Arabs and Amarillo
In Robert Kaplan's book An Empire Wilderness Kaplan travels through the West with the idea that this is the future of America. It's odd to read the book just seven years after publication and see him asking everyone he meets about militias, the oil bust, and the war on drugs, which not only are not the future of America, they feel like a very distant past.
But Kaplan -- an immensely insightful foreign correspondent -- did produce a book chock full of ideas. His discussion of water scarcity and urbanization seem dead-on to me, and his analysis of the ever-increasing (even in the mid-90s) class divide is quite frightening. To him, globalization means that Orange County, California, is a lot like Hong Kong or Singpore (multiracial, wealthy, and really quite pleasant) while the south side of Tuscon is an Asian slum.
His lack of deep knowledge of the area yields some frustrating misstatements (he erroneously states that southwestern rock formations are created by wind, and that the continent was largely uninhabited when Europeans arrived), but there are so many ideas in the book that's it a bit unfair to pull out one or two tiny ones. And it's always illuminating to see yourself as others do. It reminds you that foreign correspondents miss some details about those foreign places too. And it gives perspective and connections you might not otherwise consider. When he goes to Amarillo, sees all of the fundamentalist churches, and decides that religious conservatism is a hallmark of desert cultures everywhere, it makes you wish our current President was as big a Kaplan fan as our previous one.
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But Kaplan -- an immensely insightful foreign correspondent -- did produce a book chock full of ideas. His discussion of water scarcity and urbanization seem dead-on to me, and his analysis of the ever-increasing (even in the mid-90s) class divide is quite frightening. To him, globalization means that Orange County, California, is a lot like Hong Kong or Singpore (multiracial, wealthy, and really quite pleasant) while the south side of Tuscon is an Asian slum.
His lack of deep knowledge of the area yields some frustrating misstatements (he erroneously states that southwestern rock formations are created by wind, and that the continent was largely uninhabited when Europeans arrived), but there are so many ideas in the book that's it a bit unfair to pull out one or two tiny ones. And it's always illuminating to see yourself as others do. It reminds you that foreign correspondents miss some details about those foreign places too. And it gives perspective and connections you might not otherwise consider. When he goes to Amarillo, sees all of the fundamentalist churches, and decides that religious conservatism is a hallmark of desert cultures everywhere, it makes you wish our current President was as big a Kaplan fan as our previous one.
Join the discussion at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnclaytonoutreach/
