Shots Fired!

It's a bit opaque, but apparently the Chinese agriculture ministry is making a play to "claim" kimchi, Korea's beloved national dish, as having a Chinese origin.  The Korean reaction has been, at the very least, expected:

"'Its total nonsense, what a thief stealing our culture!' a South Korean netizen wrote on Naver, a widely popular web portal.

Seoul resident Kim Seol-ha said: 'I read a media story that China now says kimchi is theirs, and that they are making international standard for it. It’s absurd.'

Some South Korean media said China’s brazen coveting of kimchi was akin to a 'bid for world domination.'

The kimchi contretemps is the latest online spat between social media users in China and South Korea. In October, the leader of the K-pop phenomenon BTS faced a barrage of criticism in China after he cited his country’s solidarity with the US stemming from the Korean war – a conflict in which China fought alongside North Korea."

These kinds of "soft power" disputes can be bullshit, but are also endlessly fascinating to me.  As China seems to be setting itself up as the world's lone remaining superpower, it's interesting to see to what extent the dictatorship in Beijing cares about something as nominally unimportant as cultural hegemony.

At the very least, somebody in the Chinese agriculture ministry is having a big laugh for "pwning the Koreans."

Some Fall And Winter Perks

Another beautiful fall here in South Korea, epidemic be damned, and another cycle of gifts from my adult students.

October -- persimmons of all kinds, both soft and hard and dried!  The dried ones are my favorite, but I won't turn up my nose to fresh ones even though they are kind of messy to eat.  (At least the way I do it, like a starving dinosaur.)

November -- kimchi!  The homemade stuff which is, obviously, the best stuff.  Every family has their own recipe.  As I get older, I really enjoy it in the plainest fashion possible -- just on top of some rice.  Or maybe my very lazy version of a kimchi omelet, which is really more like kimchi on top of some scrambled eggs.

December -- roasted sweet potatoes!  Well, these don't excite me too much if only because by the time I get them home they are cold and really not fit for eating.  Re-heating is fine, but compared to persimmons and kimchi they are my least favorite of gifts.  Mind you, nothing goes to waste, but I tend to reheat and add some butter and salt.  (Those additions are very un-Korean of me, but it can't be helped.)

I'll Settle For OK

I'm officially "into" The Mandalorian.  It definitely has problems -- while I appreciate the Lone Wolf and Cub stuff, a good Spaghetti Western needs a proper foil.

I'm usually quick to dismiss "don't think too hard and it's good" TV or music but given the stress of The Plague, I'll make an exception.

Also, give Amy Sedaris a lightsaber.

City of Heroes

Congratulations to the NC Dinos, who just won their first Korean Baseball Championship.  (They've only been around since 2013, natch.)

"we will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations"

It's hard to see beyond COVID, but with Cheeto Hitler finally on his way out and clearing up some of the air for things of actual importance, it's a good time to remind ourselves that Thailand has a really shitty military dictatorship and the people are fighting to dismantle it:

"'We will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations in this country,' the protest organisers explained. 'We will talk about all the topics that the dinosaurs don’t want to hear.' Inflatable dinosaurs wobbled in the afternoon heat, representing the Thai government. The symbols are playful, but the message is clear: teenagers want change.

A student-led protest movement has shaken Thailand over the past five months. Young people have taken to the streets to call for a true democracy, and have risked jail to shatter a taboo that has long prevented frank, public discussion of the monarchy. Their protests, attended by tens of thousands, present one of the boldest challenges that the Thai royal family has faced in living memory.

Demonstrators say they are not calling for the monarchy to be abolished, but for it to be reformed, accountable to the people and not above the law. They have also called for the prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army general who came to power in a 2014 coup, to stand down, and for changes to the constitution to make the political system more democratic."

Let's not pretend that a new Biden administration magically washes away the past four years of dictatorship-humping done by Mike Pompeo.  But at the very least it's a turn towards a time when we at least paid lip-service to the idea of promoting democracy.

"Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance"

As always, Rebecca Solnit gets it when it comes to "playing nice" with Trump supporters, i.e., the current Republican Party:

"Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s and it won’t work now. That doesn’t mean that people have to be angry or hate back or hostile, but it does mean they have to stand on principle and defend what’s under attack. There are situations in which there is no common ground worth standing on, let alone hiking over to. If Nazis wanted to reach out and find common ground and understand us, they probably would not have had that tiki-torch parade full of white men bellowing 'Jews will not replace us' and, also, they would not be Nazis. Being Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, transphobes is all part of a project of refusing to understand as part of refusing to respect. It is a minority position but by granting it deference we give it, over and over, the power of a majority position.

