A writer's soliloquy

In the end, farewell

2009-06-05T03:36:00.000-07:00

Published 06-04-2009 in The California Aggie

The columnist is a story of contradiction. At once he must act as the interlocutor of opined reason and customized analysis, yet by the sheer necessity for argument, he must take a stand. At times, these demands conflict; for a columnist, thus, the attainment of a perfect balance is a lasting achievement.

Writing is about eloquence magnified by personal ambition. In the beginning, the columnist sees privilege. Like a child, he’s afforded space and time to write whatever he desires. He is hence impressionable, wondrous, admiring the instant subject-connection he has established. The responsibility liberates as it is large.

At this moment, the world with its inherent flaws seems raw and callow. Viewing this situation, the columnist is heightened with confidence, trusting his instincts, transfixed by the finality of his thoughts. He asserts order to a disordered world, proclaiming certainty to unpredictability. For him, his eyes have been opened by limitless possibilities. He is the master of his own destiny — he passionately knows everything and says anything. The world can be bent to his will.

But then comes recognition. Initially, the columnist found the power refreshing, mutual. Slowly, he realizes that things weren’t as simple as he envisioned. He previously saw the world as a closed system with finite alternatives, but now notices that society, with its quirks and imperfections, is a fragile state of nature. They constantly evolve and revolt, never having any certainty but always having plenty of fluidity. The columnist no longer sees things the same way.

With time comes appreciation. The grandest plays are defined by the smallest details, and as the columnist accepts the circumstances, he now understands how elements combine, transform and reciprocate. He identifies their finer qualities, learns the overarching narrative and the geometric pattern that defines things.

Now, the columnist masters. Through deliberate practice and constant writing, he expands his scope of both idealism and practicality. He learns to integrate the constraints of abstract play to the chaos that envelope the real world. Rather than merely dictating play, he now synchronizes them. Minds and hearts unite — at this moment, they are one.

The columnist is no longer defined by the column, but has elevated it to a performance art. At its essence, the column is the potential for majesty and grandeur. The columnist has synthesized a desire for performance with the practicalities of reality. His goal is accomplished. He has attained the very best.

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Our ideals are our defining identities. Ideals convey a sense of belonging, a precept and belief in the capacity to achieve something truly meaningful.

In life, sometimes we have no choice. We are often shaped by external circumstances, influenced and affected by what society demands from us. Choice becomes secondary.

Despite these challenges, it is important to remain true to one’s identity, to maintain an unyielding, principled belief in the face of withering criticism, spreading debauchery and uninformed opinion. Remaining true to one’s intrinsic, fundamental principles, that can define the whole world.

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There is an idealistic benefit of longevity. It is familiarity. With increasing identification comes assimilation, an intrinsic joy to operate within the framework that has been established.

While longevity matters, equally important is the need to outreach. One must reach outside comfort to seek the unseen and to explore the unexpected. Life is a journey often displaced by another challenge, to shatter boundaries, to redefine paradigms. It must be tested again and again.

For the past three years, the experience of writing as a columnist for The California Aggie has at once been exhilarating, unpredictable, joyful and satisfying. Personally, now is the time to finally move on, to try the other vagaries that life has to offer. As Tennyson mentioned, it is the time to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Farewell, UC Davis. it’s time for a new journey!

It’s been a wonderful and exciting three years — ZACH HAN thanks you all from zklhan@ucdavis.edu for your readership, encouragement and emails; they were greatly motivating and sincerely touching, thank you!

The strange country

2009-05-28T00:57:00.000-07:00

Published 05-28-2009 in The California Aggie

America is a strange nation. She is a country that produces the very best and the very worst, whether in political, economic or cultural aspects. Everything and anything happens in America.

Take its politics. America’s politics are bitterly partisan, often divided around staunch, sometimes less-clear, battle lines. Republicans and Democrats represent the dual extremes of two highly polar positions, but swing moderates, special interests groups and think tanks also influence. Thus the process to win votes are frequently organized and mechanized.

Here, everyone argues about equal pay to minority representation to marriage rights to corporate reform to entitlement crises to environmental preservation. The debate is so intense and noisy that at times, America seems incapable of governing or achieving anything at all.

Yet the very fact that we hear so much about the nation’s ills and maladies and doom illustrates the very strength of its democratic vibrancy. There is a desire to constantly change, renew and elevate the nation to something grander. People vote according to their perspectives and context. Hence here dissent is the best form of acceptance.

Then there are America’s laws. The Constitution, with amendments such as gun-bearing rights and the secret deliberative process of the Supreme Court, can often appear antiquated. Yet its very antiquity testifies to its endurance to its very best ideals. Individuals yield to no authority or power, but subscribe to a clear if abstract ideal of justice and independence of thought.

Corruption and authoritarianism are endemic in many nations around the world, for instance, and America is no exception. Yet here none stands above the rule of law and communal moral certitude. Eliott Spitzer and John Edwards, two former successful national politicians, floundered their careers for personal indiscretions. Bernie Madoff is facing trials while Michael Vick was just released. The system allows for self-correction, regeneration and reversals.

And this is a nation of endless products and boundless consumption, products churned constantly one after another. Brands and retailers such as Staples, Quiznos, Target, Microsoft and Ford proliferate. Companies design and cater products for every subcategory, ethnicity, preference: financial and asset management needs, insurance needs, technological efficiency needs, lifestyle home interior needs, business leverage needs. The list is so diverse and plenty that one can feel lost in a world of profuse materialism.

Yet America also delivers the very best, cutting-edge leadership. Apple has conceived some of the finest consumer electronic advancements ever known, its revolutionary designs and powerful functionalities of iPhones, iPods and iMacs spawning imitators everywhere. Barring their questionable bets in risky securities, the investment banks also apply some of the most outstanding theoretical, modern approaches to facilitating business and creating conducive operating environments.

Living in America is at once seeing the world in all its forms and quirks. One tastes Korean BBQs, experience the Irish Catholicism, indulge in French wine, retaliate against Mexican jalapenos, enjoy Cirque du Soleil and watch taiko. Cultures and cuisines come in various forms. The celebrations are diverse as they are astounding.

But the diversity also sometimes creates problems. In studies on race, though narrowing, examination scores still show marked differences. Stereotypes permeate. Urban slums are the consequence of income disparity and class groupings. A class of the very rich versus the stagnant middle class craters from the unequal distribution and remuneration of equity. The juxtaposed show the very best and very worst.

America is a restless soul tempered by a resilient dedication. She exhibits very divergent behaviors and attitudes, demonstrating exceptionalism while desiring a national collectivity. The battle for the heart of America is often fierce, cunning, voracious and incomprehensible. And this weird character is what gives America her defining, unique identity.

ZACH HAN thanks all the diverse people who traversed into his life from zklhan@ucdavis.edu!

The relevant education

2009-05-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

Published 05-21-2009 in The California Aggie

There is an increasing clamor for the bureaucratization of college education. For many, globalization reemphasizes the demand for technical expertise. To thrive in the current economic mode is to attain the very specific skill sets employers require — to the extent that “a humanities education,” as the New York Times reports, “may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.”” The oft-cited resolution is simply to shift the focus of college education to align with global economic patterns.

This approach ignores the fundamental premise of a college education.

Education is the empowerment of minds allied to active emotional maturation. At its essence, learning isn’t merely about the absorption of information. Instead, it is acquiring the ability to understand complexity, to map the details and networks in the grand scheme of order, and articulate the resulting conclusions with flourish. It helps one think and reason through ambiguity.

In this respect, a diverse college education expands, not narrows, intellectual horizons. Utilized beneficially, individuals grow. Through an exposure not to a specific technical vocation, one gains the essential analytical skills and appreciative fervor for the canon of established knowledge — from Nietzsche’s existential nihilism to Chaos theory to Modigliani-Miller’s powerful model of financial leverage. This diversity provides a perspective of independence.

One prevalent problem with this goal, including at UC Davis, is the tendency for students to skip the personal inquiry step for top grades. At college, one’s understanding is evaluated through the assignment of grades. Grades illustrate one’s ability to thrive in challenging subject materials while balancing the demands of professional growth, healthy emotional lives, personal relationships and continuous leadership opportunities. They indicate one’s ability to multitask under intense time pressure.

But too often students cram at the expense of focused and dedicated learning. Cramming is short-term, instant memorization frequently consequent of poor time management. At times, in the busy, distractive pacing of today’s society, cramming is unavoidable as it is necessary. But the potential for abuse is high, and frequenting this behavior as a general form of study misses the endeavor that goes into actual learning. This prevents active intellectual curiosity.

In this context, one’s focus is on the solutions, not the thought-process. This is a problem that must be resolved.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the second premise of a diverse college education is to help one integrate into institutionalized communal structures. As the New York Times columnist David Brooks describes the situation, “we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us.” Precisely because society is organized around certain requisite norms and commonly agreed behavioral principles, one’s comprehension and practice of certain attitudes are essential. To succeed in society, one must acclimatize to the preset rules and precepts. Certain patterns of actions must be adhered to.

In this sense, college, by its very function of instruction, is responsible to provide a platform for the cultivation of mannerisms, etiquette, ethics and grace. Through a setting for character growth, one develops the ability to emote, to project passion and to express convictions. These skills are what define connections. A diverse education helps one train these soft skills.

A diverse college education, rather than specific technical development, helps one attain the height of human consciousness while adapting to the needs of society. It is to make or bring meaning to what can seem meaningless. The diversity promotes creativity, a willingness to look beyond the obvious, harnesses the power of imagination. In the end, thus, the clamor to design education to train specific technical skills comes at the great expense of many essential life skills.

ZACH HAN thinks college is the best experience to happen… agree at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The Edwards predicament

2009-05-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

Published 05-14-2009 in The California Aggie

Even in political asylum John Edwards cannot stop stealing the limelight. Earlier last week a federal investigation was launched against him for the potential abuse of public funds during his presidential election. His wife Elizabeth is currently promoting her book “Resilience” about the personal travails she undergone while her husband committed infidelity. For the man who seems almost politically irrelevant, the image of the smiling politician seems pretty alive in public consciousness.

But perhaps the most surprising reaction to his infidelity is their very ferocity.

John Edwards always framed his life story as a battle against difficult circumstances and debilitating adversity. Son of a mill worker, he rose to prominence as a leading senator and vice-presidential candidate. As a lawyer, he describes his goals as a crusade for the poor workers against large, exploitative corporations. For many, he appeared a model of strength, directed in resolve against the many injustices life offers. His success was an inspiring American Dream tale come true — many could have subconsciously wanted his ascension as President to make it complete.

But like all stories of overindulgence in the height of successes, he eventually dismissed his very values and succumbed to temptation.

The public office contains a special aura because its inhabitants are a reflection of the constitutional character of our values. For those seeking to assume leadership here, there is an established moral conduct and construct of behavior and engagement that must be fulfilled. The standards are exacting and rigorous.

The demands of the public office can seem exorbitant at times. Yet these demands are necessary as they can be overwhelming. The public office is an incubator of public trust. As much as officials are merely individuals prone to errors, they are volunteers of tremendous responsibility. Placed in their trust are enormous public resources, the authority for power and the privilege of public resource — they yield the power to affect billions of lives.

And while individuals and society has many imperfections, the community expects their leaders to exhibit sound judgment and stable ethical purpose. This includes the ability to resist temptation, be filial, maintain faith in God, organize family values, connect with the community and pay attention to the greater good. Thus they are there to only serve the people, independent from personal interests.

For that reason, the public official’s life is a public record. When one decides to run for public office, their lives are no longer theirs, but subject to the close examination of the public. To commit into public office is to abandon any opportunity at privacy.

For Edwards, his mistakes were twofold. The first mistake was to engage in a consensual illicit relationship with Rielle Hunter, a lady who also produced his campaign videos.

Perhaps more importantly, and what truly infuriates, is his compounding his error by continuing the affair. Despite, as Elizabeth testifies in “Resilience”, his admission that he committed personal foresight, even as she “cried and screamed,” he subsequently continued the relationship. And he did this all while continuing to contest the Democratic primary nomination, refusing to abandon his affair. Absent was any thought of public admission, apology and recrimination. Instead, Edwards quietly hid knowledge of the relationship from the public.

In this respect, Edwards was irresponsible as he was unqualified.

In many ways, John Edwards submitted in a moment of personal weakness. He lost control of his moral judgment despite his responsibilities as a public official. That doesn’t diminish his accomplishments as a crusader for justice or as an individual, loving family person. But the environment for public office just dictates that such a behavior and attitude isn’t tolerated.

As much as “Resilience” is the other side of the story, ZACH HAN still thinks its somewhat a last-attempt at publicity… concur at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The individual war

2009-05-07T13:21:00.001-07:00

Published 05-07-2009 in The California Aggie

A recent invention is threatening to become even more personal than Google. As The Independent reported, Wolfram Alpha promises access to a world designed uniquely to oneself: it “will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.” Alpha, in other words, delivers what humans always sought: immediate, accurate answers.

This era is an era of looping, endless mass production and mass consumption. Products proliferate and advertisements abound. For many, this can be jarring as it can be disorienting — too much is also too little. Which precisely is why the future is increasingly shaping to be a war to reclaim individual identity. The strides for individuality brims like never before.

Take workplace changes. For companies, formal titles and dressing often convey professionalism and unity of purpose. These promote a sense of togetherness and focus toward corporate objectives. It is collective and distinctive by its sameness.

Yet that culture is evolving. In industries reliant on creative impulses especially, adopted are more casual dress codes; some tech companies even allow employees to name their own titles. For one reason, hierarchies seemingly impose levels and corporatism; these fail to humanize. By forsaking these attitudes, subordination is displaced by independent and organic values. They glorify individualism.

Popular culture is also affected. Marketers are appealing to the desire for individualism by discarding utility for prestige and purpose. Rather than portraying products as attractive commodities, they advertise emergent external product experiences: the iconic Haagen Daaz ad of a lady sumptuously enjoying a slice, the Toyota ad illustrating a commitment to environment. Absent in these are any mentions of business transactions. Instead, present is impressions of pleasure.

Similarly, Internet 2.0 is not about the dissemination of information. Instead they strive to empower users. New business models such as FML, Twitter, Facebook and digg.com thrive exactly because users can control their direction. Users discuss their daily lives and others respond. They post and calibrate individual information, others observing and listening. It is all for the individual feeling

What are the consequences? Manifold.

The first noticeable change is the way of interaction. Efficiency is now king. In cable news and papers, presentations must be condensed into immediate, comprehensible fragments. Complex sentence infrastructures are curtailed. Speed of understanding trumps artistry. Everything must be fast. Individuals, not issues, take priority.

Pleasure has also become mechanized. Theme parks imitate real beaches and forests while gaming is becoming Wii-fied. Actual substantive experiences are transformed into replicated similar experiences. Technology mimics traditionalism, the surreal becomes the reality and the artificial becomes the authentic. Everything is geared towards individual pleasure.

At a time when prior institutions and ways of life are under assault, one sees what one had previously with a special clarity and realizes the expensive price of modernization. And it is steep: the loss of meaning creates disillusionment and existential crises at the endless, same products. But humanity is retaliating in attempt to regain individual freedom and identity, which is why Wolfram Alpha is probably going to be the next dominant thing.

ZACH HAN is excited about Wolfram Alpha, expecting to instantly find a delivered email at zklhan@ucdavis.edu when he submits a query. Prove him wrong!

The 100-day context

2009-04-30T03:21:00.001-07:00

Published 04-30-2009 in The California Aggie

The 100-day mark is an exercise in futility. It neither provides any defining, authoritative conclusions, nor does it lay sufficient evidence for future successes. But the mark, however flawed a construct it is, is not just an indicator and predictor of performance. Rather, it conveys a perspective of context.

And the perspective of context matters, as it then emerges as a template from where we can evaluate the short-term projects that have been implemented. And sometimes, early successes or failures can define a presidency.

The past few years witnessed a successive failure of American leadership. This incident was at once a function of Boomer quarrels, cultural misalignment, racial fragments and technological distraction. Mired in internal conflict, America consequently and consistently ignored the most pressing problems she faced. It threatened the very values and essence of America.

It is this framework of failure that President Obama is cast into. The presidency is not a tale about Obama, but by virtue of his role, his identity and actions are central to it. Subsequently, he has come to illustrate that substantially, while his success in setting and driving the agenda for legislation has yet to truly manifest its projected long-term impact, he has changed something fundamental in us. And that something is perception, at domestic, foreign and local levels.

The domestic perceptions are our conceptions of the role of government in the public sphere. If Reagan thought the solution to societal ills was to remove government from the equation, Obama proposes to re-center government to the very heart of problems. He has almost nationalized banks, dramatically increased the influence of the government for the next decade, proposed activism. It is almost a story of continuous government stewardship in a more fragile, interdependent world.

Then there is America’s tarnished international reputation. After years of dwindling American moral stature — culminating in the shoe-throwing incident of President Bush — Obama has reoriented our image through choice and circumstance.

Choice by his decision to embrace hostile regimes, including negotiating with socialist dictators and releasing torture memos, while circumstance by his apologetic remarks during the European summit. At once, Obama has reshaped the contours of America to a more tolerant, open nation, a claim of the moral high ground.

Finally, the most palpable change Obama has delivered is elevating a sense of national purpose. After years of fractious contentions created a legacy of disorientation with the government, applications for public service is on the rise, while as the New York Times reported, “two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good.” Meanwhile, incendiary Republican rhetoric increasingly appear extremist and vacuous. The optimism that America, at its core, is capable for dedicating service is finally returning.

Sometimes, there are aspects in life and in society that cannot be merely reduced to statistics and numbers. Instead, by its arbitrary, transient nature, these are categories that defy measurements and quantification.

Similarly, we cannot judge Obama’s 100 days by merely ranking the state of the economy or the legislation he passed. But we can try to understand the quiet and implicit transformations he brings: the sense that something grand is occurring, the anticipation that at a critical moment in our history, we are finally moving past our old battles and confronting our new ones.

For that reason, the 100-day mark is instructive as it is pointless.

Astounding feats of leadership are often demonstrated during moments of gravest dangers. Obama has shown us glimpses of what he can achieve — demonstrating, through a sincerity to resolve, a willingness to listen, and political poise, that America can assert its authority as the force of democratic good that it has often been.

ZACH HAN demands a 100-day evaluation for everything in life. Propose a different solution at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The international problem

2009-04-25T23:17:00.001-07:00

Published 04-23-2009 in The California Aggie

One of the least discussed problems at UC Davis is the under representation, both politically and in popular awareness, of the international student population.

They currently represent around 2,500 students or almost 10 percent of the student population, yet at times they seem almost non-represented. More should be done.

For the international students, there are multiple, significant barriers to integration. At once there are linguistic, lifestyle and cultural challenges.

The language problem consists of the difficulty comprehending the unique style and reaction of a native speaker. For locals, phrases like “hella,” “tight,” and “what’s up?” permeate daily speech. To the international, schooled and versed more in the academic art of English conversation, this novelty can be as disorienting as it can be disheartening.

Then there are lifestyle issues. The average UC Davis student’s immediate interest lies at their place in and contributions to society. Hence what motivate them are the events that directly affect their lives — the success of the local Sharks team, Colbert’s latest parody, the policy suggestions of President Obama. Their activities also differ fundamentally: alcohol and outdoor hikes are local ways of life. Even in sports — the great equalizer of human aspirations — the most universally popular sport of all, soccer, is relegated to a position behind the Red Sox, the Lakers and the Raiders.

For the foreigner, the differences in shared experiences often prevent active emotional connection. Mutual engagement is undoubtedly possible, but it requires great effort to learning. For some, the demands of adapting an entirely new lifestyle can be hugely demoralizing.

The final challenge is cultural. America’s openness to intimate human relations and contact is commonplace, and rightly so. Thanks to the 1970s sexual revolution and subsequent liberal attitudes towards natural human desires, gender separation is virtually nonexistent. For those from more conservative nations, this can be shocking and daunting. It challenges a lifetime’s conception of morality and tradition.

The confluence of these factors, to an international student, often hinders individual growth and professional development. In a way, this consequence is somewhat inevitable as it is natural.

And in the long-term, the broader, underlying problem can manifest both voluntary and involuntary segregation. Failure to become involved locally pushes some to support groups, including peer counseling, nationality-based networks and CAPS. An inability to integrate can also lead to loneliness, depression, withdrawal and, in extreme cases, suicide. For many, this experience then emerges as a story of unfulfilled potential and missed opportunity.

What can be done? Presently, the Services for International Students and Scholars, with their numerous cultural events, functions and workshops, attempts to assist with the international students’ numerous needs and integration.

But more can be done at a local level to provide the integral emotional and linguistic support. For the international student, reaching out is both a function of individual resilience and external approval. Individual resilience entails a personal willingness to learn and a dedication to thrive in a culture that is foreign and alien. Meanwhile, external approval embodies our collective responses to those who, at times, are confounded by what for us seems natural. A patient understanding and acceptance of those unfamiliar with localities can greatly inspire.

An establishment of a position in the student government, specifically focusing on certain aspects, is also necessary and pivotal. This guarantees an opportunity for active political representation, especially with regards to numerous welfare and personal needs.

The challenges confronting an international student are diverse and, at times, dispiriting. More can and should be done to address this.

After all, living far away from home is both an opportunity for crisis or achievement.

ZACH HAN salutes those who come from afar to learn and achieve, and sends his regards from zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The Inward America

2009-04-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

Published 04-16-2009 in The California Aggie

America has become introspective. She is reexamining her mistakes and myopia, symbols of a deep crisis of identity. And the problem is this: her values have, for a while now, been altered by heightened expectations and excess of modernity. America, here, desires to re-embrace her past and her classical values.

