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Random GOP’ers


Here’s a run-down of my run-ins with the GOP rapid-response team in Boston so far:

1.  Abercrombie guys and gals dressed up as giant flip-flop sandals with signs declaring Kerry to be without conviction. Are all Young Republicans this good looking?

2.  Man pushing baby in stroller outfitted with “Re-elect Bush/Quayle” sign. Not a typo.

3.  “God Hates America” protestors in the Democracy Pen under the T tracks. Why does God hate America, you might ask? Because we looooves the gays and the sodomy.

Hold the complaints — I’m aware that the real GOP operatives aren’t vicious haters, G.H.W. Bush fans, or attractive. But nonetheless, an interesting sampling of identifiable Republicans here in the lefty bastion of Massachusetts.

—Scott Winship

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The unbearable lightness of blogging


I’ve been checking the convention coverage this week, and I’m struck by the dearth of fresh, interesting pieces. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick provides an apt description of one half of the problem:  

“There is always a rather weird quality to these conventions, in that these speeches are happening right in your living room, yet we in the press are somehow supposed to mediate the experience. We can’t hear as well as you do, or see as well as you do, but we’re supposed to triangulate your direct experience against the fact that we are here. As a consequence, there’s a lot of Media Hall of Mirrors stuff, wherein the press reports on the press, reporting on you.”

If journalists are supposed to give readers a you-are-there perspective but the readers are already there, it’s not surprising that much of the commentary strays deep into the Meta. See, for example, this post.

The other half of the problem is that nothing newsworthy is really occurring here! Not to deny that the experience of attending the Convention is incredible, but the speeches, with a few notable exceptions, are sanitized and generic. The whole four days is tightly scripted. And media representatives outnumber delegates by a 6-to-1 margin.  

Without new developments to report on, commentators have resorted to analyzing the irony, tragedy, drama, and triumph of key speakers’ performances. How must Howard Dean feel, knowing that he was on top for a while? How must Gephardt feel, knowing that the VP slot was nearly his? How frickin’ amazing is Bill Clinton? These are to some degree interesting questions, but they don’t lend themselves to fascinating commentary.

Anyway … omigod, did I tell you I saw Bono yesterday?

—Scott Winship

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MAILBAG: Feeling froggy? Why we care what focus groups think


Been watching the convention on C-SPAN? If you plan to keep watching between Boston and New York, keep an eye out for the focus groups. And beware. They should run a ticker, a la ESPN game scores, at the bottom of the screen: WARNING: INCREDIBLE TIME SUCK! They’re addictive reality television at its lowest ebb. Each group features handpicked characters who are supposed to represent demographics key to this year’s race — NASCAR dads, stay-at-home moms, blacks, Latinos. Most are culled from swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, where people are generally nice and let you cut in traffic. But shut them in a room to talk politics, and they degenerate into characters more conflict-prone than the entire cast of Real World I, II, and III. Puck made more sense than most of these people.

In that sense, at least, they are representative of a pissed-off, polarized country where no one trusts the “facts” presented to them by either party or the media. The New York Times observes most voters have already made up their minds, and members of the opposing party disapprove of the president more than ever before. The group from Dayton that appeared on C-SPAN earlier this week alternately blamed Bush and Kerry for the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, abortion law, and the war in Iraq. Their chief complaint: The candidates have no mind of their own and are pandering instead to focus groups just like them.

The candidates have reason to care what these characters think. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, “The ‘Dayton housewife’ set the standard for the average middle-American voter. Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, in their 1970 book The Real Majority, argued that candidates who spoke to her issues win presidential elections.” Or, as one reviewer wrote, they “Attempted to warn the Democratic Party not to pander to ‘trendy’ groups of voters, but instead to focus on the ‘unpoor, unblack and unyoung’ [sic] (that is, the average American voter) in order to achieve success at the polls. Much has changed in this country in the intervening thirty-odd years, but its message is one that, actually, the Republicans have been heeding more nationally.”

As opposed to Dayton Stepford wives of yore, the Enquirer found, “By and large, these swing voters are a gloomy bunch. Asked to describe the mood of the country, they use words like ‘unsettled,’ ‘upheaval’ and ‘falling apart.’” They also use words like “teeter totter” “schmaltzy” and “froggy.” “‘Things start looking good, and then they start to teeter-totter back down,’ said Jody Blair, 33, a Centerville housewife, mom, puppeteer and former teacher.” What do people like Blair really tell us? Not much about the election, but they certainly show a colorful America unafraid to share its opinions — bizarre and baseless though they may be.

One group member said she decided to vote for Bush based on a chain email letter that claimed Teresa Heinz Kerry failed to provide health insurance for employees. If this was genuine Reality TV, she would have been voted out of the airless office space right then. Instead, the C-SPAN moderator kept her hushed up while counterparts dismissed Nader as “a fossil” and “a hippie,” and called Kerry “stiff” and “schmaltzy.” But Cheryl Maggard, 48, a house cleaner from Lebanon, Ohio, came up with the best dis on a candidate yet – “froggy,” for President Bush. She was, of course, talking about his stance on the war in Iraq. “He jumped too quick,” she said, veering off into a mixed metaphor. “You don’t get into a fight if you don’t know where the exit is.”

—Anonymous

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Joe Undecided from Ohio


I know last night was supposed to be about defining John Kerry and “The Kerry-Edwards Plan for America’s Future.” But what struck me most about last night (other than its unintended persuasiveness as an argument against the 22nd Amendment) was its quietly effective promotion of Everyday People. The Sly and the Family Stone song was there of course – with waaay too many other kumbaya ‘60s tunes — but the theme ran through the evening in a number of other ways.

There were the live feeds of Democrats from various electorally important states, often featuring one citizen’s case for John Kerry. These testimonials were clearly unscripted and often awkward. The men and women selected were generally as inarticulate as, say, me. Once they finished, the camera panned back to reveal a room full of people who didn’t really know how the hell they were supposed to react. The effect was as if the neighbors had been made to gather together to pose for someone’s brand new webcam.  

Also awkward, if highly energizing, was the testimonial of Reverend David Alston, Kerry’s shipmate in Vietnam. Clearly as uncomfortable as, say, I would be speaking before a national audience, Alston delivered his still-forceful speech without pausing for the audience’s repeated applause. We were left to decide whether to submit to the ecstatic atmosphere in the build-up to the Clintons or to pipe down and hear what the man had to say.

