to say goodbye. As it turned out, within two days, maman est morte. 

Less than a year later, just before I was set to return to help my father after his heart surgery, I lost my grandmother somewhat suddenly (we'd known it wouldn't be long but we didn't know it would be quite so soon).

What I've become more aware of in the intervening year and a half is that I am not nearly the only expat or immigrant who has experienced that situation. Many of us who live abroad long-term and likely some of us who don't stay for that long in the grand scheme of things take that same flight. They're lucky in a sense if they do: not everyone can. I could return for my mother but there was no way for me to have done the same for my grandmother, as much as I wanted to.

It's a part of expat life that few talk about: if you choose to live far away long term, there is a chance the next time you see your loved ones 'back home' might be the last time, that you might have to take an unplanned 12-hour flight to say goodbye, or that there is a chance you could be half a planet away knowing there is nothing you can do.

What is even less discussed is the feeling of breakage that comes from this time away. Many of you know I no longer consider the US to be my home. I haven't for awhile but haven't been able to articulate it until recently. We may not stay in Taiwan forever - let's see if this country can get its act together on immigration and labor reform - but if we leave it will be to go forward, to somewhere new. I am married to a Canadian citizen after all. But if you plan to go forward that necessarily means you won't be going 'back', though it feels cruel to put it that way. If you don't go back, a crack forms between your life before and your life ahead. Given time, and despite one's best efforts, the crack will eventually turn into a break. Even if you keep in close touch with people back home, the number of times you will see them again in your life is reduced by your living so far away, and the amount of time you will spend with them before they, too, leave either your life or this world is necessarily less.

Does that 'goodbye' flight make up for such a trade-off? You must go forward, or at least, I must. The answer is not to stay behind, but you must also be aware of the consequences. You do not know when your 'goodbye' flight will come, or if you will be able to take it. You don't know when the crack will form, or when it will turn into a severance. You can pack as carefully as possible, pad yourself against all manner of unfortunate events, but they will find you. None of us living abroad are exempt from the 'goodbye' flight. None of us are exempt from the breakage.

It is easy, while living a relatively charmed existence in Taiwan, where my salary (as much as I complain about it, with reason I think) affords a comfortable lifestyle of downtown living, further education and travel, to pretend that every time is a time to dance. To pretend that I am a 21st century Meursault - that we are all little dancing Meursaults staring at the sky or the sun or whatever - that nothing between humans matters as much as the immediacy of life and nature, that only the constant forward-moving pace of the universe makes sense and nothing else can be explained rationally.

But, whether or not there is truth in such absurdity, human relationships do matter. You make new ones abroad: it's fairly common to write about this positive side of expat life. You meet all sorts of interesting people, not least among them local residents of your new country. And we all know that our relationships back home may cool due to this distance. But we like to pretend that there is no permanent consequence to this moving forward, that good relationships can always renew themselves. Generally, they can, but only if the people you leave behind are still alive when you come back.

This is an acute feeling while you are actually home. Living in the US in 2015 was like functioning with my arm chopped off (left or right, depending on the day). I was still alive, in a great deal of pain but able to get through the day and even keep other peoples' lives together as I planned my mom's memorial service, but something was just missing. I wasn't able to function normally due to this missing thing, this absence where there should be presence. Living in Taiwan, it's easy to forget that it happened at all. Any given day now in Taiwan is no different from any given day before late 2014 when I might not have talked to my parents (we talked frequently, but not on a daily basis).

It would be easy to pick right back up as though life was as before. It's almost eerie how nothing in Taiwan has changed even as I know rationally there is no reason for it to have. That's the other side of the expat life coin: after a monumental change or loss where you come from, the only change you see when you return to your country of residence is in you.

Back 'home', things have changed quite a bit. Others feel your loss, or rather, that loss is also felt by others. Their possessions are still around, in many cases. Whatever they built in their life still is, too. People offer memories or sympathy. The place where they lived, where you come from, has changed, even if just a tiny bit. Return to your new home, and that loss is not felt by most others (in my case, my sister - also in Taiwan - and husband were mourning, too). They can't miss someone they never knew, and a place that person never set foot in obviously wouldn't change because they are gone.

It's tempting and easy to try and avoid returning to a place where you feel your arm has been cut off by staying in a place where you can be whole-bodied if you want to be. To pretend that the breakage you've suffered, the human relationship you've lost, doesn't have as big an impact because it doesn't impact the immediacy of life and sensation in your new home.

I can't do that though. I don't regret moving abroad (it would also be easy, but futile, to wallow in regret). It is natural to move forward. To seek your fortune, in whatever form it takes, wherever it can be found. Go East, young woman. 

In order to atone for all of the time I didn't spend where I grew up, that I didn't see my mother or grandmother, all of the times I wasn't there rolled up into one goodbye flight I could take and one I couldn't, and to acknowledge that the same circumstances will present themselves again at some point in the not-too-distant future, it sometimes helps to spend some meditative time with my arm, figuratively speaking, behind my back.

So, today I broke out my arts and crafts tools, including the appropriate type of glue to repair wooden items, and set about gluing that antique wooden panel back together so I can hang it in my apartment here in Taipei.

The break will always be noticeable: it's my own fault for trying to carry it to the US and back in the first place. But then if I hadn't gone abroad I wouldn't have bought the panel at all. My mom knew that my move abroad was my own move forward and, as hard as it was, supported it.

American Sexist

This is a post for everyone who thinks that a lot of commentary about women's issues and everyday sexism in Taiwan (as this is, after all, a Taiwan-focused blog) are somehow unique to Taiwan or unique to Asia. "Taiwanese culture infantilizes women", they might say, or "In Taiwan women are expected to be very feminine, and they really don't like masculine things - that's why all the clothing and other items they buy are so girly".

Which, there's a speck of truth to that. I wouldn't go so far as to say women are "infantilized" in Taiwan (I know enough women who are, say, the general managers of investment company offices, who are senior executives or who basically run their family businesses, enough tomboys and women who simply aren't that feminine, enough rebels, athletes and artistic types to know that that is something of an exaggeration) but there does seem to be a cultural tendency to expect greater "femininity". Most stereotypes, after all, build bullshit around a kernel of truth.

What bothers me is the idea that this is somehow Asia-specific, Taiwan-specific, or has already been done away with in the Western countries that people who say this often a.) hail from and b.) praise.

I've been in the US for family reasons since December (it is now March, for those who read this post down the line). That's the longest amount of time I've spend in the US since the mid-aughts - 2006 to be precise. I was 26 when I left, and I feel I've grown and changed a lot since then - become more articulate in my support for, and reasons for supporting, feminist causes, for example. Behavior I put up with in male friends and boyfriends back then I would not put up with now, and I would be better able to articulate why.

So, this is the first time I've been around American cultural norms for an extended period since before my sense of feminist self fully formed - at least I think it's fully-formed at this point.  And you know what? Gender-pigeonholing and expecting 'femininity' is a huge problem here, as well. And yes, it is somewhat media-propagated, it's also socially propagated.

There's the Fifty Shades of Grey crap going around - since I've been back I've had at least one friend spend quite some time rhapsodizing the 'beauty' of a relationship where a significantly younger woman goes against her egalitarian beliefs and lets herself be dominated, as per the wishes of her (barf) "inner goddess", a relationship I'd categorize as if not abusive, at least full of red flags and creepy behavior (this is not a commentary on dom-sub relationships, of which I know very little and have no firsthand experience - this is a commentary on the relationship in that book/movie/pile of trash).

