Being in a rural village in Cambodia means you can live in
your own little world. I never watch tv anymore and I don’t have a radio.
Newspapers and magazines aren’t sold in my village and most people can’t read
them anyway. My only source of news comes from the internet and that only
happens if I truly try to seek it out. It would be easy for me to remove myself
from all the politics happening in America and from this perspective I can tell
you that everyone in America seems a bit crazy to me right now.
Seeing American politics from Cambodia brings to mind a
number of things. On the one hand I think Americans tend to argue over the most
arbitrary things. I’m in Cambodia dealing with child malnutrition and maternal
mortality, but those seem to be forgotten in America even though almost half
the kids in the Bronx rely on food stamps. Instead, our media and our
politicians are creating hot issues for us to obsess over.
On the other hand, elections in Cambodia...let’s just say I
can’t comment.
I read two articles, one recently and the other a few months
ago, about how flip floppy American politics is. There seems to be no
politician or American who isn’t a flip flopper if you actually look at the
history of the current political hot topics.
One of the articles was about the history of the birth
control movement and the backers of the movement over time. At one time many
religious organizations were the ones promoting birth control options.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the link.
I think the New Yorker article highlights one of the great
ironies of the American mindset. “Maverick” “Rogue” Two words that have been
thrown about with great pride in America since the days of the founders. These
are the words that the Republican party used to gather a great number of
FOLLOWERS. Once a “Maverick” has groupies are they now the “Mainstream”? As
usual, our brain is doing a lot of the behind the scenes work before any
individual decision comes to our conscious mind. I think that once we realize
that we can take a step back and really look at the issue instead of going with
our gut.
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