ARRIVAL IN DALLAS, TEXAS. UPFRONT CONFRONTATION WITH POLITICS
Dallas, Texas, Thursday, 04 September 2008

Life in airports is pretty bland. I suppose, however, that that’s its chief attraction. After all, who wants excitements, breakdowns, frustrations and lost baggage when all you are trying to do is get from one airport to another with the least possible hassle. Of course, it's all a huge “people-moving” task, to which, sheep-like, we submit ourselves in the interest of smooth flow, and we are lucky if the staff are at least friendly. We expect everything to go smoothly, and airlines and airport authorities generally fulfil their functions admirably. Nor wind nor snow nor sleet … and all that.

Our travel programme to get back to Ecuador is a little complicated since we are making a week-long stop in Dallas to stay with my younger sister and to visit my 93-year-old mother in her nursing home. Hurricane “Gustav” passed through New Orleans yesterday. Although it did not wreak the damage anticipated, the airport there has apparently still to re-open. I therefore happily wind up on the same Southwestern Airlines flight with Kathleen. Instead of New Orleans, we changed planes at Chicago Midway and boarded a flight there that was direct to Dallas with a quick stop in Kansas City. All over the mid- and southwestern U.S.A. the skies are heavily clouded and temperatures were cool as “Gustav” sucks in or distributes colder air across the continent. But, no delays to flights. We set down at Dallas´ “Love Field” in the early afternoon and my sister is there at curb-side by the time we have our luggage off the belt.

The luggage issue is huge for us because of all the boat stuff we have acquired over the last months to take back with us. We checked out which airlines permitted sufficient weights and pieces of luggage, since the financial crisis hitting the travel industry has apparently driven airlines to levying extra charges for carry-on luggage; $25 or $35 fees for a second checked piece of baggage are not longer exceptional. My return flight to Guayaquil starts off with Continental Airlines. But as the airlines come under stress from declining passenger numbers and rising fuel costs, they are adjusting by, for example, dropping flights. Now we fly to Houston with Continental and, at Continental’s instigation, the onward flight to Guayaquil is with COPA with a stop in Panama City. Oh, well! Both Southwestern Airlines domestically and Continental/COPA internationally at least permit two 50-pound suitcases per passenger plus a generous carry-on allowance plus a personal item like a laptop.

The night before we leave Catonsville is largely taken up with packing and re-packing ‘stuff’ until we have the weight spread around. Two large suitcases are filled almost exclusively with boat stuff including books and back numnbers of Harpers and The New Yorker and paperback books. These printed things get priority treatment since, by contrast to many sporty cruising types, we regard our cruising activity as an extended reading tour. The crew of every cruising boat in every faraway port knows this packing drill. We even have a new 30 gal./min. Whale Gusher hand-operated bilge pump to replace our corroded-out old 25 gal/min bilge pump. Were we to ship it to Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, the costs and customs duties would be punitive. The last few times we have flown into Ecuador, Customs seem much more lenient in their treatment of tourist baggage at the airports. Pray!!! ‘If they get pernickety we shall plead special circumstances of bringing in items for a vessel in transit.

The airport parallel world

Now that, except for very occasional trips away from Vilisar, I have been out of the airport-travel parallel-world for many years, I am reminded, when I actually do enter an airport, of how far away from all this our life aboard Vilisar really is. Instead of quiet anchorages and some natural noises from the wind through the rigging or the occasional wave slapping the hull, here there are mobs of people, some younger ones marching purposefully through the airport to the taxi ranks and on to their next career appointment downtown, laptop slung over one shoulder, a wheeled carry-on suitcase in tow and a cellphone glued to one ear, but also a lot of tired and grey faces. There are squalling kids and a backdrop of CNN TV, people in loud private conversations on their cellphones and bland announcements over the airport loudspeaker system about curb-side car-parking, security in the terminal or smoking bans

Upfront confrontation with politics

On the 90-minute flight from Baltimore to Chicago, I sit next to a youngish-looking professional lady who sells computer-storage space to government agencies around the country. Of course, the conversation soon turns to politics. The Republican National Convention is on in Minneapolis at present and the vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, had delivered a rousing, “red-meat” acceptance speech on TV the night before. She is a terrifically entertaining speaker, even though the speech itself lacked any real content. It was in fact pretty much like a typical right-wing radio talk-show rant, except Palin’s speechwriters have made her far funnier than, say, Rush Limbaugh.

In my humble opinion, Pallin is young and dynamic, a female of course,but inappropriately self-confident. Republican justifiers will have you believe that she is the only one in the field of presidential and vice-presidential candidates with executive experience. She and her husband, after all, had a small tourist-related business in Alaska, if that qualifies. Being mayor of a town of five or six thousand souls doesn’t really cut it as executive experience and neither does even being governor of a state like Alaska, whose physical dimensions, topography, demography and current problems are totally different from those in the rest of America. She might just as well have come from a totally foreign country. Poverty, racism, infra-structure, deficits? Palin’s experience seems to be mainly a knack for getting the Federal Government to pay for things.

