In a way I feel sorry for Andrew Sullivan. He appears to be a deeply conflicted man, hopelessly trapped in his own unresolvable conflicts. Everyone knows how he tried to reconcile his own Catholicism, an element that is key to understanding how his mind operates, with the Church’s outspoken stance against the second key to understanding Sullivan, homosexuality.

This became an acute crisis for Sullivan last year during the pedophiliac priests scandal, when the church took a strong stand against homosexuality, naming it, in fact, as the chief culprit, as opposed to the aberrant behaviour of a relatively small sliver of priests. (Not sure if I am expressing this clearly. IOW, Sullivan argued passionately that the behaviour of most gay priests was fine, and it was unconscionable for the Church to say that “gay priests” — as in all gay priests — were to blame for the crimes of a small group of sick pedophiles.)

I’m not sure how he finally reconciled this. I am sure, however, that it’s something he will agonize over, probably for the rest of his life. Here he had gone to Catholic school, made Catholicism a centerpiece of his very existence, and then this church he so loved basically gave him the finger. Looking for a quick fix for an incredibly messy situation, the Church found an easy scapegoat and that was that, a tidy solution.

Which brings us to today, many months later, and guess what? Sullivan has to deal with a variation of the same conflict all over again. In a short but obviously impassioned post today, he writes:

BUSH VERSUS GAYS: After the debacle of calling Rick Santorum an “inclusive man” while Santorum supports the imprisonment of gay men in relationships, we now have attorney-general John Ashcroft banning a six-year-old tradition of a gay pride day at the Justice Department. No, this isn’t the biggest deal imaginable. It’s just a clear and petty attempt to inform gay civil servants that they are second class citizens and second class employees…Certainly the administration has now done a lot to give a direct one-word message to its gay supporters: suckers.

Here we go again. Sullivan is trapped by his quixotic vision of oil and water mixing, and I remain bewildered that a man of his towering intellect could have allowed himself to fall into this trap in the first place. Just as with the Catholic Church, Sullivan has exulted in a near-suffocating love affair with The Bush Administration, at times showering it with such effusive praise as to border on parody. And then he is hurt, surprised, when Bush & Co. live up to what most realistic people know is one of its top priorities: placating the religious right, which is exactly why Ashcroft is attorney general. What Ashcroft is doing is in complete harmony with what he stands for and should come as no surprise to anyone.

What boggles my mind is that Sullivan is expressing outrage against what he should have known was inevitable. This administration is going to nominate judges and cater to groups whose values run so counter to Sullivan’s, they actually would have him discriminated against, if not outlawed altogether. And he never seems to understand that no matter how much he adores this administration, it is by its very nature Sullivan’s enemy.

To be fair to Sullivan, he has expressed strong criticism of Bush recently, most notably for the “fuzzy math” of the tax cuts. But he still seems to be trying to reconcile the irreconcilable; like a man trying to get out of a strait jacket, the more he squirms and kicks and fights, the tighter the strait jacket becomes. When will he face the plain bold-faced fact that this president, his idol, has sold him out? Sullivan did a lot for Bush, and now he’s learning what many of us knew all the time, that he is expendable, Bush doesn’t need him and holds no loyalty to him. Just like his beloved Catholic Church.

Sad, because no matter how he infuriates me, I know that Sullivan is a good man with a lot of love inside of him. How tragic that he has been directing it all these years at the very forces that would kick him out the door in a heartbeat.

The comments section over at Brainysmurf are still hopping as Hong Kong bloggers Conrad and Phil, as well as yours truly, face off against charges of cynicism and worse. It’s all good-spirited (mostly, at least).

Then, I came across another site that really goes a bit too far:

For the most part, I can’t stand reading the HK bloggers (and this includes the Peking Duck, which should be considered a de facto HK blog, no matter how much time he spent in Beijing)….overall, I can’t stand their Birch Society, down-with-the-evil-reds mentality. I’ll have to go with the mainland bloggers on this one. The HKers’ cynicism against China isn’t a reflection of frustration for a place they deeply love and hopes [sic] to continue to improve, but rather a conscious attempt to maintain the insularity of their happy little gweilo lives and never have to try to bridge any sort of cultural gap.

Oh dear.

First, my blog contains many more posts about my life in China than my life in HK, so I’m not sure where he is coming from, implying that this hasn’t been a true China blog. But “Birch Society”? Any reader of this site knows I am a cautious liberal, a Democrat, something of an iconoclast and anything but a Bircher. I went to China with great expectations, and was appalled at what I found there. I must admit, before I went I had fallen for the Big Lie myself: I truly believed China was changing, its leadership was more compassionate and open minded, the press was opening up, etc., etc. Now I can only wonder how I could have been so stupid.

