Since I left in August, the subject of the U.S. elections has come up nearly every day, everywhere I’ve gone.  When people have found out I’m American, it has often been the first thing they’ve brought up.  I’ve tried to be the last one to express an opinion, since the point of travel is to learn what other people are thinking.

And after three months of conversations in more than a dozen countries on three continents, I’ve met exactly one non-Anerican who supported McCain.  One.

One taxi driver in Christchurch, NZ seemed as convinced of McCain’s righteousness and Obama’s impending evil reign as any Palin rally deadender might be.  One guy.  Please excuse the Tom Friedman-ness of citing a taxicab conversation of evidence of anything.  But that’s just who the one guy happened to be.

Everybody else I’ve met so far — everybody — in France, Hong Kong, the Emirates, Indonesia, Korea, Australia, wherever — has been neutral to pro-Obama.  The large majority were clearly hoping for an Obama win.

Since I left in August, the subject of the U.S. elections has come up nearly every day, everywhere I’ve gone.  When people have found out I’m American, it has often been the first thing they’ve brought up.  I’ve tried to be the last one to express an opinion, since the point of travel is to learn what other people are thinking.

And after three months of conversations in more than a dozen countries on three continents, I’ve met exactly one non-Anerican who supported McCain.  One.

One taxi driver in Christchurch, NZ seemed as convinced of McCain’s righteousness and Obama’s impending evil reign as any Palin rally deadender might be.  One guy.  Please excuse the Tom Friedman-ness of citing a taxicab conversation of evidence of anything.  But that’s just who the one guy happened to be.

Everybody else I’ve met so far — everybody — in France, Hong Kong, the Emirates, Indonesia, Korea, Australia, wherever — has been neutral to pro-Obama.  The large majority were clearly hoping for an Obama win.

Since I left in August, the subject of the U.S. elections has come up nearly every day, everywhere I’ve gone.  When people have found out I’m American, it has often been the first thing they’ve brought up.  I’ve tried to be the last one to express an opinion, since the point of travel is to learn what other people are thinking.

And after three months of conversations in more than a dozen countries on three continents, I’ve met exactly one non-Anerican who supported McCain.  One.

One taxi driver in Christchurch, NZ seemed as convinced of McCain’s righteousness and Obama’s impending evil reign as any Palin rally deadender might be.  One guy.  Please excuse the Tom Friedman-ness of citing a taxicab conversation of evidence of anything.  But that’s just who the one guy happened to be.

Everybody else I’ve met so far — everybody — in France, Hong Kong, the Emirates, Indonesia, Korea, Australia, wherever — has been neutral to pro-Obama.  The large majority were clearly hoping for an Obama win.

Fiji at the moment.  Probaby won’t be settled anywhere for long until possibly January.  Busy with enough actual paying stuff that blog-time remains hard to come by.

Meanwhile, I occasionally email collections of pics — not unlike the Arles entry down the page — to friends.  (I usually don’t blog these  because uploading and inserting photos into posts is waaaay more time-consuming than the drag-and-drop of Apple email, and I’m just too busy of late.  Sorry.)  Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing.net recently reposted my entry from a recent visit to the Korean DMZ, with my permission.  Might be worth a glance.

Readers of Who Hates Whom might recall the conclusion, which reviewed various conflicts worldwide and found only one thing in common: certainty.  Certainty that one god, culture, language, political or economic system, or miscellaneous dogma is right and best allows believers to see everyone else as other, and therefore lesser.  And that seems to be a fairly necessary threshold for megaviolence to begin.  In short, “you’re either with us or against us” is one of the single most dangerous ideas a human can hold, in any culture, anywhere, any time.

I, um, think, anyway.  Let’s say that.

Unfortunately, certainty is emotionally rewarding.  Which is kind of a problem, if we want the species to survive.

Scientific American has an article up on what it calls the certainty bias.  Worth a read.  Certainly.