In fact the whole Republican Party, since long before Trump, has committed itself to the antidemocratic project of trying to create a narrower electorate rather than win a wider vote. They have invested in voter suppression as a key tactic to win, and the votes they try to suppress are those of Black voters and other voters of color. That is a brutally corrupt refusal to allow those citizens the rights guaranteed to them by law. Having failed to prevent enough Black people from voting in the recent election, they are striving mightily to discard their votes after the fact. What do you do with people who think they matter more than other people? Catering to them reinforces that belief, that they are central to the nation’s life, they are more important, and their views must prevail. Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance."

The writing here is typically excellent, but basically a well-written formulation of "how do you run a Democracy when half the country hates Democracy?"

(Not a hypothetical!)

More 2024

Following up on my recent post about what happens in 2024, Paul Campos does a better job than me at explaining just how potentially fucked we are.  Some glimmers of hope in the comments at least re: my unproven belief only Trump himself can truly "master" the racist hydra that is Trumpism.  Your Cottons and Rubios will simply be swallowed whole and rejected by it, leading to some kind of party split.

Soft Power, Softer Service?

I've posted before about the ongoing debate over mandatory military service in South Korea (about two years, only for men) and whether or not "national treasures" like excellent athletes or performers or scientists should get special treatment.  With K-pop boy-band sensations BTS at the top of the Billboard charts, the arguments for and against continue apace:

"Current laws allow men to postpone their military service until the age of 28 for academic reasons such as studying abroad, or enrollment in graduate school or in the the Judicial Research and Training Institute after passing the bar exam. Additional exceptions are made for men enrolled in Ph.D. programs abroad, who can postpone their service until age 30. 

Current laws also allow athletes or artists of classical or traditional arts such as gugak (traditional Korean music) to substitute military service with volunteer work approved by the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism.  

Only athletes and artists who have won awards in international and national competitions designated by the Military Manpower Administration, such as the Olympic Games or the Asian Games, are allowed to apply for the substitution for their military service.  

Examples include famed footballer Son Heung-min, who gained an exemption after Korea's national football team won gold at the Asian Games in 2018, and pianist Cho Seong-jin, who won the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2009 and the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015."

It's complicated, obviously.  When K-pop groups "make money" for the Korean economy (as claimed by pro-exemption folks) just how much of it is going to public projects, and how much is lining the pockets of the managers and producers?  We all know Soft Power is An Important Thing, but how do you put an objective price on it?  And is 20 months really all that much to ask for performers who haven't reached 30 yet?  (I think the arguments for athletes are actually much stronger, in terms of "lost time.")

For what it's worth among my very small sample size of Korean students, the males definitely tend to oppose any and all exemptions, while the female students are more open to the idea.

Yes I Am Already Thinking About 2024

Between COVID ravaging the world and the utter betrayal of America by the GOP, there aren't many silver linings out there right now.  But regarding Trump, it seems to me he's bound to do a lot more damage to his party -- literally his party -- than many people seem to think.

Who knows that sort of legal trouble he'll land in once he loses the shield of the presidency, but no doubt he is going to at least try and run in 2024, which means he'll begin campaigning in earnest in 2022 at the latest.

There are ton of young-ish GOP "moderates" (LOL) who really want to be president -- Rubio, Hawley, and Cotton just for starters.  And their (highly) relative difference from Trump's obvious derangement will be lapped up by the DC media -- "the serious, thoughtful Republican Party is back!"  (The only difference being that when it comes to fucking over poor and non-white folks Trump is willing to say what these other guys think out loud.)

The larger point is that, barring jail or death, the 2024 Republican primary will be an utter shit-show.  It could mean that Trump winds up running as a third-party candidate and actually out-performing the actual GOP candidate.  It could mean Trump, still bigly popular with his base, i.e., actual Republican voters, gets to play some sort of a power-broker role, where Rubio is forced to pick Ivanka or Don Jr. (the less dumb, more evil son) as his running mate.

Obvious death-of-American-Democracy implications aside, it could be fucking hilarious above all else.

I mean, nobody knows.  Biden's health is going to be an issue as well, but I have a lot of faith in Kamala Harris.  At the very least, she doesn't take shit from anybody, and that terrifies many Republicans.

