I'm in London on business with the Nameless Entity. I just finished with the British Shakespeare Association conference in Newcastle, where I led a seminar discussing online versions of Shakespeare. That was just a diversion -- no tax dollars were used to fund my trip, in case you were wondering -- but the whole experience was fascinating and gratifying.
Before that, I was in San Diego for a conference on behalf of the Entity. After London, I will go to another country, and won't get back until next week. Needless to say, I'm missing my family very much, but at least I'm doing intersting things.
I feel totally disconnected from America in a way that I have never felt, because when I left, New Orleans still existed. Blogging about that seems rather solipsistic, since it really has nothing to do with me, but I know this is obviously a tremendously important event in the life of our country, and it's odd to watch it from across an ocean.
Has any First World country ever lost an entire city since the end of World War II? The way some people talk, you would think it's a routine occurence. I watched two BBC anchors who were perplexed that "the richest and most advanced country in the world" couldn't do something as simple and straightforward as remove several hundred thousand people on short notice, even in a city where the government is notoriously corrupt, inefficient, and slow.
It's hard to explain our federal system to regular, everyday British subjects. Not that they're incapable of understanding it, but the U.K. is so much more geograpically compact, and their government is so much more centralized, that they have difficulty conceiving that the president can't just swoop in with thousands of troops and federal workers. Even today, CNN reported that the governor of Louisiana is resisting President Bush's plan to federalize the whole mess.
Isn't it time to revisit the concept of "acts of God"?
Supposedly the governor's objection is that "federalizing" the National Guard would subject it to 'posse comitatus' limitations: i.e., disqualify it from performing law-enforcement duties. If that is true, it's a good objection.
It's quite easy to explain US affairs nowadays. You just say to them to stop thinking about Washington as equivalent to London and start thinking about Washington as equivalent to Brussels. President Bush ordering troops without invite would be received about as well as French troops just showing up in the UK without a by your leave from Her Majesty's Government.
The Swedish institute Timbro did a nice analysis comparing the EU to the US with the individual EU states compared to individual US states. The results are quite interesting.