Kos points me to a timely reminder by Steve Gilliard as to what's been going on in Iraq. It's mostly out of the news as far as I can tell, but not really going well either.

If you want a strategic position, I think the big crunch comes when the insugency figures out how to take down our C-130s, meaning they get someone to sell and train them with portable SAM systems and start working in teams of two or three.

Hopefully we'll be able to get out before then, but with the neo-con plans for a permanent footprint, I'm not counting on it.

(Big Post; I Spell-Checked It And Everything)

Question. Is it a cop-out to believe in "the children," to think that a generation yet to be born has the answers to the world's problems? Yes and no.

In one sense, that this can be a transfer of power, a way of rationalizing away personal responsibility, it's clearly bogus. You can't wait on the kids to solve your problems; believing in them is no excuse for being inactive yourself.

On the other hand, the great ends of humanity are essentially multi-generational. Justice, shared prosperity, a totality of lives well-lived, these are things that span centuries in their scope, that are in some ways infinite. So on the level that you're willing to think big and take it seriously, it's quite a heavy thing to really believe in the potential children. It is an implicit call to action. Prepare the way!

I believe in our generation. My generation. What's that? Well, I believe that I and a minority of my peers in the 24 - 34 year old age range are on the leading edge of the post-gen-X birth wave that peaked in 1990, meaning it's crest is coming due to adulthood in 2008. We are chronologically closer to gen-x, but culturally closer to what is coming next. We are the forerunners.

It's important to realize that while the push for civil rights and gender equality were resounding steps forward for our country, everything else in the 60s largely failed. Rock n' Roll was thoroughly co-opted, permanently loosing a great portion of its mojo by being associated with selling things to adolescents. None of the really radical political or cultural stuff actually took off, though some of it took root. The sexual revolution begat porn, but this is really nothing new in terms of civilization, or even American culture.

By contrast, the Right-Wing things that weathered the 60s have grown up to become Wal*Mart, Big Oil and the Modern Republican Party and $3B associated network. In real terms, this is largely why they've been winning: their boomers are by in large more powerful and connected compared to ours.

But our time will be different. We have a powerful economic and cultural token with our embracing of Open Source. We are not seeking to construct an underground fantasy world, but rather a public utopia. This is a stronger endeavor. It is more bold and yet more achievable. Lots more to say about that down the line.

Otherwise it's been tough. I'm worn out from work NYC lifestyle, kind of lonely, and there are ominous rumblings around the status of the road trip. On the plus side I've been making some Art with Frank, and my straight-up physical condition is improving week by week.

Another bright point is that I'm reading Hunter's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and loving it of course. I never read it before, if you can believe that. Another formative piece I was missing all along. Read on for my thoughts half-way through. Another 1,200 words.

Looking back, the parallels in terms of electoral dynamics between Dean and McGovern are clear, as are those between Kerry and Muskie. The anointed frontrunner was Big Ed Muskie, the Man from Maine. George McGovern was a dark horse from South Dakota -- a political nowhere -- who was running on a staunch anti-war platform and driven by a grassroots campaign of young professionals. On the far left was Gene McCarthy, a reasonable analogue for Kucinich. In the rest of the mishmash you can see faint parallels between Hube and Gephardt/Lieberman, Andrews and Edwards.

There are no real analogues for Clark. And such a political animal as George Wallace -- a right wing populist Democrat, former governor of Alabama and recent staunch opponent of de-segregation -- has no modern day equivalent, though you can see elements of his appeal in Bush/Cheney '04. The point though is that the lines between McGovern and Dean and Kerry and Muskie are strong, and the really interesting thing here is that in '72 the dark horse broke through, and was immediately stomped by Nixon. Comparatively, in '04 the Anointed Candidate (with most of the same problems as Muskie) prevailed thanks to a stupendously superior use of media.

This says something about the evolving relationship between the media and politics 1972 vs 20004.

It also totally destroys the common observation that a Dean nomination would have been just like a McGovern nomination when he went national; a prison-block stomping. In fact, a close examination begs speculation as to what Dean might really have done against Bush.

McGovern was stomped, yes, but not because he was a grassroots/outsider who was against the war. George went up against Nixon exhausted, broke and with no-one backing him. The AFL-CIO and many regional heavyweights essentially sat the election out. For a comparison as to what this would have meant in our modern times, imagine Kerry/Edwards '04 with no ACT or DFA of Internet Millions to draw on. That would have been a slaughter too.