For America, these classical values are the strange confluence of optimism and prudence, a consequence of her historical nature. When her Puritan founders arrived at this land, they came armed with a fierce but focused purpose. Back home, they had retaliated against the Church of England’s hierarchy and bureaucracy because they desired a relationship with God that was unique and personal, absent from a structured intermediary.

Hence they sought to create a state unblemished by past injustices, a classless society that could engage in individual and divine inspiration free from constraints. America filled that vacuum: unadorned, it was a New World brimming with potential and possibility.

The Puritans voyage to America is where her values were founded. As travelers to a land that was foreign, they cultivated a capacity for great risk-taking. Yet they maintained their European traditions: industry, perseverance, sobriety. They were brave yet measured.

Over time, despite assaults on these values, America always maintained her equilibrium. Hippies ascended to be evened out by the traditionalists. Moralists waged war against the licentious. Excess spending was curbed by thrifty savings. Cultures and countercultures rose and crumbled, but the fundamental balance remained the same. This combination — hope and quiet resilience — is what shaped the American success of today.

What happened during our era was an extreme tilt towards lavishness. America forsook caution for abandon, disposing prudence and living beyond her means with money she never had. And compounding her problem were the arbitrary rules of international trade and investment — America thought she was rich when she really was in an illusion of richness. She engaged in reckless behavior in the financial markets, when “making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling,” declared the New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

Now, America attempts to restore her normal. But the challenges are threefold: structural, fundamental, and implicit.

Structural in the preexisting architectural organization of her institutions. Her infrastructure and public works systems are antiquated. Her buildings and bridges are old, while others are building new magnificent monuments and constructing high-speed, efficient rails at accelerating speed. Dubai boasts the tallest towers in the world while China still basks in her spectacular and majestic Olympics. Others are advancing.

Fundamental in her mindset. With the exception of Silicon Valley and, in a way, Wall Street, America lags behind her international peers in embracing new technologies and innovation. She depends upon misguided short-term policies: Japanese and German cars are outwitting Ford, GM, and Chrysler. The energy in Asia, where the most exciting opportunities lie, is immediate and intense. A flippant peer remark that “in the past, America was the place to be. Now that is no longer the case” might have been casual and callous, but it perfectly epitomizes the reality and sentiment of a less exceptional America and a more distributed power nucleus.

Finally, implicit in her national cohesion. Modern America is less uniracial and more multicultural, its diversity a potential source of great strength or fragmented discord. But America seems to be conflicted; her identity isn’t clearly defined and she seems troubled in moving forward with her immigration and integrative policies. Uniting the nation to a shared collective purpose is the difficulty.

America today veers toward an inward looking nation, scrutinizing every past sin. Her legacy is under threat. But she is recognizing her mistakes, rallying as a nation to correct them, and save herself from descending into irrelevance by summoning her defining values: optimism allied to prudence.

ZACH HAN is turning inward too during the midterm week—help him turn outward by hollering to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The Extinction of A History

2009-04-09T21:59:00.001-07:00

Published 04-09-2009 in The California Aggie

The recent World Chess Championship loss of American Grandmaster Gata Kamsky to the current world number one Veselin Topalov was, in many ways, a setback to the forward development of American chess and, in particular, a disappointment to Kamsky’s fans. Yet what should have truly been disappointing was how inconsequential the match seemed.

In the past, as much as chess demanded individual intellect, it was also a competition between overarching national ideologies and cultural philosophies. For the observer, all the emergent dramas — the human emotion, national pride, absorbing intensity, trauma of unpredictability — those were majestic feelings as they were spectacles. At times, then, chess appeared to be less about two people competing than it was about the story of two conscripts battling for larger, underlying meaning.

And that is the problem: the very values that characterized the greatest chess matches are increasingly dislodged in the age of mechanical computation. With the invention and improvisation of chess programs, chess as a sport is in danger of losing its fundamental qualities. For a game that has persisted and lasted for centuries, a critical part of human history is under the threat of extinction. Chess risks becoming inconsequential.

Often, chess is about hierarchy and class. The Rooks and Bishops can seem impersonal, bastions of high privilege available to the very few, their rank condescending and their stature intimidating. For the learner, this order is menacing and distant.

But chess is also about redeeming human qualities. Through a focused resolve and unrelenting search for answers, chess can be bent to one’s will and skill. The greatest competitors internalize and master their fears, then transform their nervousness into vigorous moves; in turn, the pieces energize and influence. At it essence, thus, chess contains the intrinsic potential to emerge as a harmonic interplay of pawns and pieces, their inter-structural seamlessness acting and reacting with swift coordination. The play emerges as an art form.

Furthermore, for the chess player, life is embodied and captured in this interaction. The dynamism of chess offers a glorious permanence against the postmodern world that frequently seems more provisional. In the minds of some, the finality of the pieces’ linear relationships can even be preferable to the more arbitrary vagaries that shape human relationships.

Computers have now displaced these human qualities. Through absolute precision, the element of unpredictability has been digitally removed. Instead, with the clarity of a perfect oracle, every move is now engineered towards exaction and perfection. The intangible factors that belie the grandest historical chess matches — the magnitude of the occasion, the sense that something critical is happening, the confluent conditions that provoke action — are surreally disposed by a machine that recognizes no human qualities.

History is a transcript of significant human meaning, its annotation often the consequence of important events allied to defining acts. For many, insight into chess is a venture into a realm that seems forbidden, secretive and transitory. One peeks into the future, seeing what has yet to transpose, envisioning what has yet to happen. That clairvoyance is exciting and exhilarating; this creates meaning, as players get to shape their own personal destinies. Chess players become masters of their own directions.

For chess to come under assault, that is frightening — it endangers not only a game that is valued, but also a way of life that people utilize to construct their own histories and imprint their identity. The invention of chess-playing programs has ultimately emerged as a battle for the soul of chess — and of national identities, cultural phenomena, and individual worth.

Preserve chess by supporting National Master (NM) James Heiserman’s lecture on “Middlegame Strategy” at the Chess Club tomorrow! Contact ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu for more information.

An institution’s death

2009-04-04T00:09:00.000-07:00

Published 04-02-2009 in The California Aggie

Newspapers as we know them are dying. Print media outlets are decreasing production, declaring bankruptcy and retrenching — the New York Times is the latest among many to announce layoffs. Last month, TIME even published a case for rescuing newspapers, so severe has the crisis become.

In many ways, the potential death of the newspaper signifies not only the death of a source of information, but the collapse of rational, refined thought. Without newspapers and journalistic reporting, society is in danger of atrophying. The cessation of newspapers is thus a threat to the very existence of America.

Newspapers are under assault because the Internet has reoriented our conventional conceptions about the access to content. Here, macro-forces and micro-details converge.

The macro-forces are the emergence of a serious competing alternative: the democratizing qualities of the Internet and the blogosphere, allied somewhat to visual television, have discouraged readers from paid print subscription.

The micro changes, meanwhile, involve a strategic failure to plan: the print media’s inability to find and develop profitable business models in the changing circumstances.

To be sure, the liberating values of the Internet and, in particular, the blogosphere, aren’t negatives in themselves. What is at stake, however, is quality writing and reporting. Quality writing is sustained clarity of mind coupled to eloquence of speech, while quality reporting is the presentation of events from perspectives that are novel, multiple, independent, and rich. Both offer focus and vision; most importantly, together, they offer coherence. From these, readers make reasoned judgments, calibrating their choices and decisions using the best available information.

Newspapers are about informing, but it also is a function of influence. Information is not merely about transmission. It’s about deep emotional engagement. Newspapers report absent of emotion, but by the nature of their reporting, great emotions are often aroused. They report about human acts and, by extension, humanity. For the reader, hearing about fellow people’s heroic deeds, this inspires civic duty. It reminds one to remain vigilant at times of grave danger. Newspapers therefore shape attitudes and behavior.

The blogosphere is similarly about ambition; it demands intense, personal engagements that are visceral and real. But by virtue of its fundamental character — personal interpretation allied to profound emotions — it fails to capture the complexities and orthodoxies of events in their entirety. Instead, the blog is an acquaintance with bits and fragments of news. On the contrary, by their strides for balance, newspapers provide the entire view.

And newspapers, through editorial commentaries and columns, offer authenticity and authority. Like the blog, a column is also about opinion, but it is opinion customized from particular attention to detail and from deep, objective analysis. They seem radical and reactionary at times, yet their honesty and immediacy is what shapes mindsets. At their very best, great columns flatter hearts, deliver devastating verdicts, beg further questions, move people to action. By these virtues, columns are an institution.

Most critically, newspapers are the incubators of reactionary democratic ideals. They fundamentally check and balance society’s greatest sin — excess. Through vigorous reporting, newspapers can shame offenders, provoke outrages, correct behaviors. Newspapers enact justice and preserve the constitutional character of our behavior. They are the upholders of our liberty.

At times of crisis, we sometimes realize what is truly meaningful to us, what we have been taking for granted but magnifies in importance when under danger. The threat to newspapers, where they could cease to exist in relevance, is one of these moments. The newspaper is America’s unsung institution, exposing what is inefficient and glorifying what is redeeming. Most importantly, newspapers regenerate our minds, soul, and spirits — it is the essence of our identity.

Thankfully, the Aggie is still publishing… express your gratitude the editors through ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

Dead American Heroes

2009-03-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

Published 03-12-2009 in The California Aggie

Warning: Potential Watchmen Spoilers

For awhile now, the anti-hero phenomenon has been permeating. During the last decade, our superheroes increasingly exhibited fallibilities often associated with regular people, such as pathological inconsistencies (Batman), general clumsiness (Superman), addiction to alcohol (Hellboy), and extreme temperance (the Hulk). Yet they would still recover; despite suffering setbacks and wounds, they will summon valiant courage and unconquerable strength to defeat the evil Soviet empire and plotters threatening the world.

But the American superhero is finally dead. The superhero as we know it is no longer existent. Optimism will now be a word from the past. We have reached a tipping point, one where the moral authority and ethical correctness of the superhero have finally become irrelevant.

How do we know this? Because in Watchmen, the protagonist makes a statement for peace and good by killing millions of innocent people. They are good by being evil.

Watchmen is at once stylistically accomplished and aesthetically rewarding. But the true strength of the movie lies in its plot. The plot focuses on the histories and narratives of the Watchmen, guardians and protectors of the city. Here, each member has individual, broken pasts. But they gain resolve through their histories, and unite to stop similar injustices from occurring.

When the Comedian, a Watchmen member, is assassinated, they are roused from their collective hibernation. An assault on one is an assault on all. They are confused as they are attacked. Many undergo numerous trials; but they soon realize that the killing is an act planned and executed by one of their members. He seeks to annihilate each.

And this is the irony. The entire story is a joke in destiny. To save billions, millions are killed. By sacrificing innocents in the New York City, the protagonist-antagonist is attempting to save the world from a broader nuclear war between the Soviet Union and America. When his ploy succeeds, the American and Soviet governments declare truce to combat the common perceived hero-turned-enemy, Mr. Manhattan. This is killing to prevent killing.

At its essence, thus, Watchmen is a morality tale. The protagonists discover that they’re not fighting for their personal existence, but for the soul of America. The masked heroes were previously the guardians of society. But they can’t keep saving America now because they are faceless, without identity. They need to cease to exist. The true heroes must instead be the police force, the firefighters, the politicians, and the teachers. America needs a real face to it. Superheroes can’t accomplish this.

In some ways, this paradox harks utilitarianism, where one’s action, however seemingly wrong, is done for the greater good. What seems unreasonable is done for a reason. Sacrifices are necessary.

More broadly, this is recognition that we are finally acknowledging truth for what it really is: Masked superheroes are figments of our imagination. They are unraveled for who they truly are. The reality is that the American superhero never truly existed. It was a concoction of fantasy, a superhero created to provide a sense of security and safety. They existed insofar as we gave them life.

What caused us to realize and admit this truth? It is this: the nation has both lost faith in the power of her ideals, as well as accepting the qualities of an integrated postmodern world. On the one hand, she is wearied from wars, her financial system is crumbling and her beliefs are shaken. At the same time, America has come to view the world as one where events are the consequence of interdependent, random confluences. America is not a sole city on a hill, but only a city among many.

Superhero movies are a reflection of the way a nation sees itself. Watchmen showed us that America has finally accepted the reality that an American superhero never existed. March 6^th was the day the American superhero died.

ZACH HAN absolutely loved Watchmen; he thinks the faceless Rorschach is pretty maniacal. Agree with him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The American schizophrenia

2009-03-05T01:35:00.000-08:00

Published 03-05-2009 in The California Aggie

A quiet endemic has been spreading around for awhile now. It is stealthy yet lasting. It affects every facet of our lives, impacting the way we behave, act, expect and communicate. And the endemic is this: Americans are facing a crisis of identity — we create then deny what we create.

The prominent conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, in an insightful 2006 The Times article, termed this phenomenon “schizophrenia.” For him, the problem with America is that we glorify and elevate certain figures and attitudes, then strangely seek to destroy them. We want but we do not want. And this paradox occurs because it gives meaning to our culture. At its essence, this schizophrenia is necessary as it is polarizing.

This schizophrenia manifests itself in many aspects of our lives. Take our food. We have become, by choice and circumstance, a nation of instant, fast food. We eat what is immediately producible: microwavable ramen, pre-packaged tri-tip steaks, instant spaghetti, Diet Coke. In a life of fast paces, our food has become fast too.

Yet we then react against the unhealthiness of this consumption. Healthy living organizations sprout up, promoting the slow preparation and organization that goes into making meals. Anti-cholesterol supporters crusade in a ferocious quest to eliminate trans-fatty acids from foods, lobbying government officials and advertising their adversaries as vested interests with skewed intentions. There is a real, substantial disdain for the deterioration of our food production and quality as much as consumers love them. And for the consumer, there is a knowable guilt to eating these, yet the behavior persists.

This phenomenon is especially evident in the entertainment industry. We endow our celebrities with the highest possible recognition. They constantly grace the front pages of our magazines and emerge as the subject of late-night talk shows. We ravish and celebrate their beauty, talent and charisma. Celebrities, in our world, are ascended to the highest echelons.

Yet we also bemoan their individual failings. We criticize Gwyneth Paltrow for being underweight, analyze Lindsay Lohan’s romantic tendencies and arguments with her partner, scrutinize Angelina Jolie’s and Jennifer Anniston’s ongoing “feud.” We question the morality of their actions and the sanity of their doings. The conversation then emerges as a battle between tradition and ethics and modernization and liberation. We admire and disdain them simultaneously, without truly being sure what we actually feel about them.

And the entire point is that this schizophrenia is necessary for the collective function of numerous parties and industries. This is a cyclical endeavor that rewards everyone. As Sullivan remarked, commentators critique and lambast, entertainers receive publicity, media managers get a job, newspaper ratings increase, consumers delight. In this circle, everyone gains a voice, all winning in the game of rise-and-blame. This process demands the participation of a leader, followers, reactionaries, anti-reactionaries. It requires proponents and opponents in equal intensity and measure.

Hence what America crystallizes it seeks to destroy. And this is the paradox: the artificiality and authenticity of each action is true. Both are legitimate and authoritative. There is hypocrisy in one seeking collective approval. Yet there are also true believers, soothsayers who strive for the individual, redeeming qualities.

This schizophrenia is the uncompromising reality and quality that defines postmodern America. And it is necessary to view this entire proceeding from a lens that is detached, removed and far. Because, like always, a schizophrenia is bewildering.

Adhering to the spirit of schizophrenia, ZACH HAN welcomes both your congratulatory messages and demeaning criticisms to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

A changed college education

2009-02-28T13:38:00.000-08:00

Published 02-26-2009 in The California Aggie

In Rick Perlstein’s 2007 essay “What’s the Matter with College?” he laments the death of college as a catalyst for radical social change. For him, the increasing pre-professional bureaucratization of college deprives students of the creative intellectual impetus they need to renew national culture and idealism. What he didn’t predict was that the end of college as we know it was indeed not brought by intellectual changes, but by economic changes — because college students are now entering an era of curtailed expectations, and living with less is becoming the way.

For the past several years, the average college student has had a clear path towards success. At college, one developed character by participating in social organizations, volunteering in charities, leading student governments. At the same time, one was expected to consistently maintain outstanding grades, attend office hours, demonstrate enthusiasm for learning. Not less were the demands to socialize and to party. Success in these — and, by extension, acquiring the necessary skills — meant that one was ready to graduate.

And the subsequent rewards were multiple. Fresh graduates expected a minimum starting salary of $40,000. Assured by the security of lucrative income, one could purchase an Acura, repay student loans, buy designer Armanis, marry college sweethearts. College payoffs were satisfying.

But the premise and promise that defined college are now withering and crumbling. That dream is under threat, brought about by a seismic economic downturn. The jobless rate is steadily increasing. Competition for jobs is fierce, pitting one not just against fellow graduates but to former managers and senior specialists. Financial reports continuously deliver gloomy forecasts. Fear is coursing and uncertainty is permeating. For many, this is the future disappearing.

Thus, expectations in college will no longer be the same. But what has changed?

Firstly, our entire orientation with wealth. We were living previously in an inflated setting, spending with money borrowed from the future. And unlike past crises, which were the product of business cycles — periods of economic fluctuations due to the imbalance of supply and demand — this crisis is real, so widespread, so integrated between numerous actors, a consequence of so many bad decisions by so many people all at the same time. College graduates must recognize and adapt to the unforgiving nature of this downturn.

It is also not just about reduced expectations, but our very conceptions of the way traditional businesses operate. Several industries are undergoing transformational, systemic changes. Traditional print journalism is entering into a crisis of identity, struggling to promote a viable business model against the growth of blogs and free content. The financial industry’s reputation and function is in shambles, the public’s faith distorted after all the perceived corporate greed and scandalous disregard. And the government’s nationalization of the banks ensures that corporate operations will never remain the same. Our professional education has to be realigned to this new reality.

Additionally, the fight for resources is increasingly diverse. As nations ascend in political influence, economic might, and military sophistication, the bidding for energy and capital occur in a realm where demand greatly outstrips supply. Resources are dwindling. Thus, for the college graduate, prior expectations of affluent lifestyles and extravagant spending are no longer realistic.

When Perlstein envisioned the death of college in America as we know it, he was imagining its death by a lack of intellectual radicalism. It would be interesting to know that its change was brought instead by an economic crisis.

ZACH HAN is also searching for a job; interested employers can email him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The obsolete education

2009-02-21T01:35:00.000-08:00

Published 02-19-2009 in The California Aggie.

In the classic 1989 movie “Dead Poets Society,” Robin Williams’ portrayal of a poetry professor inspiring his students to love poetry for its intrinsic qualities — as opposed to a singular focus on grades — is at once touching and haunting. Touching because he genuinely pursues his belief that individuals must be motivated to discover true loves by themselves; haunting because the school administration’s reaction against the perceived casualness and nonchalance of his methodical madness is empathic.

For the school, learning is about tradition. Through hard work, prudence, an enduring commitment, a careful attention to detail, one masters the fundamentals. Consequently, this translates into grades and admission into top universities. By adhering to a formulaic, tried-and-tested strategy to success, students meet that goal. In this context, radical and independent thought are scorned.

In contemporary society, this approach most closely resembles the pre-professional culture attached to higher learning. In this structure, there is a bureaucratization of education. Emphasis is placed on inculcating students with certain branches of knowledge, with their replication of ensuing steps a measure of success. The goal is to enrich students with the necessary skills to perform a specialized task.

What this methodology of learning truly illustrates, however, is an ideology of a bygone era. This is not to say that industry, effort and grades are irrelevant. They are. But in its essence, learning is about the ability to reason what seems unreasonable. To impose a structured learning order as the school and professional courses do are to deny that learning, at its heart, is about confusion, conflict, and disorder. The values that the school preaches, simply said, are antiquated as it is obsolete.

Learning is concentrated attention aroused by a profound awakening. In this sense, knowledge is not a canon of fixed percepts to be internalized, but rather a theory of human constructs. One’s objective is to discover from this knowledge.

And learning necessitates adaption. It demands that one can reorient their pre-existing conceptions of the world around novel, unique patterns. It requires that one views education through a willingness to improvise knowledge in novel situations and creations. Versatility is necessary.

The value-added benefits of academic inquiry are multiple. It equips one with the eloquence to convey messages, to express clear thoughts using precise words, to write with flourish and finality. It imbues the desire to challenge parameters, deconstruct complexities, impose meaning, create new conventions. It empowers one to transfer the spirit of innovation across interdisciplinary breadths.

But the purpose of education is not only to enrich the mind. It is to provide the vital skills one needs to thrive in this world. That includes the patience to empathize with cultures and behaviors that are different, the grace to conduct oneself in unique situations and the confidence to lead fellow men against the unpredictability that life offers.

Also, in the simple pleasures of life such as watching a movie, learning doesn’t just help us celebrate the visceral nature of fast-paced actions. It is also about the capacity to appreciate the intensity of the moment, knowing that the challenges in life are real, lasting and menacing. It reassures.

And the benefits of learning are not provisional; they are permanent. Their redeeming qualities lie in its endowment of a fertile mind. It allows us to analyze, to reason, to reconcile structures and systems. Ultimately, it helps us make sense of the world, experience its complexities and examine its travails, challenge its conventions and make meaning out of it.

The next movies on ZACH HAN’s list are W., Watchmen, Wanted, and the International. Email an alternative list to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

How the economy died

2009-02-12T21:56:00.001-08:00

Published 02-12-2009 in The California Aggie

Wall Street’s predicament is a lesson in overstretching limits. This is an institution that prides itself in creating wealth, moving and shaking markets, empowering people. At its very best traditions, Wall Street is a worldview — a belief that at its height, the possibilities of the human imagination is limitless.

But, in the pursuit of the prospect and promise of riches, they tested the parameters of what is possible and what is probable.