All of this is to say, your Rubio-Hawley-Cottons of the world are obviously much smarter and more polished than Cheeto Hitler.  (Yes, I am damning with faint praise.)  And that could be their downfall, because while any one of them will make David Brooks' heart flutter, they lack the sheer animal cunning and cruelty of Trump.  They lack the ability to channel the vicious, hateful spirit that a solid one-third of Americans, white Americans, harbor for the rest of their country.

Remember that in the last Republican primary, Trump didn't just win, he annihilated his opponents ("little Marco," Ted Cruz's ugly wife, etc.)

No amount of polish will give a pretender that unique Trumpian showman's ability to bring out the hateful id of American white nationalism, and to harness its dark energies into electoral success.

So this isn't a prediction as much as a reminder that Trump will never go quietly into that good night.  No small number of his former "friends" are going to die in jail because of him.

Who's to say the Republican Party can survive him either?

Our Grand Experiment

A two-party system where one party literally doesn't believe in the concept of representative Democracy isn't going to last very long, is it?

Isolation Drills

Ryuichi Sakamoto and friend, Playing Piano for the Isolated

Simply lovely.  Nothing much to say beyond that.

Also, I had no idea Mr. Sakamoto has his own Youtube channel.

Double-win.

The Moon and Antarctica

Life aboard the International Space Station ain't easy, but how about wintering at a science station at the South Pole for a sunless six months?  Challenge accepted:

"From April to September, the station plunges into total darkness, and temperatures regularly hover around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn’t stop White, who has been at the station since January, from getting out for his daily walk or run, always solo. In almost three years on the job, he’s never passed a day without venturing outside. White records every session, and so far has logged more than four thousand miles on the ice. 'I go in any kind of weather,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how bad it is.'

Before he heads out the door, he signs a dry-erase board (which features the handy notation 'If no return, look for frozen pile when sun returns in September') to let his crew know he’s out exercising. When getting dressed to go out, he chooses from utilitarian gear used by the military in extreme cold, a heavy canvas anorak like the one explorer Roald Amundsen wore when he was at the South Pole in 1911, or, on the most miserable days, an Inuit jacket made of Siberian wolf fur. He knows how to read the wind, stars, and snow to find his way back, even in utter darkness or whiteout conditions. 'One of the worst things you face here is the wind,' White says. 'The wind works its way in, and you get frostbite on your nose and face.'”

I think I could last about a week without sunlight and, even worse, no internet. 

My Oyster(s)

 Oyster soup (굴뚝배기) with side dishes.

One of the best things about Korean food is how seasonal it is.  And now that we're in the healthy mid-section between fall and winter, oysters are in season.  Down the street from my college is an amazing oyster soup joint that features variations on a theme -- a stone bowl of steaming hot soup filled with shelled oysters, fresh seaweed, and your choice of starch in the form of rice, rice cakes, or shredded dumplings.

The magic begins when, at the last moment before serving, a raw egg gets thrown in.  If the timing is right, you get to pop the yolk and watch the rich yellow fat mix into the brinish soup.  (The place was packed, so my egg was, alas, overcooked by the time it got to me).

Still, this is a definite "memory" food for me in South Korea as the gorgeous fall weather starts turning to winter.  My boss really likes this dish as well, so I've had it plenty of times.

I don't get tired of this one though.

Also, do yourself a favor and order an oyster pancake to share as well.

To The Stars!

Life aboard the International Space Station must be a futuristic dream!  Actually, no -- it's noisy, stinky, and kind of gross, but vital nonetheless --

"The ISS is smelly, noisy, messy, and awash in shed skin cells and crumbs. It’s like a terrible share house, except you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no one gets a good night’s sleep.

There are some perks, however. The Cupola module offers perhaps the best view available to humans anywhere: a 180-degree panorama of Earth passing by below."

Sure, but still beats Earth ca. 2020. 

"You should see him move the masses"

Candy Machine, "Spotlight"

I know I say it all the time but these guys were really, really good.  Also, Baltimore was Portland before Portland was Portland.

It's a beautiful Monday afternoon here in Daegu.  I taught my adult students this morning, and they agreed the the American system of electing new presidents is pretty damn ass-backwards, thanks to the Electoral College (which makes no sense to anybody, including most Americans).

In the elevator down out of my apartment I noticed I had the hugest, most wrinkled eye bags ever.  Two cups of coffee this morning, and one more after lunch has made the day bearable.  I really need to get back on a normal sleep schedule, which at least should be possible now.

