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"we will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations"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"'We will act as a meteorite and hit the outdated ways of the older generations in this country,' the protest organisers explained.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.