Then there's shopping. As I shop for spring clothing, something I am happy to have the luxury of doing without a problem (that never happened in Taiwan), my sister and I have noted several times that the clothing and t-shirts available for men are much cooler and more unique than those available for women. Some examples from Target:




Choices for women: yawn. They're cute, but boring. Totally fine as one aspect of a wardrobe, and would be fine if more fun choices were available - but the only fun choices are super feminine:



So, the men get Game of Thrones sigils and Star Wars t-shirts, and we get "SINGLE"? Yuck.

There were t-shirts for sports teams - most of which seemed to include the word "Swag".

The men's t-shirts were much more interesting: 



I personally would want "Omnomnomnivore" from that group.

So, we've been shopping in the men's section. I got fuzzy Batman pajama pants, Boba Fett pajama pants, a Sriracha t-shirt, and I almost bought a Star Trek t-shirt but decided against it as the last movie was so damn bad. You can get t-shirts for everything from Guiness to The Big Bang Theory to A Song of Ice and Fire. I'll have to get all the t-shirts altered.

I asked if any of these were available in the women's section. Nope. For women? Boooyyyss, we're single! 

Do they think women just don't like sci-fi, Game of Thrones or delicious, delicious Sriracha? I like all of those things. What makes them think that a woman wouldn't love a pair of fuzzy Batman pajama pants or a baby Iron Man t-shirt or a Darth Vader sugar skull t-shirt? All of which I would totally wear. I would not wear Snoopy sporting a pink bow or anything that says "swag", "cute", "kiss me" or whatever on it. Also, no sparkles please.

I've also been watching an inordinate amount of TV, simply because it's quite novel to have a lot of channels to choose from in my native language. I've become strangely obsessed with Ellen's Design Challenge (I just love cool furniture I suppose), but was put off by the judges saying repeatedly that "women" would not like one designer's items. Here's an example of an item that is "masculine" and that "every man" would want in their home but hardly any women would buy (very close to what was actually said.

Both my sister and I were put off by this - I freaking love this fan...thing (it's a credenza, right?). I would TOTALLY buy that. I would probably never buy the more 'feminine' designs thought up by other designers. I happened to love this guy's "masculine" work - I'm all about interesting metals, industrial details and thick natural woods*. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say I was pissed at how the show categorized these designs as "for men", but it, along with the "now we shop in the men's section at Target" experience, has really made me think about whether the US is really better at all in terms of socially-conditioned gender stereotyping than Taiwan.

Sure, women in the US, at least my part of the US, get less blowback for expressing our not-always-feminine preferences and sensibilities, and in Taiwan a lot of women complain that they do. But I'm from the People's Republic of New York where we are all Communists, pornographers, homosexuals and Jews - I would wager that in other parts of the country it's much worse. And you won't see as many instances of Hello Kitty figurine collection or anything like that.

But really, I'm not even particularly anti-feminine - if even I, not the least feminine person you will meet (although certainly not the most) feels pigeonholed, like "this is for girls, that is for boys" in the USA, if even I feel like I have to shop in the men's section of Target to get cool t-shirts and get irritated at a TV show for implying that women don't like things that women obviously do like, as I'm a woman and I like them, then maybe we are not as progressive as we think, maybe Taiwan isn't so much worse or so much more sexist than we think, and maybe we need to get off our high horses about what it's like 'back home'.

Women still get a raw deal here, too.

*shut up

Fuck! What we need is more women who swear.

What we need in Taiwan is more women who swear.

I don't mean that literally. I don't actually mean that more women in Taiwan should go around spouting colorful obscenities (although that would be quite enjoyable - I'd fit in more for sure!). I mean it more like this:

Culturally speaking, actions, preferences and attitudes feel to me to be more gender-specific in Taiwan. Obviously this doesn't mean every individual follows a prescribed set of rigid gender norms, just that this seems to be at work on a general level. One of these gender-segregated activities is swearing - a few things people have said to me regarding women swearing in Taiwanese culture:

"Oh, I don't know so many of those words. Those are words for men."
"Jenna! You are a lady! Where did you learn words like that?"
"Women in Taiwan don't swear much. Well, maybe they will say bad words around their close friends but they won't really do that in public."
On the final day of the occupation of the Legislative Yuan, after most of the students had left, one of the speakers in the 'free speech zone' inside the front gate was a woman who said "Okay, I'm going to say something. About President Ma. Even though I am a young woman, I'm still going to say it. I want to say - Ma Ying-jiu, fuck your mother!"
"When I was in junior high school my female classmates would say something like, 'oh, I'm going to say this word, haha' and then they might say something like 'stinky vagina' and it was very funny because they were girls. But then by high school they stopped saying that. I don't think any girls I met said those things in high school or college."
"What does that mean?" Me: "You don't know that word? It's a pretty standard Taiwanese swear word." "No, I really don't. I think my husband will know. He's a man, that's a word men say."
"Really, you never swear?" "No! I'm a woman!"

I realize that what these folks said above hardly counts as 'data' about how often women swear in Taiwanese society. My point is more that I hear repeatedly that swearing is the purview of men, and 'ladies' don't do that. Whether or not it's strictly true (and it probably isn't as rigid as the above quotes make it seem), it is obviously a common social attitude or I wouldn't hear it so often.

The reasons for this gender-stereotyping attitude are pretty obvious: because it's gender stereotyping, and it fits pretty well with what most people around the world associate with 'male' (raucous, bad language, rough around the edges, burly, undomesticated, a bit of attitude, protective, a hunter, gregarious, aggressive) and 'female' (gentle, sweet, pretty, undemanding, nurturing, domestic, child-oriented, quiet, giving, refined)...

...which, by the way, before anyone accuses me of gender stereotyping myself, if you read this blog at all you know that I don't actually think any of that is true! Plenty of women are raucous, aggressive, gregarious and have a bit of attitude. I would say I'm one of those women. And plenty of men are gentle, nurturing, quiet, giving...I'd say Brendan is one of those men. Expected gender roles are bullshit - the paragraph above is more what people think about men vs. women when they have absorbed the idea of expected gender roles, not what's actually true. I doubt many would argue, whether it's true or not (and it's not), that many if not most people *think* this is how things are.

And that's just as true in Taiwan as anywhere, and I would say more so than the West.

So what we need is more women who swear - that is, more women in Taiwan who defy expected gender roles. Or at least, when faced with a divide between their personality & nature and what society expects of "ladies", will choose their natural selves over maintaining a more socially desired appearance and personality.

Swearing is just one example of this - it could be anything.

There are two things at this point that I need to clarify, lest I give the wrong impression.

First, I don't mean this in the "white lady says Taiwanese women should do X" way that it might be construed. This is something I'd like to see happen in basically every country including the USA. I'm only focusing on Taiwan because I live here, so expected gender roles here affects me personally. But every country and culture - or at least almost all of them - have gendered expectations of behavior that don't conform to individual personalities. Even if these expectations do somewhat match general trends to some extent (and I'm not sure they do, or if they do, that behavior was more more likely impressed on them by culture, rather than tendencies they were born with), it does a disservice to individuals who fall outside of the lines or don't fit the expected parameters to have a society that openly expects specific behaviors from specific genders. There is really no good reason for expecting everyone to conform to meaningless standards rather than judging each person as an individual.

