The Plane, The Plane
Oh, oh. The week begins with a bang. Not a big bang. Just a major international one. An American EP-3, a big lumbering reconnaissance plane described lovingly by those in command as “a big pig,” runs into a smallish, but nimble Chinese F-8 jet.
Or is it the other way around? Who screwed up here?
Let’s put it in rubbernecker’s terms we all can understand: Did the big U.S. Chevy Suburban run into the aging, used, but still sporty Chinese-owned Ferrari? Or vice versa? Can’t anyone stay in their spying lanes? Did anyone even have a proof of insurance card?
President Bush wants his plane back before it’s taken apart like a roast pig at one of my relatives’ christening parties. Oh, and throw in the crew as well, which includes Ramon Mercado, a Filipino American from Moreno Valley, California.
But China wants an apology for the U.S. transgression. To which Colin Powell says, “ no way.” It was an honest accident, he says.
As if honest accidents occur on a routine spy mission. (“Hey, who spilled my invisible ink?”)
Besides, how would the U.S. react if the tables were turned? How would the U.S. treat a wayward Chinese spy plane caught site-seeing off the coast of California? Roll out the red carpet? We saw what happened to an American citizen, Wen Ho Lee.
So watch out, folks. We may be witnessing “negative gravity” at work.
When we can’t explain simple things like a spy mission screwing up, what else can we do but turn to the smartest guy we know. Not that Asian American guy in your office who can fix any computer problem you throw at him, but the man himself — Einstein. Al? Yes, that Einstein.
Perhaps just coincidentally, NASA announced this week the first direct evidence of something Einstein had only theorized about the universe but couldn’t prove.
The first direct proof finally came in a chance photograph taken by that big pig of a telescope known as the Hubble, which with 7-11 security cam-like precision, caught a glance of an exploding star in 1997.
Asian Americans will note that was not Margaret Cho, but a real star in the distant universe.
Why did the explosion take place?
Scientists say it’s due to Einstein’s theory of “negative gravity,” an idea that suggests the existence of a kind of force that exists everywhere, that when present in enough volume, say somewhere in space, two objects that should come together, mutually repel one another.
It’s the opposite of gravity. Two things which should come together because of gravity, suddenly find themselves in “mutual repulsion.”
That’s the cosmic version of say, a very bad divorce.
The impact of this force would be to push galaxies out past Bakersfield.
Beyond even. It’s the answer to our expanding universe! There’s an explosion and things want to get away from each other.
And so when the Hubble caught the exploding star, or the supernova back in 1997, after careful examination scientists are now saying the actual explosion took place 11 billion years ago. This is even before Sen. Strom Thurmond’s parents were born.
By the brightness of the supernova, scientists say the star was closer to earth when it exploded. Why didn’t gravity hold back then? The presence of negative gravity!
Fast forward 11 billion years to the present and we go from supernova to “the super pig and the Ferrari.” And what do we have here but the every day, diplomatic possibility of “negative gravity.”
There’s no doubt China and the U.S. are naturally moving closer and closer. There is a kind of world gravity taking hold with the globalization of our economies and the mutual dependence of labor and markets.
In a telling bit of coincidence, last Tuesday, The New York Times ran a full-color, full-page ad opposite its coverage of the spy plane incident. The ad showed an unmistakable silhouette of a Chinese rowboat on a horizon, the navigator in a pointed hat, oar in hand. And then the dominating text: “Chinese to Become #1 Web language by 2007.” It was an ad for a technology consulting company, Accenture, just another manifestation of the forces of economic gravity bringing the U.S. and China together. And considering the tech wreck in the stock market, China may be the only possible hope.
But the negative forces are also at work. There’s already leakage on that Taiwan arms deal that would definitely harm U.S. relations with Beijing. And then there’s the domestic front, with the right-wing buttressing Bush into making half-hearted, semi-cold warrior stands for the plane and crew.
The right, no doubt will try to muster up the same energy it did during the campaign finance scandal (the notion of “China as election stealer”) and the Wen Ho Lee affair (the “China as nuclear spy” stereotype). Community activists are already poised to combat some heavy-handed, anti-Chinese rhetoric that could emerge and spill over to Asian Americans.
Certainly, China, which could just hand over the plane and crew, isn’t helping by insisting on an apology.
But it’s all part of the current two-faced approach that marks the way the U.S. and China engage each other. We mutually demonize and market to each other at the same time.
Maybe if they just sent the crew back and gave us a check for the jet?
The posturing on both sides is fairly laughable considering the degree of commerce between us and them. In the end, someone has to decide the gravitational pull of money is just too great. The only thing that can screw that up isn’t the mere collision of two planes, but the presence of a kind of “negative gravity” that threatens a supernova like explosion that could send the two countries further and further apart.
That’s something to be fearful of. |
