Liberal Talk Radio

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to put together for a while, but it was only recently that it really crystallized for me. Below are two pictures of the new U.S. Courthouse in downtown Seattle.

I’m not an archecture critic, but I am a big fan. And the first thing that hits me about the courthouse is its obvious Asian overtones. The green roof and awning tilted upward immediately make me think of Asia. I don’t know how many other U.S. Federal buildings are designed like this, but the symbolism is profound. Washington, D.C., was built in the image of Paris. Most Eastern U.S. cities were similarly constructed with Europe in mind. But that’s all in the past. “That’s old Europe,” as Don Rumsfeld might say.

To see this building is to see our country doing an about face. We’re looking West across the Pacific Ocean, to Asia. It’s a reorientation (pun intended) that speaks volumes about where America’s future lies.

The degree to which China, Japan, and India will shape America’s future is only starting to be understood. Over the next 100 or 200 years, our Trans-Pacific relations will absolutely dwarf our Trans-Atlantic alliances. The West Coast will become America’s front door, and Ellis Island will be a quaint little artifact in the backyard. Already, the Asian immigrants streaming into Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, often aboard cramped shipping containers, are paving the way.

This all came spinning into my head over the last couple of weeks after finishing Robert D. Kaplan’s wonderful book, An Empire Wilderness, and finally seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, vol. 1 on DVD. Kaplan talks about how America first re-oriented itself from a North-South nation to an East-West nation. I won’t go into detail about the book, but it got me thinking about the long-term future of America. He writes that the only thing separating America from previous global empires (Britian, Rome, etc.) is that technology has changed rapidly under America’s watch, whereas it remained more or less static for the 1,000 years of Roman rule, for example. We will be saved by our ability to adapt to change.

Kill Bill is a collage. Tarantino is riffing on Japanese kung-fu movies. A former video store clerk, Tarantino’s main influences are not real life, but other movies. He’s a DJ: borrowing other films’ styles, stealing actual scenes, casting certain actors purely for the meta-theatrical joy of putting them on screen because of who they are. He even references his previous works (the black-suit-white-shirt-black-tie combo). It’s no surprise than, that he got Wu Tang Clan’s RZA to do the soundtrack. Tarantino is a thief, and thievery is the future of art.

Finally, my generation grew up under the spectre of a rising Asia, notably Japan. We didn’t look to the painters of Europe for cultural salvation. We looked to Tokyo, where Super Mario Bros. 3 was being developed under tight security. All the cool stuff was happening in Japan. We just had to wait for the English translation.

I’m not really sure where this is all leading except to say that it’s powerfully clear that America’s survival, in the long term, depends on whether we can find a niche for ourselves in a Trans-Pacific world. I realize I’m not the first to observe this. But staring at that courthouse brought it all into sharp relief.