Second, I don't mean to imply that Taiwanese women as a whole don't already stay true to themselves. I'd say that many do. I am sure that many of the women on the MRT with fake eyelashes, unstable shoes and done-up hair do all of that because they want to, and that women act however they act because they want to. And often next to a woman dressed up that way, I'll see another woman in a comfortable sweatshirt and jeans, hair in a ponytail, no makeup.

My criticism isn't aimed at particular women and how they act, because that's their choice. It's aimed instead at the social standards that dictate that some ways that women act are better than others - I'm not taking aim at women who don't swear so much as the social stricture that 'ladies shouldn't swear' or 'ladies should do X but should not do Y'.

I am sure for all my feel-good huggy-buggy talk above, that there is also subset of women who dress up more than they'd like to, or swear less than they'd like to, or speak out less than they'd like to, or pretend to be gentler/sweeter than they really are (a subset, not the whole) because they know that society 'prefers' these things in women. That they play up the X because "ladies should do X" and downplay the Y because 'ladies should not do Y'.

I am sure of that, because plenty of female friends have told me so. Or they have said that when they do step outside of those boundaries of expectation that they feel judged for it. A few have explicitly said that they feel judged for it more in Taiwan than when they've spent time in the West. Certainly, I feel that I can get away with more gender non-conformity in Taiwan as a Westerner and that if I were Taiwanese (born here or an American of Taiwanese ethnic heritage) I might get judged more harshly for it than I'd like. I already get obasans telling me about weight loss ('ladies should be slender!'), I can only imagine that it'd be more severe if I were not a foreigner, or didn't 'look like' a foreigner. I can imagine it because friends have told me it would definitely happen. I've already had a boss who tried to hint several times that I should wear makeup and heels (I wear neither - I like real skin and feet that don't ache and have the ability to perform the full range of human ambulation, thanks) - I can imagine how it would feel to not wear makeup to work and have the entire office judge me for it. I can imagine it because a friend of mine has had it happen to her.

I've already let out a swear (I do that a lot; I promise I don't have Tourette's, I just like to use the full range of language at my disposal, in all shades and colors) and heard 'Jenna! Where did you learn that? You are a LADY!', so I can imagine what the reaction would be if I were a Taiwanese woman and said the same thing. I can imagine it, because friends have said that such a thing would not be well-received.

And yes, to be very honest, I do - I really really do - feel more at liberty to challenge these gender-based expectations in the USA, to go for the gender non-conformity to a level where I feel comfortable in appearance, actions and personality. And local friends in Taiwan have said the same.

If we could stop doing that - stop pushing gender roles on people, stop expecting and start, I dunno, swearing - I bet we'd see a much wider spectrum of self-expression and gender non-conformity in both genders.

I mean, Jesus H. Fuckpopes, I'm sure it can be done, right?

Of Verdicts and Public Opinion

Here is what's hard.

Two cases, famous in their respective countries.

Case 1, in Taiwan, a foreign man is accused of driving drunk after a night of karaoke, hitting and killing someone (a local). Nobody really knows what happened, but everyone in the expat community agrees his trial was a sham. He's found guilty - chances are just as good that the police and the owners of the KTV, along with the judge, agreed it would just be better if the foreigner took the blame for the Taiwanese man's death as they are that he actually did it. Taiwanese public opinion very much supports his "guilt". The media treat him as guilty even before the trial. Not only is he a foreigner, but  he's dark skinned (doesn't matter that he's British).

Most foreigners believe that the verdict was wrong, and that it was probably also reached in part as a result of the pressure of public opinion on the judge, pushing him to convict. The argument is that a fair judge wouldn't be swayed that way (nor would a fair judge collude with police and the KTV owners to agree to blame the foreigner).

Case 2, in the USA, a young black man is killed for what appears to be no reason whatsoever. The killer is found not guilty (which, by Florida law, is as far as I know technically true, but that's a point against Florida law, nit a point in favor of the killer. Public opinion is almost entirely one of great fury at the crime and verdict. He was found guilty by the public long before he was tried. Nobody believes justice is served. Many seem willing to ignore the findings of the jury in favor of that public opinion, which says he should fry (or be locked away if you're not into the death penalty).

Case 1is that of Zain Dean. Case 2 is that of George Zimmerman.

In Case 1, I'm inclined to agree that public opinion among Taiwanese should not have played a role in Zain Dean's conviction. I don't know what happened, but no matter what it was, the trial itself was almost certainly a joke. I believe that the judge should have followed due process and ignored the Taiwanese media and public clamoring for Dean's head. (From what I've heard, even from students who just assumed he was guilty until I pointed out that it wasn't nearly so assured that he was, judges in Taiwan are influenced by public opinion to convict or aquit far more than they should be).

In case 2, however, I'm inclined to agree with the public opinion. Justice was not served. George Zimmerman is a murderer and America is still a very racist society. I can say that I think due process should be followed, even as Obama speaks out and says that in a land of laws, we must respect the findings of a jury if we want that due process. But...deep down, I think it was just the wrong verdict.

The commonality here is that I do feel the verdicts reached were both the wrong ones, but for very different reasons. And in one, I'm inclined to dismiss public opinion because I happen to not agree with it (or at least, I just don't know anything beyond the fact that the trial was a joke). In the other, I can't bring myself to dismiss public opinion that quickly...because I agree with it.

And it both, race and racism played a huge part in public opinion before and after the verdicts, and probably in the trials themselves.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this, but I can't help but see the parallels here and contemplate my own ideas about when the public is right, and when they're not...and when to respect the verdict of a jury or judge, and when not to.

And once again, I'm reminded of my own privilege. As a white person, I may face prejudice, but I am not nearly as likely to be assumed guilty in Taiwan as Zain Dean (of South Asian descent, I believe) was - damning evidence of racism deeply rooted in Taiwan. In America, I probably wouldn't be seen as "suspicious" enough to shoot without cause, and the system works in my favor. It's amazing how many people are blind to that.

No Really, The GOP Can Go Die

Not Taiwan related, but whatever.

My assessment of why the Republicans lost so bad in the election boils down to this: not only did they lie, but they kept telling people what their lives should be like, what their options should be, how things should work out for them, rather than listening to what people were saying about how their lives actually are. People, who don't like to be told what their lives are like despite their own experience, who don't like to be condescended or mansplained to, called 'em on it and didn't vote for them.

Let me give an example of this sort of attitude. In a comment on an article in a well-known online magazine, I gave a few facts about myself (while trying to stay anonymous). I won't copy the comment itself, but here are the basics:

- That I am a married woman who doesn't want kids, and therefore access to my reproductive rights is important to me, not something I am "not concerned about" or "isn't a part of my life" according to conservative pundits.

- That for me and many other women, control over when and how many children to have is an economic issue, it's not a belief voted on over other more pressing economic issues. Children are expensive to deliver and raise and being concerned about this absolutely boils down to economics (not for us - we could afford a child - that's not our reason, but it's the reason for many).

- That I may be fairly well-off now, but there was a time when I earned in the low 20s and lived in an expensive part of the country. I couldn't get a more affordable apartment farther from the city as I couldn't afford the car I'd need to do so. I lived a mile from the nearest metro station as it was (albeit in a pretty nice rented townhouse with roommates). I definitely felt an economic impact - I had to budget very carefully to get by in that city, even as an income in the low 20s would have been better in other areas.