Still, if I’m Joe Undecided from Ohio watching all of this on TV, I think I could relate to these folks, and I think I’d appreciate their presence and the respect shown them at the convention. Cambridge, Massachusetts is embarrassingly far from my blue-collar roots in small-town Maine, but I’m not so disconnected from my roots that I couldn’t see my old neighbors reflected in the faces from Little Rock and Milwaukee on the screen. To my mind, letting these everyday people speak for themselves is far more effective than any people-versus-the-powerful speech could have been.

—Scott Winship


Delegate


Delegate


Watching Alston speak

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Bubba’s boomer guilt…


For all the references to military service that we’ll hear this week in Boston (did you know James Carville was a marine?), the most remarkable reference to Vietnam in my book was this one from former President Clinton:

“During the Vietnam War, many young men — including the current President, the Vice President and me — could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, ‘send me.’”

Talk about boomer guilt! Still, the self-criticism made the point that much more powerful. Kerry certainly could have avoided the war if he had wanted to. The contrast between the paths that he and the current President chose clearly favors the Democrats. Now if only Kerry could convince active soldiers and their families that they should support his positions on defense. Hopefully, the campaign is making this a goal of the next few days.

—Scott Winship


Bill Clinton


Jim Wark, a Vietnam Vet (‘68-‘69) from Texas

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Britney Spears and Natalie Portman for Kerry?


There’s hardly a bad seat in the Fleet Center, even if I did feel like I was sitting close enough to touch the hundreds of balloons attached to the ceiling that will drop on Thursday. (Did I just spoil a surprise?) Perhaps I was sitting in the mysterious blogosphere? Anyway, one game I played while lesser-known speakers were at the podium was to try to figure out who was occupying CNN’s set, which was arranged on the convention floor below. To get a sense of the size of the place, here are a few of my guesses as to Larry King’s guests, accompanied by their actual identities as confirmed by the transcript:
    
    My guess: Britney Spears
    Actually: Vanessa Kerry
    
    My guess: Natalie Portman
    Actually: Alexandra Kerry
    
    My guess: Rudy Giuliani
    Actually: ex-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (for whom I worked as an intern one summer)
    

—Scott Winship


Cheese head and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer


Protesters outside the Fleet Center

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MAILBAG: Campaign kids


In honor of the Bush twins’ first official interview last week, let’s take a look at how the press treats politicians’ children on the campaign trail.

A number of newspapers across the country have either covered campaigning kids – from the twins to Kerry’s daughters and John Edwards’ brood – or opined about their role. Few ask politicians about the role their children play in the campaign. Even fewer ask adult children pointed political questions. Granted, the twins’ first interview was with Vogue. Still, consider the questions they were asked:

What do you plan to do after graduation? (Teach at a charter school; work in Europe/Africa). Why did you join the campaign? (Not at parents’ urging). What are your parents like? (Dad’s hard on their prospective dates; Mom’s a clean freak, but funny).

The New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller summed it up best: “The article, which is light on politics and heavy on fashion, also reveals that the president is an avid teaser of his daughters’ boyfriends.”

Perhaps we don’t need to know more – what they think of the war in Iraq, for instance. Do we really care?

Sure we do. First, because their parents hold them out as an extension of themselves. As reporters at the Houston Chronicle (among the top 10 highest circulating papers in the country) observed: “The twins’ presence in the Bush campaign will help to soften the president’s image and possibly garner support from young Americans. ‘Surrounding yourself with family always tends to make you appear to be more human, softer,’ says Garth Jowett, a communications professor and propaganda expert at the University of Houston.”

Second, we care about their views because they have placed themselves on the stump. They purport to be well-educated, have grown up in the political spotlight, and as a result, may be considered public figures.

Julie Hines at the Detroit Free Press wrote a thorough article about campaigning children Monday
that examined both the role they play and their potential impact. The piece implies that since reporters/the public aren’t out to press kids for comment, their major role is as family-endorsing eye-candy.

In that case, the Edwards children – dubbed “replacement kids” during his North Carolina campaigns and now likened to the Camelot clan – could have a major impact. “During the first day of joint appearances by the Edwards and Kerry families, the Edwards tykes stole the show,” the story notes. “John Kerry joked at one point that Jack had become the new campaign manager.” So could Kerry’s own two adult daughters, who plan to campaign for him. Vogue is already talking to them about a piece similar to the twins’ spread. Then there’s his wife’s son Chris Heinz, 31, who’s been heavily involved in the campaign and likened to JFK Jr.

As Hines notes, “The conventional wisdom is that sons and daughters of candidates don’t have much impact on elections. They smile and make nice with the public, but they don’t change outcomes. But this year could be different, especially if polls continue to show President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry in a tight race, says Doug Wead, author of ‘All the President’s Children.’ ‘In a close campaign, absolutely everything counts, including the children,’ says Wead.”

The public – and the media – certainly cared three years ago when they were caught with a fake ID and alcohol in a Texas bar. And it seemed Bush spokespeople expected more after they graduated in May. “With their graduation from college and joining the campaign, there’s certainly going to be more coverage of them, and that’s understandable,” Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for First Lady Laura Bush, told The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. “However, they are not public officials. When they engage in campaign activities, certainly there will be media interest. But when they’re going about their own work, we hope the media will respect that.”

But if the public wants to know what they’re thinking, shouldn’t adult children on the campaign  trail be asked hard questions about those they’re promoting? The New York Daily News’ Lloyd Grove, who doesn’t think kids will have any effect on the campaign, doesn’t think so. “Are people going to vote on the Jenna issue,” he asked Hines, “Or the Iraq issue?” But so many political questions of the moment – about the war, gay marriage, the economy – have been termed family values issues, particularly by conservatives, it seems ridiculous to think family members shouldn’t be pressed for answers, or at least opinions.

For now, it appears the kid gloves are still on. Washington Post Style writer Robin Givhan considers the Vogue spread indicative that the twins won’t be pressed on the campaign trail. “Those who spend any time on such trails argue that the goal is not to reveal one’s real self but a perfectly polished and eloquently scripted facsimile,” she writes. Chelsea Clinton made her press debut at a Versace show, after all, with a puff piece in Talk. “But the portrait does offer this: They are ready to play a new role … In their life story as told in public photographs, they’ve gone from indiscreet college students to Stepford daughters. One longs for photographs that tell of the intellectual curiosity that took them abroad or of the ‘natural effervescence’ that Reed (the author) found so compelling.” If only we didn’t have to rely on photographs or press releases to know what they’re thinking.

