What do they eat in Iran?

Consider the following map:

Source

Asia is pretty darn huge, right?  Look at Iran and Kazakhstan alone.  Asia is huge.

No wonder then that the New York Times has a lengthy write-up: Asian-American Cuisine’s Rise, and Triumph.  It is about "America’s long, complicated love affair with Asian cooking":

As a nation we were once beholden to the Old World traditions of early settlers; we now crave ingredients from farther shores. ...
These are American ingredients now, part of a movement in cooking that often gets filed under the melting-pot, free-for-all category of New American cuisine. But it’s more specific than that: This is food borne of a particular diaspora, made by chefs who are “third culture kids,” heirs to both their parents’ culture and the one they were raised in, and thus forced to create their own.

True, right?  What a melting-pot this country is!

The report continues:

Could we call it Asian-American cuisine? The term is problematic, subsuming countries across a vast region with no shared language or single unifying religion. It elides numerous divides: city and countryside, aristocrats and laborers, colonizers and colonized

So, at this point, I should lower the boom.

The "Asian-American" discussed there has no place for Iran. No Kazakhs, No Nepalis.  It is all about the "Asia" that Americans refer to: China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.  Not even Indonesia!

The American (mis)understanding of the world is unique in many ways.  Reminds me of another map on this theme:

Source

If only we would spend some time and energy understanding the world!  Oh well; hasn't happened before, and ain't gonna happen in trumpistan!!!

Take us to your leader

Finally, the big day came.  And we are now done with it. Phew!

No, I am not referring to the theatricks, er, theatrics, er, primary in Iowa.  It was groundhog day, and the rodent said it will be an early spring.  Lucky Phil--he doesn't have to deal with the great pretenders that the candidates all are.

The way I understand the world is vastly different from how any of those candidates do.  Which means that when it comes down to voting for one, it will be about how much I want to engage in a deal with myself--compromises--and vote for one of them.  I am hoping that this time, too, it will not be a protest vote at the top of the ballot.

Listening to all those entertainers, er, presidential wannabes, one might end up thinking that ISIS is not only the greatest threat to the United States but to the entire humanity.  To deal with ISIS, one wannabe wants to carpet bomb and destroy ISIS, and another is ready to kill innocent women and children too.  A third one wants us to forget the rest of the world and focus on the domestic problems.

Seriously, these are some of the best that we can offer?

Listening to any of those wannabes will result in the viewer getting one heck of a screwed up understanding of the world.

We let our politicians tell us what should be our greatest fears. And they serve us really badly. Of course, ISIS is a group with evil intent who behave barbarically. But they do not and will not have the ability to invade the U.S. and kill Americans in their beds. This does not mean that they should not be opposed. But they should not, I would argue, dominate our debate about foreign policy.

Exactly.

There is a good reason for these wannabes (and the Oval Office occupants) to talk up ISIS and other threats--leading us into wars is pretty much the only thing they can do on their own and they seem to be forever enthusiastic about it.

Maybe that’s because these are the only kinds of threats that they can even remotely plausibly suggest they can do something about – preferably using muscular and provocative terms that make them sound like “leaders.”
Nobody is going to “kick nature’s ass,” as those of us who recently lived through Winter Storm Jonas on the East Coast will testify.

To take leadership on climate change or on helping wiping out malaria, on the other hand, is to be a wimp bowing to the international community!  We apparently want in the oval office huge cojones and nothing else!

No surprise, therefore, that alien life does not want to make contact with us! ;)