There are two main things which I believe would have favored a national Dean candidacy which Kerry did not capitalize on:

1) The advent of Open Source and the internet, which would have really gone into a higher-order effect if he were actually the candidate. Kerry used what Dean's style of campaign created as a beachhead, but didn't extend the territory much. Joe Trippi would have had to have been replaced as campaign manager (a fact which even he acknowledges), but if his campaign were truly allowed to flourish, it would have been much more advanced than what we eventually ended up building.

2) The lack of an existing class of political burnouts. In effect, Dean would have been able to draw on the young professionals who drove McGovern, as well as the true radicals who got "Clean For Gene" (McGovern) in 1968 and forced Lyndon Johnson out of the race before getting stomped by the Hube/Daily Axis in Chicago, and thus pretty much lost as a source of energy for the square world.

The major Dean liabilities were conventional media illiteracy and organizational issues at the HQ level. Had he weathered the primaries -- which might have come down to having CNN not replay a 30-second sound clip 600 times in a 24 hour span -- these are problems that could have been solved.

You have to realize is that if Dean had won, he would have had establishment backing just as much as Kerry. ACT was going to happen. MoveOn was going to happen. MFA was going to happen, and the Democratic Party was going to fight for its political life no matter what. Unlike McGovern, Dean was going to lead a united party.

Did you know they were planning to have 200,000 people come to the convention!? Really take over the whole city and make it a grassroots networking bazaar rather than a cold bunch of vip-list cocktail parties and meaningless pap for TV... that shit would have been tight! It's a bit of fantastic indulgence, yeah, but when I think back on what might have been, it still gets me high.

Bush is much worse than Nixon -- a fact which Hunter wryly brought up on numerous occasions -- but there are electoral parallels there as well. Both faced sagging popularity in the midst of a festering war. Both aligned with cultural conservatives and big business. Both were willing to fight dirty.

On this count, Nixon went beyond Bush/Rove to a great degree. For instance, in 1972, Nixon's hatchet men actually burglarized people to steal secret documents. First they stole private medical records which they used to reveal that McGovern's running mate had received electro-shock therapy for depression. Then they stole the Democratic strategy guide from their Watergate offices, the crime (as opposed to, say, the carpet-bombing of cambodia) for which the whole house of cards would eventually tumble.

This is the other thing to realize about '72 vs '04; not only was McGovern left out to dry by the Democratic establishment, he was hit right off the mark with leaked press reports that his VP was insane. While Bush's message guys are absolutely brutal, medical reports proving your Veep is nuts is a damn sight more damaging to a campaign than an ad campaign attacking your service in Vietnam (e.g. the Swift Boat Veterans For (un)Truth).

Bush is much worse than Nixon, and looking back I think with Dean we could have beaten him. I believe Howard was a better candidate, personal weaknesses and all. I think primary-voting Democrats (urged on by talking heads, no doubt) cared more about his willingness to commit gaffes than the voters eventually would have. Bush screws up his speeches all the time, but you know what he means. This is something that people who are honestly engaging in the political process -- a.k.a. "trying to decide who to vote for" -- respond to, often positively. Our side needs to take to hart that our malapropos-happy present hasn't suffered a whit for his lack of silver tongue. He has a strong gut-level message and (usually) appears confident and unafraid. Kerry had a wishy-washy message and often appeared rambling, desperate, or orange.

Which is not to deny Kerry his due. I pushed for the man, and I believe he did the best he could. We all did, under the circumstances. It was close, but just wasn't enough.

I don't know where the Poltix train is running. I'm keeping semi-warm with leftovers and good-guy civic engagement, waiting for the road trip to clear the decks. The future says New York in the fall. Luke will be here, and so will work and I'll be pretty near dead broke when all's said and done.

I don't know what's coming next. The kids are still coming. If we hold the previous pattern on turnout, there should be between 8 to 10 million new voters (out of just less than 20 million people turning 18 between 2004 and 2008), and if we hold the line on popularity (let alone increase our edge) they'll break our way 3 to 2. That means a 2 to 3 million vote advantage next time around. That will have an impact.

But that's only if we can get it up. All I've heard any really excited talk about lately is taking out Joe Lieberman in 2006. Still no real idea what the call to arms will be. Will keep searching and let you know.

My friends Amanda, Madeline and Chelsea are trekking together through China. Amanda's been there for some time, speaks the language and all. Chelsea tripped up from New Zeland, and I hadn't a clue that Madeline was going to meet with them there. Anyway, In the interest of global interconnectedness I thought I'd post a couple emails.