—Anonymous

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The VP debate: why Edwards won’t win


The Democrats have, once again, failed to understand the political logic of lowered expectations. Minutes after John Kerry anointed the youthful, Southern, telegenic, “two Americas,” son of a mill worker John Edwards as his VP choice, excited Democrats across the land began publicly salivating over the prospect of the successful trial lawyer using his mesmerizing courtroom skills to eviscerate stodgy Dick Cheney in their October 5 debate in Cleveland. Kerry even got into the act, saying he couldn’t wait to see Edwards go “toe-to-toe” with the Vice President.

Problem is, while Edwards was a smart choice to liven up the Kerry ticket, he was also consistently unimpressive in the primary debates (in a few, he seemed to barely be there). He may do better in a one-on-one setup, but he has yet to prove an ability to attack an opponent in an effective way. He mostly stayed “positive” in his race against Kerry (he had to if he wanted to stay in the VP race), and his early attacks on Bush and Cheney in his new VP role have been average at best.  

Second, Cheney may appear old, predictable, and cranky, but he’s also experienced and smart, and he’s not going to let Edwards blow him off the stage. In fact, with all the Democratic talk of how great Edwards will come off in the debate, the Dems have, once again, set themselves up for a monumental failure, with the post-debate talk inevitably focusing not on substance but on how Cheney (who some Republicans desperately want off the ticket) held his own against the litigator extraordinaire. Remember all that talk four years ago about how Al Gore would invariably embarrass George Bush? Well, with expectations significantly lowered, Bush didn’t look half bad.

My prediction: Cheney won’t look half bad, either, and the political pundits will declare him the debate’s “surprising winner.”

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Fiction & Poetry

GAY LIT

Best of Imagine (So Far)
2004 Best of Imagine

If you think being a closeted queer is suffocating, just imagine what it’s like to be an imprisoned gay man.


(stock.xchg)

On the Big Yard
Art is everywhere
Etched into the skins
Of former foster care kids
Turned convict

One man walks the yard alone
He wears a shirt that he cannot take off
The ink of a thousand ballpoint pens
Pushed under his skin by the tips of old guitar strings and sewing needles
In group home midnights
Or D Block lockdowns

Across his shoulders; the letters “S O C A L”
And below this
A pictorial history of Los Angeles
The Pachuco Riots, the movie industry, and surf culture
Underneath the left arm
A lifelike rendering of Adolph Hitler
Underneath the right arm
A shamrock with the numbers “666” in the center
Four teardrops from his left eye
A Sistine chapel of convict art
And down the back of two gigantic biceps are the words:
    P
G      R
A      I
Y      D
    E
He is called “Silent”
Because he speaks to no one
And no one speaks to him
No one even speaks of him
Except for an old man who once said in chow line
“There go Ol’ Silent … He don’t talk to nobody …”

I wanted to speak to him
And when he ran past the Woodpile
Where the peckerwoods sat
I said “Good Morning …”

Silent kept running
But the Woods, playing Pinochle with their White Pride tattoos,
Had heard what I said
And one of them said to me: “Don’t fuck with Silent …”

I decided this was good advice
But when we lined up to be searched after our day on the Yard
Silent stood next to me
He knew that I was the one who had spoken to him

You could see it on his arms!
How lonely he was …
I spoke to him, again
“You’ve got some really amazing tattoos, man …”

The room had been a maelstrom of convict clatter and clanging doors
Now it was quiet, as Silent regarded me with a blank stare
too late now
I looked back at him
Silent reached up and lowered the elastic band of his orange convict pants
No one could look away
We saw his tattoos
Black flames reaching down the shaft of an erect penis
A small “happy face” at the very tip

The guard turned
He addressed Silent by his real name
“Miller! What the fuck is you doin’?”
“Man, git yo’ hands up against that wall!”

Silent covered himself slowly
He put his hands on the wall
They shook him down for weapons and other contraband
Then we moved back into the cellblocks
When they called for “Yard” at 11 AM the next day
I stayed in my cell

I left Old Silent
On the Big Yard
But I thought you should know
He was there

Gay Pride, motherfucker ….

STORY INDEX

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Books by prison poet Jimmy Santago Baca
URL: http://www.powells.com/search/DTSearch/search?kw=jimmy+santiago+baca

PEOPLE >

Prison Poet, Dramatist, Jean Genet
URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/author/genet/index.shtml

Prison Poet Etheridge Knight
URL: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/knight/knight.htm

The Prison Poet by S.H. Wintle
URL: http://dreamsis29.tripod.com/PrisonPoet.htm

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Commentary

This is my country

I can’t help but feel at home in Mexico. But that does not mean it is my country.


I flicked my driver’s license casually.

“Citizenship?” asked the border patrol agent.

“American,” I said.

My best friend Cecilia and I were coming back from a fun weekend in Mexico and had just driven up to the U.S. entry gate at the Tijuana/San Diego border. I asked the uniformed man for the best route to northern San Diego, where I lived. He teased me about having to ask for directions. We both laughed.

Cecilia was not so at ease. She paused and was jittery when she answered the agent’s questions, leading him to briefly inspect our trunk before telling me the best way home. I quickly left Mexico without another thought. But next to me, my friend Cecilia started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t believe it was that easy,” she said.

This was one of Cecilia’s first trips back to Mexico, her homeland. She had spent more than 15 years living as an illegal alien in the United States before finally becoming a legal resident. The first time she had crossed the Mexican border wasn’t so easy. She had climbed into a tire, floated, and then waded across the cold waters of the Rio Grande into Texas. She’d walked overnight before landing in a safe house. Another time she’d hidden for hours inside the tiny secret compartment of a couple’s truck, holding her breath while a border patrol dog sniffed the outside, its damp nose searching for illegal cargo.

Five years ago Cecilia married a U.S. citizen and became a legal resident. Now she can travel to Mexico freely. But she knows she will cry when she crosses the border. She can’t help but think of the hundreds of thousands of people who did as she once did — risk their lives to live in this country.

“I didn’t really think about that just now,” I said. I then hugged her, an embrace for all the immigrants in this country, including my parents.

As a first-generation Mexican American, born and raised in Dallas, Texas, I basically grew up Mexican. My parents are often more traditional than families in Mexico — trapped in time, they are unaware that the country has moved beyond the 1950s and 1960s. While kids my age danced to Michael Jackson, I fell in love with romantic boleros from Mexican idols like Javier Solis. I became an expert on black-and-white film stars like Pedro Infante and Cantinflas.

