Mohsin Hamid's Article

Here is a great article by Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I finished the book last week and today I literally stumbled into this article in yesterday’s Washington Post via Slate.

He’s exploring the question of “why they hate us” and in so doing he puts into words how many foreign people feel. But he also shares with us his duality—that part of him is pissed off at how his “other” country means so little to the average American.

It’s really a great article and the bit about the difference in Chapters in history is a great analogy. Read the whole thing, here’s a snippet:

Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others. It will come his way no matter how kind, generous or humble he may be.

But there is another major reason for anti-Americanism: the accreted residue of many years of U.S. foreign policies. These policies are unknown to most Americans. They form only minor footnotes in U.S. history. But they are the chapter titles of the histories of other countries, where they have had enormous consequences. America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.

America makes you fat

An interesting article about how US-born hispanics have poorer health than those that come from abroad.

David Hoon Kim

So I've been slowly catching up on my New Yorker subscriptions and I finally got through the Fiction Issue. There's a really good story on there by a guy named David Hoon Kim, who is part Asian, part French, part American. It's his first-ever published piece and he's got other stuff in the pipeline I guess.

The story itself is really good and it deals with some of the issues of looking like one nationality while really not feeling that way. Check out the story for yourself. Also check out the interesting interview on the site, where he talks about language and writing.

Guatemalan Soccer

So last week Guatemala lost to Canada to end their run in the 2007 Gold Cup. The next day the papers in Guatemala thrashed the team for it's ineptitude. The real reason people got so worked up though was because they had been given hope, again. And, again, they felt bamboozled.

The gist of the comments in the paper (and by readers) was this:

"Here we go again. One more time the National team shows they are nothing but amateurs playing against professional athletes."

Lately they haven't been blaming the coaches, which used to be SOP. But our last two coaches have been pretty good—the one thing everyone agreed on.

Now the only thing people agree on is how slow, weak, and underskilled our players are when they play real teams.

It's an argument that has been made for a long time. Our players aren't professional athletes, they are guys who are getting paid a little bit of money (just enough) to play a sport they've played since they were kids. In a poor country like Guatemala, these guys' priorities have nothing to do with sports. It's about getting yours and providing for your family. It's the same thing that happens in politics—when anyone that isn't rich (and even those who are) get to a position of power, they go into self-preservation mode. Only they take it to an extreme. Once they realize the amount of money they can take (which everyone else is taking), they figure they better get in on in too or else they'll miss their chance at having a little bit of comfort in their lives.

It's poverty, it makes things like morals and values something you can't afford to think about, and never do.

That is all.