Crested Butte is a place where we leave our doors unlocked but lock our dumpsters. I believe this custom first developed because we all trusted each other not to steal. Furthermore, few of us had much of value to steal, but the trash company charged money to haul away refuse. It was an economic consideration.
That’s the way it used to be, at least, and if it isn’t like that now, the spirit of such trust and freedom is still alive in our attitude. If and when that confidence and expectation disappear, we will have lost an irreplaceable quality of life.
Community at the head of the draw provides benefits that compensate for isolation that at times seems stifling. Think cabin fever and social inbreeding. Think escape. Think remove from the mainstream; everything else is downstream.
That remove is an affordance of place locals enjoy and visitors envy. Still, being so distant from ordinary life in the fast lane requires adjustments. It doesn’t suit everyone. For example, I grew up in Colorado Springs about five miles from ground zero if the Soviets had nuked NORAD. Vaporization would have been instantaneous. Here in Crested Butte, it would take a while for nuclear winter to freeze me out.
That particularly nasty scenario came to mind as news of North Korea’s nuclear escalation trickled into our headwaters. Back in the day, that news would only very slowly have made its way from mainstream to upstream. North Korea might have developed and deployed its weaponry before we in Crested Butte ever even knew they had nukes. But now we know.
Kim Jung Il’s expressed intention of lobbing nukes at South Korea, Japan, Alaska and wherever else, demonstrates The Dear Leader’s inability to be a world citizen at any level. North Korea is isolated not by geography like Crested Butte, but by ideology and intention. The country’s aggressive and belligerent posture sets it apart from the rest of the world; no one really wants nuclear confrontation.
While I seriously doubt foreign policy wonks will be soliciting my opinion, I think the United States should stay well out of North Korea’s nuclear face. After all, during 1950-53 we adventured on the Korean Peninsula and it didn’t go especially well for us. The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army overwhelmed U.S. forces causing the longest American military retreat in history. North Korea withdrew from the 1953 armistice May 27, 2009.
Intent on payback this time with nukes, Korea’s bellicose intentions would only flare with United States intervention. Instead, with its newly earned world stature as Olympic host and banker to the United States of America, the People’s Republic of China should throw some of its weight at The Dear Leader. Nuclear threat or not, it is doubtful Kim Jung Il or his illustrious successor will dare the Chinese tiger. And the United States should let them do it, you know, just to the 38th Parallel.
With North Korea off the foreign policy plate, the United States could then concentrate on another distant proto-nuclear threat. Iran is neither as crazy nor as isolated as North Korea, although with Ahmadinejad calling the shots, crazy doesn’t seem too farfetched.
While North Korea neither knows nor cares what the rest of the world thinks, Iran’s culture and education, political geography and oil reserves place it at the forefront of world attention. Iran and North Korea have only nuclear aspirations and antipathy for the United States in common, but that’s probably enough.
Different beast that it is, I used to brag Iran up. I defended the country’s democratic process; just because they elected someone we don’t like is no reason to, for example, pre-emptively invade the country. I believe the people of Iran are educated and sophisticated enough to exercise and enjoy democratic rights.
Ahmadinejad believes that also, which is why we may never know true results from Iran’s recent election. Defending allegations that the vote was rigged, President Ahmadinejad has shut down the internet, cell phone access—anything that might help opposition supporters organize revolt. Riot police and hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah militiamen (so-called “ninjas”) are fighting riots in the streets.
That is something else North Korea and Iran apparently now have in common: government by brutal dictatorship. You can take that to the dumpster and lock ‘em in.
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