One Fine Day

I am having a good day.

This morning I woke up early, and attended a presentation at the National Democracy Insititute, a major player in international political development/ democracy promotion. They were recapping the November 7 elections in authoritarian Burma, but more than that, they were demonstrating a new project/ platform that combined GIS mapping reported elections fraud with first-person narrative citizen reporting of the events. Rapid, compelling, grassroots, and almost NPRish in its earnestness. The application in Burma - a country with relatively limited communications tech and a highly repressive regime - was only tangentially of interest to me. Mostly, I wanted to know about its application in other, less severe, environments (like those in Central Asia where I am more interested).

After the presentation, I met with the NDI staff responsible for their Kyrgyz programs, and got to talk a little "shop" with him in the lobby. I'm working on some independent research, and having trouble getting access to a few government reports which this new contact, Alex, volunteered to help me locate. Double-plus.

We were interrupted, briefly, by Ian Schuler, one of the panelists and the guy behind the new technology platform. He found my questions intriguing, and wanted to follow up with me about the challenges of application outside Burma and discuss what systemic biases they might encounter. I handed out a few business cards, then had to be on my way. Like I have for the past 2 months, I had 5.5 hours of work to do as a receptionist at the World Resources Institute.

It was raining, so for the first time in almost 3 weeks, I didn't ride a Capital Bikeshare rent-a-bike over to the offices near Union Station. Since joining the annual membership in mid-September, I've saved $104 in metro fare. Minus the $50 annual membership and the $26 I paid for a helmet, and I'm already $28 in the black, with a few weeks of fall and all of Spring and Summer still to take advantage.

At work, I started the day as I always do reviewing news relevant to Central Asia, and posting an item of interest on my new twitter feed - @richardrweber. It's not designed to be a fun, personal kind of twitter. It is very professionally oriented, and almost exclusively designed to get me better connected with other regional experts in the hopes that this leads to a job. Toward that end, it's been pretty successful. Back in October, I also started a new blog - Shashlykistan - which is also devoted to my semi-professional analysis of Kyrgyz and Central Asian political, economic and social developments. Initially, it was a way to force me to keep up with events, and hone some writing, research, and analytic skills. With the holding of parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan on October 10, I found myself opportunely positioned to access and write about these elections, and their resulting parliament. Much of what I discovered had not previously been mentioned in other news sources, so I passed it along to some contacts I have in Bishkek, Prague, and professors at Columbia.

Sanity Rally pt 3 - Politics as Unusual

In the lead up to Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington DC on October 30, it seems the major media talking points were:

1. What secret political message would Jon Stewart insert into his supposedly 'apolitical' event?
2. What impact would he have on the upcoming Midterm elections?

No matter how much he protested, or how many different news outlets he appeared on - Larry King Live, NPR's Fresh Air - no one believed Jon Stewart when he (repeatedly) promised that his rally would not be political in content.

And low-and-behold, it wasn't. There were Zero politicians involved in the rally, no political talking points, and no references (snide or supporting) to political candidates. A day before Halloween, and there wasn't even a single Christine O'Donnell/ Witch joke.

Stewart & company went to great length to deliver exactly what they promised - a major rally in the nation's capital just 3 days before the midterm election that wasn't about politics.

Real Conversations about False Politics

On the eve of the US midterm elections, I decided to write a letter to my grandfather-in-law. Like many of his generation, and many on my side of the family as well, Paul aligns - loosely- as a conservative. Even that labels is inadequate, as it suggests adherence to a variety of social, political, and economic affiliations that I don't even know how he feels about. We've never discussed abortion, the death penalty, education policy, unwed motherhood, FCC regulatory policy, privacy rights, gun rights, marriage rights, or really many of the other hot-button political cliches.

We've talked about the military - Paul was a lifelong Army man - and generally agree that the men and women in uniform deserve almost unending respect and leaders worthy of their commitment.

Mostly, our discussions have pivoted not so much on issues, but rather on politics itself, with the media - and here I mean explicitly Fox News - as the driving element. Paul watches Fox, and again, I don't want that to suggest that he agrees with everything said on that 24/7 talk machine. I get most of my US news from the New York Times, NPR, or - I have to admit - the Daily Show. I also don't always align exactly with the manner in which certain stories are covered, or the editorial choices of what is - or is not - newsworthy.

But on this Election Day 2010, I wanted to share some of my thoughts with Paul, after receiving a series of e-mails from him over the past few months in the run up to the election. That e-mail - edited to omit family banter and add some context - appears below, and in it I put forward some of my observations. These come from attending recent 'non-political' rallies held in DC by Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart, as well as daily monitoring of various on-line news sources throughout the closing months of the campaign. It also builds on my studies - and ideal career path - as an international democracy promotions analyst, helping foreign countries install, fortify, and improve systems of electoral democracy. What one finds often in such work is that 'golden rules' of democracy abroad - like nonpartisan elections committees and identifiable campaign contributors - are often ignored at home.

Sanity Rally pt 2 - Attendance Size Doesn't Matter (But Mine's Bigger?)

Near the beginning of his October 31 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall, Comedy Central host Jon Stewart made a few tongue-in-cheek remarks:

"As you all know, a Rally's success is judged only by two things: How Many people show up, and the diversity of those people."

He went on to explain that any gathering that was overwhelmingly white was, by assumption, racist; while any gathering that was overwhelmingly non-white must be demanding something that "we" didn't want to give them - voting rights, seats at a restaurant, etc.

He also jibed - "Early reports coming in place our attendance today at approximately 10 million... or was it 6 billion?"

The early points Stewart wanted to underline were:
1) The substance of a rally can actually be more important than the size of its audience.
2) 'Diversity' is a coded word for racial/ethnic mixing, when in fact other categorizations - age, profession, income - or even nuanced concerns like rational opinion - might be more important factors, even if they more difficult to immediately identify.

Fine and good. Point made, point taken. Stewart's Rally permit for the National Mall allowed for up to 60,000 people and no one is suggesting fewer than that showed up. Additionally, any 3 hour event broadcast live on national TV, with additional live coverage on multiple other channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and others), as well as 4 millions on-line viewers doesn't need to make a big deal about how many supporters it has.

Sanity Rally pt 1 - Knee-jerk Reactions

On Friday, October 29, I wrote the following as part of a "Pre-Rally Prognostication" blog in anticipation of the upcoming Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear presented on the National Mall by Jon Stewart and Comedy Central.

True to my word, I am following up on my predictions, and here posting some quick, initial reactions, as well as my string of Twitter posts made live from the rally.

More thorough, and thoughtful, analysis will follow.

What I expect from the Rally is this:

1) It will be a predominantly younger crowd (median age in the late 20s/ early 30s)
2) It will be otherwise very diverse in terms of race, profession, religion, etc.
3) There will be lots of jokes aimed at both Democrats and Republicans
4) It will not be politically focused, perhaps not even having a strong politically neutral "get out the vote" message.
5) It will be a lot of fun.

Let's break that down one at a time.