Some parts of my culture I rejected. I was not allowed to go to sleepovers. I couldn’t talk to boys. English was banned at home, and I ate tacos for lunch while classmates ate sandwiches. Most of all I hated the work. I had to help my parents clean offices at night, falling asleep in the van while they worked until morning. On the weekends, while my friends got to see movies or visit the park, my parents and I sold food out of our home, collected cans, cleaned houses, mass produced paper flowers, packaged gift tissue, sold toys at swap meets, painted apartments, and mowed lawns or buffed floors.

“I don’t belong here,” I’d thought. Only when I visited Mexico did I get the childhood I yearned for. I could hang out on the streets without my parents beckoning me inside. I was free to flirt with boys and walk around the plaza arm-and-arm with my cousins.

Something magical happened to my parents in Mexico. They laughed louder, told funny stories, hugged relatives, enjoyed leisurely meals, and even danced.

“Why don’t we stay here?” I wondered. When we came back stateside, I missed Mexico, with its big mountains and wide beaches, its loud cities and colorful fruit stands. But it always came to an end, and we dutifully headed home to work and to school. At the border, my mother and I would cross by car. My father would always disappear and take another route.

“He has something to buy, “ my mother would say. “He’ll meet us on the other side.”

We prayed while we waited for him to cross. I would absorb my mother’s nervousness. We always felt relieved, and happy when my father walked up to us in Laredo, Texas — safe on the other side.

Today, my mother is a U.S. citizen and my father is a U.S. resident. They make few trips to Mexico now, ensconced by a lively Dallas lifestyle where they tend three small businesses. Mexico lives in my heart, but as I matured I began to embrace being American more.

Some of my relatives are very poor in Mexico, with little hope of getting ahead. Some of them are middle-class and believe keeping up appearances is the most important thing there is. I like it here where I can work hard to get ahead, and where it’s okay to be me — 31 and unmarried, living on my own, working on a career, experiencing other cultures, traveling alone, going without makeup, speaking up when I want to, being unfashionable, hosting martini parties. My family in Mexico would forgive me for my small indiscretions too, I’m sure, though I do get a lot of lectures when I talk to relatives there.

No, I am lucky to live here. As a reporter in San Diego, I often cover stories about undocumented immigrants. I read mail from readers who accuse me of not telling the story of how illegal aliens are crippling California, not to mention the country. I am often told to go back to my country too. I laugh off the most offensive comments because I can.

I am American.

I look at the immigrants here — who stand on the corner looking for work, who live in makeshift shacks in canyons because they lack affordable housing, who pile into cars to go buy groceries, who work 12-hour days for little pay, somehow managing to save thousands to pay back the coyote who brought them — and I’m not afraid of them. They are here illegally, I know. But they are here. There are an estimated 8 to 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. They are part of our society, and I am honored to tell their stories. Somebody has to. I approach them respectfully and I am glad when they talk to me.

Recently, U.S. border patrol agents began arresting immigrants in San Diego at bus stops, on corners and in grocery stores. I wonder if they will snatch me up if I somehow forget my I.D. — after all, I look so ethnic. It angers me that my civil rights as a U.S. citizen could be so easily violated. But then I return to my comfortable stateside apartment and do not think about immigration issues. I have that luxury.

Back in the car, my friend Cecilia cried. And when I hugged her, I began to cry too. I remembered the struggles my mother and father had gone through for me, the countless times they had risked their lives to cross the border, the dozens of jobs they held, the new language they studied, the hamburgers they learned to cook, the way they encouraged me to go to college, the soft words of love my father murmured when I told him I was moving away. They are proud of me, but I can only aspire to be as courageous.

My parents became American for me, just as millions of immigrants have done for decades and will continue to do so for their families. When Cecilia cried I could almost hear them panting, out of breath in the nearby deserts, walking through the night to reach a safe house somewhere in this country.

And I prayed for them.

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Commentary

I liked tea

For an immigrant, everything tastes, sounds, and feels a little different from “home” — a place that seems farther away for the nomad with each passing day.


Author Radhika Sharma performs a ceremony on her sister-in-law’s groom during a wedding in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, in April 2004.

I often find myself mired in thought comparing and contrasting my new life in the United States to my life in India. Recollections and epiphanies come to me during mundane dinners, at supermarket checkout counters — even during spiritual discourses.

Each month I struggle to do justice to my position as a reluctant and informal ambassador, hoping fervently that as I vocalize my observations about both cultures I also reawaken and clarify my rather murky sense of self and identity.

Almost every week I struggle to explain fuzzy existential and far removed issues to folks back home: Why do Americans complain about housework despite having so many timesaving appliances? Why does the immigrant Indian community celebrate Diwali (The festival of lights) on weekends? Why this? Why that?

And almost each day, while I drink tea by myself, I remind myself to enjoy the richness and aroma of the tea and try to avoid listening to the voice playing in my mind: “You liked tea because it signified something. Does it still?”

That voice in my head repeats provocatively. Teatime was my time with my mother and brother; time spent relaxing, time spent bonding, time stolen from the onslaught of life’s perpetual errands.

In my early months as an immigrant, my lunches and teas would get the better of me — leaving me depressed, sometimes tearful, missing home. That doesn’t happen anymore. I am happy that a symptom has faded away, but has the disease, this looped drama, playing in my mind?

Disease is the state of being ill at ease. But on a cynical day, I feel that the word is synonymous with the state of being an immigrant. As my sense of powerlessness grows, I often marvel at the illusion I used to have that I could decide the degree of my assimilation and separation. Now that seems nearly impossible.

My first few months went by in a blur. “Learn this.” “Get here.” “Get there.”

Perhaps a part of it has now been accomplished. I know the difference between a Macy’s and a Nordstrom. I have trained my tongue to pronounce “schedule” the way the American ear likes to hear it. I laugh delightedly on jokes by American stand-up comedians. I have started reveling in the inescapable “Do-it-yourself” philosophy of my adopted country.

Yet I often wonder that in this process of learning, how much did I unlearn and how much more do I have to go? Each time this fear strikes, I try, in vain perhaps, to control the process of my adaptation — to never forget where I came from, to become only so much of an insider that I understand the issues of this new land while still remaining the outsider who can offer a fresh perspective.

The other day someone said to me: “So, you’ve been here for awhile. You should be well adjusted by now.”

