Hawaii, continued

I had never been on a cruise ship before, and I never would have gone except for Mom's invitation. It's not that often that Mom, Marian, Martha and me get together, and not since our Mexican Mennonite adventure in 2001, have we been together for a week. That experience alone made the trip memorable.

As for the cruise itself, it was much as I expected. Lots of freshly-scrubbed, red-faced, well-fed and pious Midwesterners, some with their children, and some with their parents. The food was very good, and there was lots of it. We ate mostly in the Aloha Cafe because no reservations were required, and the buffet had a constantly changing menu of mostly pretty good stuff. And they had BIG plates. You could really pile it on if you felt the need, and lots of those well-fed Midwesterners felt the need. I was reminded of Hal's story about standing in line at a big buffet somewhere and striking up a conversation with a rather corpulent man beside him in line. The corpulent man was complaining that one of the problems with being on vacation was that it was really easy to eat too much. Without thinking, Hal replied that it looked like he'd been on vacation for quite some time.

I didn't talk a whole lot of politics on board. Our President-elect came into the conversation on three occasions, and all three times the well-fed Midwesterners expressed some variation of the theme that Obama was a communist, a socialist, a baby-killer, a Moslem, or all of the above. For the most part, I held my tongue. I was badly outnumbered, and wouldn't have stood a chance if one of those church ladies sat on me. Some people might say, "But Walter, those people are really the salt of the earth." My reply would be, "To me they look more like the fat of the land."

I made some great choices of reading material for the trip. I managed to read 3-1/2 books on the trip, proving to me that my internet-induced-attention-deficit-disorder (IIADD) is not a chronic ailment, and given the right circumstances I can still focus and enjoy reading something longer than a web page. In additon to three complete New Yorker magazines, I read three books. They are: The Limits of Power, by Andrew J. Bacevich; Crash Proof, by Peter D. Schiff; and Deer Hunting with Jesus, by Joe Bageant. The Limits of Power and Crash Proof take on the same theme, but from different angles. Both books deal with the coming end of American power - The Limits of Power from a military and diplomatic point of view, and Crash Proof from an economic perspective. Both books essentially say that the American post-WWII preeminence was squandered by borrowing and consuming rather than saving and producing. I'd highly recommend both of them.

Deer Hunting with Jesus is a well-written and entertaining book about rednecks and white trash in a small town in Virginia. Sarah Palin would probably call it the "Real America." Joe Bageant is an aging Vietnam War vet who left town in the sixties and then returned to his roots 30 years later. In those 30 years, Joe never lost his 60's progressive political perspective, while the town and most of its inhabitants as well as family and old friends swung way to the right. It's the kind of town where a $10/hr job on the swing shift at the local Rubbermaid plant and a modular home is as good as it gets. He touches on some of the same themes as The Limits of Power and Crash Proof, except that the people he writes about are at the bottom of the economic/political power ladder, and will suffer the most from America's slide. The ironic thing is that these people still support the politicians who put them and keep them at the bottom. This is another book I'd highly recommend.

The book I'm half-way through is Angler, by Barton Gellman. It is a well-researched and sobering book about Dick Cheney's vice presidency and the abuse of power. I'll write more about it when I've finished it.