The first lesson in Finance 101 states that money, coupled with prudence, contains enormous potential for growth. It’s simple: investing grows money. Fundamentally, balancing one’s cash flow — between income and expenditure — with a positive net flow, then reinvesting the money, is the means to achieve this goal.

For many individuals, one common and primary method is through direct investment, the way students deposit money into a savings account. As the aggregate function of accrued, compounded interest over a period of time earns returns tailored to the investor’s objective, value is created.

Others invest in stocks and bonds — respective equity and debt instruments conceptually designed to guarantee phenomenal growth, a constant income stream, or both. These stocks and bonds are created to profit both the investor and the company. Then, using modern, sophisticated functions such as technical and fundamental analyses, they predict market movements and forecast earnings. All these acts are designed to gain maximal returns.

For companies, the investments from individual investors, in turn, are loans that provide necessary funds for financing profitable ventures. They subsequently identify and invest in projects yielding positive net returns using capital budgeting analysis. The entire process transfers and circulates money between individuals and corporations — earning individuals money and companies equity for investment.

Wall Street, however, took this philosophy and practice of investments to the extreme. In many ways, they engaged in, and perhaps underestimated, overwhelming risk. By creating a class of exotic financial derivatives called the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) — derivatives dependent upon valuation of other assets — their intention was to make profit by lending loans to homeowners, recouping these through the balance from interest payments.

In doing so, they simultaneously assumed that interest rates — the cost of lending — would remain artificially low—hence taking on more risks by lending to borrowers even with poor credit history. It didn’t help that individual investors were attracted by the immediacy of borrowing and credit rating agencies gave high ratings to the investors.

Precisely because these loans were attached with variable rates, when those unable to pay defaulted and foreclosed, a cyclical interaction of fear and panic permeated, increasing rates and, subsequently, increasing defaults. In turn, this collective increment affected all participants.

The crime here is not the innovation of the derivatives itself, but Wall Street’s reckless acceptance of the associated risks. In lending, they were implicitly remarking a belief that loaners with questionable credit history would somehow originate funds to pay their debt. When this didn’t materialize, leading to a cascade of interlinked failures in several industries, the impact was severe.

What Wall Street demonstrated is myopia, an ignorance of the strategic focus of long-term planning. The derivatives they created were illusions of intangibles, imagined value. Lacking was substantive, actual value. Present was not wealth but a sentiment of wealth.

The fall of Wall Street reminds us that financial transactions are actual processes that implicate the livelihoods of many. Real people lost homes, jobs, and savings — violating the entire percept of trust and reinvestments.

Wall Street succumbed to the reality of hubris and excess. It broke its proudest traditions — that while innovation is necessary, pushing the boundaries of imagination too far is dangerous.

Having said this, now is the time to invest in the market. Email ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu for investment tips.

How capitalism didn’t fail

2009-02-12T21:55:00.001-08:00

Published 02-05-2009 in The California Aggie

Something has been lost. Populist sentiment is on the rise. The public’s confidence in America’s leaders and her businesses is broken. The world’s admiration for America’s financial prowess is fading. American capitalism is under assault.

This frustration is evident most clearly in the recent backlash to the Wall Street’s reward of a lavish $18 billion bonus after receiving taxpayer bailouts. For certain segments such as college students, this is the future disappearing; for others, this indicates the loss of a moral compass and ethical consciousness. The rebukes, indeed, signify a broader desire for greater government regulation — capitalist greed here appears the antithesis to the values that defined previous generations.

But what this incident truly illustrates is that the very fundamentals of capitalism haven’t changed. The conception behind the free market and its corrective powers remain the same. Its goals relative to the broader community stay the same — earning profit. What has changed is our conception towards capitalists and capitalism.

America has always prided herself on the strength of her capitalist ideals. Capitalism, broadly defined, is the economic practice where privately owned and produced goods are traded for an equal valuation — most commonly, money. Based on mutual agreement, it transfers property from one party to another, independent of government intervention.

In many ways, capitalism mandates the optimal meeting of minds. A producer makes a good, values it, and markets it to a potential buyer. The buyer, assigning his own valuation of the good, then proceeds to either accept or reject it. There is typically no external interference in this pricing process.

This liberty to choose and dispose is the quality that makes capitalism so attractive. Should the seller’s relative valuation be too high, the buyer can choose a competitor’s product. Recognizing this cost, sellers price products depending on confluent factors. For economists, this system allows the optimal pricing of goods and subsequently, broad economic efficiency.

And this is precisely what happened in the real estate industry, the source of our current economic malaise. They marketed mortgages with variable payments, and people bought it because the interest rate, or payment on loans, was very low. These mortgages — a variation of the exotic derivates, where an asset’s values change depending upon that of another asset — are the products sellers originated. Buyers bought it. Government oversight was absent. Capitalism worked perfectly fine.

Thus, what really failed here was not capitalism, but a collective failure to understand the way capitalism works. The blame is not squarely on the Wall Street capitalists — as much as they have shown contempt and an attitude bordering on the arrogant to the national plight — but rather on a network of multiple interlinks, including banks, credit rating agencies, loaners, investors, regulators, the government. The mortgage loaners created very poor products — financial instruments no one really understood; or, if some did, chose to ignore the risks — but consumers bought it nevertheless.

Capitalist companies are not responsible for the welfare of Americans. A company is only interested in maximal profit, in its sole perseverance. Wall Street behaved like this because we enabled it. They thrived because we perpetrated it through numerous individual and broader decisions.

The cost of our failures are staggering and potentially, lasting. So, what should truly be reexamined is not just capitalism. It is the relationship and attitudes we have towards products and commodities. As college students, acting carefully, deliberately, and prudently might help, as well as not buying products we don’t have the credit for. Practicing sound financial investments and spending behavior are positive approaches.

Capitalism isn’t to be solely blamed. It is a time for personal reflection.

ZACH HAN thinks that the populist anger is a nice bandwagon to jump upon. Follow his lead at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

What Detroit must do

2009-02-12T21:53:00.001-08:00

Published 01-29-2009 in The California Aggie

President Obama has begun our first sustained effort to rescue our automobile industry. As the New York Times reported, his recent signature of a law that allows certain states to “begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard” is a step to reshape the contour of our national automobile industry.

This change has been long overdue, but the impact will be positive. In the short-term, higher mileage standards in new automobiles guarantee less fuel consumption and hence greater efficiency. For users such as college students, this implies greater affordability and overall, better economic value. In the long term, it might revitalize the Big Three automakers. And that is exactly what this law, in part, intends: to solve a crisis of identity and lost direction that has plagued the automakers, and, by extension, Detroit.

Detroit is in a transitional period. Its sales are dwindling, its reputation crumbling and its products unsold. At this moment, acceptance is necessary — they need to recognize the unforgiving realities of competition. To survive, even thrive, Detroit ultimately needs reinvention.

The Big Three must reorient its production model. For years, while its rivals developed more efficient, streamlined cars, Detroit ignored calls for improving performance. Instead, it persisted with creating large, gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Not only were these models more costly, it was logically counterintuitive and counterproductive. In a world where efficiency is power, sales unsurprisingly suffered.

To re-elevate Detroit, moreover, creating revolutionary business models is necessary. For too long, Detroit was a story about a series of missed opportunities. In the early 90s, Ford’s research team originated the hybrid concept and prototype before it became popular. But, concerned more with earning maximal short-term returns, they didn’t pursue the presumably lower-margin hybrid. They chose to concentrate on the bottom line when they had the opportunity to reshape the industry and change history.

Thus, Detroit makers need to realign their corporate culture. They must pioneer and unearth the next frontier rather than continually persisting with old models. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested, incorporation of the Better Place model — a system that models upon Apple’s iTunes — enables users to lease electric cars then replenish it from the battery-exchange stations. “The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.” Nobody knows the success potential of this model — but changes are occurring. Detroit must adapt and find the ultimate cost-efficient, environment-friendly balance.

While Detroit must remain true to its essential values — its philosophy mirrors America’s, that of creative destruction, the displacement and dismantlement of worn-out, unconvincing ideas by superior ideas — it must also learn from the best. And that means studying the traits of the current Japanese automobiles.

For Toyota, currently the largest automobile seller in the world, the employee-focus perspective, commitment to employee welfare and continuous leadership development has lifted them to the very top. Furthermore, in the Toyota Way, for instance, their introduction of the just-in-time practice — the process of maintaining almost no final products, but instead executing the process once orders are received, all with systematic coordination — significantly cut down costs. This lesson is one Detroit must learn from.

Cars began in the imagination — when visionaries dared to accept radical challenges, to invent and to innovate, to conceive what was previously unconceivable. With the proliferation of automobiles today, imagination is more critical than ever. If Detroit wants to succeed again, it must improve. Most importantly, it must renew its imagination.

ZACH HAN welcomes a brand-new or used Toyota Camry. All gifts can be sent to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

President Obama’s America

2009-02-12T21:52:00.001-08:00

Published 01-22-2009 in The California Aggie

President Obama at times appears less a person than a phenomenon — through a unity of acuity, poise and elegance, he captivates and inspires. For all his skills, accepting the Presidency of the United States is not just accepting the toughest job in the world, but the collective weight of history and the aspirations of the world all at once. And, in reality, he couldn’t have been more prepared, because Obama embodies the character and spirit of modern America.

In many ways, present-day America has increasingly been defined by numerous internal contradictions and external persuasions, with her burgeoning cultures, races, religions, products, ideas. For many, this discordance and capriciousness are overwhelming. But Obama is the perfect expression of this state. At once he transcends the resplendent mosaic of class, race and ideology. He is part Hawaiian, Indonesian, Kenyan, black, white, Harvard, inner-city Chicago. He is America’s first true postmodern President.

Yet he thrives in America’s sometimes difficult politics not merely because of what his life narrative is — he succeeds also because of what his life narrative isn’t. In many ways, Obama is the antithesis of the qualities that characterized the last eight years — the Bush administration’s juvenile nihilism and the Congress’ gross incompetence. For many, conditions and circumstances demanded a genuine leader. Obama was one.

In politics, the smallest details define the biggest moments. For Obama, he chose to meet his most dangerous challenges with the finest responses. When his political candidacy previously threatened to implode, he didn’t shy away from the novelty that challenge presents. Instead, reassured with remarkable courage, he delivered a speech on race in Philadelphia, now universally acclaimed for it’s honest, vivid examination of the complexities of racial relations. He transformed a moment that could evoke hurt and pain into leadership, not denying and abdicating responsibility but providing us all a moment for reflection and discussion.

America tomorrow is also a time when traditional political labels will matter less, displaced by common sense pragmatism and mutual resolutions. The public’s faith in the government has dramatically crumbled — in his last year Bush often had an approval rating hovering around 20% — thus electing a man who built his reputation as a conciliator. For many, blind subscriptions to political constructs damaged our capacity for reason and tolerance. They worried that excessive partisanship harmed the country, and, wanting to reclaim the promise and power of the American Dream, united behind Obama.

Most importantly, America appears to have regained her desire for renewal and reinvention at a moment when she is facing her greatest crisis in identity. Present-day America confronts her greatest challenges in decades — the multi-polar world, the crumbling financial system, the Constitutional violation, the climate change, global terrorism. These tasks are extremely daunting.

So, when America’s status is in deep peril, when the world no longer views America in the same way, when America’s promise has been distorted and her ideals besmirched, Americans collectively chose action over inaction, electing Obama and, by implication, dismissing the endless political gridlock and Boomer-Vietnam-60s infatuation. In record numbers, Americans turned out to elect a candidate who is post-Boomer, post-civil rights, post-Vietnam. They wanted an America premised not on the past, but on the future. This is modern America.

At a time when the qualities and reality of modern-day America appears confused, fraught, fragmented, divergent, Americans decided to unite and save our nation. They engaged actively, and, in the end, channeled their hopes and worked to elect our new president — President Barack Obama.

ZACH HAN is watching the Inauguration replays, and will share some with you from zklhan@ucdavis.edu

Countdown-in-chief

2009-02-12T21:51:00.001-08:00

Published 01-15-2009 in The California Aggie

A strange event is happening. The most powerful person on the planet for the last eight years has seemed almost powerless for a while now. President George W. Bush is almost an afterthought. He has been conspicuous by his absence. In truth, he has become irrelevant.

For President Bush, his time in office, from his disputed 2000 electoral victory to the history-altering attack of 9/11, must have at once been equally shocking and surprising. The events that occurred under his watch have been monumental. His responses, however, have not.

To be sure, President Bush wasn’t solely responsible for America’s many predicaments — events are the consequence of confluent, independent motivations, from historical to cultural to accidental — and 9/11 occurred arguably due more to the built-up intellectual and religious antagonisms than any single failure to heed specific warnings. Moreover, the set of challenges he confronted, including global terrorism and climate deterioration are historically and uniquely novel. These factors, allied to the hyper-magnification and instant dissonance that the information age presents, meant that he was a President in an age without precedent.

But the very greatest leaders rise to the grandest occasions. The greatest Presidents adapt to the problems, devise unique responses and implement solutions. Here, President Bush was a disaster. He was rigid as the times demanded flexibility and dynamism. This rigidity has roots in his life experiences.

Bush apologists often cite his embrace of faith and the subsequent born-again moment from serious alcoholism as the defining character behind the man. For many, life-changing events are a deep touch on their deepest vulnerabilities. Some resign and falter; others struggle with recovery. Some embrace faith — often a demand for a personal, complete abdication to a divine inspiration. For Bush, he found solace, strength and salvation in Christianity. He persevered, then ascending to the highest office in the land.

But he practiced his faith in a dangerously monolithic way. He lived a regimented life, subscribed to certain fundamental tenets, stopped doubting himself. Consequently, he ignored scientific reports. He disdained opposition to his authority. He sought constant affirmation; as Richard Cohen suggested, Bush read a lot — contrary to popular caricature — but his range was limited. He was narrow in a realm that was wide. He didn’t want to be challenged.

For some, this unyielding conviction in a world that is often menacing, fluid and contradictory was admirable. But the repercussions of this certitude to the national economy, foreign reputation and military power were negative, lasting and widespread.

Bush, furthermore, was a broader expression of his party. Like an idealism that succeeds and is constantly repeated until it crystallizes into dogma, the Republican Party’s fixity with Reagan’s policies had come to symbolize rigidity. Bush perpetrated it. He was the participant of the Republican Party’s moral and ideological bankruptcy and partisan zealotry, scorning dissent in favor of loyalty.

Politically, as Frank Rich remarked, Bush thrived. His policies weren’t outstanding, but because of the Republican’s strength for identifiable narratives, he managed to tear down opponents. He practiced the politics of personal destruction, winning votes. But he didn’t win minds and hearts.

The media often lambasted him for his inept reactions to events. Many are not justified; as one President once suggested, observers are detached, mere onlookers. They lack the information and intensity of the moment, a situation that frequently demands courage. For a President, knowing that every choice can affect and implicate the lives of billions, the pressure is tremendous. But Bush failed to translate the pressure into incisive decisions.

President Bush will probably be recorded as a historical failure. But for all that we blame him for, he was a man with certain beliefs and flaws who served in the Office of the President. It was just unfortunate he was unprepared for the job.

ZACH HAN is counting down the days… send him your countdown number too to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The end of convention

2009-02-12T21:49:00.001-08:00

Published 01-08-2009 in The California Aggie

Many enter 2009 disheartened by the events of late 2008, and they should prepare for more disappointments or, at the very least, a moment of pessimism. Ushered in is not a new vigor but of uncertainty and unpredictability. We are entering the age of turbulent dissonance, a period without much precedent.

The first change begins at home to our conceptions of the government-individual relationship. Activist government is on the rise, and for good reason. The failure in the housing sector that quickly afflicted and spread in pandemic fashion — illustrating the interdependence among numerous institutions and faculties of power, and the powerlessness of individuals within this framework — shattered the myth of the corrective function of the free-market.

Hence, as a majority of Americans are eager for greater corporate oversight and more individual assistance while maintaining civil liberties, they bestowed a massive mandate for Democrats and elected the temperamentally conservative Obama as president. As David Brooks, the New York Times conservative columnist, echoed, our present challenge demands “epic legislation” and “conservative rule.” This period thus promises to be both the era of tremendous and limited government involvement, a somewhat uncharted novelty.

Our consumption habits and, by implication, our lifestyles, are also under assault. Mutual trust, the lifeblood for credit flow, is broken after continuous financial frauds and malfeasance. Like a newfound attitude, consumers are curtailing spending and expenditure — festivity sales were reportedly one of the poorest in recent memory — an end to an era based on cheap credit. For many, the need to consolidate, live within their means, save, and be prudent will be prominent. Restraint displaces exuberance. The world is getting more productive, but we could be more conservative.

The general attitude towards energy consumption will be seriously altered. As energy depletes alarmingly and the global climate change occurs, our oil addiction faces its challenge. According to an Environmental Protection Agency projection, for instance, currently producing oil reserves meet approximately 70% of the global daily barrels produced. In twenty years, this resource will only accommodate 30%. With prices illusionary — the $100 a barrel last summer was, according to experts, still kept artificially low — discovery of alternative energies and cleaner disposal of carbon-polluting sources are critical. This energy frontier will reshape our ways of living.

Abroad, the rising economic, political and military might of numerous nations means that America’s current hegemonic stature will be diffused instead to a network of important actors. Cities of the world — London, Seoul, Buenos Aires, Madrid — are gaining critical influence, ensuring the easy transference of and access to knowledge, capital, and human flow. Consequently, in a system that favors distributive, not solitary, action, individual nations will exert less control over events. For America, this challenge means a struggle between the pursuit of exceptionalism and the embrace of cooperation.

Meanwhile, the recent Israel-Palestine bombings serve as a reminder of the dangerous and fatal threat that international conflict and terrorism pose. The challenge of confronting extremists and democratic transgressors with differing intentions, however, will not be a solitary American quest. Precisely because America’s reputation is tarnished and its soft power diminished, global security is the provenance of many nations and their active participation. With the European Union reinvigorated under the powerful but previous leadership of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Asia continuing its upward ascent as the middle class grows, unilateralism will become a footnote in history.

2009 marks the beginning of a new year, but it is also an entrance into a new epoch without precedent. We’re in for an interesting time.

The new year felt differently for ZACH HAN, and agree with him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The conclusion

2009-02-12T21:47:00.000-08:00

Published 12-06-2008 in The California Aggie

As the end of 2008 hovers, we reach the conclusion to a momentous and remarkable year. This year, events occurred and questions were asked, some left unanswered. What is undeniable, however, is their significance. This year can not be ignored.

The election of the first African-American as President

Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States doesn’t just mark the elevation of a biracial American to the highest office. Rather, it represents the fulfillment of many dreams, continuous efforts, and an act.

As Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist, remarked, "Obama is a confirmational figure, and this election confirms what has been gradually occurring in American society ever since that July day when Johnson virtually outlawed most forms of racial segregation in America. We've been transforming ever since."

It was forty-four years ago that the Civil Rights Act passed. Since then, while perennial frictions and occasional distrusts have not disappeared completely, the progress has been tremendous. Attitudes have evolved and prejudices deconstructed, displaced by individual acceptance and collective unity. Consequently, America has emerged as a more tolerant, just and equal society.

Obama’s ascension is more than about overcoming our racial conflicts. But acknowledgement of its importance is necessary.

The collapse of America’s financial pride

In the past, the American financial sector towered among its peers, their success inspiring entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners around the world. But the dramatic collapse of America's financial and insurance giants — AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the buyout of Merrill Lynch reveal fundamental weaknesses the way the industry is organized.

The reasons for the collapse were multiple and interrelated. At a broad level, the unchecked capitalism and continuous derivative speculation led to an era of corporate excess and mismanagement. In the end, these mistakes culminated in the systematic fall of all actors involved — homeowners, subprime lenders, banks, rating agencies — with rapidly dwindling home values and defaults leading to non-payment, credit freezes, and unparalleled waves of layoffs.

For many around the world, the severity and immediacy of the crash corroded international confidence. More importantly, the downfall indicates structural weakness in America’s brand of capitalism.

Many lost savings, and America's financial reputation suffered too.

The loss of the conservative movement

The conservative movement once prided itself on the gravitas and force of their ideas — President Reagan's reactions and policies to the major threats of the 1980s, for instance, helped steer America out of hyperinflation and restored America’s sense of purpose against the communist Soviet. But the conservative ideas outlived their usefulness. As numerous socio-political and intra-national dynamics changed, Republicans clung to the past, continually advocating the same proposals in differing contexts.

Moreover, the movement grew so partisan that it no longer tolerated dissent — often the creative process that engender ideas. Christopher Buckley, son of the venerable National Review’s founder, “resigned” once he voiced support for then general election candidate Obama. Moreover, with the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh becoming the influential voices of the movement, pragmatic solutions were rejected for ideology. These incidents illustrate a party that lost its identity.

Unsurprisingly, voters overwhelmingly voted for a Democratic President and Congressional majority. It is a referendum on the ideals that defined America for generations.

At stake this year was the very core of American exceptionalism and it’s larger experiment. As individuals, we cannot foresee the future, only watch as events unfold. But 2008 has offered us lessons, instructions, and most importantly, hope. We’ll be waiting for a new dawn with renewed promise and confidence.

ZACH HAN wishes everyone a wonderful end to an important year. Wish him back at mailto:zklhan@ucdavis.edu

A new order

2009-02-12T21:45:00.001-08:00

Published 11-20-2008 in The California Aggie

There is a profound sense of anticipation, fear even, at the new structure of our world order. This order exhibits a strange, unusual behavior because it has no behavior at all. We have entered a new era and epoch of postmodernism — a narrative defined by its absence of a grand ideal, devoid of an overarching meta-theme. In this construct, our truths are provisional, our comprehension transitory.

