Aria PN

Reading some of the obituaries of Kuntowijoyo I feel a sense of a great loss that I didn’t know much about him. Having been abroad for my entire adult life, I lack the social, intellectual, and organizational experiences that come from, for instance, being in campus and active in its varieties of movements. I don’t know (or know little) about a lot people I should know (more). This doesn’t have to mean knowing them personally, but I’d like to know their histories, thoughts, influences, etc. So I’d need to know people who know them, and being in campus certainly would help.

However, being in the right place at the right time is not sufficient. The campus was rather polarized 10-15 years ago. I might be in one “side” without knowing much about the other side. At least that’s what I’ve been observing from some of my friends. That’s why it’s very encouraging to see all sides are active in politics right now one way or another. This means there are interactions from all sides in the highest level, which should bode well for interactions in the lower levels. And those lower level interactions, which necessarily have been started 5-10 years ago, make the higher level ones possible.

ariapn Personal

I wrote before the 2004 election (Bahasa), how the Bush win would bring together a unilateral approach and an incompetent administration resulting in policies that divorce themselves from reality-based world. (The article was written before the election, so it also has a lot of stuff on Kerry and Democrats. The relevant stuff is in sections 3.1 and 5.1.)

The current administration of the US seems to manage to always take the least popular position in every important issue matters to the rest of the world. No wonder, the world has managed to get by without the US.
Michael Lind wrote in the Financial Times how the US became the world’s most dispensable nation,

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: “Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world.” The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging – but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

ariapn US