- That as a result, in my early-to-mid 20s I couldn't access or afford oral birth control. I couldn't take over the counter meds that were sold at affordable prices because I happen to be very sensitive to contraceptive side effects (more information than you really need about me, but it's important as many women have this issue). I had insurance but the co-pays were so high that on my low-ish income I couldn't afford pills even with coverage. I budgeted for the necessities - food, one phone (cell only, no landline), Internet, housing, transport, a bit for other expenditures such as clothing, emergencies, visits home, and very little left over for fun. There was no room in my budget for that. Now, imagine a woman who has no insurance or whose insurance doesn't cover contraceptives - they'd be in even more dire straits. Clinics (like Planned Parenthood) were difficult for me, as I couldn't easily get time off during business hours, I worked in the suburbs and had to take a bus (meaning no lunch hour visits), I'd get home after evening hours were done, and so the only time I could go was Saturdays. The only clinic with Saturday hours was in a very bad area - one that a white woman wouldn't want to walk in alone (I don't say this to be racist - I say it as a matter of fact. Pizza delivery wouldn't even deliver there. It was not safe). I wasn't poor but I was just getting by, as were many people I knew, and there was no room in our budgets for such things.

- That abortion is basically inaccessible to many women, even with Roe v. Wade in effect. Some states have done a remarkable job of removing visits to Planned Parenthood or getting abortions as an option for women in their state. Looking at Missouri (not where I lived, but relevant), abortion is not accessible to women who can't get time off work to travel to one of the six clinics in the state, who can't afford to travel to one (and Missouri is a big state, most women live some traveling distance from one), who can't afford the hotel or time off for the 24-hour waiting period, for women who can't afford an abortion but who were not impregnated due to rape or incest, and their life is not in danger, and to minors whose parents don't consent. Missouri is not a wealthy state - that makes abortion inaccessible to many, if not most, women in that state. Roe v. Wade and its remaning the law of the land is irrelevant when it comes to these real-life issues.

- That I moved abroad not only because I wanted to learn another language and immerse myself in another culture, but because I had better career opportunities abroad, and finally, for better health insurance because America's current "system" SUCKS. It sucks for anyone with a pre-existing condition, for anyone who can't afford their premiums, their copays or their deductibles but also can't afford a better plan, for anyone who is unemployed or has a job that doesn't offer benefits, for someone who needs coverage and has a pre-existing condition but wants to start their own business or go freelance and can't afford it while maintaining insurance. That as much as Americans crow about how foreigners come to America for care, people from Taiwan who live in America often come back to Taiwan for similarly high-quality but affordable care, and you don't hear a lot of expats complaining or returning to America for care. I've never heard one.

And what I got told was that none of this was true: that if I didn't want to go to a known dangerous neighborhood then I was clearly racist, that I could go on my lunch hour to a "nearby" clinic, that I couldn't possibly have moved abroad in part because I wanted socialized health insurance, that I could have bought cheap OTC birth control at Wal-Mart (there was no Wal-Mart near me, thankfully, but I took his meaning to be 'a pharmacy'), that I was lying about how difficult/impossible it was to go to a clinic, that my story of "bad side effects" from OTC birth control was a "lie", and that America clearly has the best health care in the world, and that abortion was a non-issue because "we have Roe v. Wade" so, basically, quit yer whinin'.

That right there is what I mean - this commenter was telling me what my life was like - despite not living my life, and not even knowing me. He was telling me what my options should be, what my choices are, what I could do, rather than listening to me when I told him what my life was actually like, and listening to the statistics on how accessible abortion really is to women across the country, despite Roe v. Wade. It was condescending, it was mansplaining (the commenter was male and thought he knew better than me what my own experience was), it was holier-than-thou, and it was not listening.

And this is why the Republicans lost - because their entire party line has become like that. They keep telling people what their lives are like, and don't listen to what people are saying about what their lives are actually like.

They tell women what their options are, rather than listening to women talk about their options.

They say that equal pay is not an issue when it clearly is.

They tell minorities what their experience is, rather than listening to women talk about their experience.

They spew "facts" about immigration rather than listening to those who have immigrated or want to immigrate. (Fortunately this seems poised to change).

They reduce the entirety of the American lower classes to "moochers" and "takers" without listening to what the lower classes say they do and what they need. They refuse to hear that many poor people work hard and need a leg up to no longer be poor, and characterize them instead as "not taking personal responsibility". You ever been poor and tried to not be poor? Yeah, NOT SO EASY, is it?

They talk about how much the haves are subsidizing the have-nots without listening to the facts of how much the haves really are paying for.

They tell the LGBT community that they're "not homophobic" while ignoring the needs of the LGBT community and pushing clearly homophobic platforms, prioritizing their religion and shitty "morals" (I spit on those morals) over what people actually want and need.

They tell those who are sick what their health care options should be rather than what they are ("you can just go to the emergency room" - great, but that doesn't work if your problem is cancer and is not immediate or acute. You can't get ER treatment for cancer, psychiatric issues or diabetes or any other number of diseases).

They tell the middle class that they'll get jobs only if they give breaks to "job creators" without listening to what the middle class actually needs (infrastructure, affordable education and job training, affordable housing and childcare options), and ignoring the fact that trickle-down economics just plain does not work. Ignoring clear statistics - if you give a person in need money, that money generates more for the economy. If you give a wealthy person money, they tend to squirrel it away or invest it in ways that benefit them, but not others, and generate a net loss for the economy.

They tell those affected by climate change that it's more important to prop up Big Oil than to acknowledge climate change, and then try to pretend climate change away. "No, you didn't get hit by a natural disaster or have your crops ruined, or can't afford rising food costs due to climate change, now shut up and vote for me".

They tell the poor that they shouldn't want "things and stuff", and should ignore the fact that there are those who have far more "things and stuff" than they need and are pushing policies that make it harder for others to get the same things...and stuff. But wait - why shouldn't I want things and stuff? You have things and stuff because the balance of power is in your favor. Why should I find that fair?

They tell teens and parents of teens what their attitudes should be - "just don't have sex, wait 'till you're married", as though that has ever worked in the history of ever - rather than acknowledging the need for sex ed based on what is.

And that's why they only won one segment of the population. One that I daresay is easily duped, or for whom the message is carefully calibrated. And if people are upset that women and minorities are sick of being condescended to, then that's their problem - and if they want to say that in the most racist terms possible

The rest of us are sick and fucking tired of being told what our lives are like, and would like people in power to instead listen to us to find out what our lives are actually like.

And until the GOP understands this and stops with their condescension and unfair characterizations, and wrong assumptions about people they don't understand, they're just not going to win among anyone other than non-urban white males. We're sick of it. Get with the times or get lost.

"Facts don't prove a damn thing!"

Just a small note on education.

I am one of those people who believes that, generally speaking, education back home cultivates better thinking and life skills than education in East Asia. Even if the overall knowledge base is less, that's amply made up for in the development of critical thinking skills, creativity and to some extent confidence. All skills that serve one better in the real world than testing, a lack of practice and rote memorization.

That said.

Someone I know recently brought up the teaching of science in conversation, and it got down to religious beliefs vs. science - specifically evolution.

To this person's horror, I said that yes, whether or not to teach evolution is still a debated topic in much of the USA, and many schools will teach it with a "caveat" that it's "just a theory" or "there are other points of view".  Folks whose religious convictions state that evolution is either not the answer - and the world was created in  6 days, 6,000 years ago - or it's more "intelligent design" than "evolution"* have more control over science education than many are comfortable with.

