BLOGGING FROM AFRICA
All right, you may not have known if from the last two posts about Iraq, but I'm actually blogging from Malawi right now. Here's a new blog I started for my Africa trip, since I anticipate the style will be so different that overlapping the new will not be ideal.

It may be a good thing that I'm out of the country this election year, because I'm afraid it will be a painful one. Edwards seems to be out of the race, so the pleasant election in which I like both candidates will not happen. Meanwhile, the consensus seems to be that Bush is losing touch with the public. My attitude to Bush is that for a short time, beginning in Afghanistan perhaps but coming to a climax during the war in Iraq and immediately afterwards, I thought the guy was the embodiment of my political ideals of transcending borders, and Americans' traditional narcissism, and trying to do something for the world. His immigration reform proposal made me feel that way again. But I don't like the tax cuts, and even the support for the Federal Marriage Amendment is starting to rub me the wrong way. I wish he had just said, "The courts should not decide this issue; it's for the people to decide," rather than taking a definite stand, even from the point of view of tactics. Meanwhile, Bush has not boosted the US commitment to development and foreign aid to the degree I would like, and I oppose the tax cut and Medicare "reform," and the absence of any effort to cut entitlements. And yet I just can't stand Kerry.

I was thinking the other day about Kerry's outrage over the Bush campaign supposedly "impugning" his "patriotism" (which they didn't) and it occurred to me that, while it's good Bush is taking the high ground (somebody should!), I would impugn Kerry's patriotism any day of the week, among other things because of his nastiness towards the president. A real patriot should respect the president's judgment, principles, courage, should give the president the benefit of the doubt and give him credit where he can; certainly, you might run against him, but to be so ungenerous towards him is unpatriotic, as well as just bad character. I don't think Kerry is a patriot because the kind of spontaneous, simple love of one's fellow man, which patriotism is a special case of (towards one's country in particular) is not part of the character of a man like Kerry. But maybe I shouldn't be so hasty to judge. After all, even if Kerry is not much of a patriot now, I'm sure he will be if we elect him president. As he said after he won New Hampshire: "I love New Hampshire! And I love Iowa too." If the whole country becomes the vehicle of his ambition, I'm sure he'll love us plenty. Anyway, I'm in no position to blame someone for their patriotism being contingent, because I don't think I could give any of that automatic respect and benefit of the doubt to President Kerry, and if he is elected, that will pretty much be the end of my patriotism. I had a dream that America had risen above Clintonian narcissism and had a vision of freedom for the world, and was prepared for the sacrifices that would make that real, that would make "another world possible," in the words of the World Social Forum, that our stunning wealth and power, energy and efficiency, which only serve to damn us as long as we keep them to ourselves, would become virtues because we were beginning to devote them to the service of a higher cause. If that dream is going to rot away into smoldering Kerry-ite resentment politics, I'm just grateful to be far, far away. Time, perhaps, to bear in mind the words of Christ: "My kingdom is not of this world."