some brief friday notes

My two desert-island albums, I have realized conclusively (by "conclusively" I mean "because they have remained an unchanged pair for several years") are London Calling by the Clash and, of course, as anyone who knows me knows, the greatest album of all time, Graceland, by Paul Simon. The one a furious, musically and lyrically brilliant assault against the establishment and the other the product of a songwriter grappling beautifully with the onset of middle age and a painful divorce. The first, of course, is Graceland, the second, London Calling. Just kidding.

The rain in Santiago is paradoxical and cruel, I think whatever god reigns over Santiago weather has Bush's Iraq planners advising on winter weather patterns. A cap of cold air traps smog in Santiago (our presence in Iraq, which provokes massive violence there), rain comes in every once in a while to briefly clean things up ("surges"), but that same rain makes the air colder, meaning more air gets trapped (surges repress violence for a couple of days and then people just get more pissed and more violent). Then again, if it didn't rain, the smog would keep getting worse with no relief. And here I see the problem in my metaphor: The surges don't actually provide any relief at all except to the demented, divorced-from-reality people in charge. The rain does. Also the rain dramatically improves the view: The Andes are gorgeous again. So, an imperfect metaphor. Still, the vicious-cycle parallels are interesting.

One thing that comes up a lot when meeting and talking to Chileans, especially those of the university variety, is about the domestic problems of the US. Here the greatest social problems are income equality and, more specifically but just as embarrassingly, centuries of abuse, repression and neglect of Chile's substantial Mapuche minority. The correlating deep, embarrassing and infuriating social problem in the US, I would (and do, frequently) argue, is racism. Recently I've started reading more about the immigration debate going on at home, and it's obvious to pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense that the underlying conflict is fear and hatred of "brown people." The xenophobia of everyone from Lou Dobbs to the "Minutemen" of Texas and Arizona to some of the residents of Hazletown, PA (h/t Orcinus, post "Hatin' on Immigrants") makes me shake with anger. I want to get on a roll here, but because I really should be working on my Electoral Systems final, I'm going to come full circle and end with the Clash's take on anger in "The Clampdown":

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
Do you know that you can use it?

Amen.

P.S. A new blog is going up in the links: ImmigrationProf Blog, which is written by a trio of law professors at UC Davis. Represent.

P.P.S. ¡NINGÚN SER HUMANO ES ILEGAL!