Silence.

Then, slowly, "if you tried to say that or teach it that way in a Taiwanese school, people would laugh at you. Teachers would laugh. Administrators would laugh. Nobody would take you seriously. Sure, evolution is a 'theory' but some theories have more proof behind them than others. Evolution has a lot of proof behind it.  'The world was created in six days' has basically no proof behind it. That's just science. You might get fired for teaching religion in a science class. Science is proof, experiment, observation and fact. It just would not happen in a Taiwanese school."

So, you know, there's that. At least here kids are learning  actual science.

But then, looking back at the USA, I recently got into a debate online with someone I went to high school with and her friend. It was an entirely different discussion - about illegal immigration, in fact - and the friend says "facts don't prove a damn thing!"

Um, yes, they do. That's the whole point of facts. And when it comes to science, at least  kids in Taiwan are getting better facts. If they want to take the burden of scientific evidence and say that there is an intelligent maker behind it, fine, but they're not taught that they can deny the facts just because they're inconvenient to their belief system.


*different debate, that. I don't believe in intelligent design but I do recognize that there are different ways of believing it. Some basically tear down science. Others  keep science intact but add the caveat that it was God's idea and is under his watch, but little else. I could go on forever about that, but I won't.

Reasonability

Another positive thing I'd like to say about the elections is how reasonable it all was. I don't just mean the subdued campaigns - nary a screaming siren political truck drove my by house and posters and flags were sedate and much fewer in number than in previous elections - but Taiwan as a whole.

Here is my dark secret: I have friends who are blue (shhh, don't tell anyone)*. I disagree quite strongly with them.  With most, we just don't talk about it. I have my strong beliefs, they have theirs, and I'll express mine but stop short of insisting that others must agree (even if I think they should, because of course I believe I'm right - I wouldn't have a belief if I didn't think it was the right one, but they could say the same).

With some - one especially - well, we do talk about it. We disagree strongly. Well, in some ways not so strongly: the main difference is that she's focused on what the election means for the economy and stock market, and while I agree that's important, my ideological beliefs about Taiwan as a nation and my feelings of under the surface rage at any political group that has not  apologized for mass murders it engaged in trump that (plus, I don't really think the KMT is all that great for the economy, but that's a different debate). As an Armenian whose ancestors survived a genocide that the Turkish government still has not apologized for, that's not something I can forgive or ignore in any group. You could say it's in my blood.

What matters, though, is not that we disagree. It's that we disagree, and we can talk about it - even heatedly, but never insultingly - and we can still be friends.

I can't do that back home. I'm actually not against "conservatives" in the classic small-government, fiscally conservative sense, although I'm not convinced of their economic arguments. The position itself does not offend me and I am happy to discuss it. Although I disagree with libertarian economic platforms, again the idea doesn't offend me.

What I can't condone is what a vote for the Republicans also stands for: a vote for homophobia, to some extent for racism (although that's an issue that is hidden deep inside Republican economic platforms and is too intangible to prove fundamentally without wading into a political correctness landmine), and for restriction of women's rights. A vote for basing American laws on "Christian"** morals that not every American shares. I certainly don't. I feel this way to such an extent that I really can't have a civil discussion about these issues with a non-moderate Republican. I can't respect someone who endorses homophobia or says "America is a Christian nation" when it isn't, or who uses perfectly good words such as "liberal", "socialist" and "feminist" as insults. I just can't. Those views are abhorrent to me. Even if a person votes Republican based on economic principles, they're still casting a vote for the party that holds all the disgusting views above.***

To the same extent, I can't condone what a vote for the KMT stands for ("it's OK to commit crimes against humanity and not apologize for them!"). The difference is that in Taiwan, I can talk about it. People can talk about it...mostly. I see more green-blue dialogue than Republican-Democrat. I see more green-blue friendships and relationships (I couldn't possibly date a Republican back home, but I know plenty of green-leaning Taiwanese who have blue-leaning partners). I see people mostly getting along. The flashpoints are the exceptions, and society as a whole can mostly deal with them.

And I can talk about this. As someone who is fairly deep green, to someone who is fairly deep blue. We know not to insult each other: I may dislike the KMT, but I don't dislike her. I may not respect Ma Ying-jiu, but I do respect her. It can't, and shouldn't, ever be personal (although the White Terror thing really hits a nerve with me due to aforementioned family history).

The difference, I believe, is the fact that the US has increasingly veered towards social issues in its civil discourse, even though polls show that people care about the economy and vote on that rather than social issues. I do vote based on social issues, but I do so as a reasonably successful and very lucky, privileged American who had most of the right breaks. I don't know if I'd feel the same way if I'd grown up at the ass end of the system. Deep down we Democrats and those Republicans hate each other because it's all about worldviews and morals - gay rights, women's rights, religion, what makes a real family, when does life begin and how is it that all men are created equal but don't have an equal shot at life?

There is some of that in KMT-DPP political discourse but it doesn't cut quite so deeply. A Taiwanese feminist activist could vote for either party and feel she did the right thing (although I personally feel that the DPP is a better bet for women). A proponent of gay rights could do the same. Religion doesn't even come into it, as I believe is right. The debates aren't about these issues. The one social issue that gets play is national identity, and even that seems to have reached a "let's agree to disagree" sort of detente.

A very intelligent friend of mine said that Taiwan is much better now: "four years ago you would hear something like 外省豬回中國 or 無知南部人****. It's better this time indeed." And I agree - it is better. Things are improving. The two sides ran a reasonably civilized campaign - as much as can be expected from politics - and the overall outcome was one of a mature society, not two angry sides growling at each other. I admire that.

These days, if you throw out either of the above insults you'll get shushed, not cheered on. You can state your views but few will encourage you to just hurl invective with no underlying message. Which is as it should be.

Of course, there are always outliers. There are always a few shouters rather than talkers, in any society. The difference is that in America they seem to have taken over our discourse, whereas in Taiwan they're being told to shoosh so people can get on with the business of electing a leader. They can say what they want, but few will them seriously. Even within the campaign - attacks against Tsai Ying-wen didn't seem to stick ("she's not really Hakka" got shouted down, so did "she's a lesbian!") and while people joke about Ma Ying-jiu, generally the underlying message is that he's weak and ineffective.

So I look at my home country and I see "elitist", "liberal", "lamestream media", "feminist", "socialist", "terrorist" all used as though they carry the same register. Since when is a "liberal" the same as a "terrorist"? Since a bunch of angry people decided it was. I hear personal insults, attacks, people who believe things like 'if you don't see it my way, then you're just an idiot'.  This is not shushed. This is not put in its proper place at the extreme ends. This is what makes it on TV or gets talked about online. And this is sad.

Back to Taiwan, and sure, people disagree strongly. Someone might think another person's opinion is wrong, but the insults don't come. It would be rare to actually believe that because someone disagrees with you, that they're an idiot. I disagree strongly with my dark blue friend, but she is certainly not an idiot.

I don't feel we Americans grant each other the same respect.

I admire that in Taiwan, people seem to be able to see the difference between a belief and a whole person.

I wish I saw more of that back home. Then again, I also wish the beliefs we were debating weren't ones that are tied so strongly to social values. I wish we could all agree that gay people are people too and deserve equal rights, or that women are, indeed, able to make decisions about their bodies, and get on with the business of debating the economy and foreign policy.