The question that must thus be asked is how did postmodernism come to be, and what are its future repercussions?

In his book “Bobos in Paradise,” David Brooks attempts to examine the factors behind this phenomenon. He asserts about how, disheartened by the model of the organization man — the personification of a capitalist servant, leading an ordered, structured, modulated life — certain subsections rebelled. For this subsection, the capitalist lifestyle was disturbingly idle and unsettlingly monotonous.

Thus, they resolved to embrace human’s perceived natural desires. They celebrated human independence by abandoning formality for originality. They became reactionaries, hippies, anti-establishment, anti-status quo. Their key descriptor was “organic.”

Over time, rather than polarizing into two disparate, distinct entities, these two seeming antagonisms merged. These contradictions assimilated into a form that is more indistinguishable, more protean. Their melding shaped popular culture; it now dictates us to be simultaneously creative and organized, hot and cool, traditionalist and avant-garde. We must be the confluence of both traits.

What is at stake? In a sentence, it is life as we know it. We risk entering a world of complete uncertainty.

In daily life, we’re dispersed everywhere. At once we study assiduously, listen to music, chat on AIM. With these acts, we deprive our work the attention they demand, paying only a cursory, fleeting view. We also get interspersed in a diversity of involvements. In a state of constant bombardments, we become entranced. We’re decoupled from permanence or stability. We’re uncertain.

In academia, we learn the classics and alternative inquiries, de-centered from any form of single monolithic thought. Here, we try to internalize a multiplicity of collective knowledge. But in turn, we often pass superficial glances at the main canons of thought, acknowledging their existence without fully understanding them — in the process, bypassing associated contexts, subtleties, nuance. We learn everything without truly learning something.

In the media, we hear the echo of a thousand dissenting noises, never really discovering a sole, authoritative voice. Commentary by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Katie Couric proliferates but none predominates. These are dissents that fit nowhere, testament to their dissonant nature. Consequently, there are no truly defining personalities of our generation who speaks to our conceptions of what is possible and what is probable.

Until Obama came around and triumphed with a promise for unification, politicians sliced and diced the electorate, classifying some into soccer moms and others as security moms. They targeted voters only because it was possible. For them, the electorate had no special clarity, only discord.

Commodities and capital exacerbate this situation. Companies identify niche needs, then accommodate those needs through product design — Gears of War 2, Prius, Safe Food. Marketing and advertising departments seek to convey advertisements that are personal, special, unique. Individual identity displaces the collective. And these identities move in random directions.

Where do all these changes leave us? Our dissimilarities emphasized, we become increasingly detached and different from the person next to us. In a wide-ranging world, we narrow down. We grow, not to a commonality, but to a collection of infinite ideals. Postmodernism lays directions. But we’re complicit in enabling it.

This conception is at once both frightening and assuring. It offers us options while taking away others. Our task, then, is to find a clear one.

ZACH HAN thinks a multiplicity of random thoughts can meet at one point. To prove it, email him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

A death and a birth

2009-02-12T21:43:00.001-08:00

Published 11-13-2008 in The California Aggie

There are two prominent schools of thought in Western philosophy about individual choice and the government’s role. One champions freedom. This ideal indicates that through hard work, talent and motivation, an individual can ascend to the top of the social hierarchy, the master of his own destiny. Here, the government plays very little in the individual’s private life.

While the thought’s approach evolved over time — be it Darwinism, exceptionalism, capitalism — the fundamentals persisted. It forms the basis of modern conservative thought.

The second school emphasizes interdependence. Accordingly, we are social products, the consequence of a vast network of interrelated relationships. In this framework, the notion of fulfilling our ambitions by simply asserting our will isn’t that simple. There are constraints preventing us from doing that.

That constraint is the surroundings that shape us: society. In many ways, social upbringing predicts mobility. For instance, one living in certain conditions presumably often identifies with and adopts from his surrounding, such as mannerisms.

In turn, the individual reacts to the broader society with this internalized behavior. When he meets someone who radically differs, however, the very nature of the differences reduces opportunities for meaningful interaction. The cycle perpetuates, and his behavior locks him in that societal structure.

Thus, even before birth, individuals have their future directions predetermined by the communal constructs they will inhabit. For a large segment of this group, especially the impoverished, the lack of proper education is a hamper.

Some believe that the solution to this is through direct assistance. They advocate government programs to promote self-sufficiency. They also believe that upward mobility for this group doesn’t just lie in helping them, but in changing the overall system.

To them, the structure is flawed — a product of elite thought designed to maintain the preexisting social order. They advocate progressivism, populism, socialism, radicalism. The focus is on the collective.

For the past two decades, the first school of thought often prevailed, despite economic research suggesting the equally vital role of stable societal conditions and institutions, created through government presence (or absence in others). Critical to the first school’s success was its transformational leader — Reagan — who, through the power of his personality and message, fundamentally won over certain segments of the electorate.

In the last eight years, however, the governing party both deviated radically from, and practiced the extreme versions of, the conservative-Reagan principles. It provided tremendous tax breaks for corporations and the affluent and deregulated markets, all in faith of the invisible hand.

As a consequence, corporations thrived, especially at the very top tier. Union bargaining power weakened, executive pay skyrocketed, middle-class pay stagnated. To be a CEO in America at this time was a dream come true.

The problem wouldn’t have been so severe if corporations earned their profits well and distributed them appropriately. Instead, some, especially Wall Street financial companies, gambled massively. Sensing quick opportunism, they hedged bets in financial derivatives — a financial asset whose underlying value is dependent upon the performance of a different asset — leading to unchecked sales of subprime mortgages to borrowers with questionable credit histories.

Moreover, some companies, under pressure to meet industry expectations, inflated earnings (Enron). This led to distrust in corporate accountability. Companies ripped consumers. But the government, the arbiter of rules, disappeared too.

This entire situation is why Obama’s triumph is so interesting. Inheriting a massive Senate and House mandate, he holds the possibility to alter the direction of the nation for the next decade. Should he fulfill his promise and find the best solutions to the most pressing problems, he could realign the nation into a center-left paradigm.

The first school of thought is under assault and in peril. The second one could dominate the next few generations. It has finally earned its due.

Support the second school of thought to ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The defining moment

2009-02-12T21:40:00.001-08:00

Published 11-06-2008 in The California Aggie

In the end, the conclusion to the election was exhilarating and inspiring in equal measure. For some, euphoria, jubilation, and passion persisted; for others, a sense of redemption, justification, somber reflection, nostalgia and even disappointment prevailed.

But while the results provoked an astonishing range of emotions, what should not be lost and must not be denied is that there has been a tremendous, remarkable, even epic transformation in America.

In this election, many sought a new chapter, leaving the past, embracing the future. Consequently, they voted for change both in leadership and in parties. At once, barriers once considered insurmountable crumbled, previous constructs deconstructed. Change unfolded, marking the passing of a generation, an ideology, and an era.

But while we are in context, we must also look from outside context. The implications have been, and will be, numerous. And there are several overarching themes that have emerged from the narrative of this election.

The emergent politics

Elections are often conducted through a set of predetermined conventions, arbitrary rules designed through prior wisdom and wit. Similarly, this year, the expectations were set, the battle lines, clearly marked.

But a strange event occurred — this framework became irrelevant. Obama didn’t subscribe to the old ideals. He redefined them — typical parameters of campaigning, organizing and fundraising were not just bypassed, they were shifted. Through the employment of novel campaign devices, a function of harnessed innovation and improvisation, outreach evolved. It succeeded.

With this success, under assault are our traditional assumptions of political behavior and our acquaintance with the familiar operational modes. Because of the power of imagination, things will no longer be the same, for the better. Future politicians will learn from the basis of this model.

A new empowerment

The devastating losses of the Republican Party aren’t just an overwhelming referendum on the disastrous rule of the last eight years or the end of the destructive, superficial-emphasis era of Rovian-style politics.

More significantly, it’s about the empowerment of an electorate who became politically active and voted for the first time, a segment that previously had been disenfranchised by apathy or alienated by distrust in the brokenness of the system. Realignments occurred — it was touchingly moving.

Not lest, this shift was indicative of a confluence of dissension and of newfound conviction. As a candidate, Obama didn’t win merely on sheer political talent. His candidacy was the expression borne out of a collective desire for forward-progress. It’s about hope. And this empowerment provides a crucial template for future political strategies.

A leadership reassertion

Another major emergence was the reassertion of leadership. In a postmodern era proliferating with contrasts and contradictions of unpredictability, in a nation devoid of an authoritative figure and beset by discordance, Obama provided assurance and a sense of control.

Coupling strategic vision with a focused inquiry, he probed America to re-attain her belief in the spirit of positivism. Through conviction and certainty, he appealed to diverse voting blocs and disparate groups, uniting them with a common purpose and common belief. They reacted to his message, and he won in a landslide. This exemplifies leadership.

The phenomenal political bar Obama set for future leaders — charisma, profile, wit, temperance — will be defining. It will be a difficult class act to emulate.

Finally, Obama’s ascension doesn’t just illustrate the death of the old politics. It symbolizes the rebirth of an older one — one that emphasizes participatory democracy, a rejuvenation of intellectual engagement, an initiation of active discourse.

Most importantly, Obama’s triumph is not merely a victory for the Democratic Party, but a reaffirmation of the promise of the American Dream. Regardless of skin color, beliefs or upbringing, his victory proves that the combination of talent and hard work can reward dreams.

That this moment is breathtaking both in magnitude and in nature is not just testament to the extraordinary election. Perilous times mandate the elevation of the greatest acts. This is one such moment. America responded to this challenge, making history and preparing to continually remake it. It was rich in meaning, a historic achievement in many proportions.

Something has occurred. A change happened. For many reasons, it will endure.

America, this is your defining moment in history.

Democrats of the world, unite! Celebrate the new beginning with ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The closing arguments

2009-02-12T21:38:00.001-08:00

Published 10-30-2008 in The California Aggie

For an election season that has lasted for almost over two years — with candidates firstly and formally entering the race, then campaigning and fundraising, persisting through the primaries, accepting party nominations and now, reaching the final stages of the general election — the experience is presumably a draining one.

But this is a special election, and not just because of the possible election of the first African-American President. Instead, there is the sense that America is at a defining moment, one of tremendous historic opportunity. The end is as exhilarating as its beginning ever was.

So to the final contenders: Senator Obama against Senator McCain for President. At once, this is a clash between two personalities, ideology and parties. Most prominently, it is a battle for the fundamental direction, heart and soul of the country — at stake are the past, the present and the future.

Much of the media’s recent focus has been on McCain’s strategic missteps. But there’s something profound about the way Obama’s poll numbers have been steadily increasing. What the media is underreporting are the numerous brilliant moves of the Obama campaign, coupled with a shifting, seismic paradigm. A new reality dawns, perhaps.

From the beginning, Obama’s campaign approached tasks from a novel perspective. If previous presidential candidates won by identifying, narrowing then focusing on a slice of the electorate — soccer moms, security moms, religious groups — Obama expanded them, during the primary and now in the general election. He conducted the most efficient ground operations in history, empowering constituents to play an active role in the political process, and, in tandem with Howard Dean’s visionary 50-state strategy, dramatically increased the number of registered Democrats.

Furthermore, the media’s continued emphasis on the Red-and-Blue polarization neglected the emergent new electoral majority — the ascension of the increasingly influential Hispanics, Asians, and a reinvigorated African-American electorate. Early voting patterns across numerous states indicate a broadening electorate, each with their own political motivations, values and behaviors. The traditional state constructs are evolving.

Yet while there are fundamental changes, there are also news cycles and daily polling. How did Obama react and respond to these political battles in a fierce partisan climate? He responded by not responding. As Stanley Fish, the prominent literary theorist, contended, “[Obama] didn’t do much and he said less … and his poll numbers went up.” McCain suspended his campaign to take action, yet polls suggest that this move conveyed a lack of control. Politics is often about strategic and tactical moves. Sometimes, however, it’s about inaction, knowing when to remain poised and when to act authoritatively.

Most importantly, we’re witnessing the public’s reaction against Capitol’s inaction. Characterizing Washington for the past few years were bitter partisanships, antagonisms born out of a refusal to engage intellectually and cooperate appropriately. Yet ideology only works with context, not against it. Consequent of this subscription to official party lines was a legislature that was often dysfunctional. In the end, Republicans controlled the Houses, but it was more correct to say that nobody controlled it. Republicans did not assert leadership because leadership was lacking.

This is where the next President comes in. It is imperative that the next President would cajole the legislature to end their infantile clinging to ideology and finally start acting on the most pressing issues, united by a common purpose and common sense. When Obama remarked “we are one nation, one people,” he wasn’t just audibly stating his personal belief. He was echoing what many of us possibly felt.

We are close to the end of the election. But we’re also witnessing the opportunity for a new beginning. At this moment, we can play our respective role to shape and define the direction of the nation.

Do not miss this chance.

It’s been almost a year since ZACH HAN began with “The Obama Revolution.” Send your final thoughts on this exciting, unpredictable, and most importantly, important election to zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The end of 1964

2009-02-12T21:34:00.001-08:00

Published 10-23-2008 in The California Aggie

In a perverse way, that the most serious economic recession since the Great Depression occurs at the end of President Bush’s second term has a sense of poetic justice to it. After eight years of unchecked government and corporate excess, neglect of the most fundamental issues, and a subscription to outmoded ideas, we witness their ultimate consequences — and failings.

But this unprecedented financial disaster in modern times is not merely a referendum on the Bush administration. It is a reassessment of the Republican Party, and conservatism, as a whole.

In a way, the emergence of the modern conservative movement begun in 1964, when Barry Goldwater’s ascension personified the framework that defined the Republican Party’s direction. Already, there were the indicators of the soon-to-be encompassing goals — the emphasis on individual self-sufficiency, the combat for government’s reduced role. Goldwater lost, but he set the tenor and endurability for modern conservatism.

But if Goldwater helped organize the conservative base, Reagan crystallized the ideas. On many issues, Reagan committed dubious choices — creating the largest national budget deficits then while simultaneously engaging in war and reducing taxes.

Yet in the most pressing problems of the day — the battle of individual liberty against communist, government-mandated regulation, as well as the function of government — he, and conservatism, were right. He reasserted American military strength and confidence and reduced the government’s role, empowering individual choices. In turn, these victories didn’t just alter the domestic and foreign policies of the next decade. They shaped them.

That his achievements are still constantly celebrated today is not only testament to Reagan’s abilities, but an echo of the power of the conservative ideas.

But the world has changed since then. Today is not 1964 or 1980, but the era of global interconnectivity. Globalization — precipitated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, improved bilateral trade, the invention of the Internet — altered the underlying dynamics. This structural order, rather than championing sole power hegemony, primes integration. Multiculturalism permeates, pluralism grows. Our interactions are not confined within national borders, but expand outside of them. This is the world we inhabit, one of shared kinship and common ideals.

Thus, conservatism’s problems today are, firstly, denial. Despite overwhelming evidence of how minimal government oversight over markets of the last eight years is disastrous, conservatives are still focused on the same ideas. They are still championing tax cuts to the wealthiest as the solution for all societal ills, still warning about bailouts as steps to socialism. These methods ignore context.

And the context is this: At a time when home values are dramatically dwindling, when income distributions have become so widely skewed, when millions of Americans lack basic healthcare, when the economy is recessing, when lifetime savings are disappearing, when the world’s confidence in America is shaken — the government needs to lead the way. This is not an issue about big government, advanced socialism or abandonment of the free-market. It’s about a government that can restore faith in the markets, guarantee every Americans with their basic rights and liberties.

Conservatism’s second problem is irrelevance. For instance, the neoconservative idea of unilateral military response is an indictment to a field where other major actors possess stakes, one that bypasses cooperation and ignores interdependence. This response needs changing.

That the Republican Party still holds steadfastly to the brand of old ideas is symptomatic of a party in decline, bereft of ideas and devoid of content, constructs that have outlived its usefulness. The party is in a dire need for a period of sustained remake and reinvention not out of choice, but of necessity. Until they become the party of ideas once again, they must change.

From the direction of 1964, for the better.

Change begins at the grassroots level, so start that by emailing ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

An open letter

2009-02-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

Published 10-16-2008 in The California Aggie

Dear Americans,

You have a tremendous stake in this election. Our nation has reached a pivotal moment, a time that should not and must not be ignored, in her history. We face an imminent choice, and we have to make a decision — soundly, carefully, deliberatively and with haste.

The challenges our nation faces are manifold. At home, we confront a recessing economy, dysfunctional administration, gridlocked legislature, tarnished reputation and declining values. Abroad, regimes with skewed interests are proliferating, petro-authoritarian governments are gaining influence, democracy is under assault. These are not trivial.

Most of all, the confidence and energy that once characterized our national character seems to be ebbing away, displaced by a sense of insecurity and hesitation. The world’s trust in America has been shaken. But it seems that ours has been too.

Those are the problems, and Washington is where the problem starts. The problem with Washington is not just excess. It is irrelevance. Take the most recent financial meltdown. At the moment when American financial markets — as well as credit, the lifeblood of capitalism — stumbled and froze, the conspicuous missing element was not only confidence, but leadership. Washington couldn’t exercise authority or influence, hampered by a staggering distrust in the President and exacerbated by a deadlocked legislature.

Why is this? Because some leaders we elected primed politics over mutual resolutions, favored certain special interests, ignored global problems and missed new opportunities for growth and unity. As a nation, we lost collectively.

How do we confront, even resolve, this problem? By taking action. There are certain times when the costs and calculus of inaction outweighs action, and inaction is a luxury we cannot afford and a theme we should not subscribe to right now. To succeed is the need to maintain a keen vigilance. At both an individual and collective level, we must participate and engage actively in the public discourse and the electoral process.

And this begins by demanding Washington to start paying attention to the most pressing issues in the country, including healthcare reform, stricter corporate oversight, alternative energy exploration and immigration review. At a community level, we also can play our respective roles — in classrooms, in schools, in churches, all for the betterment of our nation.

Our roads and buildings are similarly in serious need for repair and for upgrades. But investing capital into our infrastructure isn’t enough; our strongest asset, the capacity for innovation, needs to be reprioritized. Exploration of the next scientific frontier — biotechnology — is crucial, as well as our refocus and re-emphasis of math. Education — and a good fundamental education, at that — has to take ultimate precedence over short-term gains. These are the primary arenas that define the new world order, a field we must master to compete in the global economy.

2008 will be remembered as the precise moment when America confronted her cathartic moment, when the very ideals that made her great — an unyielding belief in the power of ideas, a firm commitment to democratic virtues, an undoubted dedication to inspire — came under threat. Will 2008 go down in the annals of history as the moment when a nation regressed and faltered, lost in hubris, or the moment when she reinvented herself and rediscovered her capacity for leadership? Will this moment define her, or will she define this moment?

That choice is yours.

Yours concerned.

Same place, same time, same person, same email! ZACH HAN waits again for your email at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

In eternal memory

2009-02-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

Published 06-05-2008 in The California Aggie

There is something profoundly human about a dramatic sporting loss, particularly when it befalls a team on the brink of victory that you wholeheartedly support. After an initial shock, a secretive wish that you are merely having a horrible dream follows, begging to be awakened to reality. But you wait, and keep waiting. The waiting never ends. The nightmare persists.

And slowly, it finally dawns on you that you can’t change the past. With recognition comes numbness, a sense of simultaneous denial and acceptance. The feeling is not how real the loss appears, but how surreal it feels.

But let us look at an actual event. The date: 21 May 2008. The location: the Luzhinski Stadium. The characters: an incredibly successful manager against another criticized for his perceived dourness, and the backdrop pitting opposing owners from America and Russia, a specter of the Cold War. The event, meanwhile, was the biggest match of all club competitions: the final of the Champions League. The match was monumental, not only in the magnitude of the occasion, but also for the stature of the clubs: Manchester United FC and Chelsea FC.

A club, in many ways, is only a club; it truly becomes an institution through its people. For the players, this was the very stage where careers are defined, the very realm in which legends are born. It is the ultimate date with destiny.

Great matches are often the function of context and of talent. And so an astonishing match it proved to be — two goals, an absorbing intensity, goalpost rebounds, extra-time, a sending-off, penalty misses, sobs of despair, tears of joy, sorrow, triumph.

In the end, Manchester won. But it is more accurate to say that Chelsea lost it. For the Chelsea players and fans, their dramatic loss was compounded when their talisman and captain — John Terry — fluffed the winning penalty.

Loss is a self-absorbing moment punctuated by abrupt spasms of hopelessness. Upon defeat, a fleeting, transient evocation of withdrawal occurs. We have suffered. Nobody wants to experience the feeling of the loser; a loss places our ability in question, scars our pride. Our talents have been disproved, and we bear collective shame.

But in the midst of it all, the match reminded us something very redeeming about sport.

For sportspeople, sporting excellence is the exercise of a deliberate practice. It is about the meticulous preparation, the pattern that has been perfected on the training ground. After much effort, this training internalizes into an instinct, players preparing to perform when it really matters.

And during the match, against the constraints the moment imposes, players battle through improvisation. It is about mastering their fears, transforming the chorus of support into strength. With all these endeavors, they perform with simplicity what for us often appears phenomenal.

Meanwhile, for the fan, a soccer match in itself is not an attraction. Instead, it is the moments when the team has defeated overwhelming odds, the time when the players’ unyielding spirit defied reality. To these moments, we attach a special significance, etching within our minds the feelings they provoked. For their passion, we stand together in affirming applause, our minds united in a common purpose. At this moment, we are one.

Ultimately, it is about the human connection that we make with the players. We attain a sense of belonging, unhindered by criticisms, a rock against the injustices the world commits upon us.

