Life's Persistent Questions

Blogging ...Memento-style.

Finally came back from China. I was only gone for about 11 days, but it now seems a life-time ago. So much of what I rely on for news information in the U.S. is blocked in the good old PRC, that the events the last week and half have left me in the dust. The banners of "a new moral majority" has been replaced by the new catch-phrase "Federalism." From medical weed to marriage, the state's right to regulate itself is coming under attack. The irony is of course that the Republicans had been associated with State's Rights, and the Democrats were the ones using the big bad Federal government to meddle in people's daily lives. Times has changed. While a younger me had found the idea of federalism strange and curious, I now find some genius in this idea of the U.S. founding fathers. But it seems to me that the fight to protect state's rights is nothing but a political jargon in the mouths of politicians who happen to find themselves in the minority in the country. Democrats did it before the Civil War, liberals during segregation, Republicans during their conservative rebirth, and now supporters of gay-marriage and medical pot-users.

Getting back to my intended topic, I'm planning to put down some of my thoughts and reflections about this past trip. It's only ironic that while the two countries, U.S. and China, become closer and more connected, it is the differences between the two that are making a deeper impression on me. It's probably because I'm older, but it's also possible that 10 years ago, comparing the two was as futile as comparing apple and oranges. Now it's more like apple and pear.

posted by hedgehog @ 3:46 PM