In this way, I could say that America has a lot to learn from Taiwan.



*I am joking, but you knew that

**As someone who is not Christian but was raised Protestant, I don't actually think that a lot of what these guys say is "Christian" really is at all. I don't think Jesus would have condoned banning gay marriage or contraception, or possibly even abortion, and definitely not tax breaks on the wealthy while the poor went without. But, that's what they say. A different debate, again.

***I know, I know, I should respect all views but I just can't do that when someone makes up a bunch of lies about the "sacred bond of marriage" to disguise homophobia or thinks he knows better than I do what I should do with my own body. NO.

**** translation: "Foreign-born (Chinese) pigs go back to China" and "Ignorant southerners".

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggeringly Bad Satire

So as you've probably all heard if you follow politics in East Asia, Paul Kane has come out saying that his recent piece of stinky tripe was a "Swiftian satire", a piece meant not to be taken seriously but to provoke debate by playing a fierce devil's advocate.

Uh huh.

Thing is, I don't buy it.

We all know the tired cliche of someone who makes a big, stinking gaffe trying to cover his butt by saying "oh, it was just a joke! Can't you guys take a joke? I was MAKING FUN of it by pretending to support it, I didn't mean to be taken seriously!"

I mean, I can understand little comments here and there where one speaks hyperbolically (I've done that), but this was an entire op-ed piece, and if it was a satire, it wasn't a particularly funny one, nor was it particularly obvious. The secret of good satire is that it has to be clear to most people that it is, in fact, a satire, without having to tell them. Even if it sounds serious, even plausible. If this was a satire - and I don't believe it was, I'm in the "he's trying to cover his butt" contingent - it was remarkably ill-conceived and poorly executed.

As Jon Stewart said of an unrelated news item - I believe it was Herman Cain saying he'd build an electrified fence on the US-Mexican border, then saying it was a "joke", that he wasn't serious, and then saying that he wouldn't rule out the idea of a fence: "it's like a teenager hitting on a girl. 'You wanna make out? Hahaha, I was just kidding...unless you wanna make out.'"

I don't think Paul Kane's belated "oops" is really all that much different.

Maybe it's because you're an IDIOT, Paul

Wistaria House, Taipei

A typical dark, rainy late autumn day in Taipei today, and we gathered at Wistaria House (the historic teahouse known for early pro-democracy activism and the movie Eat Drink Man Woman) to do what one really ought to do there: drink tea, shoot the breeze, and talk philosophy and politics.

The now-infamous op-ed piece published in the New York Times (for some reason) came up - I find it so abhorrent that I don't even want to link to it directly. But I will, I guess. The prevailing theory among my friends is that Paul Kane's a hack (keep in mind that many of my friends studied International Politics) and that the NYT just likes the controversy it's drumming up. I can't think of any other reason to publish such a steaming turd-pile.

Brendan's take: Paul Kane is clearly the sort of academic who can't handle complexity and discussing politics and current affairs through an appropriately in-depth understanding of the issues. He's the sort - and libertarians do this too, I might add - who reduces very difficult situations to simple models that suit his needs and disregards anything that could upset the simplicity of his ideas (and I use "simple" in the way that a 19th century governess would to describe one of her charges who was especially slow). With ideas based on models rather than reality, his understanding of the deeper issues is about as thorough as a four-year-old's understanding of the mechanics and engineering of trains, from his model train set. He can't afford to take into account things that upset the balance, like how the Taiwanese might feel about this, how it not just might, but would start a cross-strait war, and how political negotiation is rarely as straightforward as "you cancel our debt, we give you Taiwan". At least it hasn't been since Europe gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler. And gee, that sure worked out. That what a people and their government thinks is only important in relation to how much power that country has globally, so the only people whose ideas matter are the US's and China's, and everyone else is like a butterfly flapping its wings in Malaysia, which might cause a storm: something you can't and shouldn't take into account. Basically, these sorts of people - Kane, a lot of people in the State Department and on international affairs advisory committees, the stupider sort of academics, libertarians and most conservative economists - look at the world the way a sociopath would ("sociopath" being my word) - with zero empathy. They're chess pieces, big ones if they're lucky, small ones if they're not, and what matters isn't people but the game: both the political game and the economic one. There's no accounting for actual people, because it's all models...and let's be honest, models don't work.

(Some of the above, like the train set analogy, is mine).

Joseph's take: It's just plain more complex than that! Hacks like Kane treat Taiwan as a troublemaker, a thorn in the side of the USA, but it's not Taiwan that's the problem. Taiwan has issues (human trafficking is a biggie) but generally speaking is probably one of the easiest and least offensive countries to deal with in Asia, if not the world. The problem - the thorn in our side - is China acting like a spoiled little bitch (his words, not mine, but they really need to be emphasized). Taiwan is not a part of a bigger country that wants to be free, or a province looking for independence - it's a de facto independent political entity, and Taiwan is not the problem. China is, and the solution is not to just bend down and **** China's **** (redacted for the sake of my Moms), which is what this move would be. Furthermore, Taiwan really should be the US's easiest bargaining chip (we all hate referring to Taiwan as a "bargaining chip" but let's be honest - in the eyes of the US government, it is). It doesn't have to send troops. It doesn't have to impose sanctions. All it has to do to keep a little bit of strategic one-uppery on China is to throw out a few "we hope for a peaceful resolution" platitudes and sell it some arms from time to time. How is that so hard? It's a huge advantage for the US. Giving it up would be idiotic.

My take: all of the above, and the fact that Kane seems to just assume that this won't have any adverse impact - that because the feelings, thoughts and opinions of the Taiwanese don't matter, that selling Taiwan to China won't incite a cross-strait war. But it will - I know of very few Taiwanese people who want to unify with China. I know more who think it's inevitable, but almost none who actually want it. I know plenty of people who feel that keeping the status quo is the best way to go, but none who would think that way in a world in which China was not a threat: they'd vote for independence, not unification. The status quo is a necessity, not a desired state, in their minds. And for every apathetic sort, I know a few who would fight. Taiwan would almost certainly lose that war (OK, it certainly would without assistance), but not until horrific carnage was racked up. The death toll, the economic costs (especially in the tech industry, seeing as Taiwan is one of the core pillars of semiconductor technology, OEM products and more), and the political strife it would cause in East Asia is something the US can't possibly accept or justify. That alone should be enough to realize why Kane's idea goes beyond idiotic and into the "I'm just an idiot trying to stir up controversy" territory.

Plus, well, think about it: America not only can't afford to police the world for democracy, but also I'm not nearly convinced that the USA as a nation has the moral compass to be able to do so effectively. We can't go sending the military around the world to force democracy on people (as much as I am a fan of democracy). Taiwan isn't like that - it takes very little effort for a fairly big payoff. And while we can't force democracy on countries like China, we shouldn't go in the other direction and sell out functioning democracies like Taiwan to autocratic, corrupt states like China. We can't force democracy, but we shouldn't be taking actions that actively dismember it. Selling Taiwan out to China would do just that.

He says somewhere in the piece that people will think his idea is crazy and unworkable.

Well, DUH. Because it IS.

And with that, I've already wasted too much time on this worthless piece of tripe. I'm going to go find more funny pictures of AIDS brochures.