And we often desire to relive this moment. We repeat the same story at dinner tables, beaming proudly as we recollect that swift, graceful acceleration. Delightfully, we sometimes imitate a favorite move, because in the imperfection of our own skills, we remember the relationship. Our lives have been visited, touched by the knowledge that such a moment is possible. We are transported to another time when impossible is nothing.

In retrospect, there is no doubt what I wish had happened. But for all the disappointments the loss created, Chelsea’s close date with destiny will remain in eternal memory. The wish lives on. The hope strives. They will last.

ZACH HAN thanks all of you for the emails throughout the year! Just as Chelsea remains in memory, you will be too, but nudge him one final time at mailto:zklhan@ucdavis.edu

A life on the board

2009-02-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

Published 05-29-2008 in The California Aggie

When Bobby Fischer, arguably the greatest chess player ever, passed away this year, many lamented the end of an institution and of an era. But they should have rejoiced. Not at his death, but at how chess reminds us about the glorious forces that create and affect life. Because, indeed, the real surprise about chess is how closely it echoes life.

Often, people assume that chess is a war between minds, as players exercise control over the forking Knight and the menacing Pawn, their interaction producing immediate and latent threats. But it is not only about individual pieces and the manner players legislates them. Chess is also a meeting of science, art and sport.

On the one sense, chess is a science because it enforces certain inviolable rules and subscribes to an underlying construct. Despite the pieces’ individual dynamism, there is a logical coherence between moves, a deep-seated pattern of linear continuity. Science is not to be denied; denying them would be denying the laws of nature.

But chess is also an art because of its infinite permutations. Inherently abstract, chess provides a platform for, dependent upon the players’ skill and will, the execution of multiple possibilities. In his pursuit of painting his art, each different player couples his soul and heart to performing different plays. There are no wrongs, only unique rights.

Sometimes, winning in chess is a function of a preplanned ruse or a strategic ploy. But despite all the possible preparation before the game, triumph is often achieved in the midst of sporting unpredictability. The time pressure, the psychological intensity, the temperament, the sense of the occasion — all these coalesce to burden a player with a feeling of constraint. The true champion, unsurprisingly, masters over these constraints. He might even create new limits for others.

For all the promise of chess, at stake is individual choice, the expression of a free will against competing, discordant ideologies. On many occasions, the opening variations or level of aggression a player practices can be reflective of the philosophies he adopts in life. Chess, as a microcosm, becomes a players’ projection of his inner self. In this respect, he is not merely bestowed with the privilege of planning destiny, he controls his own destiny.

But chess is also a construct of collective endeavor. The very nature of chess demands a certain degree of clairvoyance, a peek into the future, whereby players act as voyeurs spying upon the secrets that have yet to unfold. Yet it is also a reaffirmation of the past. The energy and history of our predecessors coexist within the current, refined traditions, a wisdom players utilize in the modern context. Thus, when we look upon the grace that defines present theory, we are not just looking at layer upon layer of human imagination, but looking into the future through the eyes of the past.

Exclusive among all forms of sport, chess may be one where honesty is critical. On the board, all pretenses are abandoned, displaced by a truth to oneself. To win, a chess player substitutes external distractions with his inner instincts and intellect. He is honest to himself, analyzing his flaws and admitting his mistakes, then seeking to correct them. In listening to the voices within, he is engaged not only in a battle of minds versus his fellow humans, but involved in a larger quest to discover truth.

What do all these principles and characters ultimately mean? Well, everything. Because chess, like life, is about perception and perspective: one anticipates, predicts and envisions how the forces on the chessboard will conflict and complement, how the world will be when he is given the opportunity to change it. He could enthusiastically perform or stoically calibrate, but in making this choice, individualism is projected, reactions are personified, expectations are violated. In this framework, chess is an indictment of life.

Some once remarked that a part of chess died with Fischer. Perhaps. But amongst the many powers that Fischer brought, a rule of chess never changed. It embodied life, and continued despite his death.

ZACH HAN anticipates his receipt of a Queen, a Bishop and a Knight. Send them to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Two stories remembered

2009-02-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

Published 05-22-2008 in The California Aggie

In literature, many narratives begin with the incident of a protagonist suffering a loss, then battling back against all odds to build lasting legacies. Based upon the events of the past few days, these narratives could have been easily suggestive of two real-life personalities.

For Robert Mondavi, it was his ceding the family business to his brother, then later elevating his wine company into one of the world’s premier producers. For Senator Ted Kennedy, despite losing two brothers to assassinations, he tirelessly performed legislative work that he has become the most accomplished senator in recent history. For both, the commonalities that unite their stories are ultimately similar: death and brushes with death.

There is something fleeting about the abrupt manner death occurs. Without warning, it steals something dear away from us, instantly enveloping around us a sense of disbelief and denial. Our ordered lives are suddenly ravaged by turmoil, a chaos that disturbs our perception of place and time relative to the world. Now marred by confusion, the previous certitude we tightly held now lies in tatters.

In turn, we are forced and kindled to react with urgency. We search for work, and do so, because we don’t want to deal with the mortifying feelings of death. We desire normalcy.

With the passing of time, we start to see things anew. The recognition that life is never going to be the same anymore — after an irreversible loss — dawns. We move on, the shock and fear ebbing away.

But death and the forces beyond our control pales in comparison to the forces that are in our control. The beauty of life lies not in the tasks that we cannot do, but the endeavors we can accomplish. Against the corruption and ills and errors of mankind and nature, we command the strength to right the wrongs and summon the hope to solve the unsolvable.

We are not arbiters of morality or legislators over the lives of others, but through outreach we abandon the impulse of confining ourselves. Instead, we reach deeply within our mind and rejoice in sharing the powerful idealism of imagination because we want to inspire others.

We are doing this for something larger than ourselves. It is for our principles. It is the ideals we stand up for, the resilience we muster to achieve our goals because we believe we can create a better world. We believe that through strides, we can improve the lives of those close to and far from us. So, when our principles are challenged, we do not yield, but we resist in defiance.

And we touch others in ways we might not realize — that compromise we agreed after a monumental quarrel, our article about the imperiled environment that provoked engagement, the advice we offered that helped a peer graduate within four years, that Brahms piece we played in harmony that had the audiences hollering for encores — all these achieved against the forces of mortality.

Sometimes, in the blurry quest for material wealth and social status, we forget that life is at times meant simply to be lived as it can be lived. Our fixation with what we want prevents us from realizing that there is a society and community we’re connected to, shrouding our temperance and clouding our judgment. We lose focus. Death brings us back to reality.

So, in death, like in life, we are touching something that is essentially human: the celebration of unpredictability. When a death occurs, our innermost senses are poignantly alerted, a reminder that in the daily grind of life, there are the special moments — the simple pleasures, the laughter of a loved one — we should appreciate.

In death, what seemed present just a moment ago is no longer real to us.

But we remember. Memories are etched, lived, and re-lived.

For Mr. Mondavi and Senator Kennedy, we are not just applauding the larger-than-life personas that they are, but acknowledging the service they performed with absolute distinction and humility. In a way, they wrote, and are writing, real human stories. For the very human qualities they displayed, their stories will live longer than literature.

ZACH HAN believes in the longevity of their stories. Agree with him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The New Great Society

2009-02-12T21:00:00.000-08:00

Published 05-15-2008 in The California Aggie

Seventeen-year-old Magnus Carlsen recently reached the number five rank in the chess world. Such brilliance is unusual for, compared to other prodigies past and present, Carlsen has meteorically accomplished so much in so littletime. Indeed, his performance has been so phenomenal that he has even been nicknamed as the “Mozart of Chess.”

But Carlsen emerges at a time when chess itself is undergoing a period of subtle transformation. Chess once functioned as an active process of collective endeavor, players frequently corresponding through group banter and shared analysis, uniting minds and unifying passions. Now, as a sport, chess is increasingly individualistic.

And the reason for this change is the invention of computers and chess-playing programs. These programs have classified, researched and analyzed much of preexisting chess knowledge. Consequently, modern opening theories can run up to 30 moves long. The opportunity for collaborative efforts are displaced by interacting software functions — a surgical, clinical and digital removal of surprise. In a way, computers solved the secrets of chess in ways humans never did.

What this small incident truly illustrates is a larger symptom of mechanization. Simply said, every facet of life has become more connected to technology. And it is taking over, slowly but surely.

We live in an era of increasing predictability. Through GPS we bypass the process of learning new directions, instead simply following the arrows on the map. We no longer have to patiently rummage through the towering stacks of books, but obtain immediate Wikipedias at the click of a mouse. Online, we fulfill the promise of the internet and become the person we want to be through MySpace.

We shut ourselves out from the world by listening to iPods when cycling to class and we limit ourselves to the same DJ Tiesto webpage we visit everyday. In sync, we mouth profanities at a disliked presidential candidate and glorify the other by joining the chorus of fellow Huffington Post message boarders. We surround ourselves with selective, and intense, affirmation. In a unlimited world, we experience the limited.

Our relationships are similarly evolving. We don’t write letters as much as we Facebook to keep in touch. In the process, we remove the critical human element, continually in access with our peers without the effort that goes into building relationships. What for a previous generation was a necessary commonality is for us a casual accessory.

Moreover, entertainment, once a pejorative of theaters and sporting arenas, is now transported directly to our comfy homes. Bowling on Wii doesn’t just look real, it recreates reality. GTA4 is no longer leisure, it’s a lifestyle. Our lives outreach in ways nobody could’ve ever imagined. It’s no longer the same.

But what does all the new things we do mean? In many ways, atomization takes over. Our modernity becomes postmodern, reality becomes surreal. We depend less on society and more on computers for the tasks we want to accomplish.

Personal freedom has never been greater, yet as we isolate ourselves in devoting attention to the familiar, repetitive routine, we become the sole occupant of the worlds we inhabit. We somehow take ourselves apart from the society we want to be part of.

Do we lose anything? We do. Pivotal to reason and emotion is not just our-newfound order but disorder. Disorder is an unpredictable encounter with an old friend, the surprise of walking by and hearing the roaring energy of a street hip-hop show. It is the moment when we become lost during the road trip, and in wandering we chance upon the far-ranging golden mountains and crystal-clear blue lakes that leave lasting impressions.

Disorder is the moment when, searching for the library assignment, we accidentally find a book that radically challenges our views and dramatically reshapes our thinking. It is not the things that we expect because we expect nothing. It is instead the moment we feel genuine joy when we witness the unexpected. Chaos disturbs our equilibrium, yet it keeps teaching us something new about life. It becomes life.

So technology means that our lives have changed. It is frightening and promising, monumental and miniscule. And you know what? The choice is ours. It is up to us to choose how to make the best of it. For Carlsen, the answer is clear.

ZACH HAN isn’t really sure anymore of what’s real and what’s surreal. Wake him up at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A heroic end

2009-02-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

Published 05-08-2008 in The California Aggie

In the end, Senator Obama suffered a marginal defeat in Indiana while conjuring an overwhelming victory in North Carolina. But the match as a contest was over a while ago. A string of consecutive victories guaranteed Obama’s pledged delegate lead as theoretically unassailable. With his latest triumph, however, bloggers, newscasters and the Drudge Report — the premier portal of breaking news — are finally calling Obama “the nominee.” The curtains, for once, are truly drawing to a close.

What we should now do, firstly, is acknowledge the passion of two patriots who truly believed in their own capabilities to lead the country.

One is a woman defined by her qualities as a fighter, a quality she internalized and utilized to triumph over the specter of sexism, to overcome gender barriers and to climb to the very top. If anything, the valiance she mustered to push on, the pretension she masked to assuage supporters during tough times and the bravado, if foolhardiness, she summoned against unflinching criticism are admirable. She wouldn’t just yield, because at stake was not only the Clinton brand but her own trust in her leadership. And in the boiling heat of the kitchen, she didn’t get out like in the past. She threw the kitchen sink, sometimes futilely, against inevitability itself.

Nobody faults Senator Clinton for remaining in the contest. Politics can be an inherently brutal bloodbath. At any other moment, moreover, Senator Clinton would have been an outstanding Democratic nominee. But the state of disrepair that George Bush left the nation in requires not just another president who is well-versed in policies. It mandates the emergence of a candidate who can fundamentally change the system. It demands a new era of progressive ideals. Clinton, simply said, was playing the wrong type of game at the wrong time.

An African-American candidate, Obama’s ascent as the nominee is, well, a “fairy tale” come true. Because rooted in Obama’s narrative is, in many ways, an American classic. For weeks, he endured the unendurable. Often, he was charged with accusations of unpatriotism, extremism and elitism. He withstood, at times unsuccessfully, the full-force of Rovian-style distortion. He attempted to transcend politics of the past, only to find his immersion in the past. Faced with mounting odds, he roared back to victory by returning to his theme of hope. In his finest moment, it truly is, as the Wall Street Journal conservative columnist Peggy Noonan once suggested, “the moment of Obama.”

Thus, for the powerful character and emotional intensity both displayed, let us applaud the heroism of Obama and Clinton. In our bitterness at each others’ candidates, let us not forget that the heightened interest piqued in a whole new generation of voters. Let us acknowledge the motivations of the older generation in voting for Hillary — the personification of “experience” — a vote that is an extension of their own experiences. Let us not forget the tears, sweat, blood and hours spent not only by the candidates, but by volunteers, operatives, consultants, canvassers, all for their undoubted commitment and steely dedication to the cause. Let us also not forget, too, all the dropped-out candidates that participated in and contributed to the race.

Let us further celebrate a nation that has finally awakened from its slumber. Voter turnout records shattered across the country, a nation rebelling against the mistakes of the past. Most of all, let us realize that there is a true desire for collective change across the nation.

We now stand at an axis between the past and the future, where the old form of cynicism is in an existential crisis, upended by an ideal of hope. For Democrats, also, the end of the slugfest is near, but a new horizon looms ahead. It shines brightly. And so, before everyone goes back to work, before everyone returns to normalcy, before everyone breathes a resounding sigh of relief, let us herald this promise. History has been made and waiting is to be remade. We are, as Obama frequently says, at a “defining moment in history.” His victory on Tuesday proved it.

The curtains are finally, finally closed, but you can still conjure some surprises for ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The great convergence

2009-02-12T20:54:00.001-08:00

Published 05-01-2008 in The California Aggie

In the New Republic article “Obama’s old virtues,” Karma Nabulsi suggests that Obama’s ascendance is a function of “classical republicanism” — a system prizing active civic engagement in a participatory democracy — a very old theme that has been absent from view for a very long time. Perhaps. But the explanation for Obama’s political success might be even simpler. It is simply his promise of a uniting narrative in a disunited country.

America has long been celebrated for her promise of a new beginning. Yet as her citizens cherished that promise, in the process an array of divergent niches emerged. And America became directionless.

The era of postmodernism — a concept defined through the absence of a defining identity — partly explains this lack of direction. Protean and ambiguous, postmodernism reveals itself in many facets of our lives, most obviously in our national sphere. In the New York Times Magazine article “The Posteverything Generation,” for instance, Nicholas Handler asserts that “we refuse … to present a cast of inspirational or revolutionary characters on our public stage or to define a specific philosophy.” Our failure to present a popular national hero, in this sense, is a victim to the absence of a distinct narrative.

And society refuses to adhere or conform to any unifying narrative because they have grown so different from each other. “[T]he most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow,” so suggests Senator Clinton’s former chief strategist Mark Penn in “Microtrends.” And he’s right. The rapid alteration of America’s demographics, facilitated by increased immigration, has created an entirely new landscape. As multiculturalism — a product of this changing landscape — permeates, the creation of specific, conflicting niches with their respective needs occur.

While these unique niches proliferate, our forms of expression have simultaneously evolved. It has become slow and personal. Take individual lifestyles. Although dissatisfied with certain practices, we don’t always retaliate through protests. Instead, some adopt contrarian behaviors by boycotts. Others engage through online chat rooms. These individual acts are not always directly apparent.

But exhibited in these actions is a fierce rebellion in the form of incremental activism. The rejection of one lifestyle and the embrace of another are not indicators of apathy but statements of intent. Postmodernism does not provide an encompassing idea, but lays the platform for change at an individual level. And we have embraced it.

Companies fuel this individualism further. To meet the broad spectrum of individual-level consumer tastes, corporations orient their products accordingly. Preferences are analyzed and calibrated. Past ideas of mass-marketing are consigned instead to low-end consumer products. Branding and advertising are designed specifically to satisfy consumption habits. At a large-scale, these miniscule changes magnify themselves into a large change. As a result, segmentation abounds.

Moreover, with the nation marginalized, even devoid, of outstanding national personalities, popular culturists replace them. Celebrities and musicians emerge as role models, with our preoccupation with the latest gossip on Britney Spears’ mental health and news on Brad Pitt’s wrecking marriage prevailing. Yet while we appear to scrutinize their behavior and tragedies, we aren’t delighting in their misfortune or limitations as people. We are merely illustrating interest because we lack national characters.

The convergence of all these factors enabled the emergence of Obama’s candidacy. Promising a new brand of politics that transcended the past, he was, and is, an answer to those longing for a national unity. His candidacy holds promise to the masses wanting to ally individualistic change with a defining narrative. It’s no coincidence that when Michelle Obama remarked that “[f]or the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” she meant it. Because he was converging a divided country. It mattered.

ZACH HAN is lost in the reality that is life. Save him from postmodernism’s prison at zklhan@ucdavis.edu

Liberalism needs to fight

2009-02-12T20:45:00.000-08:00

Published 04-24-2008 in The California Aggie

Triumphing in Pennsylvania, a state often associated with the birth of many American narratives, Senator Clinton proclaimed that “the tide is turning.” She might have envisioned the aptness of her candidacy’s rebirth. But it wasn’t a rebirth. It was the prolonging of a futile process, Democrat’s proportionate delegate system rendering her catching-up in the pledged delegate count impossible.

Yet by choosing to continue, she is damaging her fellow Democrat’s reputation and amplifying her own negatives, all while increasing Senator John McCain’s electoral chances. Should these factors ultimately coalesce to elect McCain to office, liberalism would have lost a monumental opportunity to redefine and reassert itself.

But first let’s examine liberalism’s fall from grace.

Liberalism’s downturn, in many ways, is testament to the Republican Party’s political acumen and their messages’ coherence. Through superior organization and unrelenting discipline, a Republican nominee has occupied the White House for all but 12 out of the last 40 years. This statistic isn’t trivial. It demonstrates the Republican’s uncanny ability to win elections.

The media, as initiators of discourse, furthermore bought into the Republican’s stereotypical construct. By adhering to the contours of “gotcha” journalism, where soundbites proliferate, Republicans’ effectively succeeded in tarring liberals as elitist snobs, caricaturing them as unpatriotic wimps and branding them as coastal-dwellers out of touch with America’s heartland values.

Finally, Clintonism was supposed to usher in a new era of Democratic progressive policies. But it didn’t transpire that way. Instead, as Matt Bai, in his article “The Clinton Referendum,” suggests, “[Bush’s policies] was less a victim of Bush’s radicalism than [Clinton] was its enabler.” In other words, triangulation — the practice of selecting the middle point of you and your opponent’s arguments — dispirited liberals into accepting the credo of the right rather than standing up for their own principles.

Such a submission is fine, even indicative of a healthy democracy, if the ultimate result is concerned solely with winning political warfare. But conservatism’s practitioners, utilizing the dark art of denigration, have essentially torn the electorate. Consequent of the Republican smear tactics is a nation so divided that we can’t summon a national consciousness during times of unparalleled crisis. While external and internal threats continue to manifest, the government is impaired, burdened by ideological adherence.

As such, until the Republican Party reinvents itself and dismisses the divisionary tactics, the only option for all liberals is to unite and to ascend. Liberals need to re-embrace their identity and not be afraid to champion their virtues. Today’s moment demands not triangulation; it mandates the elevation of liberalism. It isn’t the time to yield to right-wing pummeling. It is the time to battle back, and battle hard.

But here’s what makes Obama’s candidacy so ironic and fascinating. He’s conducting a liberal revolution not by aiming to polarize the Red States and Blue States further, but by attempting to unite both. He’s not merely inspiring new voters everywhere, he’s incorporating disenchanted crossover conservatives. Despite being the Senator with the most liberal voting record, he works well with Republicans. All these virtues indicate the possibility of an era of sustained liberalism.

To make this possible, to finally move past the past, Obama first needs to defeat the forces of the past. He needs to bury Rove-style politics of blatant distortion and character assassination — a test Senator Clinton is now administering to him. He needs to stand up to the lunacy of Swiftboating and “who would you rather have a beer with?” Should he triumph, it will deliver the message that the era of Rovism is finally over.

The liberal ideals of social justice and equality have to be refought and relitigated. Clintonism of the yore, of finding common ground, has to be dispensed. Liberals, and liberalism, need to regain their pride.

Liberals need to fight against the kitchen sink and the Republican attack machine. Throw ZACH HAN one at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A bitter discourse

2009-02-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

Published 04-17-2008 in The California Aggie

Senator Barack Obama’s recent remarks about the predicament of the “bitter” working-class, in many respects, provoked a political firestorm. Some accused him of “condescension,” while others called him “elitist.” In retrospect, as he admitted, his characterization of this demographic probably wasn’t the most incisive. But the reaction to his words speaks more about the nation’s state of fragility than about the candidate’s fallibilities.

Uncomfortably, this backlash epitomizes the state our national discourse has fallen to. The question that must be asked, thus, is why has the discourse become so philistine and juvenile?

The most obvious blame lies with the media. To increase viewership, conflict is sought. Reporting on productive — if mundane — community-empowerment efforts are forsaken for attention-grabbing headlines. In national politics, for instance, the competitive aspect of an election is emphasized, with the horse-race casting the candidates and their supporters as part of a sporting bloodbath. Here, personalities, not policies or philosophies, confer electoral prospects. As a result, our national leaders have become constantly-scrutinized participants of a large-scale reality show.

