1 Boring Old Man

Wandering through Africa on a three week trip, we flew through Dubai, the Disney World/Las Vegas of the Arabian Desert and spent a few days in Nairobi, Kenya before venturing out into the incredible African Game Parks in Kenya and Tanzania. There was plenty of opportunity to talk to people along the way and find out what people thought about our government – not just the Africans, but also travellers from other countries. While I hardly did a scientific survey, the response from everyone I talked to was similar to a comment by our tour guide, "Oh, Republicans are bad for Africa … the world. We’re a lot happier when you have a Democrat." And everyone, I mean everyone, said something like. "I don’t know why you are in Iraq. Was it for the oil?" Certainly, everyone was friendly, including other travelers. But my impression was that everyone thinks that we’ve gone a little crazy. Since that’s what I think too, I expect it was easy for people to talk to me about that – the America is crazy part.

Another point, Africa [at least Kenya] is something of a corrupt place. As one person said, "You can do anything here if you have the money." If you’re stopped at one of the frequent roadblocks along the way by police [carrying AK47s], and your vehicle papers are out of whack, a little money fixes the problem. The papers are full of comments about anti-corruption laws and efforts. Until recently, Kenya had something called a "one party democracy." That’s changed now, but apparently there’s still a lot of vote rigging, particularly in the more primitive tribal areas. Kenya has forty two distinct tribes, and "tribalism" is a major factor in their elections. Their government is all central – no "federalism." The move to have regional and national governments like we do has failed in the past, and is thought to increase "tribalism," which weakens their democracy. But my point is that they think we’ve got the same problem. We no longer stand before them as a beacon of a successful democracy.

So, I’m going through the blogs and news on returning, and I run across this article in the New Republic, Nothing Worth Declaring, about our new, redesigned passport. Its pages have backgrounds with glorious moments from our past. The author of the article is saying that it’s a Red State passport – "… signs of Cheneyite muscle-flexing." I think that’s right. It proclaims our self image loudly ["of the people, by the people, for the people"] – "shouting its Yankee pride like an American flag on a fanny pack." But it’s embarassingly off the mark from the way we are viewed in the world right now. As a young man living in Europe during the Viet Nam War, I was aware that there was a lot of suspicion about our motives in being in that war, and there was a lot of something like envy of our wealth and power. But I always felt that there was respect for the "American Experiment." In my travels as an old man during the last four years [China, Africa, Europe, Peru, Mexico], it has felt sadly otherwise. However, it’s hard for me to evaluate this impression because America feels different to me too.