I guess I am. With each passing year and each subtle adjustment I make, I become interesting fodder “back home” for extended family and acquaintances to analyze. An aunt hugs delightedly and tells me that she is so happy that I am still the same. An acquaintance spots a few of my “American” mannerisms within 10 minutes of association. They are both right. And wrong. For the truth is always somewhere in between.

For me, and perhaps for many others like me, the intangible fallouts of immigration started kicking in only after I seemed to have successfully wrestled with the tangible fallouts of immigration. After the mad rush to make sense of the system had subsided. After you have learned to drive on the freeway, navigate the healthcare system, and much more, you realize that your phone calls to extended family start feeling increasingly threadbare.

You rely on old memories and idiosyncrasies to craft conversations. And as soon as you set the telephone receiver down, you ruminate on this greater vision immigration has unexpectedly ushered. Longing alternates with pragmatism and then, perhaps, at parties with others who chose to live in the United States, you ponder the pros and cons.  Depending on your mood, you let one place win over the other.

Like characters in a novel which take on a life of their own, eluding the grasp of their creator, so too is the effect of this new geography. When blissful ignorance yields to unsettling realities, the mind grasps for acceptance of the new reality.

I rationalize. “Let us be grateful,” a voice inside me whispers. After all, this is a great century to be a nomad, a wanderer or an immigrant, as my older friends reassure me. Email, voice mail, snail mail, Web cam.

True, short of touch, I am there, wherever I want to be, deluding me into thinking that I know what is going on in that place I once called home. And should my longing get unbearable, the airport is barely an hour away!

Twenty-four hours on a Transpacific flight is all that that separates me from a once-lived world and a new world that gives me the seductive opportunity and the infrastructure to do cutting edge professional work. But one weekend as I got back from my first writers’ conference, I thought, “How lovely if this would happen in India!”

But it doesn’t. Not right now. And that is among the many reasons why I continue to stay.

This cutting-edge work wreaks havoc on my heartstrings, while giving me nebulous fears and joys. A little bit of geography and a boundless chasm of the mind keep the different pies of my circle apart. And only I know how exquisitely different each pie in my circle is. I know how my days are a crazy mish-mash of feelings. Sometimes I feel completely at home and wonder why we need to stick labels onto feelings like belongingness, while at other times, when I am forced to deal with prejudice, discrimination, and explain life choices like being a writer who writes in English, I wonder, “Why am I here?”

Each day I learn that nostalgia is like an uninvited guest who never really bids goodbye, and every couple of days when you open some closet in your heart, you will find it hiding there, waiting to pounce on you. And then it hits me that these feelings will not go away, and that I have no words with which to dress them.

Our adjustment to geography is unfortunately not as well defined as the geography itself. No matter how much we might try to keep in touch, to prop up our understanding of cities and scenarios miles away through the written word and the spoken word, there simply can be no substitute for our physical experiences. There’s no substitute for the here and now.

Radhika Sharma (left) visits San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with her husband’s aunt, Sangeeta Sharma (far right), and Sangeeta’s daughters Nikita and Kareena in the summer of 2002. (photo by Nikhil Sharma)

With each month that I stay an immigrant I know more people in my new land. With each year that I stay away my nucleus in India shrinks to a highly dense mass. I see myself in my English friend who longs for London (“home”) the moment she sets foot in the San Francisco airport, yet feels strangely unsettled in London and wishes she could go (“home”) to San Francisco.

I see myself in my Indian friend who must buy Indian handicrafts when her craving for colors gets insatiable. I see myself in my Polish friend who prays for an alternative to seemingly interminable flight journeys. I see myself in my younger friend who has just discovered the joys of hopping on a fast-moving train from San Francisco to San Jose. Our names might be different. Our faces unique. Yet our secrets are the same. Despite the pitfalls, the world is our playground. All of us homeless and all of us home.

A few days ago I caught myself getting irritated at a jaywalker while I drove my car in my California suburb and remembered my unconditional acceptance of traffic chaos in my hometown of Jodhpur, India. I christened it “selective acceptance.” For immigrants thrive and struggle with this sense of a bifurcated identity that lets them create different switches in their minds. Switches that are turned off and on depending on their viability to the present moment.

Still, there are many other nameless mental switches longing to be named. Perhaps I could have devoured books on language and come up with some feeble attempts at categorizing them. But my purpose is not to see a few self-coined words as a part of the lexicon. My hope is to see a time when we will have a large working vocabulary on immigration coined by our collective experiences. For that is when its nebulous halo will get slightly better coordinates.

If we are to deepen our discussion, if we must ensure that the richness which our “diversity” has injected into the system, is not submerged into some dense mass of homogeneity, then we must take care to articulate and encapsulate all the insights our immigrant status has bestowed upon us. The mere act of such acknowledgement will reassure those newly uprooted and alone while opening the eyes of the non-immigrant to a world they shall then perceive with far greater empathy.

We must articulate the loss of a once familiar language, the joy of occasionally hearing a word once commonplace and reveling in all its contours and nuances, the reluctance of being put in a ambassadorial position (“So what exactly does this symbol signify …?”).

Physical distance places a slow, corrosive dilution on our relationships. The gain and loss of friends. Missed weddings. The resigned acceptance of an Internet-discovered home remedy as woeful substitute to a grandmother’s, which, physical proximity allowed, would be passed down through the generations.

Otherwise, those who have vicariously shared these experiences shall attempt, as they do now, to dissect and condense our imagery to fit the conformed dimensions. Reducing to caricature our struggles with a new language, new neighbors, and new workplaces; always focusing on the tangible, the easily perceptible; and tidily neglecting the harder and more elusive aspects of our journeys.

Language is fluid, and at times an imperfect tool. But let us not make it a highly imperfect one due to laziness. And while we find words to convey the gamut of emotions that well up inside us when we hop from one flight to another, all the while hoping to capture the creases on those faces standing across the terminal for posterity, we must understand that we measure our losses by their absences. We must accept that our quantification of our losses has stemmed out of a consciousness of their absences.

Nevertheless, those absences have been gifts, enriching our perceptions. The piercing pain of those losses and the richness of our gains is what we must more adeptly articulate.

When we choose to name something, we acknowledge its presence. We cannot describe or deal with what we do not know or will not admit. Loss and abundance have innumerable shades.

But it is time we added a few more shades to our palette. One word at a time. And even though there may be times when our hearts ache, we must chose to remember that this is a great time to be a nomad.