But the media isn’t wholly responsible for this mess. They are conscripts feeding such news only because their users don’t denounce this lunacy. The focus of a candidate’s appearance or even cackle — and not one’s governing abilities — has thrived only because the culture has enabled it. The true fault lies in a society that consumes information without questioning its logic.

Societies’ acceptance of such trivialities is partly a function of modernity. Individuals’ fast-paced lifestyles, paradoxically, drain them into demanding immediacy. To provide this ease, news networks frame distinctions in absolutes and construct narratives in black-and-white. Furthermore, given societies’ dwindling attention-span, the media compresses entire chunks of information into sound bites. In turn, long, deliberative and substantive answers are dismissed as “wonkish” and “nerdy.”

Another reason is the elite-commoner dynamic. A leader’s electability is arbitrarily defined according to “likability.” Appearance of intellectualism is scorned, branded as a pretext to being “out-of-touch”. Elitism, disdained, emerges as a barometer of detachment from reality. Swayed by such factors, the nation ended up reelecting George W. Bush — “who would you rather have a beer with?” — to a second term in 2004.

As these dynamics converge, a culture that doesn’t celebrate intellectualism as much as it rewards a visceral gratification has emerged. Simplicity, not soundness, is exalted. Lost are complexity, context, perspective and nuance. Emotion takes precedence over thoughtful civic engagement. Partisanship is primed above reason. Gut-feeling pervades. Consequently, fear, anger and distrust permeate. This situation is indicative of a society that has grown so dependent, intent and intense on instant longings. It is illustrative of a nation where critical introspection has atrophied.

And certain parties, notably the Republican establishment, have exploited this vulnerability by employing distractive measures. Wedge issues, such as gun ownership, gay marriages and abortion are highlighted, divisions designed to appeal to certain classes. Moreover, when politicians distort the words of opponents, they are not questioned as much as the battle befits the horse-race. This bickering obstructs progress.

In the end, critical challenges the nation faces are ignored in favor of triviality. Attempts to solve impending problems fail because the nation is too distracted by, as Senator Obama once characterized, “the smallness of our politics.”

And this situation is unsustainable. America’s international stature is at peril. Asia’s ascent symbolizes a new world order. The nation’s immediate and long-term future is at stake. The choice, then, is to acknowledge the problems that really matter. We can begin firstly by asking whether working-class Pennsylvanians are “bitter.”

ZACH HAN is bitter about the state of discourse. Email him your bitterness to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A trip to Philadelphia

2009-02-12T20:38:00.001-08:00

Published 04-10-2008 in The California Aggie

Arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport and armed with the motivation of contributing to Senator Obama’s campaign as a “springtern” — a colloquialism for a spring internship — little did I know what to expect. But experience I did, and it was uncompromising, rewarding and ultimately, eye-opening.

Philadelphia is a city that is distinctly heterogeneous. Buildings appear segmented, even aloof, from each other. On the one hand, the neoclassical architecture harks as a reminder of the past, intent on maintaining the memories of patriots pursuing independence. Meanwhile, symbols of the capitalist advance — the leaden, towering skyscrapers — juxtapose these cultural ancients. Coexisting, they both brim and bore, at times seemingly conflicting between a burning desire for progress and a poignant nostalgia to preserve.

The relationship between the city and its inhabitants is equally stark. Strolling through downtown Philadelphia, one gets the sense of witnessing differing Americas at once. While the walking rich executive overlaps with the homeless man sleeping down the railway station, they’re seemingly invisible to each other. A divide manifests itself. This situation is not merely the product of successes’ stature but the failure to acknowledge.

Yet these unique characteristics, in a way, disappear in the context of Pennsylvania as the next nominating state. Instead, attention is lavished on numbers. Polls — a snapshot of voter sentiment — have suggested that Obama’s campaign confronts challenges in winning over certain demographics, specifically women and blue-collar workers. What these numbers doesn’t capture is the industrious, heartfelt effort a political campaign invests, especially when in concert to solving this divide.

Located in downtown Philadelphia, Obama’s headquarters is easily accessible. But its strategic placement isn’t its only strength. The large number of volunteers travelling-in from around the country is arguably another reason for the candidate’s increasing poll numbers. “No other University in the country [at that time] had more interns than UC Davis at the Obama for America Office in Philadelphia,” Ryan Loney, the UC Davis Students for Barack Obama Co-Coordinator, proudly remarked.

Most critically, however, there is a fundamental, multi-process system. A clear organizational order is in place. Roles are outlined. Phases are systematic. Outreach, whether through phone persuasion, voter registration drives or on-the-street retail campaigning, is conducted. Databases containing voter’s details are collected and updated, thereby enabling the maintenance of frequent, constant contact. The expectations are clarified, performed, accomplished and exceeded.

Moreover, this system doesn’t merely encourage active voter participation. It strives to develop leadership. A new generation of leaders, groomed to foster involvement in their respective communities, are sought. Internships provide opportunities to promote a more active engagement in the political process. It helps volunteers grow as people and leaders.

For the interns, the enthusiastic reception towards these programs is palpable. “I was surprised at how many people actually flew out to Philadelphia to springtern,” Josie Alioto, a UC Davis senior, noted. And that despite the grueling early morning to midnight schedule, where, as Josie further added, many “gave up [their] spring breaks to work 14 hour days.”

Collectively, this process is empowering. “On March 24th we hit the streets with thousands of volunteers to register voters in Pennsylvania. At the end of the day we registered about 11,000 voters across the state,” Ryan noted, a testament to the volunteers’ success in facilitating the democratic process.

Philadelphia is a city that lives within itself and with its people. It celebrates a rich tradition while striving to compound a unique heritage. It represents America in its past, its present and its promise. For all the electoral fervor that is brewing, the significance of the place, and problems, shouldn’t be lost.

Springterns don’t get paid, but ZACH HAN always welcomes donations. You can do that by reaching at mailto:zklhan@ucdavis.edu

A cut-throat education

2009-02-12T20:35:00.000-08:00

Published 04-04-2008 in The California Aggie

Roger Cohen, the esteemed The New York Times columnist, recently proclaimed that Asia’s ferocious emergence signals “the end of the era of the white man.” The declaration was extreme in conception, but he was perhaps audibly echoing the feelings that have been fermenting. It was reasonable in thought.

The reason for this outlook is Asia’s ascent. “Come to Asia and fear drains away. It’s replaced by confidence and a burning desire to succeed” so suggests Mr. Cohen. Accordingly, with changes at multiple levels occurring at breakneck speed, it is only a matter of time before the aforementioned situation realizes itself. And he attributes this phenomenon to Asia’s “culture of education and achievement.”

In a way, Mr. Cohen is both right and wrong. Because, simply said, the Asian culture of education is, to an extent, both constraining and rewarding.

Constraining because this culture upholds the importance of results above all else. Progress is measured as a function of cut-throat competition. Grades emerge as an indicator of excellence and academic achievement becomes a predictor of further successes. Moreover, it prizes conformance to a societal construct of excellence, a familiarity which further breeds continuity. In this culture, optimal academic performance is the goal.

But it is simultaneously rewarding because of its simplicity. This form of education is systematic and methodical. There is a gradual, progressive means towards the attainment and application of knowledge. One, in an orderly fashion, learns the fundamentals of a discipline, and then proceeds to practice theoretical assumptions. The establishment of an intuitive, if authoritative, attempt towards mastery takes precedence. By this extension, one learns through frequent, deliberate practice.

Yet this system is beset with its own flaws. Here, the distinction between excellence and failure is clear. Clinically, however, this distinction suggests a frame in absolutes. But the process of learning is not merely a protocol-oriented approach. Learning is not a rigidly mechanical or structural process. Instead, learning is also a product of confusion. Ideas are not confined or divided into clear-cut polarities. They are intertwined in nuance, contradictions and ambiguity. Identities are juxtaposed. Entities both coalesce and conflict. Consequently, their relationship is defined by non-definition.

This nuance is essential. It repeats itself in cyclical processes. One only needs to look at America, a nation of renewal and reinvention. Random strands of ideas create movements. A society experiences these cultures, absorbs them and exhausts them. Then, dissatisfied with the monotony, someone suggests a newer idea, which in turn engenders counter-cultures. Ideas are manufactured, used and then replaced by more innovative ones. These counter-cultures rebuke their predecessors. The form evolves, but the fundamental cycle continues.

Some have further suggested that the irony of education is its ability to teach individuals not to just perpetrate a preexisting system, but to ultimately facilitate a system’s destruction and replacement. For instance, in his work “A Talk to Teachers,” James Baldwin asserts that “[t]he paradox of education is precisely this — that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated … But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in [achieving that goal], that society is about to perish.” In this sense, the sole stride of a systematic learning process that seeks perpetuity — so often the pride of the Asian educational model — is symptomatic of a society in decline.

Mr. Cohen was perhaps correct in anticipating Asia’s fierce intellectual growth as a prelude to a new era. But he could’ve viewed the situation not from a zero-sum perspective. It isn’t. Instead, it can be an era full of possibility and opportunity. That world marks the beginning of an era without distinctions.

Spring is the season of renewal, and ZACH HAN welcomes your comments again to mailto:zklhan@ucdavis.edu

Conservatism Revisited

2009-02-12T20:31:00.000-08:00

Published 03-14-2008 in The California Aggie

The conservatism President Bush has practiced in the past few years was one often based on an unyielding conviction, seemingly oblivious from any form of doubt. Yet that’s not what conservatism, as a philosophical thought, demands. Instead, “[a]ll conservatism begins with loss,” so declares Andrew Sullivan in his book “The Conservative Soul.” And it is: conservatism is a natural response to loss, an approach that embraces the need to conserve and preserve in times of challenge.

A conservative is defined by his application of doubt to far-reaching rhetoric. A conservative, characterized by “his profound grasp of the limits of human understanding”— as Sullivan remarks — recognizes his inherent limitations in the face of unlimited possibilities. A conservative does not subscribe to a monolithic certitude or a status quo, but relents to a wavering, skeptical questioning about the aggrandizement of promises. Conservatism, in this sense, is a cajoling to reconcile the strands of idealism with realism.

Conservatism champions the rights of an individual to be the legislator of his own destiny, all while free from government oversight. An individual, after all, knows himself best. The government, as Sullivan suggests, should play little in dictating or regulating an individual’s life; instead, its only function should be to protect the nation’s broader security. For a conservative, this absence is an incentive, even empowerment, for the individual to make his own choices, to determine his own direction, to utilize his own resources for maximum gain and to attain his own goals. Such liberty invites self-sufficiency.

A desire to preserve, moreover, doesn’t imply that conservatives resist change. Chance favors the bold, an idiom often rhapsodizes, but change, radical or not, isn’t merely the product of lofty plans or the privilege of grand beliefs. Instead, for the conservative, change is the consequence of gradual planning and accumulating wisdom, a sometimes slow, but authoritative, process. The focal point of this ideal is to prepare oneself to meet expectations through a sense of fortitude, gained from deliberative practice. The practitioners, in this construct, are not static bystanders; they are active participants facilitating change.

While a benefit of a conservative’s independence is the pursuit of mastery, few ever achieve it. But this challenge is not a reason for not trying. It is an imploration to resist in defiance. It is about the human endeavor, the commitment, the devotion, the dedication, the passion, the investment and the strides, all performed irrespective of the final result. In acting without unnecessary restraints, the attempt might not necessarily succeed, but in the process of trying, one learns. One approaches the height of human consciousness.

Undoubtedly, conservatism’s premise can be flawed — individuals frequently make irrational decisions, violating the precepts of logical, gradual increments. But the choice is left entirely to the individual. As columnist Rob Olson recently noted, “[c]onservatives favor certain kinds of actions.” The opportunity to succeed in life is fully dependent upon one’s own actions, whereby one is provided the chance to strive for the best despite or because of another’s influence. However, it is not privilege obtained through the effort of another. Conservatism, thus, is neither a barrier to progress nor what it seeks to rebuke. Instead, it makes the individual’s decisions, filled with triumphs and failures, the central focus. In the end, the individual has tried. And that’s where one feels meaning.

Ultimately, for a conservative, the final goal is to live a life one simply desires. To quote Sullivan’s flourish, “[Conservatism’s] modesty is the point. It is austere and restrained. It makes no grand claims about humanity … [Conservatism] just accepts the fog of human existence … But why? As we inch toward the least we can say, we stumble across the thing we have been looking for all along. We have discovered freedom.”

That’s a premise of a conservative.

ZACH HAN is conserving for his finals, but he will preserve your emails at mailto:zklhan@ucdavis.edu

The firewall reigns

2009-02-12T20:30:00.001-08:00

Published 03-06-2008 in The California Aggie

Before Tuesday’s primaries, Senator Clinton described Texas and Ohio as her “firewall,” the last bastion of defense where she, once analogized by TIME to an “immovable object,” was to halt Senator Obama’s “irresistible force.” At stake was her entire candidacy. Lose one primary and it was over. In the end, she won both. The fire reigned and her wall didn’t crumble. In the aftermath of the collision, the firewall towered mightily, and the Democratic battle for nomination prolongs.

Repeating the now familiar patterns that have largely characterized this election so far, the impression of a generational battle reasserted itself once again. The oldest age-group (65 years and above) veered towards Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive experience candidate, while younger voters (17-29 years) voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, who often emphasizes the value of judgment. And this trend illustrates the differing outlooks the generations were brought up on.

The youth vote, in a way, is a projection of their understanding about the American ideal of renewal and reinvention. John Judis’ essay “American Adam” suggests that Obama’s emergence is partly a function of the electorate’s desire to “create a future without reference to the past.” In this sense, it is not merely an exhibit of the discontent with the current Bush administration, but a desire to overturn the old order and replace it with a new start. The youths’ enthusiastic embrace of Obama’s message, thus, is not a denial of the problems America faces but an assault to solve them, done through a new beginning.

Moreover, Obama’s ascension arguably reflects a youth rejection of a traditional top-down management premise. This age-bracket’s leaning to Obama is a projection of their own experiences with an organization’s integration, where companies’ increasingly diffuses executive roles and holds multiple-stages of shared collaboration. It is a belief that a bureaucratic rank-and-file system no longer suffices on its own, instead evolving into a cooperative and process-oriented approach to developing solutions.

Contrastingly, the older generation’s relative preference for Mrs. Clinton is a probable extension of their belief in refined wisdom’s importance to confronting challenges. This brand of experience, at least in politics, was on full display on Tuesday night. Mrs. Clinton’s unshaken resilience when faced with an impending defeat, at least according to several polls, is admirable. She refocused her message and subsequently convinced voters that she was most qualified to lead the nation in a time of crisis, an illustration of the necessity of relevant experience.

But this belief about experience has its own flaws, as TIME’s report of a Florida State University experiment on experience shows. Experience, in a traditional sense, implies authority and mastery over a certain task. But according to the experiment’s results, experience matters little in the face of novelty, as seasoned professionals committed the same mistakes that a novice did when presented with a same simulation. And in an increasingly changing world, where new challenges range from climate change to China’s awakening, experience may not be as necessarily critical as judgment is.

So how will these two radically differing strands influence the remaining races? It’s impossible to know. At any other time, backed by the party establishment, an outstanding political team and one of the most popular president in recent memory, Mrs. Clinton would have normally swaggered to the nomination. But this is not a normal election. This is an election without precedent, where an inspiring African American candidate is competing against a very credible female candidate. There is no indicator.

Early media estimates suggested that the final delegate count from the races was still unclear, despite her triumph in the three states. The story of the “irresistible force” versus the “immovable object” continues. Stay tuned.

Stay tuned! ZACH HAN hopes that the Democrats can decide on a nominee soon, and you can agree at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

The first woman President

2009-02-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

Published 02-28-2008 in The California Aggie

Ohio’s Tuesday night debate was, by many estimates, a draw. But judging from Senator Clinton’s downward spiral in the polls, her failure to sufficiently overturn the perception of her faltering chances may as well have been a loss. And that’s the great irony of this election: the first female candidate with the most credible chance of winning the nomination for the presidency is losing to, as Newsweek termed Senator Obama, “the first woman president.”

In retrospect, such a proclamation was already forming. For instance, in December, Maureen Dowd noted that “[c]ustomarily in presidential races, Americans seek a patriarchal figure,” but with Obama “this dynamic seems reversed,” a particularly apt, if not clairvoyant, description. She could have whispered a conspiratorial “matriarchal,” though, instead of dubbing him a “child prodigy.” Because the voter sentiment for Obama’s candidacy signals a repudiation of the stubbornness, cockiness and authoritarianism — qualities frequently stereotyped to the male virility — the Bush administration manned. Instead, it is an embrace for the encompassing, inclusive and listen-to-all attitude Obama nurtures.

Now, nobody doubts Mrs. Clinton’s commitment to serve the country. By herself, she is incredibly intelligent, often exhibiting an intricate mastery of complex policy solutions. She has shown a determination, and ability, to overcome gender barriers since her days in Wellesley to Wal-Mart. Moreover, those who know her in private often gush about her warm persona, a far contrast to the authoritative personality she employs on the campaign trail. But her candidacy’s implosion is not so much a function of her different demeanors as she is a victim of the shifting times.

In politics, timing is everything. Timing, in this regard, is the snapshot of electorate emotion and national atmosphere at that certain rupture. And the current times, besieged by a prolonged war, economic slowdown and disheartened electorate, doesn’t just demand for a change in policies or philosophy. It cries out for a change in approach. Obama’s emergence, in this sense, is not an anomaly of a “child prodigy” who overturned the “patriarchal” order, but an expression of it.

What would this different approach to governing and leadership reflect? On many levels, the positives would be several.

At the very least, it will dramatically repair America’s tarnished foreign image, and likely, policies. The troubling legacy of President Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” mantra still frequently manifests an indelible impression of American arrogance around the world, if voter criticisms are any indicator. By adopting an either/ or policy, not only were allies alienated, it contributed to America’s often solitary quest in Iraq. An Obama presidency, based upon his willingness to meet dangerous world leaders without preconditions — typically a quality associated with a woman’s willingness to listen — would deliver a resounding message that America is ready to reassume leadership in promoting democracy.

It will also indicate a probable return to the frequent Congress bipartisanship before the divisive polarization of the 1990s and 2000s. If Obama’s record as president of the Harvard Law Review and as Senator in Illinois is any predictor, one would expect him to forge a similar coalition that would find ways to substitute ideology with nationally-beneficial legislation. The skills that would be needed, as Dowd euphemized, are “[l]ess towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity.” It would need matriarchal skills.

Senator Clinton’s failings have prompted the media to critically re-dissect her management failings, such as her over-expenditure on Dunkin Donuts(!) and paying premium prices for misguided consultant strategies. But she didn’t find herself losing the nomination just because Obama won it. She finds herself there not because she was a female candidate seeking what has, until now, been exclusively a male-dominated post, but because she adopted a patriarchal attitude when the times wanted a matriarchal attitude.

The times and the national outlook may be shifting, but you can still email ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

An Election of Metaphors

2009-02-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

Published 02-21-2008 in The California Aggie

There is one constant that has defined this election, and it’s not just “change.” It is not, as TIME proclaimed, an election where “the only predictability was unpredictability.” No, that was too abstract. Super Tuesday, as some theorized, did not “settle[] nothing.” It settled everything: Hillary didn’t have a plan after Super Tuesday, was cash-strapped, and Obama’s gridlock with Hillary that day demonstrated to voters his ability to compete against her, his 10-in-a-row wins a possible consequence of that. Anyway, the other constant was the colorful, ever-present metaphors that have graced this election.

The shattering began in Iowa. Commenting on Obama’s victory, David Brooks gasped that he witnessed “earthquakes,” a tectonic shift that reverberated earth’s very core. Pretty apt, because this upending of an established order was similar to a wrecking geographic chasm, shaking the stage for what was to become the most exciting election in recent memory.

Then, it blew to climate change. When Hillary stunningly saved her campaign in New Hampshire, weathering Obama’s momentum and poll numbers, TIME thundered about “spring, the season of rebirth.” Accordingly, pollsters, like weather forecasters, got every prediction wrong as voters refused to listen to experts, instead preferring to create their own weather. The battle was shaping up, the storm brewing in the teacup, only at a larger, real-life magnitude.

Next up: nurture against nature. Maureen Dowd teased Hillary, lamenting her fate that the calibrated, polished senator was outshined during her marriage to a “Natural”, only to be usurped by another “Natural” when she began her march to coronation. Oh, how fate conspires, how nature acts!

At times, the portrayal seemingly referred to a bygone era of mythical creatures and magical spells, resplendent with sorcery and old-fashioned warriors. For instance, Dowd exclaimed that to win, Obama needed to “slay the dragon.” The metaphor was almost one-sided, glorifying man’s heroism against nature’s bestial agents.

Bill Clinton himself has often been dubbed a “Force of Nature,” his charisma a tsunami and a tornado that sweeps all before him. But when he threatened to overshadow Hillary’s candidacy in South Carolina, the media flared, spewing froth and blazing petulance about a phenomenon never witnessed before in history: the emergence of the “two-headed dragon” — a referral to the ferocious Clinton attack machine — another head added for good measure. Uh. Anyway, for dramatic effect, they could have used a machine analogy too, perhaps by noting that a machine has no chinks, operates with clockwise efficiency and never tires. Maybe the failure to recognize that was what detached the gloss of inevitability.

Staying consistent with the themes of medieval knights and romantic valor, “Camelot,” the knight in shining armor, galloped to battle with the Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama. Ted, as the “lion,” passed the torch and the mantle of the Kennedy legacy onto Obama. It was almost like watching King Arthur knighting the hero, set against a backdrop of modern day elections.