It's impossible to relate our full experience in Nanning; suffice it to say that most people there had clearly never seen a white person before (thanks, Chairman), much less a six-foot-tall Chinese-speaking one and her two female travel companions. Entire city blocks literally stopped dead to gawp as we passed. There was the occasional laughing, pointing, or menacing stare, but mostly people's jaws just sort of fell slack and they gaped wide-eyed at us everywhere we went. On my part, the hilarity of the situation quickly turned to irritation, which was in turn replaced by a frightening degree of hostile aggression. We quickly left.

Kunming is great. Quite a few tourists seem to have passed this way before, as evidenced by the more relaxed reception we've received by the locals. Among some of the odd sights we've encountered thus far include a simmering hot-pot of various fake meats, including quite sickeningly realistic mini-weiners; and two Tibetan guitarists who moonlight as "fire dancers" and whose act consists primarily of repeatedly inserting and withdrawing flaming sticks of fire into their crotches in time to very up-tempo disco music. Never boring, eh?

Today we went to the "Stone Forest," which is sort of self-explanatory. It's a whole bunch of naturally-occurring standing-stones in the midst of an evergreen forest. It was gorgeous, though we didn't explore quite as much as we'd have liked to on account of the searing heat and general lethargy.

On the hour-plus route there and back, we passed field after field and paddy after paddy. Farmers toiled unendingly in the kind of heat that makes me want to strip off my own skin. It's amazing the sort of terrain these farmers have to work with. The land has been so over-cultivated (thank you again, Chairman) that it's turned to a ruddy clay; in wide expanses it looks like satellite images of the surface of Mars. I watched one woman with some sort of hoeing implement turn over earth on a patch of hillside land that one would imagine could only be summited wearing the sort of spiked boots with spurs that repairmen use to climb telehphone poles. Why do my people live in a land where they can slog about in Laz-Y-Boys and waste food by the kilo, when this woman has but a shit wooden tool and a bad back from farming rice she's not even allowed to eat from a mountainside that I could barely walk?

Like I say, never boring. Cheers, Chairman.

That's from Amanda. Here's Madeline's take on roughly the same timespan:

imagine you're walking down the street, which is crowded with about three times the amount of people you're accustumed to seeing, and the second you set foot on the curb, all eyes on that block turn and are focused on you. and not just a casual glance, outright staring, gaping open mouthed pointing and talking about you. this is what has become the standard reaction to us three white girls, one of which is taller than anyone they have ever imagined being and has a mass of super curly hair. and then imagine thier faces when that girl can speak perfect chinese. anyway, it was interesting leaving hong kong and heading into china because in hong kong, there are so many different people, and everyone has seen what other people look like.

from there we went to guongzhou where we stayed in the nicest hostel i have ever encountered. the city appears to be the place to go if you're a westerner looking to adopt a chinese baby, there were hourds of new parents wheeling thier new little ones around. but as we went further into the city we saw no white people, and i think a lot of people there had never seen one by the way they reacted to us. it's a bit offputting having that much attention focused on you, but they just don't know how to react to us. we went to a tradition chinese medicine and herb market there which felt truly authentic. dark aisles, groups of men sitting playing cards and smoking, the smell of incence burning musty, and bags brimming with the strange and exotic. we saw so many unrecoginizaable herbs, dried snakes, lizards dries and flayed and stuck on a stick, deer tails, bugs a plenty, scorpians, tendons, seahorses, on and on.

from there we went to nanning on an overnight train. we got in at 5 in the morning and had 12 hours to kill before the next overnight train. we found out early on that the specilaty of the city was canine cuisine, and tried to avoid to ares of town where the dogs are sold. we went to a huge park called Bailong gongyuan or white dragon parkoverflowing with ponds and pagodas, and groups of people doing tai chi, or learning to fan or sword dance, we fed koi, we wandered. this place was worse than guongzhou in how inconspicuous we felt. within the park it was ok, people got excited when we said hello in chinesse and we got a lot of smiles. so we would smile at everyone and say hello. as the day progressed, it was harder to feel friendly and by the end of the day we were giving off looks that were communicating "what do you think you're looking at?" it was a tiring day, but i think it was good to have the experience of being in such an extreme minority position.