There is anecdotal evidence that can back up any of these upbeat claims. And it sounds so good, so convincing. I believed it. And I have never, ever been so shocked at my own naivete. Keep going back to these anecdotes, my Mainland blogging friend. Then go to Page 12 of this week’s Time magazine, which names 4 young men, ages 26 to 32, sentenced by the changing and magnanimous Chinese government “to extended prison terms for ‘subverting state power.'” I quote:

The four men were arrested in 2001 after they formed the New Youth Study Group to discuss sociopolitical issues and to write essays, some of which were posted online. Given that Communist Party organs have begun publicly discussing once taboo subjects such as political reform, the severity of the sentences — Jin and Xu have each been handed 10 years in prison and the others eight — has shocked human rights activists.

Please think about it: Ten years languishing in the Chinese dungeons for….writing essays. If, by expressing my revulsion at such acts of inhumanity, I risk being classified as a Bircher, so be it. If I tell of the corruption and badness that I saw in China and that makes me a fascist, so be it. It’s nice that you are enjoying yourself in China. But to pillory those who tell it otherwise and lump them, foolishly and incorrectly, into one generalized slot — that is inappropriate at best, dishonest and nasty at worst. I would say that virtually every bellicose word Laowai writes is false (and, I suspect, he knows it).

This same site takes an especially viscious swipe at The Gweilo: “I sometimes read the Gweilo Diaries for a perverse kick. Rabid Republican politics mixed with descriptions of his rocking gweilo life, spending $HK7000 every Saturday night, bagging a new Chinese chick every time he goes to some Wan Chai bar. It’s like the expat life my secret evil twin would live.”

Do I sense a repressed case of “blog envy”? Conrad’s readership is huge, and for a good reason — his blog has incredible energy, strong opinions he is willing to fight for (even though he’s often wrong about politics) and he’s a fantastic writer. The Comments below his posts are always bountiful and delicious. Laowai’s Comments, on the other hand, are….empty. There aren’t any. Why am I not surprised?

Okay, sorry to vent a bit, but accusations without foundation coupled with reckless generalizing are ingredients that get my blood pressure rising.

UPDATE: I hope this doesn’t make it sound as though there is a history of animostiy between the HK Bloggers vs. the Mainland Bloggers, like two armed camps. I have been in correspondence with several of the Mainland bloggers for nearly a year now, and never thought there was any friction, let alone hostility. I’m not really sure how this whole thing got started.

A new Asian blog makes some strong comments on issues close to my heart (like China); I disagree with a lot of the blogger’s point of view (which I’ve expressed in the site’s Comments), but if we all agreed on everything the blogosphere would be the bore-o-sphere.

I plan to get seriously back in the game after the government here gives me my employment pass. Until I have that, I can’t apply for broadband. Should be another week or so….

I’m not the only blogger who’s tuned out recently. My friend Orcinus seems to have also put his blogging on hold, which is probably best for him but certainly a loss to all of his readers, like me. Be sure to check out his philosophical ruminations on the recent death of his uncle Billl, whose passing surely influenced Dave’s current state of mind. I can definitely relate.

I have decided to stop my blogging, at least temporarily.

Since I left China, I have simply not felt the burning inspiration, the passionate need to write. And the last thing I want to do is present uninspired drivel to readers who expect and deserve something better.

Right now I need to focus on study (Chinese), self-improvement (physical and spiritual) , and excellence in my new job. That will leave me very little time for what in China was an all-consuming passion (i.e., obsession). Back then, when I felt a lot of despair, the blog was actually my healing mechanism. But here, where SARS is fast disappearing and life is a relative picnic, I feel no urge to get up on the soapbox. At least not now.

A lot of what I wrote about — the evils of the Communist government, the agonies of China’s gays, the cover-ups of the SARS and AIDS scandals, the laughable antics of the Chinese state-run media — all of these things were reflections of my outrage, my fury at what I saw (and see) as criminal behaviour from a government many in America wrongfully believe has reformed and repented. I just don’t feel that outrage now. My heart’s not in it.

So this is intended to be my last post for a long while, maybe weeks or months, while I settle down and come to terms with my new environment. (If I know myself, I will probably come across stuff on Andrew Sullivan’s site or The Gweilo’s that will impel me to comment. But, based on how I’m feeling now, I’d say that should be a rarity.)

So thanks a lot for visiting, and please check in now and then. I don’t know when exactly it will be, but there is no doubt I’ll be back.

The world is really a much better place with Josh Marshall in it. Being so far from home, I don’t know if this topic has attained the status of a true national scandal and disgrace — but it should.

Check out Andrew Sullivan’s lead post about the Bush administration and deficits. No matter how much my liberal friends/readers chide me for it, I still admire Sullivan, quite deeply in fact, when he looks at things objectively, without wearing his I Luv GWB sunglasses. I am really happy to see him coming back to reality.