Now, we have the “cult of personality” and the “messiah.” Accordingly, Obama’s followers have become a cult-like group, devoting an unshaken belief to the next coming, which should be cause for concern. For instance, Brooks denounced Obama’s apocalyptic message of “we are the change we have been waiting for.” Well, after eight years of Bushism in the White House, maybe we even need a third coming. Amen.

The latest, a response to Obama’s Wisconsin’s victory, was a Clinton surrogate’s portrayal of Obama as the “silver tongued …thespian.” This is exactly what Obama’s message is about: ending the circus act that has thrilled Washington for a long time. We don’t need another few years of Clinton White House psychodrama, entertaining it may be, or Bush’s secret theatricals behind the scenes. We need empowerment and inspiration, graced by a virtuoso performer.

With Obama’s 10 straight, sweeping wins, “God” will probably not be too far from the horizon. You heard it here first.

Regale ZACH HAN with your own colorful, entertaining, acerbic metaphors at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

For the love

2009-02-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Published 02-14-2008 in The California Aggie

Andrew Sullivan, in a recent The Times article, declared that “Most presidential elections … are about the last one.” Perhaps so. But elections, one would suspect, are also about personal narratives — of belief, of love, of longing for a better future — and this election is no exception.

These personal narratives are why people choose to commit to a campaign. It is when the hopes and fears of individuals, aligned to the vision and judgment of a candidate, move them to place their trust and faith in the candidate. Thus, they start contributing campaign funds and devote time and energy to volunteer and canvass and to spread the word. In this sense, they become the heart and soul of a candidate’s movement.

Among my involvement with the campaign occurred two weeks ago during the Sacramento rally for Senator Barack Obama. Arriving at the rally at 10 on a breezy Saturday morning, we listened to speakers who roused with enthusiasm and candor, passionate despite the biting iciness of winter.

Then, our spirits high, we gathered in groups, each assigned to a certain precinct. Handing us a detailed list of potential sway voters — compiled through a technology micro-identification process — our leader briefed us on the numerous etiquette and expectations, such as acting “courteous at all times.”

For many youths, a demographic group that has voted overwhelmingly for Obama, this election is our first traverse into national politics. But that morning, the rally wasn’t only about youths; it was a mixture of all age-groups: The young and the old, Latinos and Asians, whites and blacks. Among those in my group was Irene, a senior citizen who had travelled extensively around the world; Daniel, a UC Davis graduate student with noble aspirations to further his profession; Chrystal, an Asian-American UC Davis English major; and Alex, a junior transfer student concentrating in Biology. It was a diverse group, but we shared a common goal.

The first household we visited elicited no response. It was a pattern that was to repeat itself. Perhaps it was simply odd for one to greet campaign volunteers on a Saturday morning. More frequently, moreover, were the rhythmic dog howls that accompanied our ascent to a doorstep. We weren’t welcome.

The glitz and glamour associated with campaigning for a candidate often ignores the challenges of actual groundwork. For me, that day was merely a single-day event. For others — precinct captains, unpaid volunteers — it is a repetitive activity performed daily, sometimes in inclement weather stretching for months. Far from the uplifting, giddy, soaring, if abstract feeling those inspired by a candidate experiences, the actual process involves a grimmer, harsh and mundane reality. It is not only a task to persuade hearts and minds, but a battle to toil against freezing temperatures, ferocious winds and dreary conditions. At times, it feels almost like a crusade not only for one’s candidate but a battle against Nature itself.

But of those we convinced, the feeling was rewarding. One lady, introducing herself as a high school educator, was “60-40” for Obama, despite proclamations of surprise when she notes about her upbringing in Texas. She didn’t need to explain herself — she had experienced the best of both worlds, and her leaning for Obama was a story that spoke for itself. Ideology didn’t matter, she wanted change.

We left around 4pm to listen to Senator John Kerry speak. On the speech itself, Kerry proved himself more than an eloquent interlocutor. He regaled us with details about Obama’s candidacy and charmed us with personal anecdotes and, although occasionally lapsing to long-winded explanations, seemed the absolute antithesis of the person portrayed in the media.

To be sure, I don’t recall the exact details of his speech — the moment was somewhat fleeting and momentary, drowned in the rapturous chorus of support. But in the delirious decibels, I do remember the feeling it evoked. Because when I saw the “fired up” audience chanting “Yes, We Can” and “USA,” I knew I was witnessing an energy and spirit that was heartwarming. They were doing it for the love.

ZACH HAN’s professor likes to say that “Everyday is Valentine,” but he still you a Happy Valentine’s Day! from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A Conservative Comeback

2009-02-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

Published 02-07-2008 in The California Aggie

Senator John McCain’s life story is a classic tale of comebacks. In Vietnam, his plane was shot down and he was captured, tortured and held prisoner-of-war for five and a half years. During that period, he nearly broke down on a couple of occasions, but each time he persisted, survived and was finally released. Last summer, when his campaign for the Republican nomination teetered on the brink of bankruptcy — his support for the then unpopular Iraq surge seemingly alienated potential donors — he rebounded, saving his candidacy by, as a few commentators noted, doing what he does best: engaging in a guerilla style-warfare. With these efforts, he reinvigorated his campaign that he eventually collected a string of critical victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.

Most of all, the man whom some felt should have, eight years ago, assumed the Republican nomination for the Presidency is now back, eight years later, to assume that role: With his numerous victories on Super Tuesday, he now leads as the party’s frontrunner. It is, in a true sense, a story of second chances.

Yet the Republican Party establishment and media-leaning conservatives are recoiling at a President McCain prospect, despite polls suggesting that in a matchup, he might be the best Republican nominee against a Democrat. Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator, went as far as to state that “If [McCain’s] our candidate, then Hillary's going to be our girl.”

What drives this ferocious backlash? Because a McCain victory might symbolize the beginning of the end of “movement conservative”: a term prominent economist Paul Krugman, in his book “The Conscience of a Liberal,” denoted for the hijack of conservatism by the extreme right-wing of the party.

According to Krugman’s controversial hypotheses, movement conservatives have, for decades, been attempting to roll back the New Deal. Supposedly, it began with Barry Goldwater’s ascension as the 1964 Republican nominee — he galvanized the conservatives with a common purpose — and continued with their ferocious opposition of the 1994 universal health care plan and culminated with President Bush’s attempts at privatizing Social Security. Their operations, he remarks, are conducted through numerous avenues, such as through “the proliferation of … think tanks,” with the extreme secrecy and increment of executive power in Washington during the past few years a byproduct of this movement. As it is a movement that seeks not less, but more partisanship, it is part of the reason for the current climate of national polarization.

Thus, McCain’s comeback is, in a way, a referendum on the goal movement conservative seeks to achieve. It is a voter repudiation of the Republican Party’s direction. And the Republican establishment, simply said, can’t contemplate the possibility of a conservative siding with Democrats.

This situation is a result of McCain’s willingness to stand for his beliefs. McCain, in many areas, is notorious for being a maverick. Last year, together with Senator Ted Kennedy, he supported comprehensive immigration reform in Congress — it was ultimately defeated — as well as opposing the party establishment’s positions countless times in the past, such as his vote against President Bush’s tax cut. In short, he is the absolute antithesis of an ideal movement conservative candidate.

But this integrity is what has drawn many voters to McCain. In polls, McCain staunchest supporters often consist of independents, suggesting that his ability for bipartisanship and moderation appeals. David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, succinctly summed it when he remarked that McCain’s fearlessness to unabashedly fight for his platforms are a product of his experiences in Vietnam, as “prison in Vietnam gave him self-respect and a cause greater than himself.” In this sense, McCain’s politics isn’t about himself but about the greater good.

McCain’s impressive victories on Super Tuesday continue the tale of a stunning comeback. It is a tale that will complete itself should he ascend the White House in 2009 as President.

One commentator called McCain “a phoenix reborn.” Send ZACH HAN your own term of McCain to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Why Obama?

2009-02-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

Published 01-31-2008 in The California Aggie

The most important issue in this Democratic election did not happen in this election. It isn’t Hillary’s “tears” in New Hampshire or Bill’s role as a surrogate “attack-dog.” It isn’t the unique dimension of the frontrunner candidates’ race and gender. Instead, it is a war that began 40 years ago and persists to this day.

At least, according to Andrew Sullivan.

In possibly the most persuasive case for Barack Obama’s candidacy, Sullivan’s brilliant piece “Goodbye to All That” — published in the December edition of The Atlantic — documents why Obama’s victory is the only way forward. It is because Obama, and Obama alone, is able to end the legacy of impairment that began since the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War, in a sense, was not one war, but two. One was the actual war in Vietnam, and the second was a more relentless, if quiet, left-right war at home. The Vietnam War ended, but the second war continued, exacerbated by Reagan’s Southern triumph and intensified during the peak Boomer period of the 1990s and 2000s. This “confluence of events,” Sullivan argues, represents the “family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation.”

A Baby Boomer family quarrel isn’t necessarily bad. After all, America’s politics is a function of disagreement. The founding fathers envisioned its best form in dysfunction. And America thrives because while she celebrates a marketplace of conflicting ideas, she always manages to eventually agree.

But what has occurred during the last decade is a complete radicalization of this disagreement. It has descended into an incredibly destructive war. One refuses to listen, let alone contemplate, an opponent’s ideas. Characters are assassinated. Dissenters are demonized. Integrities are questioned. Statements are mischaracterized. The product is polarization and division.

Why can only Obama transcend this partisanship? Because, if the palpable enthusiasm and record turnouts in the Democratic election is any indicator, we might be witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift: A coalition is retaliating against the status quo and forsaking divisions in favor of a national healing. And Obama, by circumstance and by choice, is at the heart of this paradigm shift at the right place at the right time.

Circumstance because his personal history, an intersection of race, class, religion and generations, as well as being post-Boomer and post-1960s, uniquely places him at an axis that is not burdened by the past but beholden to the future. But more importantly, choice because it’s Obama’s willingness to stand up and inspire not the basest, as many politicians persist in, but the best in us. It is his message of “hope,” and our trust in that message, to embrace a new beginning.

So, when Obama says that we need hope, it is not a validation of “blind faith.” Hope is not a suggestion that by merely acting nicely or politely all problems will resolve themselves, or “something you do when something is out of your control.” Hope is a reassurance that if one believes, one can solve any challenge. Hope is something you strive for when you believe in the possible impossibility.

Obama’s candidacy, Sullivan also remarks, is less about him than about “the moment he is meeting.” By this extension, Obama’s candidacy is about us. It is about whether we want to live in a culture that glorifies the demonization of another or one that celebrates thoughtful disagreement and a marketplace of ideas. It is whether, despite our disagreements, we’re ultimately capable of reason and respect, cooperating together to elevate this nation to greater heights. It is whether we’d prefer to hope rather than fear.

Ultimately, this election is our chance to change the direction of our nation. It is a referendum on whether we choose to “fight the same old fights,” as Obama notes, or move forward. It is a chance to make bitter partisanship a footnote of history. It is our chance to end the war that began 40 years ago.

So let’s make this moment come true. Let’s make the future not about our past but our future. But there is only one moment to do so. It is now.

ZACH HAN encourages you to vote on Super Tuesday. He wishes you his best regards from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A legend’s life, and death

2009-02-12T20:16:00.000-08:00

Published 01-24-2008 in The California Aggie

Bobby Fischer’s death was, in a way, as uncontroversial as it could get. For someone who had always been the center of attention and controversy wherever he’s at, there were no final performances from the master and no final adulations from the audience. But the ironic manner of his departure doesn’t diminish the accomplishments of the greatest chess player ever to grace the game.

What did Fischer do? At his best, not only did he dominate and redefine chess, he was ultimately part of America’s larger war against the Soviet Union communism.

Fischer’s life was a story of contradictions. As a teen prodigy, he triumphantly steamrolled past his opponents to win the US Chess Championship a record eight times, then defeating Boris Spassky for the 1972 World Chess Championship, before descending into a perceived “madness” and finally being disowned by his country. It was, one could only envision, a true classic.

What is it that sets Fischer apart from his fellow world champions? To understand this question is to understand a fundamental law of chess: there is no turning back. In chess, like life, one confronts a multitude of choices. But unlike life, there is no avoidance in chess. During one’s turn, the situation, favorable or not, demands a reply. Fischer, beyond imagination, consistently delivered the best solutions to the problems he confronted. Perhaps more aptly, he conjured overwhelming problems his opponents never managed to solve.

And like the way all the greatest practitioners of a certain art do, he redefined the game. Chess pieces, individually, are not meant to be atomized. They are not detached; instead, by their capacity for interaction, each piece is a function of harmony.

But for a game sometimes derided for its antiquity and accusations that each pieces’ mystical connections have been understood, Fischer brought a new, unparalleled excitement to each piece. At times, he sacrificed pieces and exchanges as though they meant nothing. With him, the board was often full of chaos and randomness and madness. His moves were seemingly out of this world—so deep were the combinations he foresaw that one could only wonder what his opponents must have felt. It was like watching a disastrous tsunami unfolding, yet helpless were his opponents to resist or retaliate. With him, chess pieces took on a new life.

Yet Fischer also was, in a perverse sense, a Pawn in the larger ideological battle of capitalism versus communism. Fischer’s ultimate match against Spassky is a tale of two diametrically opposing national heroes—one from America, another from the Soviet—battling for chess supremacy and, to a larger extent, for that day’s ideological victory. Each played their part perfectly. Fischer was notorious for his abrasive attitude—a symbolism for American individualism—and single-handedly played against his opponent. Spassky, known for his perceived dourness, meanwhile had the backing of the Soviet chess machine—the greatest chess-playing nation on earth—behind him. In a sense, they were conscripts of their nation’s war. Fischer won, and while he might have been a national Pawn, he was the King of chess.

But what made the person who was so frightening on the chessboard so frightened of the real world? Exiling from chess, he became anti-Semitic, anti-America, anti-isms. As Edward Rothstein of The New York Times suggests, in the confines of the chessboard, Fischer was probably at peace with himself because he understood the disturbance that befuddle positions. He comprehended the individual pieces’ dynamics and synergies. Yet when it came to real life, faced with events he did not have control over, he faltered. In the black-and-white finality of the chessboard, he saw magic. But in the often blurred gray of reality, he saw madness. In a way, chess became his reality—for him, “chess is life.”

Bobby Fischer died at the relatively young age of 64. In a perverse way, it was probably destined. Fischer will forever be remembered as the King of the 64-square chessboard.

For Bobby Fischer, ZACH HAN checkmates you from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

On Clinton’s speech

2009-02-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

Published 01-17-2008 in The California Aggie

There couldn’t have been a better prelude. The blazing winds roared, the winter iciness chilled, and the atmosphere was electric. Yet it was merely a brewing anticipation before an even bigger storm inside the ARC Pavilion. Davis, a relatively quiet town, thundered to life in welcoming President Bill Clinton’s arrival—undoubtedly the most famous personality to visit UC Davis in recent years.

Listening to Bill Clinton speak is like listening to two powerful messages being spoken at once. On the one hand, he imbues you with a certain warmth, while on the other he engages you with his hope, intention and vision for the country.

As a person, Clinton is easily charming, if not mesmeric. While he appears avuncular, easily mistaken for your next-door uncle, he impresses the audience with a deft sureness in his voice. Gracefully, his speech achieves a balance between rapport and rapture, passion and polish.

As an elder statesman, meanwhile, Clinton is dignified and knowledgeable. Fondly reminiscing, he recalls the progress he made during his term in the White House while diligently explaining the complex challenges the nation currently faces and his wife’s plans for solving them. He doesn’t mince or wince while he convinces.

When he finishes his delivery, the gravity of the moment seemingly descends, and the audience, transfixed, spontaneously rises to a mind-numbing ovation. The performance is over. The audience appreciates, even loves it. A great chapter is relived, delivered aptly by a great orator.

Yet one could almost feel a certain degree of irony about the message of his campaigning for Mrs. Hillary.

In his speech, President Clinton outlined precise reasons for her victory. Yet at times his words seemed almost contradictory. “Every election [is] about [the] future,” he remarks, yet it is difficult to imagine his reoccupation of the White House as the future, simply because a Hillary presidency is seemingly an invitation to relive the previous Clintonian times and the challenges that accompanied it. In this sense, her candidacy is not the “tomorrow” he promises but rather the “yesterday.”

A fundamental problem here, as noted by UC Davis Professor Walter Stone, an expert on elections and electoral behavior, is the polarization and partisanship that has long permeated the national mood. This feature started with President Reagan’s triumph in the Southern states during the 1980s which opened a culture of division—characterized mainly by an unwillingness to compromise.

In a way, this division is a subscription to a culture of absolutism, where issues are defined in complete rights and wrongs. Actions by certain parties are often denounced by their opposition, sometimes for purely ideological reasons. Mutual understanding appears to be a word from a historical era. The fact that not too long ago the U.S. Senate Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid called President Bush a “loser” and a “liar” only further illustrates the degree of this system’s brokenness.

Here’s where the dilemma lies. Part of a president’s duty, President Clinton mentioned, is to “empower other people.” Nobody doubts his charisma or ability to accomplish that task, yet the candidate isn’t Bill but rather, Hillary. It is difficult envisioning the creation of a positive climate for discussion in Washington should Hillary be elected, as her past reputation for being too polarizing are potentially disempowering. If the national polls indicating a youth age-group leaning towards a “change” message, the somewhat lackluster response to the President’s mention of Mrs. Hillary was deafening. The anticipated chants, simply said, were conspicuous by their absence.

Ultimately, what President Clinton believes might or might not be the best for the nation. The voters will decide. But for once, UC Davis will be grateful for the opportunity to listen to President Clinton speak in person. We saw a former President who was dignified, respectful and presidential. Braving the chilly winds of the winter season was merely a small price to pay.

Tell ZACH HAN your experiences and opinions in listening to President Clinton speak at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Of anger, tears and tones

2009-02-12T20:13:00.001-08:00

Published 01-10-2008 in The California Aggie

Call it the Comeback Kid II’s story, the status quo’s return, or even maybe the simple confirmation that New Hampshire never follows Iowa’s lead. What is certain, though, is that the NH Democratic primary results asked more questions than it answered—especially of the press.

In the days preceding the primary, polls predicted another empathic Obama victory. Riding on the crest of what he calls the “wave” generated by his Iowa triumph, Obama’s momentum appeared unstoppable, with the media estimating a double-digit lead over Hillary. Her campaign, accordingly, was all but over should she suffer a second successive loss—and it looked to be heading that way.

Yet in a stunning reversal, Hillary won. Despite an admittedly narrow two percent victory margin, the polls were wrong. Many explanations are probable. The independents, perhaps sensing that Obama’s commanding poll lead was a guarantor of triumph, could have voted for another favorite, Senator John McCain, in the Republican primary. Perhaps, as some speculated, NH residents didn’t decide until the last minute. Anything, simply said, was possible.

Critically, however, were two crucial actions—or rather, their impact—that commentators misinterpreted. The first was Hillary’s moment of “anger” during the NH debate. Many journalists, for instance, seized upon her reaction, with the Huffington Post reporting that she “fumed”, while TIME magazine graded Obama’s performance as an “A-” and Hillary’s as a “B”. In that debate, Obama, according to much of the media, seemed presidential, responding intelligently.

What they failed to anticipate was that Hillary’s passion was resonant. From the lofty viewpoint of journalism, some viewed her “anger” as un-presidential. Yet, for the average voter, that moment was probably empathic. Seated oppositely against two candidates proclaiming “change”, Hillary seemed cornered. But she didn’t yield. In a passionate defense, Hillary resisted, displaying a willingness to not shy away from a challenge. Andrew Sullivan—the prominent conservative commentator—summed it succinctly when he speculated that the women voters “backlash[ed] … against the media's coronation of Obama.”

Another moment was Hillary’s “tears.” The media hollered, some comparing it to Howard Dean’s infamous 2004 “scream.” Others even questioned whether it was a calculated political move. But what was fully evident was her wanting the job, and fighting for it. Whether it was sincere—and it appeared genuine—wasn’t the main issue. Voters saw her passion, and in a manner many rank-and-file voters could have only connected with, Hillary’s role seemed reversed to that of an underdog battling against a media establishment favorite. Ironically, in a perverse way, the media’s reporting themselves wrote the narrative.

What matters, ultimately, is the tone and impact these two results have set.

Obama’s decisive Iowa victory, in a way, opened three important narratives. The first narrative resolves doubts of an African American candidate’s “electability”, as his triumph against two famous frontrunners in a state that is predominantly white illustrates.

The second narrative symbolizes what could possibly be a unique type of political coalition that actually works: a coalition that transcends the generational and ideological debate. Generational because its principles seek to undermine the Boomer and post-Boomer division; ideological because it also seeks to encompass the wider electorate rather than encumber with bitter partisanship. In winning the caucus with a coalition that doesn’t discriminate partisan stripes or ideological forms, it is uniquely based on inclusion rather than preclusion. It is, in Obama’s words, “addition”, not “division.”

Perhaps most importantly, the final narrative reflects an electorate triumph: increasing voter consciousness. In Iowa, voters turned out in unprecedented numbers, literally doubling the previous elections figure. This is not a validation of chance, but a confirmation of a national consciousness.

What these two results tell us is democracy speaking.

The rollercoaster rides of Iowa and New Hampshire results have surprised ZACH HAN, but he will still reply your emails from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

The Obama revolution

2009-02-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

Published 12-06-2007 in The California Aggie

Obama’s recent surge in Iowa is a classic American story: in true American fashion the underdog roars back to life against the frontrunner, with only the finale of the underdog’s ultimate victory lacking. Yet just a few weeks ago, commentators widely predicted the procession of another Clintonian dynasty. Hillary’s coronation, with her campaign bearing all the hallmarks of her husband’s famous, efficient political juggernaut, seemed a done deal. Instead, the machinery’s march now seemingly slows, if not grinding to a halt, against an entity that is more abstract–what Obama quotes as “not calculation but conviction.”