I ate absolute garbage last week as well.  One night for dinner I managed to combine some leftover fried chicken with a plate of home-made nachos.  Just grateful that bikini season is over.

I didn't get drunk on election night, for what it's worth, but early Sunday morning when the final result came in I did crack a Stella Artois tall-boy that I'd forgotten in the back of my fridge.

Exercise-wise, I've actually done pretty well with 90 minute to two hour anxiety walks through all parts of northern Daegu.  My exercise bike, which I've owned for about 10 years now, seems to be giving up the ghost -- one of the pedals is making a horrible grinding sound.  The weather really has been gorgeous though, so getting outside seems like the thing thing to do.

As for Trump, my hope of hopes is that he really is cuffed and dragged screaming from the White House by the Secret Service, but I'm sure the reality will be much more boring as he jets off to Mar-A-Lago in a cloud of spite and miserable failure.

As I mentioned, he'll never lose that particular loser stench.

Feeling Better -- Some Election Thoughts

Sugar, "Feeling Better"

Every masterpiece a la Copper Blue should have a mandatory outtake / angry, dark shit EP like Beaster.  It is known.

Some more salubrious thoughts than the ones that went before concerning the 2020 Election:

1)  Loser stink.  We all fail, but there's a particularly foul scent that goes with being a one-term US president.  It just doesn't happen that often.  Carter has rightfully been restored due to his incredible humanitarian work, but that took a long time.  George H.W. never recovered.  Gerald Ford?  A walking punchline.  Trump's whole brand is based on "winning" (he's a fraud of course) and this will stick to him forever.  Conversely, defeating an incumbent president is hard fucking work, and Biden pulled it off.

2)  As predicted, Biden is set to win the largest vote total in American history, with the largest participation in modern American history.  Only the Electoral College and the media's insatiable desire to get vote counts within a mere few hours is keeping this from looking like objectively what it is: a blow-out victory against a guy who, along with his Republican Party, pulled out every stop to make voting difficult, if not impossible.

3)  McConnell isn't going to let a single damn thing go through the Senate.  Biden and Pelosi need to message the hell of the fact that the House is trying to Get Stuff Done, and the Senate won't allow it.  Frankly, this is a long shot.  "Both Sides Do It" is pretty much the mantra of even left-of-center US media.

4)  If Trump isn't dead or in a New York State jail come 2022 he's going to run again, probably with his daughter or less dumb, more evil son in tow.  Honestly, I really hope he does -- he wrecked the Republican primary in 2015 and he can do it again, no problem.

5)  Everybody, including me, underestimated Biden's ability to rise to the occasion.  Let's see if he has some more magic to pull out of his Vintage Mustang.  And let's hope Kamala Harris will rise as well.  She was my second choice after Elizabeth Warren, and I think she will.  At the very least, a strong, smart black woman taking the reins of power is going to blow more than a few blood vessels among the GOP and FOX.

6)  Breathe.  We won.  We didn't shoot the moon, but we won.  Remember that Trump is not the sort to go quietly into the good night -- there will be casualties, as one of his favorite things is to reward loyalty with bitter spite and legal peril.

Not a Pyrrhic Victory So Much As a Sad and Underwhelming One

Obviously, it's not over but then again it's kind of over barring Complete and Total Ratfucking.  This election was much closer than it should have been, and yet not so close that John Roberts would show his hand just yet.  With the Senate out of reach for Dems he has two solid years of pretty much rewriting the post-1945 legal status quo for America.  Why blow it so early when Biden will most likely not be able to enlarge the court?  Or even get rid of the filibuster?

Goodbye Roe for starters.

So it sucks.  I stand by my opinion that large turnout is a generally good thing, even if it means there must have been a ton of first-time Trump voters out there.

It's looking like Biden bombed with Hispanic voters.  Another reason to take the incredibly smart and motivated AOC more seriously?

Silver linings?

The Senate map for 2022 is looking good for Democrats, but again Biden has to think big and strategically.  If he goes back to Washington thinking he'll just charm the pants off of McConnell to get the Democratic agenda through we really are screwed.

And fuck the Electoral College.

In a few hours I have to walk into my adult night class and explain a lot of this shit to them.

Good times.

"sudden death due to heart failure or a stroke as a result of extreme hard work"

The life of a delivery driver is never easy, especially in COVID-era South Korea:

"The fates of the 14 drivers can not be directly linked to overwork, but their families described the causes of death as 'kwarosa' - a Korean term used for sudden death due to heart failure or a stroke as a result of extreme hard work. Drivers in South Korea are struggling to cope with the sheer volume of online orders during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the packages have piled up, so has the pressure.