kunming which is in the yunnan province was our next stop. the country side is beautiful and we have been seeing so much of it from the trains. rice paddy upon rice paddy, farms, brick buildings on top of waterways, rocky hills rising into the mist. it feels really surreal somtimes. i have to stop and think at times "i am in china" and it's hard to believe. it is so different here. i wouldn't have been able to do this without amanda. it's wierd to not evem be able to read the signs or communicate at all. it's alienating. and i am lucky that such a close friend was willing to be translator. it gives so much more tot he trip than having to hire a guide.

we have been in kunming for 3 days now and it has been lovely. we have seen blue sky for the first time. the layer of smog is not as thick, but i have developed a cold i think my body is having a hard time keeping all the pollution out. this is more of a tourist destination, so we haven't had quite as much attention. we went to a bird and flower market which was so much fun. i have found i have a special place in my heart for market places. the people teeming about, the festive air. we bought trinkets, we played with baby ducks which sent amanda right to heaven cause she is a huge duck lover, and then we promptly went and found a toillet to wash our hands cause none of us want to end up with the bird flu. we went to a vegetarian restraunt that served up the most amazing looking meal to date. there was the multi fake meat stew they put on top of a flame so it would boil through your meal with little fake meat wieners bobbing on top. and there was the gelatinous violet soup of "8 amazing ingrediants." but it was actually really good despite appearances and it was so nice that amanda and chelsea didn't have to worry about meat sneaking in. peoples interpretation of no chicken, no beef, no fish, no pork, no meat, is very liberal here. they say yes, yes, understood and then your tofu comes swimming in beef. i have been getting a lot of dishes to myself by default. next kind of by accident we went to the camel bar and saw live music, guys doing chinese pop songs with pretty acoustic harmonies. and then they did the fire "dancing' which involved twirling around, licking the fire sticks, swiping them across thier bodies and then plunging them into thier pants repeatedly. then afterwards they came over and chatted for a while and then dedicated a song to us called "because i really love you" which according to the bar tender, they had never done before. i guess we are making quite an impression.

yesterday we went to shilin on a day trip, to the stone forest which is vertually a forest of large limestone pillars rising up. it was a bit of a tourist trap though, and i'm not sure if it was worth the 2 hour cramped ride in the smallest van in memory in the blazing heat.

we are leaving kunming today on an overnight bus.

we are having a great time. it is amazing to not have seen these girls for so long, but we're such good mates that we just fell right into it again and having been having the time of our lives. even the bad times, well they're bad, but when you're traveling like this, it's just another part of the process. we have dubbed this the voyage of discovery and that title has proved very apt. chelsea gives a big hello to all. she has been doing a great job learning bits of chinese, but unfortunately it doesn't really stick in my head. with all the tones and everything i am at a bit of a loss.

Color me green with world-travel envy.

Here. Listen to this at least for the first riff. It'll set a mood.

After spending a day at Fix Cafe working on this and this and starting to feel a bit like a regular, I headed over to the Metropolitan Pool for a quick workout. I'm back on pace to hit it three times a week, and getting to the point now where I can diversify the routine a bit. In this instance, I added some lower-back stuff and re-arranged my order such that I hit the lats and shoulders before closing out on the chest and arms. Life is all about contrasts. The Met Pool has a nice little gym, and on a friday it's nearly empty, which is both nice because you can work at whatever pace you want, but also a drag... because you can work at whatever pace you want. No overall sense of pushing. I close out with 6.3 miles in 15 minutes on the stationary bike and a very brief cat sequence to keep my back loose, then head back to GPoint for a shower.

I'm still staying with Wes and Jeremy up there in the old hood. They've been absolute champions about letting me sleep in their living room, truly above and beyond. It's easy to fall into staying with them (I have keys and everything), but I need to explore alternatives. No one likes having a bum on their couch for three weeks straight, even if he does occasionally provide some entertainment. He's also loud and makes a mess and stinks up the bathroom; I'm sure it gets tiring. Anyway, the point is I should spread the burden of my existence throughout my social network.

After getting back I scarf a cheeseburger from PFC, bathe and read a book review in Harpers about soem retrospectives on the Enlightenment ("The Enlightement Is Dead; Long Live The Enlightenment!") which got a few gears moving upstairs. Wes is cleaning up the place; parents coming to town this weekend. I take down the recycling and head out to the Lyric, which is just starting to fill up with a birthday party, including a band, and some of our crowd come to say final goodbyes to John and Noreen, who are moving to Boston today. I run into Phantom Phil (again, random), Frank and Laura, Alex and Laura, Capodice and Kate Kita. Everyone's a couple these days. Selah.