Obama’s renaissance culminated with his outstanding speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner – a reminiscence of his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. The subsequent media coverage only reminded us why many initially became enamored with him: that powerful rhetoric, that magnetic tenor and that passionate conviction. We relived the appeal that made us feel good and made us hopeful. Most importantly, we are noticing a change.

This election is about race and gender, yet it is also more about getting past them. The fact that we actively contemplate a diversion into uncharted territory illustrates our progress from skepticism to our readiness to embrace new possibilities. We might not agree on an Obama candidacy, but we care enough to discuss and debate our fundamental differences.

In a way, Obama’s candidacy signifies the inevitable generational passage. Obama’s personal story, a unique blend of diversity, is often inspirational. Yet it isn’t merely about what his life narrative is – it is also about what his life narrative isn’t. As some commentators note, Obama doesn’t carry the excesses of America’s past. He is post-civil rights, post-gender rights, post-Vietnam and post-Baby Boomer. Unlike other candidates, this post-ism is Obama’s unburden. In his focus on the future without past constraints, the persuasion for change rankles.

This change demands reason. Today’s increasingly complex world presents novel challenges, and the case for judgment grows louder. As the influential the New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, Obama presciently called for military action in Pakistan, should it be necessary–President Musharraf’s recent Constitution suspension illustrates President Bush’s folly of clinging to perceived allies–as well as denouncing the Iraq war.

And this change personifies what America needs now. In his eloquent and incisive The Atlantic article, Andrew Sullivan, a prominent conservative commentator, believes that Obama’s candidacy arrives at a critical juncture–the precise moment when America clamors for a uniting narrative. Accordingly, America faces myriad challenges not only from Islamic fundamentalism and environmental problems, but to the interchanging political dynamics of China’s ascension. The time for change is now.

This need for unity appears in America’s dichotomous interests. The Republican fear-mongering works because they appeal to our innate fear. They succeed because we empathize with temporality of our own lives and we sympathize with difficult predicaments. Yet to constantly focus on the past is to constantly forsake future opportunities. In aligning to partisanship, we are allowing ideology, not reason, to define us.

As divided as America is, the American way has always been to believe that we triumph by putting our hearts and minds into overcoming challenges. To succeed, we need to believe in possibilities rather than fear possibilities. Obama’s remark “Let us reach for what we know is possible” represents that exactly—to transcend our differences.

Critiques about this phenomenon are growing by the day, and the magnitude of the cacophony is remarkable. TIME magazine’s Dec 10^th edition profiles Obama’s case, as do a slew of other commentaries. And in these critiques, we notice change. We hear voices that offer us the chance to move past our past divisions. We see the opportunity to overcome our ideological and electoral differences.

We are seeing an Obama revolution.

ZACH HAN believes that Obama’s revolution is gaining momentum, and is waiting to hear the good news from Iowa in January. Email him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu if you believe it too.

Our global arch

2009-02-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

Published 11-29-2007 in The California Aggie

Dr. Jon Rittenhouse’s inspiring lecture “Postmodernism in Our Society” on November 14^th was a critical critique of postmodernism’s role in today’s society. Yet while his lecture was clear and resonant, postmodernism’s conception and reality is rather more ambiguous.

Postmodernism proclaims that our era is a hodgepodge of randomness, as postmodernism itself is the engage of the unknown, the independent and the abstract. It rejects all forms of universals, demands not the absolute but the arbitrary and declares that we are a society without direction. In this context, our presence manifests itself by its absence.

Yet people clamor for an overarching narrative – for reaffirmation, for a more noble purpose or even simply for a sense of adrenaline. Seemingly, without a clear direction we are a people without identity and without intention. Our lives, then, become not existential but empty.

So, if the civil rights and gender movements defined the 1960s and 1970s, if the communism versus capitalism debate defined the 1970s and 1980s and if the technological advancements defined the 1990s, what defines today’s story? The West versus “Islamic” fundamentalists?

Simply said, the great defining moment of our generation is arguably the arch that unites us all: globalization.

Globalization connects people. As individuals, we are shaped by the people we meet and by those we talk or don’t talk to. In observing and assimilating the behavior, beliefs and attitudes of the people and community around us, we adopt cultures and the lives of others.

And the electronic media dramatically magnifies this outreach. From far-flung locations, the media screens videos and images of violent demonstrations, of religious dichotomies and of excruciating poverty. In viewing, we see differences and similarities: injustice, prejudice, kindness and wealth. While we might not always reach out, we see. Seeing, simply said, is believing. It expands perspective, implores us to act and provokes us to speak. In fulfilling that role, the electronic media emerges as the most democratic form of liberation.

In interconnectivity, we discover worlds and choices we never knew previously. Instead of depending on literary tomes or word of mouth, we simply travel. Instead of spending on individual gadgets, we buy all-in-one packages such as the iPhone. Our lives evolve for the better.

Accessibility to information diffuses power. While in the past, dictators reigned by spreading fear and suppressing radicals, internet now dismantles this culture. Through blogs we organize rallies and voice discontent. In sharing information, the masses learn about government excesses and revolt accordingly. Hence, the internet emerges as the new checks and balances on executive authority. Power now isn’t merely the pejorative of the elite, but instead spreads to the middle-class.

Globalization offers variety. In finance, Treasury bonds are no longer the sole prestigious attraction. Instead, investors increasingly switch to Euro-denominated assets. New York no longer holds the distinction as the world’s primary financial center. Instead, London does. The rise of China and the growing stature of the European Union proffer alternatives to America.

Nations, moreover, have become so interdependent to each other that internal instabilities no longer proscribe to within nations. Al-Qaeda’s proliferation in Pakistan, for instance, directly threatens America and the world’s security. Through accessibility to technological prowess and nuclear knowhow, the calculus of international relations alters. Nations are no longer islands by themselves. Instead, in accessibility, boundaries disappear.

What does this future promise us? Well, we become a network of interactivity, as social fabrics intertwine through Facebook and MySpace. As a microcosm of a larger whole, we see how our actions, however innocuous, affect those halfway around the world. And the novelty that this challenge presents offers us an important message: we have to keep idealizing, improving and innovating.

Globalization means you can also contact ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

No interference

2009-02-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Published 11-15-2007 in The California Aggie

General Musharraf’s recent declaration of a state of emergency and suspension of Pakistan’s national Constitution recasts another scepter of doubt over America’s foreign policy. Throughout Gen. Musharraf’s rule, America supportively aided his government – viewed as a key American ally in combating terror – often with monetary aid.

This situation exacerbates the problems Pakistan faces. A few weeks ago, Newsweek’s cover story proclaimed Pakistan, not Iraq, as the most dangerous country in the world. Accordingly, with the public increasingly dissatisfied with Gen. Musharraf’s rule and Pakistan’s emergence as a safe haven for terrorist activities, the consequences should Pakistan’s nuclear weaponry fall into the wrong hands will be disastrous.

These events highlight the dilemma of international relations. Unpredictable as relations between countries are, America’s staunch support to her allies does not guarantee that they will always heed our advice.

And what if America’s actions are fundamentally wrong?

David Brooks, the esteemed New York Times columnist, remarks that humanity’s conflicts essentially classifies into two prominent ideas. The first strand believes that nations are “riven by deep cultural divides,” as differences in language, religion and attitudes polarize. According to this logic, a state should not interfere with another sovereign nation’s internal problems. Instead, countries with their unique narratives of history, people and cultures understand their problems best to find their own solutions.

Many experts attribute our prolonged dilemma in Iraq to this problem – we initially knew too little about a war we entered. Thus, we became entangled when the establishment of one group over another led not to instant collaboration, but to overdue revenge.

The other school of thought advocates a belief that the human community essentially upholds “shared, universal values.” As humans essentially are the same biological species with the same wants and needs, this thought champions the importance of embracing common values, such as the right to free speech. Policies based upon this ideal emphasize active intervention, negotiation, outreach or, in extreme cases, military deployment to spread these virtues.

The latter thought has often characterized America’s foreign policy, as policymakers believe that our intervention is ultimately beneficial. By actively promoting and facilitating the process of diplomacy and international development, we empower other nations with the tools to grow as independent actors. Consequently, not only do we make America safer, we make the world a better place to live.

In basing our foreign policy on this ideal, though, that disagreements occur. The extent of our intervention is frequently a source of contentious conflict with other nations. When a former Malaysian Prime Minister famously rebuked America for acting as the “police of the world,” he was undoubtedly voicing his own opinions, but his words resonated loudly with others.

Nations, unless explicitly ask for help, might justifiably disdain international interference. Congress, for instance, often criticizes the Chinese government for their continual arms trade with the Sudanese regime, despite the Sudanese governments’ involvement in human genocide. Yet it isn’t driven by the intent of killing people that China continues to engage in the trade. It is about a different philosophy.

China believes that nations begin from the smallest units. Literally translated, the Chinese characters “guo jia” means a “country home.” These characters symbolize the importance of family stability – for, according to this belief, someone who cannot govern his own house is unfit to rule a nation. Because a country starts with the smallest units – culminating in the nation – countries facing problems are deemed missing this crucial link. Thus, a nation will achieve progress only when they start building on from the family.

Until we start understanding each other, we’ll keep repeating the same mistakes.

Questions? Comments? Email ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Our Facebook Obsession

2009-02-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

Published 11-8-2007 in The California Aggie

Google’s recent unveiling of the OpenSocial system is a clear statement of intent – it is an intention for dominance. At a technical level, the Google initiative attempts to standardize application procedures, thus enabling every program developer’s platforms to cater across all social network sites.

The alternate viewpoint is that this goal brings potentially difficult consequences. To equip each site with universalized, similar features is to dangerously produce a mass-commercialized commodity. Directly, it threatens each entities’ unique identity and defining character. They risk becoming commonplace.

Google’s underlying reason is unmistakable, however. The reason is that standardization broadens Google’s influence in the social networking sphere.

Rather than acting as a means of entertainment, utilitarianism or information, social networking sites primarily glorify human relations. Often, they function by creating and strengthening relationships through bytes rather than beers. In this realm, everyday people are main actors – the face of social networks, literally taken at face value. And who better to explain this phenomenon other than Facebook?

Facebook fulfills dreams. It allows us to be the person we want to be, at least in the internet world. Providently, Facebook inflates one’s conception of self-importance, and vice-versa. The profile additions by individuals every few minutes can be affirmations to one’s existence, with the amount of wall posts acting as complements to one’s popularity. Gaming applications, such as Vampires, add excitement. We also become active participants in joining groups and proclaiming support to presidential candidates. All these act to validate one’s expectation.

Facebook exemplifies our voyeurism. In long stretches, it fulfills our innate longing to observing others in privacy, as well as reaching out at opportune moments. In watching posted videos of politicians bumbling or photos of our peers drunken escapades, we sometimes sneer, even satirize. We also express sympathy and poignantly empathize when we collectively mourn the passing of a friend, their Facebook walls engraving remnants of our recollections. Subconsciously, we even delightedly consume information of the downright arbitrary and trivial: “ABC is ARGHHH” and “XYZ is thinking.” We become observing participants, watching through the fluorescent cloak of a liquid display screen.

Aggregately, Facebook’s impact often compares to a mass-produced modern yearbook. Information and details are compiled, stored and constantly updated. As recipients, we choose to read and reread, displaying an interest of another’s life. Yet, in choosing to sometimes obsessively monitor the lives of others, we are forsaking our own narrative of excitement and adventure. Facebook doesn’t merely add to our story – it emerges as our story.

The irony is that as the primary beneficiaries, we are also the primary losers. We can easily scribble wall messages and send online gifts, neglecting the consuming manual labor taken to writing postcards or sending actual gifts. Undoubtedly, social networks function through maintenance – in this case, absence is presence, because it reflects a different form of outreach. However, it is a presence without the essential human quality and maintenance without the human touch. Our relationships become digitalized, not actualized.

In previously declining Yahoo!’s 900 million dollar offer, Facebook’s founder, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg remarked that he was more interested in witnessing the cosmic growth of the vast social network. His remark was quietly innocuous, but he was audibly echoing our conceptions about the future importance of social networks.

The future of that world is one where the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, enmeshed in layers of virtual ideals. It is a world where our expectations are shaped and impressions are reinforced through online profiles. The dangers – and possibilities – are numerous.

ZACH HAN will facebook you from zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

A Writer’s Dilemma

2009-02-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

Published 11-1-2007 in The California Aggie

As writers, we seem to have this innate tendency to speak about ourselves. Call it narcissism, but one thing we cannot seem to agree on is who we are and what writing is. Last week, The California Aggie columnist Koji Frahm mentioned that writing is naturally subjective, while last year, Adam suggested that writing is a form of art. Their themes differ, but both concur on one issue: writing as a discipline is difficult to define.

The reason for this fixation is that writing is protean, shapeless and abstract. Writing has no fixed purpose, except for the response and feeling it elicits in its reader. Henceforth, writing is both an art and a science, as it is open to interpretation and yet requires a fundamental set of laws to thrive.

One prominent essayist once remarked that writers become writers because they are only willing to look inside their heads. Accusingly, he believes that rather than conscientiously experiment the way scientists do or physically struggle the way sportspeople do, writers lazily prefer to dwell in the liberty of their imagination.

So, depending on the breadth they explore, writers deliberate truths, exaggerate half-truths, articulate recollections, fabricate stories or even concoct lies. Precisely because writing is a product of the imagination, a writer’s boundaries are limited only by constraints of the human mind. Unhindered, a writer’s ideas could roam free in feverish passion and unrestrained abandon, or navigate carefully in thoughtful reason.

In attempting to elucidate the clarity their subject demands, a writer confronts two choices. One is to distort order and to envelope the arbitrary. A subject, by itself, can be static. A writer, thus, has an obligation to capture its meaning and describe it in precise terms. Their job is to engage in the abstract and the unknown.

The other is to embrace order and to comprehend the chaotic randomness. This way, by following a set of conventions, writers translate real world confusion into known percepts. Both, ultimately, require us to realign the cosmic truth into a coherent thought and reconcile contradicting strands into an organized one.

And writers determine the conversational agenda. The means to create this conversation, fortunately, is plentiful. They can choose to delight, to humor, to inform, to contrast, to humiliate, to satire and to instruct. Through a monopoly of words, writers can manipulate figures of speech to great effect. To choose one word over another is to magnify a miniscule into a massive contrast, and vice-versa. Easily, the difference of a single alphabet can manifest the story with an entirely new identity.

The rhythm and unity of words, moreover, creates a pattern. Alone, words can sound detached, repetitive, aloof and prosaic. Weave it with competence, and the text becomes a statement of intent. Weave it with mastery, attention and insight, however, and words becomes married, harmonic and resonant. Previously dormant, words have now sprung from its stupor, raging as a formidable and unyielding force. In capturing the very essence of objects, words make them subjects and scripts by themselves.

Writers also encode the gravitas of issues in metaphorical symbols and hyperbolic cues. These identities add mystery, convey nuance and deliver ironies. In a cheeky impunity, they masquerade, begging the reader to solve them. Achieving that feat, often, is to validate our insecurities and to reaffirm our worth.

Moreover, the brevity of words suggests an inherent representation of lifelessness. Typically, people view alphabets as a distinct set of adjoined characters. But, similar to human beauty, the curves of a written word can be equally erotic, purposeful and attractive. It can be alive.

As elocutionists of speech and imagination, writers purport to recognize and purvey the truths and flaws of this world. That can be true. Because writing is defined not only by distinct certainty but often by shades of ambiguity, the world in which writers live in is one rich with identity, subtlety, and character. It is a world with limitless definition.

Write, write and write to ZACH HAN at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

The French Connection

2009-02-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

Published 10-25-2007 in The California Aggie

The recent one-day work strike in France was a clear message to Premier Nicolas Sarkozy: the French do not welcome the adoption of American ideals to their nation. Since assuming office, Mr. Sarkozy has for weeks taken measures that many viewed as inherently pro-American. In the shortness of the protests, though – France is famed for long forceful revolts and revolutions – the French seem to be accepting the precariousness of their economic standing.

France is a nation defined by its past as much as it is by its present. Mention France and vivid images of romanticism, liberalism and intellectuals appear. In popular culture, meanwhile, the French are often parodied as the emblem of snobbery, evident in their taste for the haute couture and classy lavishness.

Modern France, however, is not the economic powerhouse she once was. Unemployment is high and bills of a 35-hour workweek have been enacted to law. One can’t help but wonder if France knows how to overcome her economic quagmire. For a nation that led the Enlightenment, the irony of France’s current situation is that France is confused about her own economic direction.

The global capitalist world is one that demands vigilance and industry. In its perfect form, capitalism asks for a meeting of needs, where a free interaction of mutual wants occurs through the marketplace. Precisely because it is the avenue where buyer meets seller and supply meets demand, exchanges are conducted when both parties are capable of fulfilling these needs. To ensure the smooth operation of this mechanism is to ensure that both parties can deliver the goods.

France’s economic malaise has roots in its labor force. For most people, more work is generally an unwelcome distinction. But as Mr. Roger Cohen, the respected International Herald Tribune columnist, remarked, the French take it to one extreme: they believe that work is an act of “exploitation.” According to the French philosophy, an idle time is the period when the human intellectual capacity is at its most active phase, when man could contemplatively study life’s vagaries and the comprehensively understand societies’ problems. Henceforth, a greater amount of labor is tantamount to serfdom, because man is then deprived the time to reason, to think and to contribute.

Contrast the French sneer to work with the American concept of long working hours. In America, freedom is often equated with the equality of opportunity to climb the social and professional ladder, as long as one is willing to invest the necessary energy and enthusiasm. In France, freedom is defined by the liberty to think independently, comprehend rigorously and act justifiably. This disconnect is a difference in philosophy: The French emphasize an intellectual richness rather than a monetary richness.

And this psyche could probably trace its roots to the nations’ respective national heroes. In the American capitalist mindset, our heroes are frequently the elegantly dressed Wall Street investment executives, the financial planners and the business owners. In France, their heroes are the revolutionary Enlightenment philosophers. Success in France often entails the ability to quote eloquent lines from agricultural peasants at a dinner table.

Mr. Cohen believes that the French renaissance at the world stage is necessary for Europe to finally counterbalance itself as the dual superpower to America. France, he believes, holds the key to this vision. In a way, for France to lead is akin to a Gallic remobilization to re-revolutionizing schools of thought once again. This success will depend on how receptive the French will be towards Mr. Sarkozy’s calls, as legions of thinkers rethink their priorities.

History offers us an insight into the past, but history has a tendency to repeat itself. Long live the republic!

ZACH HAN sneers at the amount of work he has this week, but still welcomes your emails to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

The Quiet Revolution

2009-02-12T19:40:00.000-08:00

Published 10-18-2007 in The California Aggie

Nicholas Handler, a Yale junior, recently won The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine Essay Competition with his entry “The Posteverything Generation.” The essay was a response to historian Rick Perlstein’s op-ed assertion that modern college is losing its relevance; according to Perlstein, current colleges are unable to inspire youths unlike previously, when campus demonstrations and social activism were the norm.

Online responses to the winning essay were critical. Some commented that the essay was a blatant example of Ivy League elitism, detached from the realities of everyday mortals. Others blamed the apparent ornate mechanics of the writing, calling it “pretentious.”

Style, I believe, is a statement of fashion. It represents society’s changing norms, where language’s dynamics speak loud about political and cultural issues. It is not merely a symbolic decoration, but reflects the author’s choice to achieving clarity and cohesion. It allows the author to prompt and probe in a manner that befits his objectives. It is Handler’s right to elaborate in the way that allows him to express himself best.

The most constructive criticisms, though, were centered not on the style of the piece but rather the substance of it.

According to his critique, we’re a post-everything generation. Consequently, while the form might not be the same, today’s youths are involved in a similar, if quiet, revolution. Instead of public street protests, we engage in an online discourse, contribute to special-interest causes, sign petitions and make small-money contributions. While we don’t channel our energies into directly rebellious protests, we seek other, often subtle, ways to influence change, such as through chat rooms and online forums.

It is easy to accuse such participation as one of convenience and passivity. But such a stark contrast to the campus revolutionary energy of the 1960s and 1970s is an inevitable byproduct. In a way, the earlier revolutions established new major schools of thought, especially in areas of economic reasoning and political theory. While crucial areas such as racial discrimination and gender inequality are still a work in progress, significant progress has been achieved. In the upcoming Democratic primary elections, we have a woman and a colored candidate leading the polls for the most powerful position in the world.

Indeed, internet’s ascent means that our way of life has been radically altered. While we now live in an era of relative wealth, unparalleled prosperity and technological modernity, the most important feature of the post-everything generation is that it is a narrative in which we all are active participants.

YouTube means we all are our own content-creators and directors. Blogs provide us the platform to voice our opinions to large audiences. No longer are holed-up ivory tower academics the sole bastions of authority, but also the everyday people willing to research and type up entries into Wikipedia. In short, the post-everything era seeks intimacy and immediacy.

The 1960 and 1970s campus demonstrations are a poignant remnant of our past. Having said that, the engagement of youthful energy, or what some have termed “creative destruction”, is vital.

But the means to achieve that goal have changed. To disrupt the pre-existing order through the application of force is arguably more counterproductive than beneficial, and should only be a resort when all other means have failed. Forceful revolutions are disruptive and chaotic, a barrier to progress rather than an avenue to growth. We are presented with the opportunity to facilitate change through a virtual world, a challenge we should fully utilize to lead in the new economy.

As a post-everything generation, even if our quiet revolution fails, we are writing our own story. That, I believe, is an achievement. In the end, even if we lose, we still win.

ZACH HAN welcomes all your comments again to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.