STORY INDEX

PEOPLE >

Profile of a young immigrant author
URL: http://www.masslive.com/living/republican/index.ssf?/base/living-0/1082452771112062.xml

A link to various immigrant authors (with bibliographies of their work)
URL: http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Contents.html#Authors

Commentary >

NPR’s audio piece on the immigrant experience
URL: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3075005

Radhika Sharma’s perspectives on immigration in India Currents
URL: http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=7cc0e622759345fb7373b739077e5726
http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=d8f17cfd5b64be9c5fc5e969ee9bff19

A potpourri of the various facets of American immigration
URL: http://immigration.about.com/
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listmigratiodo.html

KQED FM San Francisco weeklong dedication to new Americans
URL: http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-archive.jsp?progID=RD62&ResultStart=121&ResultCount=10&type=radio

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News

Seduced by the Stars and Stripes?

For a few months, it seemed policy differences between the United States and Canada had thawed and a new relationship was blossoming. But June's election expressed a lack of confidence in Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal Party, leaving President George Bush’s plans for a continental missile defense shield hanging in the balance.


(Illustration by David Benque)

Sharing the world’s longest undefended border, Canada and the United States have benefited from a long history of peaceful and friendly relations, including more than 80 treaty-level defense agreements, more than 250 memoranda of understanding between the two defense departments, and approximately 145 bilateral forums in which defense matters are discussed. Yet, in recent history, during the George W. Bush/Jean Chrétien years, this relationship endured difficulties: from the recently resolved trade dispute over softwood lumber tariffs; to the banning of Canadian beef exports after a single case of mad cow disease; to the gaffe that resulted in the firing of Chrétien’s aide, Françoise Ducros, who called Bush a “moron.”

The cooling between Ottawa and Washington reached an icy low when Canada declared its steadfast opposition to the war in Iraq, and refused to partake in the war effort. Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, made it very clear how “disappointed” Bush was with Canada’s decision.

However, after Chrétien retired in December 2003, and Canada’s new Prime Minister Paul Martin took the helm, relations had begun to thaw. A priority was placed on improving bilateral relations, including expediting discussions on Canada’s participation in the missile defense system (MDS). In a nation with a long and proud history of being pacifist and non-antagonistic, this seemed to mark a divisive shift in policy, which could have drastically altered Canada’s peaceful standing in the world.

Then, six months after taking office, Martin was forced to fight for reelection and win his own mandate to govern with the confidence of the Canadian people. The election took place amongst widespread public anger and disillusion over corrupt practices in the Liberal Party after Auditor General Sheila Fraser found that the Liberal government had funneled $100 million of taxpayer money into the coffers of Liberal-friendly advertising agencies in the forms of fees and commissions.

At the June 28 elections, Martin’s party won, but only narrowly, gaining 135 out of 308 seats in parliament. Being 20 seats short of a majority means that the party will have to compromise their agenda and collaborate on policy with the other stakeholders in parliament: the Conservatives on the right, the New Democratic Party (NDP) on the left, and the pro-sovereignty, yet largely left, Bloc Québécois Party. Teetering in the balance is whether America will gain financial and logistical cooperation in its vision of a continental missile defense system, or have the door shut in its face.

The benefits of public apathy

As early as November 15, 2003, the day after Martin’s coronation ceremony in Toronto, he stressed Canada’s eagerness to participate in discussions on the Bush administration’s missile defense system, saying: “We’re talking about the defense of North America. Canada has to be at the table.”

Martin’s priority of improving bilateral relations moved up the echelons of parliament, with the establishment of a permanent cabinet committee and a House of Commons committee on Canada-United States relations. Member of Parliament Scott Brison, who defected from the Progressive Conservative Party to the Liberals, was appointed to this portfolio. When Brison ran unsuccessfully for the Progressive Conservative Party leadership in spring 2003, he advocated a far-reaching partnership with the United States for the creation of a “seamless border.”

In the past, Canada’s position on the missile defense system has wavered from outward opposition to meek caution. Although bilateral talks proceeded between Canada’s former Defense Minister John McCallum, who served in Chrétien’s cabinet, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003, they were highly secretive and substantial results were not revealed. One reason for the silence may have been the widespread disinterest among average Canadians.

In February, when I asked random people in Toronto’s diverse neighborhoods about their thoughts on Canada’s role in the missile defense system, most told me that they hadn’t heard anything about it, or that the topic didn’t interest them. Yet no one wanted to be quoted as an “uninformed” person.

A 28-year-old student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, who plans to teach high school in the fall, asked to remain anonymous and admitted that he doesn’t follow politics very closely. Queried about his country’s change in stance, he said: “I don’t know anything about the missile defense system. I don’t recall seeing a single newscast on this almost sci-fi thing that you’re describing.” When I asked him if he thought Canada should collaborate with the United States, he flatly replied: “I guess it would depend on how serious the threat would be. I don’t know.”

A residential youth worker who was attending a Valentine’s Day party, Michelle Hadida, 25, agreed that the subject hasn’t caught the attention of most Canadians. “Not many people know what’s going on,” she said. “You don’t hear about [the missile defense system] in the news. Usually people will flick on the 6 o’clock or 11 o’clock news for a quick update of what’s going on in the world, and because they’re not being exposed to this on the news, the chances of them looking it up on their own time is very slim.”

Under cover of public apathy, the issue had gained momentum in Ottawa. Canada’s most recent Defense Minister, David Pratt opposed the Chrétien government’s refusal to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq. However, he just lost his seat in parliament with his district of Nepean-Carlton, just outside of Ottawa, falling to Conservative Pierre Poilievre on Election Day.

Pratt was seen as more hawkish than his predecessor, John McCallum. In commenting on Pratt’s appointment to Defense and what could be expected, John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail called him “a firm believer in the need for Canada to sign on to the continental missile defense system” and  “as Americanophillic as a Liberal can get.” With Pratt’s ouster, Canadians are now left in suspense, waiting to see whether Martin’s new appointment to the defense portfolio will follow Pratt’s lead and cozy up to the Americans or put more distance between the two neighbors.

Margaret Rao shows her solidarity with the New Democratic Party’s opposition to the missile defense shield by holding up one of the Party’s advertisements. Rao, who lives in Toronto, thinks most Canadians wouldn’t go along with plans for Canada to participate in this feat if the issue were more publicized.