Notes on Autumn Leaves

I'm currently with Brendan, visiting my in-laws outside Bangor, Maine. Today we walked - I can't rightly say we hiked - several miles of scenic forest trails and an elevated "bog boardwalk".

I grew up in upstate New York, not quite England but culturally not that dissimilar. I am quite obviously very familiar with the concept of changing leaves in autumn. I grew up with Autumns in which the leaves turned every amazing shade of red, orange, yellow, gold, lime, burgundy and brown. I never thought of them as anything special, or anything worth running out with a camera to capture on film - they were just a part of everyday life.

Taiwan does not have leaves that change in autumn, although I guess some parts of the country, up in the mountains, might have it to an extent (I once saw a color-changed tree on Yangmingshan, woohoo!). I haven't been home when the leaves change in years: we usually come home in late summer or late winter and miss it. It's therefore been something like half a decade since I've seen leaves changing color.

Far from being jaded about it, it was like I was a kid, or a tourist from a tropical country - the excitement over the beauty of seeing such vibrant colors in nature, splashed on trees and mottled with bright hues out to the horizon was something I hadn't experienced since early childhood. Like the beauty of the Hudson Valley, it just gets lost on you if you're exposed to it for too long.

I find that interesting - something I hadn't even been able to take for granted because I didn't notice it long enough to dismiss it, like the beauty of autumn leaves, became something new, exciting and to an extent sentimental simply because I hadn't seen it in so long. Now I can appreciate it. In 2006 I didn't even notice, let alone care.

By the way, there are black bears in the woods where we were hiking. Chances of seeing one are basically nil, but I did comment that if we did encounter one and get mauled, the local headlines would read "Former Maine Resident and his Non-Maine Wife Killed in Vicious Bear Attack".

Earlier in our visit we went to downtown Bangor. I've said before that while I don't wish to live in a small town or a cold climate, that I happen to like Bangor and if I changed my mind about both of the above, it would be a lovely place to live (for now I'm content for it to be a lovely place to visit). Not so for my own hometown, which was flooded during Hurricane Irene, to which I snarkily replied that I wish the whole thing had washed away.

I like Bangor for its pre-war architecture (lovin' that understated Art Nouveau type on the McGuire Building) and revived downtown, and compare both it and nearby Orono quite favorably to Highland, NY (where I grew up). Downtown Bangor has a few shops - some hippie-dippy, some cute, some fashionable - a neat bookstore, an awesome antique shop, more than its fair share of pubs and drinking establishments, a Japanese restaurant, two South Asian restaurants and a Thai place, among other things. There's not enough to keep me occupied long-term but there is quite enough for a longer visit.



Basically, I'm not down on all small towns. Just the one I grew up in! (I was one of the few liberals in a town of conservatives, a non-Catholic in a town full of Catholics - or for that matter a secular person in a religious town - and a Polish-Armenian who hated soccer in a town full of athletic Italians).

Over the course of our friendship and relationship, I've exposed Brendan to my cultural heritage, mostly by culinary means. I am still sorely disappointed that he doesn't like olives, even the expensive kind (which are cheap in Turkey). I've made sure he's tried lahmacun, tabbouleh, good kielbasa, fish cookies, hummus, various olives, done the whole "forage for a plate of cheese, bread, olives and other tasty things for a meal", introduced him to ketchup on eggs (a family staple - he didn't take to it) and recently made him latkes with sour cream and applesauce, which may not be my culture (I'm not Jewish), but it is something that reminds me of growing up in New York - even if it was the state, not the city.

So it was finally time for Brendan to introduce me to the food of his cultural heritage...

So we drove out...

...stopped at a convenience store...

...and bought...

...

...whoopie pies.

At one point before we bought them, I saw them for sale and asked Brendan about them. Another guy at the counter said "you're not from Maine, are you?"

No, no I'm not.

I also made sure we went here:

Which may be a Canadian thing, but there is one in Maine and Brendan was born in Canada so there ya go.

Being There

Recently I taught a class where we talked about change, and one of the questions that came up was “How has Taiwan changed since you were a child?”

I wasn’t surprised by any of the answers I got, although I was struck by how much of a depth of knowledge I don’t have and can’t have, because I wasn’t there. Here are some things students have said:

“When I was younger I always had many opinions. I wanted to say anything I was thinking. My dad told me – ‘don’t do that, be careful, or a truck might stop outside the door.’” (Which meant, as everyone else in the class knew, that he would have been carted away by government operatives, possibly never to be seen again).

“When I was a child we were poor people. I lived in a farmhouse in Shuangxi [Taipei County] and every day we ate rice and vegetables. We grew the rice and vegetables, we did not buy. We also had chickens and pigs. Sometimes we could have chicken or pork. But usually we ate rice and vegetables. We didn’t have money to buy other things.”

“When I was young I couldn’t speak Taiwanese in school, or the class monitor would make us pay five kuai. Of course in that time no local children spoke Chinese. If you were a local one, your parents often did not speak any Chinese at all, so you could not remember the rule to speak only Chinese. But here is my secret: I was the class monitor. If I spoke Taiwanese I forgot to charge myself five kuai. If my friend spoke Taiwanese and there was no teacher, I forgot to charge him. You only paid five kuai if the teacher was there, or if the class monitor didn’t like you” (proving once again that middle school alliances are stronger than cultural solidarity).
“My uncle was taken away by the KMT. He disappeared for many years and then he came back, but he was crazy. He couldn’t remember anything from before his jail time. When he got older he would walk around the street and be confused. One day they found him dead in the street, but he was an old man and totally crazy. But my family still votes for the KMT” (joining a long list of people who don’t deny the atrocities committed by the KMT but still seem to refuse to blame them).

And from a friend – complaining about taxes paid to the current government and asking why he should have to pay so much when there is glass in the parking lot, his apartment building has been robbed twice, and there is no law and order anymore. I said that I thought Taipei was a lovely city – maybe not perfect but I used to live in Washington DC, so if he wanted to see ‘a lack of rule of law’ I could tell him some stories about crime there. “Taipei used to be more beautiful than now,” he replied, but I am pretty sure he was referring to Taipei under the mayoral governance of Chen Shui-bian.

Here’s the thing – none of this stuff was in the least bit new or surprising. Heck, the majority of it contains facts I already knew. And yet, I wasn’t here for it – in part because I’m fairly young (30) and many of my students are noticeably older than I am, and partly because I did not grow up here. I moved to Taiwan in 2006, long after it had become a developed country, a democracy, a country in which the capital city is clean, safe, politically stable and has a better infrastructure than many cities in the USA. I moved here long after Taiwan solved many of its worst problems (the worst of which being, of course, the oppressive and murderous dictatorship of a government, the urban infrastruture and the pollution).

I was born long after the White Terror ended. I didn’t even know where Taiwan was when Chiang Ching-kuo ruled the country. I had only a faint notion of it when Lee Teng-hui did. I moved here long after Chen Shui-bian ceased to be the mayor of Taipei. I look at old pictures of Taipei – which are easy to find, as the government seems fond of scanning them and putting them up in displays aimed at civic boosterism (which always struck me as odd, especially in the area around Ximen and Longshan Temple – why put up pictures of a time when the buildings were far more gorgeous, and have since been torn down, to make people feel good?). I don’t see a past I can share in or fully understand. I wasn’t around when my student was a class monitor and would get charged – or beaten – for speaking Taiwanese. I was not here back when the divide between waishengren (外生人) Hoklo Taiwanese, or Taiwanese and Hakka, was at its deepest during the days leading up to and after democratization. I was not around when many people still mainly lived as subsistence farmers, even in Taipei County. I feel like I know, because I’m here now and I’ve studied a lot of history, but I don’t really know. Deep down in the culturally influenced fibers of my being, I don’t really, truly know.