One of the drivers who died was 27-year-old Jang Deok-jin, a former Taekwondo enthusiast who had lost 15kg (33lbs) after doing 18 months of night shifts, according to his family. Deok-jin came home from a night shift earlier this month at around six in the morning and headed for a shower. His father found him dead face down in the bathtub an hour later.

'We loved that boy. When he said it was such hard work we told him it was ok to stop working, but he used to tell me that he had plans for his future,' his father said. 'I am to blame for not discouraging him from working so hard and exploiting himself.'"

It's almost as if Capitalism, by design, is a system that alienates us from our labor, our families, and ourselves.

How You Feeling, Teacher James?

I'm very confident that Biden is going to win the U.S. popular vote in record-breaking numbers -- both his overall tally and in seeing the largest voter turnout (Democratic and Republican) ever.  The early voting alone shows that people on both sides are motivated, and in particular younger folks who will guarantee a Biden popular victory.

But of course, it's 2020.  2000 (Gore vs. Bush) and 2016 demonstrated that Electoral College shit-sandwiches are only for Democrats, and never Republicans.  The Supreme Court is now packed with folks who literally worked for Bush in 2000 so he could rat-fuck his way to a contested election.  The same goes for the state-level.

So once again, for the fourth time (!) since I moved to Korea, I'm waiting until tomorrow morning my time to find out what happens.  If all goes well, we should know by nine or ten p.m. U.S. time, which will put me in my office at 11 a.m. or noon Wednesday.  (I'll be teaching an adult conversation course, actually).

I really doubt I'll get any decent sleep tonight.  (Not like I've been getting more than three or fours at best lately.)  My adult students continue to be flummoxed at how such a strong and rich nation like America can have such an unnecessarily complicated (and racist!) system like the Electoral College.

That said, as with early voting mentioned above, there are some real Biden advantages baked in already.  I think the number of Trump 2016 voters who either sit this one out or actually pull the lever for Biden will not be insignificant.

So there's my optimism.

Here's my pessimism -- a defeated Trump will still Tweet at us.  A solid 30-35% of America will remain deplorable at best, and violent at worst.  The Republican Party has abdicated any pretense about maintaining a functioning democracy.  Indeed, the sooner we collapse into a Putin-style kleptocracy, all the better for them.

Oh, and the economy is fucked due to COVID, which is only going to get worse.  There's no guarantee it won't last until 2022 or worse.

From day one Biden needs to think and act big.  I'm not sure he's up to it.  Obviously better than the fascist alternative, but still -- does even a big win tomorrow just delay the inevitable Tom Cotton "Use Tanks Against Peaceful Protesters" 2024 campaign?

"Lockdown was the trigger"

The Guardian with a surprisingly positive review of how folks are keeping up with their physical and mental health while under lockdown:

"Ludford spoke to a GP about his anxiety, who recommended exercise and referred him for counselling. So, he started walking: '2km became 5km became 10km,' he says. And he exercised to videos he found on YouTube. At first, he could not manage a single burpee, but after a few months, he was flinging himself on and off the floor with ease. 'The exercise was the only thing that really helped me to get a handle on my anxiety,' he says. 'Exercise kept the wheels on the bus.' Seven months on, Ludford has lost 34kg (5st 5lb) and is no longer severely obese. But the weight loss is secondary to his mental wellbeing – he feels like himself again. 'Everything came together at the same time,' he says. 'Lockdown was the trigger.'

While lockdown was a period of indulgence for many of us – who can blame anyone for looking at a world in freefall, with political leaders squabbling like children, and reaching for the biscuit tin? – the enforced stillness of 2020 gave some people the time and headspace to embrace a more active lifestyle. Freed from the shackles of the commute and the lure of late-night pub sessions, an overhaul was in reach. Fiona Gillison, a chartered psychologist and behaviour-change expert at the University of Bath, says: 'The pandemic reduced the barriers that many people have to leading healthier lifestyles – by giving them more time at home or dedicated time to exercise.'”

Of course, the interviews are with folks on decent furlough (80% salary is my understanding) and retired folks with pensions.  It's hard to imagine a full-time nurse or part-time clerk enjoying this sort of "indulgence" right now.

Still, if there's any silver-lining to COVID it's that we really should change our relationships to work, health, and family if we ever manage to beat this thing.