Doubting Thomases

Back in February, activists like Margaret Rao, 51, a theologian, and mother of three young adult daughters, were worried about the public’s lack of knowledge. Seated at her home in Toronto’s little Italy neighborhood, Rao clutched an ad by the NDP outlining her party’s opposition to the missile defense system. “Paul Martin knew whom he was choosing [in appointing Pratt to the defense portfolio]. It’s already skewed towards making friends with the States,” she said. “We need to have a national debate on this. I think most Canadians wouldn’t go along with this — especially if we got the facts out.”

The facts Rao thought Canadians would take exception to include the highly questionable effectiveness of the system, in which a sensor in space discovers an object headed for the United States, ground-based infrared sensors and radar systems track it, and the United States launches a missile to intercept it. If the system worked, it would give the United States the power to protect itself from incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs), whether launched without intent, or from what the Bush administration has commonly referred to as “rogue states,” such as Iran and North Korea, which is predicted to develop the capacity to launch a missile towards the United States by 2005.

If it worked — there’s the rub. Such things also worry Alex Carter, 27, a post-graduate journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto. In between classes, Carter took a moment to express his doubt. “I haven’t heard anything about it possibly working,” he said. “It just seems like a waste of money, so until they can prove that it works and prove that there’s a threat, then I think we’d be doing it only to appease the Americans.”  

Although the United States has a long history of researching the viability of ballistic missile defense systems dating back to the 1940s, no definitive results have been yielded. President Richard Nixon briefly deployed a system in the mid-1970s that was then abandoned due to technical difficulties. President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of the 1980s revived the concept of ballistic missile defense. Essentially, SDI was based on exotic, futuristic space technologies and ambitiously geared towards countering the entire nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union. Due to technological problems, high cost-estimates, and the end of the Cold War, the initiative was never implemented.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, some see missile defense as unjustifiable. Such is the opinion of 24 year-old artist Krystal Ann Kraus, who has been banned from entering the United States due to rallies she’s attended in opposition to U.S. free trade agreements with the Americas. Unwinding with a Smirnoff Ice at an Irish pub in the upscale Yonge and Eglinton area of Toronto, she felt that a clear threat to justify pursuit of such an endeavor did not exist.

“It’s silly to think that we should spend our resources and energy in tax dollars in fighting some weird, almost ‘cartoonish’ type of character, like power rangers taking over space,” she said. “Altron’s not the enemy. Most poor nations can’t even dream about occupying that realm. It’s an area of the rich, and the rich are going to control it because they’re the ones with the funds to get up there.”

The Council for a Livable World, a U.S.-based organization advocating arms control, points to an analysis prepared by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in which two official reports five years apart reached a remarkably similar conclusion, affirming that missile defense deployment is “a rush to failure.”

The Center for Arms Control compared a 1998 study issued by a panel headed by former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch and a report released by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in June 2003. Both reports suggest that political pressures are driving the missile defense program, leading to premature deployment of an inadequately tested system. The GAO report explains: “Because of time pressures, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), must include components that have not been demonstrated as mature and ready for system integration into a particular element …Testing to date has provided only limited data for determining whether the system will work as intended in 2004.”

Fear makes friends

In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton agreed in principle to the need for a missile defense system, in terms of policy, he sought to remain consistent with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. Intended to set limits on defensive missile systems, the ABM Treaty is credited for what has been approximately 30 years of nuclear stability around the world. However, under pressure from members of Congress, the National Missile Defense Act was passed in 1999, allowing for the deployment of a missile defense system as soon as technologically possible.

Then in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, amid a climate of fear, Bush scrapped the ABM Treaty on December 13, 2001, and gave an impassioned speech. Of the historic treaty, he said: “It hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks. I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses.”

Thus in 2002, the United States began work on adding components to allow for layered and overlapping missile defense coverage. On December 17, 2002, Bush announced the United States would deploy an initial operational ballistic missile defense (BMD) system for the defense of North America by the fall of 2004. Costs, already totaling $91 billion on the missile defense system over the past two decades — with exorbitant spending by successive Republican- and Democrat-led administrations — will continue to rise as progress is made.

While an understanding exists which exempts Canada from bearing any costs of the system as long as it allows its airspace to be used, this principle has recently been called into question. On Sunday, February 22, 2004, in a Question Period segment on CTV News, former Defense Minister Pratt refused to rule out the possibility that Canada would make a cash contribution.

York University Law student Stephen Tolfo, 24, feels that it’s in Canada’s best long-term interest to be complicit, regardless of any associated costs. A long-standing supporter of bilateral defense arrangements, he’s adamant that people need to remember there is a real threat. “Bush knows what he’s talking about, and as Canadians, we can’t afford to sit out and expect the Americans to take care of us when something goes wrong,” he said. “We need to be pro-active. The key is that it’s a defense system, not an offense system.”

An additional pressure is the fear that Canada’s role in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which was established in 1958 to monitor and defend North American airspace, would be diminished if it doesn’t sign on. Already, progress on the discussions has resulted in an agreement in principle that MDS operations would be placed under the auspices of NORAD, providing that Canada endorses the controversial system.

Protecting Canada or gaining points with the United States?

On February 5, 2004, the C. Warren Goldring Annual Lecture on Canada-United States relations at the Royal Ontario Museum in the heart of downtown Toronto drew a distinguished crowd of guests, including representatives from numerous conglomerates and Canada’s largest banks that line the city’s financial center on Bay Street. In a lecture theater filled to capacity, Leon Panetta, Clinton’s former chief of staff, delivered a speech, “The Challenge in Washington: Governing by Leadership or Crisis.”

Panetta, like many others, is concerned with the effectiveness of the system. Asked how legitimate the threat posed by so-called rogue states is and what, if any, role Canada should play in the initiative, Panetta cautioned: “Ultimately, I think we do have to be concerned about what can happen with terrorism and the weapons that can be used. But I do believe right now, that to embark on a missile defense system with all the costs associated with it, and with the questionable technology that’s involved with it, would not be in our interest.”

“Let’s be careful,” he warned,  “particularly at a time of a $500 billion annual deficit, in throwing more money at systems that ultimately can be proven as unable to protect our security.”

Despite such warnings from experienced statesmen, there is strong support for the pursuit of a missile defense system from influential corporations on both sides of the border who stand to make money from it. Pressure on the Canadian side comes from Canadian aerospace companies and business lobby groups such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which has set up a CEO Action Group to push for closer business and military ties with the United States. Derek Burney, chief of staff to former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and current president of CAE Inc., is seen as a key stakeholder. His company is already supplying U.S. aerospace and defense giant Boeing with software systems for the missile defense system.  