But that's Alaska for you. Voters there may regard themselves as survivalists, but in the whole population of fewer than 700,000 (any city, indeed any large housing project or big-cuty high school, anywhere in the world is bigger by far than the whole population of Alaska) a lot of people are Federal civil servants. Three-quarters of the surface of Alaska is federally-administered, the State managing only 25%. Only 1% is privately owned. Under the old statehood laws (an average of 6 persons per square mile), Alaska would never even have been granted statehood. It's best to think of Alaska like the French think of their Overseas Territories; i.e., Alaska is administered like St. Pierre et Miquelon. Every man, woman and child gets approx. $3,200 annually as a gift, their running share of royalties from Alaska’s huge natural resources. Since current oil shipments are running lower, it is only the current high price of oil that permits the State to continue these annual payments whilst keeping state taxes low. It also explains why the state wants so badly to drill in the protected wildlife areas. The pipeline from the north was built for 2 million gallons per day but is at present running at only 700,000 barrels per day. It doesn’t explain why Alaskans should be smothered in Federal subsidies, however, when it is more like Dubai: short on people and long on natural resources.

Palin’s politics don’t speak to me anyway: she’s against abortion under any circumstances whatsoever; she’s a big gun fan; hasn't two clues to rub together about international affairs; if she has any opinion about public finances or globilisation or free trade they have yet to be vouchsafed us, etc. etc. The experience of the Governor of Alaska or any other thinly-populated, resource-oriented state is not very likely to be of much use as President.

On top of that, I think she’s a total flake. Her being called to be vice-presidential nominee is like some sort of Disney movie about a small-town hockey mom who out of the blue becomes vice-president and, by a stroke of personal luck but national and international misfortune, is catapulted into the White House. Why not Paris Hilton? Does she in any way compare in experience to Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice or Nancy Pilosi? Pathetic! Or has the federal elections turned into "American Idol"?

All that said, airplanes are a great place to meet Americans from outside your normal circle of acquaintances. You are randomly seated next to strangers and both of you are trapped for a longer period with nothing much to do.

Kathleen and I were travelling through the USA during the last two presidential elections. I learned that it is a big mistake to base one’s predictions about the outcome of the elections on one’s subjective impressions. For example, everybody we talked to in 2000 was voting for Gore. Whatever you say about the Supreme Court tossing the election to Bush in 2000, the election itself turned out however to be a close-run thing and not the landslide for Gore I was naturally expecting from my subjective impressions in the months prior to the election. I was more cautious in 2004, therefore, and was not completely surprised that, despite a much higher overall turnout, Bush won by a hair – and won legitimately, if (despite some evidence to the contrary) we assume the digital voting machines had not been tampered with in Ohio and elsewhere.

Back to the ariplane. My seat-neighbour, as I mentioned, was a professional woman with two college degrees. She sells computer storage space, mainly, in her case, to the government and its agencies. She was a born-again Christian, “very patriotic”, loved Palin and McCain and hated Barack Obama and all his works. Obama doesn’t wear an American flag lapel-pin and doesn’t put his hand over his heart when he sings the national anthem, she told me; his tax plan will hit her directly given her income level; there is far too much government & taxes anyway (despite the fact that she makes her living selling to the government and despite the fact that she wants all levels of education to be free); Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. are all just for the lazy and greedy; everyone should carry a gun; Palin is terrific and has all kinds of executive experience; John McCain is a war hero and experienced internationally while Barack Obama was only a community organiser, whatever that is.

No, she is not from another planet; it's just the Republican Party line. It was the vehemence of her opinions that struck me and the fact that, if you hearken to the polls, half of the electorate agrees with her.

Ever since Obama won the Democratic nomination, his campaign has seemed lacklustre. He rode a wave of popular approval because he was so much more interesting and idealistic and capable-sounding than the dour and dowdy John McCain. Anyway, McCain was seen to be McSame or McBush: George W. Bush all over again. Now "The Barracuda" will be sent out to motivate the masses with her rantings, nipping at Obama’s heels and distracting the electorate from the real issues with her ad hominem personal attacks. McCain stands behind her, grinning: for the moment he's the organ-grinder watching his helper. You love to watch her in the same way you like to watch Saturday Night Live or The Daily Report. It's been ten days now and already we are wondering who that whie-haired guy with the shithouse grin is behind Sarah Pallin. "I am Sarah Palin and I approve this message."

And it’s working. She is siphoning off some undecided voters. Ever since she was nominated, McCain has even taken the lead in the popularity polls, if not in electoral-college predictions. So, unless Obama comes up with some antidote, unless he stops being relentlessly reasonable and logical, he might just lose this election. Time to take off the gloves. (Take a look at www.michaelmoore.com. He’s tearing his hair out and he’s right.)

This is turning into Palin’s election to lose. Never mind that if the organ-grinder becomes president he will keep her chained and muzzled or he is likely to find himself with another Spiro Agnew on his hands.