Every year, as May 22nd approaches, I give the day some special thought. It is a mystical day for me, the birthday of the composer who, more than any other person living or dead, inspired me and shaped me into the person I am today (for better or worse).

The very name Richard Wagner tends to arouse strong emotions in people. Some equate him and his creations with Nazism (which is unfair) and with anti-Semitism (which is, to a large extent, fair). Others complain that his music is boring, over-long, over-wrought and “heavy.” On the opposite end, his works have inspired a fanatical loyalty that is literally unprecedented in all of art.

There are few if any other classical composers or artists to have entire cultural movements bearing their names. The word “Wagnerian” is applied to theater, music, paintings, literature, poetry, philosophy and even behaviour. Most major cities have Wagner Societies, groups of unashamed fanatics who meet monthly to hear lectures on their hero and exchange opinions. Infinite numbers of books have been written about him, and every year there are more and more. And fanatics like me snap them up with an unquenchable curiosity. No, there is truly nothing else quite like it.

So why all this fuss, all this controversy and emotional outpouring over a long-dead composer? The answer lies, of course, in his music. As Nietzsche sarcastically, yet not mistakenly, remarked, “There is nobody else but Wagner — everything else is mere music.”

Wagner’s music isn’t like that of other composers, and that is no exaggeration. It probes and explores areas of the psyche — “invades” is perhaps a better word — that were hitherto considered taboo to the artist. His music, for example, recreates the sexual act in all of its white-hot passion, while at other times it evinces feelings of awful pain, unbearable sorrow and pure ecstasy. Not everyone is comfortable with art that sneaks into such private realmss; many flee in near-horror. But once the effort is made and you understand what this art is all about, there is no turning back — Wagnerianism is for life.

Normally I would expound on this, my very favorite of all topics, for hours on end. But May 22nd this year was not only Wagner’s birthday, but also my first day at a new job in a new nation, so I’m a bit too worn out to go on about it. (You should probably be very grateful.) Let me just add that Wagner had the misfortune of being Hitler’s favorite artist and, perhaps unfairly, their names will forever and inextricably be intertwined. It’s a true shame, for without the Nazi nimbus, Wagner would be far more approachable than he is today. In order to join the fraternity, one must first overcome the historical association, and then the many challenges posed by the music itself — it is long, it does have boring moments (though not many), and it does require a good deal of concentration and effort.

Even so, to say that the rewards far outweigh the challenges does not say nearly enough. Wagner’s music has the power to move the loyal listener literally to previously unexplored emotional states. It is like nothing else, no other opiate or confection or what-have-you can even begin to compare….

A moment ago I apologized for not having the stamina to expound on this topic, and now I see I’ve expounded quite a bit. Let me end it here, and anyone who wants to know how to begin the journey toward becoming The Perfect Wagnerite can send me an email. Best.

It’s wonderful to see just how far out on a limb the marketers here in Asia are willing to go when it comes to exploiting SARS for a fast buck. Walking through one of the countless Singapore malls today I noticed a huge sign across the front window of Osim, a Japanese firm that makes massage chairs that rock you and pound you and knead you, all at prices utterly dreadful to contemplate.

The city-block-sized sign boasts something along the lines that research shows massage chairs are good for your immune system and, as we all know, having a strong immune system will keep you free of Asia’s latest plague. Of course, many of SARS’ victims have been young and strong, and in all probability their immune systems were just fine. They simply had the back luck to come into intimate contact with the virus. To instill such blatantly false hopes into customers — buy our massage chair and avoid SARS — is hubris at its most ugly.

Ads like these abound here, and frankly I am rather amazed, considering Singapore’s reputation as the world’s most no-nonsense place. Well, I have only been here about 48 hours, and it looks as though I still have a lot to learn.

Today, the leading front-page headline in Singapore’s Straits Times announces that 11 Singaporean men have been brought before a judge and heavily fined for spitting in public.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big story, but these aren’t normal times in Asia. Spitting may be a factor in spreading SARS, and the government obviously wanted to use these men to set an example. The full name and full-color photograph of each spitter was plastered across the front page.

(If the Chinese government were to launch a similar campaign and print the names and photos of spitters in the newspaper, the papers would be thicker than the Manhattan Yellow Pages. Spitting is pretty universal in the PRC and a major contributor to Westerners’ culture shock.)

It doesn’t take the newcomer long to see that SARS is taken very seriously here in my new country. At the big shopping malls there are medical stands where you can go to have your temperature taken and learn more about SARS. Immune-enhancing products are touted everywhere. Television stations are jammed with public service announcements of all kinds about the virus. One even offers detailed descriptions of how to properly blow your nose and then dispose of the tissue.

[Update: At this point, I had written a long discourse on hygiene in China, then I decided it was too harsh so I deleted it. Sorry; I got a little carried away.It’s true I had issues with this topic, and I feel it will be healthier for me to let these issues go and not let them dominate my memories of the PRC.]