The bar is the bar. Our pal Cal -- the #1 toothless vagrant in my life -- shaved off his prodigious hobo-beard, 'cause people were calling him "Saddam Hussein," and his birthday is coming up and all. The band is playing and they're allright in an instrumental prog-moog way. Fortune smiles and I "win" a mini-bottle of Jameson's from Cass by correctly guessing which pocket she was holding it in. It was a "pick which hand" game, which you can often win with child psychology. See, I used to play this game with Bill all the time, and child-me was astounded at how often he would guess which hand was holding. Then he explained that I would unconsciously hold one hand a little more forward and the other a little back. The hand I was holding back was the one that held the prize. This still works with adults if they're not really watching it.

I also "win" two dollars, again from Cass, by being willing to slug down a Stoli Vanilla and Diet Coke she ordered but was then -- rightly -- disgusted by. I grimace and make wild proclamations about how this is the drink that we're going to spread coast-to-coast with Vagabender (a total lie; we're spreading the Hound-Ball and nothing else) and duck out back to nip down the mini-bottle. This on top of my own work with the right honerable John Powers starts to give me itchy feet, so when minister AlX called me up wanting to run around the Burg after being dissapointed by Sideways, I bopped out.

AlX and I ended up meeting down at a place with no sign. It was a fully converted spot; faux underground, but fun; part and parcel with the second wave of Bilzburg gentrification. On the bike ride down I could feel my lower back getting the throb as I projed down Meeker under the BQE, that's good. I'll need to build strength there to handle the move to fix-gear. We were supposed to rendezvous at Royal Oak, but just as I was pulling up he called and asked if I wanted to meet him at the bus stop, maybe poke a little smot before we hit the scene. Being a gentlemen, I accepted, fielding the phone call and making a great circle around the original destination without putting a foot on the ground.

We got high and ducked the law in McCarren park and wandered south, switching from our original destination to the no-sign place. There's a little difficulty with locking the bike, but once that's done we head in. It's humid and loud when we first enter, and we make for the little outdoor roof-deck area. like I said, fully converted spot. We're not there two minutes when a crazy drunk girl starts to "tell me a story," laying on large and unsolicited psychodrama, and we're driven back in on the pretense that I have to piss.

AlX and I talk politics, as we do, and also a little bit about women. He's married, so I respect his opinion there. His philosophy is a challenging blend of libertine free expression and high spiritual standards, which makes his message (on politics and on girls) refreshingly energetic. "You have to decide what you want, and then you have to take it." It's a kind of agressively capitalist message, but it's backed up with an earnest enlightenment spirit and a deep appreciation for community and social responsibility. There's a little nudging for me to play the field, a little vicarious living for the married man. I'm pretty well knackered though, so I'm not about to make any moves, even if there is a pretty hot Indian girl over my right shoulder. We eat a little bar pizza -- another feature of second-wave gentrification -- and enjoy the atmosphere.

The time rolls around and we walk out, and by and by I mount up and return to the Lyric for some good Bar time. A miller light, a glass of soda water with cranberry juice, some drunk talk with Jeremy behind the bar, some people-watching, and then off to sleep on the futon.

I get up and out as soon as I wake up so as not to crowd the place up for Wes and his folks, brush the teeth and head back to Fix for the wireless and the caffeine. It's no Cafe Commons, but it's allright. There are a lot of kids and dogs and the french roast is solid. There's a great (if sometimes annoying) drunk philosophizer who hangs around swilling Bud Light and talking about geodesic domes; lends to the amosthere of general artsy fartsyness -- you hear things like "The lecture said you have to have, like, a dialectic... goal or something." -- which is all more or less up my alley. Plus I like the way they make their toasted bagels.

So this is my life; working away the days and wandering away the nights. I'm still seeking, but a bit listlessly so; really just waiting to get on the road. The other day I ran into a woman I know at the cafe. She was a freshman when I was a senior at ETW, very precocious. I think she's the only woman who's ever actually grabbed my head and kissed me, which didn't end up working out all that well, but I respect the move. Anyway, we're catching up at the cafe because we're both grown up people out of college living our lives and there's a flirtatious vibration and there's this really kind of charged and revealing moment where she asks, portentiously, "so you don't know what you want?" and I reply with a short pause and a heartfelt "I have no idea."

That's where I'm at on a saturday afternoon. Needing someone to love, getting by with a little help from my friends. It's pretty decent.