The same is true from the other end: I have so many acquaintances, students and even friends (not so much friends, but occasionally) who speak as though they were there for events that happened in the USA while I was alive and living there, but they weren’t. You can read about it, study it, have a professor lecture about it or hear about it from foreign friends or ABC cousins, but really, if you weren’t there, can you really understand what it felt like to be American during the Reagan years, when greed was good? Do you really know why ‘80s fashion is currently trendy, and how that feels to someone who was 7 when that stuff was popular the first time around? Just as locals in Taiwan probably think my fetish for the Taiwanese Grandma aesthetic (bamboo paper fans, Chinese-style shirts, 白花油, Japanese-era shophouses, cypress ceilings and floors, old-fashioned tea boxes and tins, kung fu shoes) is odd, do they really understand the idea of “retro” and “vintage” as we would know it back in the USA?
Heck, were they there when we invaded Iraq the first time and people generally supported it, or the 2nd time when they didn’t? Were they there when we elected a false president in 2000? Although I was not there when Obama rode into the White House on a tsunami of hope, I do have an innate feeling for the cultural underpinnings of what that actually meant – how many Taiwanese can say the same thing? Just as I can’t say I fully hold in my gut an understanding for the tide of history that brought a DPP President to Taiwan, and then subsequently brought him down. Even if I”know”, do I really know?

I say much of this tongue-in-cheek – I was not even ten years old under the reign of Reagan. I was actually studying in India in 2000 when George II was unfairly sworn in, and had to deal with the taunts of rickshaw drivers (“we thought your Amrika was different, but I am knowing that compared to Indian politics, you are same-same only!”)

And yet, I feel it every day when I talk about my childhood, or ask students about theirs, in class. I can’t convey the feelings behind the Pledge of Allegiance, and I can’t fully dissect the reasons behind why I always mouthed, never spoke, the words after the 8th grade. I can’t really describe the taste of a Bomb Pop or 4th of July fireworks in Cantine Park in small-town upstate New York (although comparing it to Dragon Boat in Longtan is fairly close). I can’t tell people how it felt, as an American woman, to watch an American woman get as close as Hillary Clinton did to the White House, and then watch her go down in a spiral that was part a lack of charisma, part a surge of support for a younger, ethnically different candidate, and part – honestly – sexism. I was here when that happened, but I have the innate cultural understanding that allows me to really get it.

That’s a gap that I try so hard to bridge with friends and students, and I’m not sure I’ve succeeded yet.

Willful Ignorance

Was reading this today:

US Expert Warns of Economic Trap

And my first reaction?

DUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Yes, that was my very first reaction. Imagine a curvaceous white lady with a half-eaten slice of Ginger Superman pizza in her hand at So Free leaning over a copy of the Taipei Times and shouting that, thereby startling the two high school girls sharing the rough-hewn bench with us.

But seriously.

Barry Watts, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told a US congressional commission this week: “Why use military force if economic entanglement leading to economic capture is succeeding?”

DUHHHHHHH.

Except for the Art of War reference, which was a bit precious if you ask me. Precious as in it sounds like some Hollywood crap from a Gordon Gekko meets Jackie Chan flick.

I studied this stuff in college - which makes me about as qualified as some dork who read a few books and thinks she's an expert - basically meaning that I'm no expert - and I could have told you this.

In fact, I'm fairly sure I did tell you this. Maybe not you specifically, but someone, and possibly after I'd had a glass of wine or two.

And what's sad is that it's not hard to see how true it is, so Washington and the world's seeming naivete over what's going on can't possibly be true ignorance or failure to understand, because it's really not that complicated (but then neither is the concept that deep water drilling is a bad idea and alternative energy needs more investment, but they don't seem to get that either).

It's willful ignorance. It's pretending you don't understand. It's quite possibly strategic incompetence. It's turning away because recognizing the issue means you might have to do something about it, if only for show...and the US clearly doesn't want to do that.

Which means the US clearly doesn't care that much about Taiwan, or at least not enough to stop pretending they don't know what China's up to.

And that's sad, because it basically means were ****ed.

Comparative Politics 101

So the US government won't be shut down after all - which is a good thing, I guess, when it comes to museums, parks, federal workers, federally-backed mortgage approvals and government services for the poor and elderly. Allowing it to be shut down would have also had some upsides, and I'm not entirely sure it wasn't a good idea to just let it happen (for once, I agree with Eliot Spitzer!) and what we've got is a country where liberal social principles are triumphing, but Republican (I can't say conservative - it's not, really) financial ideas are sharing that winner's circle.

This brings about an interesting little eddy in the writhing tides of comparative politics.

Before we found out that there would be no shutdown, I mentioned it to a student. She was taken aback - positively horrified - by the idea that a government would go so far as to not reauthorize spending to maintain itself.

"I thought that American politics was more mature than Taiwanese politics, and these things don't happen in America," she said.

"Yeah, well, that's not true. We're just as immature politically as the DPP and KMT. The arguments and divisions are different but the rhetoric is the same. The only thing that separates the Legislative Yuan from the Senate is that American Senators don't beat each other up..." (Which, actually, I'm not sure is historically true). "...although sometimes I think they should."

And it is absolutely true. For all the complaining that you hear about politics in Taiwan and how it's too rough, immature, pointless, boastful and full of empty rhetoric and political game-playing over serious investments in improving the country - honestly, you'd think that that was only a problem in Taiwan. It's not. We're just as bad, if not worse. I mean, is there a Taiwanese Sarah Palin? Although, for all his wishy-washiness, Obama is a better and more centrist leader than Ma.

Both countries are deeply divided over social and economic issues, and both of those divides follow cultural lines (in the USA it's generally regional and is in some way related to religion; in Taiwan it's mostly about who immigrated when). The words are different and the issues are different, but the BS is the same.

So.

A lot of people like to boast that they are "socially liberal and fiscally conservative". This is apparently something that many people are proud of, and they think it makes them somehow more sensible than either party. I am not fiscally conservative - while I'm not in favor of debt, cutting government programs that many needy people rely on is not the way to go about reducing it. Lowering tax rates for the wealthy and corporations is definitely not OK - I'm sorry but supply side, Libertarian and trickle-down economics do not work. We've been through this. We talked about this in the late '80s and '90s. We agreed. Doesn't work. Money spent on social programs for the poor, elderly and unemployed put more money back into the economy than money spent giving breaks to wealthy people. So, America, WTF?).

I do believe that a time of recession and high unemployment is not the time to slash spending. I do believe that the spending the government has agreed to cut isn't the spending that really matters, and isn't the right thing to be cutting. I do believe that Obama should have called the Republicans' bluff.

I am happy that liberal values are winning out in the USA (because they're right, natch) and that for the first time in awhile, the Democrats actually stood up for women's rights and refused to allow the de-funding of Planned Parenthood.

I am not happy, though, that conservative fiscal values, at this time, are winning - and that they're cutting the wrong things and lowering taxes for the wrong people.

So yes, we might be basically just like Taiwan except we don't slap each other, but really, someone should just take Boehner and rough him up a bit, Taiwanese-legislature style.