While corporations are behind it, the government’s possible public expenditure on the system has Canadian citizens expressing concern. Advocating a social justice agenda, Barry Weisleder, of the activist oriented NDP Socialist Caucus, feels “it’s an incredibly lavish waste of funds.” Demonstrating outside the Israeli Consulate on Bloor Street West in opposition of the controversial wall that Israel is erecting in the occupied West Bank, he lamented: “There’s no evidence that such a system is even capable of bringing down a barrage of incoming missiles; but even if it were, it’s an attempt by the U.S. to seize control — not only of planet earth, but also of outer space. What an incredible waste of money at a time when hospitals and schools are crumbling and social programs are depleted and people are dying in the cold outdoors for lack of housing. It’s just an abomination.”

Professor Ron Stagg, chair of Ryerson University’s history department, is concerned that “the issue hasn’t been debated to the extent that it should in a democratic society like Canada.” This viewpoint was echoed in a May 2003 segment of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio Commentary broadcast. Steven Staples, a military analyst with the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, an organization that promotes principles of social justice in grassroots organizations, pointed out one of Martin’s shortcomings on the missile defense program: “He doesn’t talk much about missile threats to Canada. Instead, he seems to talk about improving relations with the Americans.”

This point has been a crucial one for a substantial amount of Canadians who see the threat to the North American continent as largely elusive. Richard Gwyn, an acclaimed Canadian political affairs writer, argues, “The missile defense program itself, is the dumbest military idea since the French nobles at Agincourt put on such heavy armor they couldn’t move in their saddles. It will provide an unworkable defense — even rigged tests most often fail against a non-existent threat. What ‘rogue state’ is going to commit suicide by lobbing one missile, even if it actually had it, at Washington?”

Paul Hamel, of Science for Peace, a Canada-based organization concerned about issues of peace, justice, and the environment, is concerned that Canada’s decision will hinge on appeasing the Americans, and become a make-up gesture for the government’s refusal to support the war in Iraq. “I think that the definitive goal of blindly signing on to such a useless and unjustified endeavor is simply to patch up relations with our neighbors south of the border who, quite frankly, still hold a grudge against us,” he said.

Similarly, Linda McQuaig, a Toronto-based author and political commentator, also sees the politics of appeasement at play here. She writes, “If Ottawa does join the missile project, it will undoubtedly insist that the decision had absolutely nothing to do with appeasing Washington, that we — entirely on our own — came up with the idea of abandoning Canada’s longstanding commitment to international arms control.”

Canadians becoming more … American?

McQuaig presents a compelling argument. After all, Canada is a founding member of the Missile Technology Control Regime that was established in 1987 as a means to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation by controlling the transfer of missile equipment, material, and related technologies. Canada was also instrumental in the development of the 2002 Hague Code of Conduct against ballistic missile proliferation, the first multilateral agreement that established principles regarding ballistic missiles.

Scott Peterson, 42, a former stockbroker and current journalism student at Ryerson University, feels that Canada’s role in the missile defense system is highly problematic. “I think it breaks a lot of treaties we have. I think it’s isolationist and protectionist in a global society and I think it’s just wrong,” he said.

Moreover, concern exists over how support for the missile defense system will threaten and reverse hard fought gains in the struggle to ensure that nations comply with non-proliferation policies. Llyod Axworthy, a former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister and current director and CEO of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Colombia, and Michael Byers, a professor of law and director of Canadian Studies at Duke University, write, “There’s good reason to think that support for BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] would curtail Canada’s foreign policy options. In fact, it would entail an abrupt change in our policy on the non-proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction, moving from a model of multilateral regulation and cooperation to a confrontational approach based on the threat of force.”  

Furthermore, a majority of Canadians feel that Canada, popularly labeled “a decaffeinated version of the United States” by Canadian political commentator Charlotte Gray, should struggle to level out the playing field with the United States to better assert itself as an independent nation with distinct values.

In an article featured in Maclean’s magazine on February 9, 2004, titled “Hope you Lose, eh,” an exclusive poll found that a mere 15 percent of Canadians support Bush’s re-election in November 2004. Jonathon Gatehouse wrote, “Despite a spate of polls showing a broad desire for improved relations with the United States after the often rocky Chrétien years, there is a sense that this administration isn’t one we want to do business with.”

Barry W. Cook of Toronto personified this concern in the opinion/editorial section of The Globe and Mail on November 19, 2003. Just as Martin was set to take the reins of government, he expressed apprehension over the extent to which U.S. influence permeates Canada. He wrote, “Canada is about to retire a Prime Minister and gain a CEO [referring to Martin’s business background] … Here’s hoping the head office of Canada (Limited) is not Washington, nor its chairman in Crawford, Texas.”

Such an editorial points to a popular cultural divide that many Canadians feel. The question remains whether they will demand that distinct policies be adopted in order to affirm Canada’s traditional commitment to the principles of multilateralism, disarmament, peace, and the rule of law. Yet perhaps Jonathon Gatehouse of Maclean’s put it perfectly when he wrote, “In Canada, there is still no surer kiss of death for a politician than caving into American pressure.”

With the policy-making authority of the Liberals being drastically curtailed in light of the recent election, Martin is now in the unique position of looking left or right as he vies for unabashed cooperation from the other parties in Parliament in order to stay in power and pass legislation.

While Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, affirmed that he would continue his vigorous campaign against Canada’s participation in the missile defense system, along with Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois Party, whose platform also opposed such collaboration, Martin may have to look towards the Conservative Party, Canada’s version of what in effect is the “Republicans-lite” for support. Its leader, Stephen Harper, is the only politician who campaigned vociferously in support of Canada’s participation in Bush’s pet project.

After a hotly contested race, Martin and Harper may end up forming an uncanny alliance on the issue of missile defense. The two dignified politicians who spent much of their time on the campaign trail trading insults and jabs may end up standing shoulder to shoulder with one another, gazing south with stars and stripes in their eyes.

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS>

Department of National Defense and Canadian Forces
URL: http://www.forces.gc.ca

United States Department of Defense
URL: http://dod.mil

Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars
URL: http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1420

Council for a Livable World
URL: http://www.clw.org

Liu Institute for Global Issues
URL: http://www.ligi.ubc.ca

Science for Peace
URL: http://scienceforpeace.sa.utoronto.ca

Brookings Institute
URL: http://www.brookings.edu

“

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