That Live in Japan CD by the Ventures (see last post) brought back memories regarding the way things were in the early 1960s. And just how were they, you ask? Well, there was hope in the air. You could sense it in the tunes that the Ventures were playing (which were all over the pop radio stations at the time). The biggest thing to fear back then was the Soviet Union and Communism. Communism was the evil empire, the thing that threatened to swallow us up and end all the good times. But actually, you knew that Soviet Communism (or the Chinese version of it) couldn’t beat America. Not so much because of our nuclear bombs and jet bombers and intercontinental missiles and subs and aircraft carriers. The Commies had as much of that stuff as we did. What the Sino-Soviet Block didn’t have was coolness. And coolness was what the Ventures conveyed.

Ventures songs were tributes to people surfing in Hawaii and rockets blasting off in Florida. Just listen to Telstar, the tribute to the first communications satellite (better the studio version, as the live version didn’t come out as well). Every time I hear that number, I recall the optimism that it conveyed, the notion that satellites and moon shots were the forbearers of a bright new world, a golden age of civilization. It seemed as if things were just going to get better and better. John F. Kennedy was President at the time, and he was pretty cool. Twenty times as cool as any Soviet premier that ever was or would be (save maybe for Gorbachev). And no comparison with anyone the Chinese Communist Party put up (Chairman Mao was totally uncool, despite the admiration he gained from some American college students waving their Little Red Books around back in 68). Why would anyone anywhere in the world want to be like the Russians, with all their snow and mud and drunken peasants and the huge, grey, ugly buildings across their land? And the Chinese? Shoot, that was like being a worker ant lost in a colony. You’re just another insect, forget about any form of self-expression. Weren’t any surfer dudes catching the pipelines along the beaches near Shanghai (and may still not be).

Today, we’re living in a different world. Communism is gone and terrorism reigns as the sum of all fears. If you could go back to 1963 and tell people this, they’d be very glad to hear that the Russians collapsed and the Chinese sold out to fascist capitalism. But they’d ask, just who is terrorizing America and why? Why would anyone not like the vision that we present to the world, the vision of youth and smartness and fun? Why would anyone not like a place that was dancing to the twist and making computers and playing with hula hoops and sending spaceships to the moon? Back then, we were sure that anyone in the world who got to know America would want to become like us, not undermine us. So what went wrong?

Dang, but that’s an awfully tough question. Today we ask, why do so many Middle Easterners hate us so much, especially the ones who have been in America and have studied here? Why would they want a religious dictatorship instead of a liberal democracy?

Tom Friedman has written a lot in his columns in the NY Times about the forces underlying all the Middle East hatred. This past Wednesday he talked about how President Bush and our leadership go out of their way to protect our cotton farmers and textile industry from foreign competition, as to maintain their wealth (commercial farmers are businessmen, not people who live off the land). If the USA lowered tariffs and allowed fair competition, many of the poorest Middle Eastern countries (like Pakistan) would be selling a lot more cotton fabric here. Sure, we’d lose some jobs, but the Pakistanis would gain a whole lot more. With more jobs and income, the Pakistani people wouldn’t have to send their kids to fundamentalist Islamic schools that provide free education and free lunches in poor villages. Those fundamentalist schools teach the kids to hate the US. And guess who supports those schools? The Saudis. And guess where the Saudis get their money? From selling us billions of barrels of crude oil. So, what are we doing to slow that process down? Designing cars that use less of it? Nope. Instead, Mr. Bush proposes tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy bigger cars that burn more oil.

And then, of course, there’s Israel. Our primary ally in the Middle East. With friends like that … Hey, I’m not anti-Semitic. I know about the Shoah, I’ve read the history of the Jews as an oppressed people. I know that if Israel wasn’t so tough it would have been pushed into the Mediterranean long ago. But this Palestinian thing is another kind of game. Israel was able to get the respect of the Arab nations by beating them at war. But that tactic doesn’t seem to be working with the Palestinian people, who aren’t a nation (thanks in large part to Israel). Nations lose wars and adjust their attitudes. Un-nationalized people don’t, as the Viet Cong showed us in Vietnam. Israel tried to control the problem by building settlements on “enemy ground”. And in return they got a whole new level of terrorism and suicide bombing. And now they think that a wall is the answer. When in history did a wall against an enemy ever work? It’s just a formula for more Middle Eastern hatred, hatred that could spill over once again onto American soil. (I pray not, but…)

America won the battle with Communism for the hearts and minds of this planet because it offered something better, something smarter, something cooler. It now faces a new battle, and it’s relying on the spin doctors and image consultants to make the world at large think we’re still better, smarter and cooler. But we’re ultimately going to win or lose this war based on what lies within, not what the façade looks like. The Ventures were able to win the hearts and minds of the Japanese, enemies only two decades before that concert, because the Ventures were smart and cool and talented Americans, full of positiveness. Could any of our current pop heros go to Pakistan or Algeria and win friends? Eminem and Metallica, live in Karachi? Lil Kim and Madonna do Oman? Or do the culture heros of today reflect something inauthentic about us that the citizens of those nasty parts of the planet clearly see through? I’m not trying to make heros out of Al Qaeda’s and Hama’s killers. All I’m saying is, maybe we need a closer look in the mirror, maybe we need to ask if there is some small part of the Islamic fundamentalist criticism of America that is accurate, perhaps we need to see if there are some areas where we could do better in terms of being responsible citizens of the Planet Earth.