THE ROVING
EYE China
takes over Bryce Canyon By Pepe
Escobar
ON THE ROAD IN NEVADA AND UTAH -
In the search for the (remixed, imploded?)
American dream the road goes on forever. I left
San Francisco in an Otis Redding's Pain in my
Heart mood - past the playground of Silicon
Valley Google/Facebook whiz kids, lanky blondes
talking into their McBook Pros on the sidewalk,
desperate flotsam and jetsam of the 47% defying
the shadows in downtown at night, Italy alive at
Coppola's Caf้ Zoetrope, the resurgence of Occupy
Oakland, the Hudson 49 that crisscrossed the West
in Walter Salles' ode to Kerouac's On the Road
now parked at the Beat Museum - and I went
east, past an already snow-stormed Sierra Nevada
and an eerily quiet Lake Tahoe that seemed to have
emerged from a noir opus like Out of the
Past, the ghost of Robert Mitchum included.
Reno spelt Murder - like in a masked
weirdo straight out of Seven Psychopaths
(where Christopher Walken, once again, rules)
surging out of nowhere to raise hell in a ghost
town. The Eldorado
early in the morning was
virtually empty, save for the odd bag lady working
the slots. Talk about Dylan's Desolation
Row.
And
talk about Nevada depression - one of the states
that most suffered the effects of the mortgage
crisis. As for the "recovery", it is so bad that
many believe sales of the iPhone 5 - which is
essentially a glorified camera loaded with apps -
might spur a leap-from-behind for the American
GDP.
There was hardly any
visible evidence of an "increase in consumer spending"
in Reno except at Beto's, where local cool kids
enjoy the best shrimp taco in the West. Yet it's
still swinging Obama, now trending up again
towards an 80% chance of winning Nevada, compared
to 73,6% for winning nationally, according to Nate
Silver's projections.
Guangzhou
rocks Then it was "the loneliest road in
America", whose major tourist attraction are
assorted "correctional centers" with their
inseparable sign Prison Area: Hitchiking
Prohibited (unless you're a psychopath in a
killer-on-the-road flick, of course). I arrived in
Salt Lake City - where 47% Mitt staged his oh so
successful Olympics, that business enterprise that
the Brits would never have been able to pull off,
as he said in London - and was greeted by a, what
else, snowstorm, Utah's counterpart to the East
Coast's epic freak storm Sandy. The Roving Eye
mobile performed more spinning in the freeways
around town than the whole Romney campaign.
Mitt's
Mormon paradise, seen through the crisp night air
after a storm, also seemed immersed in a
Nevada-esque pall of gloom - even though most
locals seemed to be happy that the snow season
will start soon; tourism beckons.
But then there's
that other storm approaching - the fiscal
cliffhanger - when the Bush-era tax cuts will be
gone by January 1, with the predictable follow-up
of more Washington gridlock, another downgrade of
US debt, panic on global stock markets, etc. Apart
from the imminent arrival of those ski tourists,
there were hardly any signs of a "recovery" in
Salt Lake, even with house prices now (relatively)
stable and a few added jobs every month.
Paraphrasing The Animals, I had to get
out of this place. I did - at 5am, way down south,
towards a natural amphitheater that started 200
million years ago, when the earth's crust was
crinkling throughout Nevada; then, 50 million
years ago, sediment eroded from mountains in
northwestern Utah was deposited in a lake,
lithified and later uplifted to be re-eroded into
hoodoos. Welcome to Bryce Canyon, which -
technically - is not a canyon, because canyons are
carved by flowing water whereas Bryce was sculpted
essentially by the freezing and thawing of water.
And then, inexorably, I saw
it: the Chinese, not the American dream,
meticulously scrutinizing the hoodoos at the
Claron Formation. I couldn't help noticing that
distinct Cantonese accent. The dialogue was
inevitable. "Guangzhou?" Answer: "Guangzhou. And
you?" Answer: Hong Kong. We are neighbors.
Thus I learned from the Lady
of Canton this was a full expedition,
local government sanctioned, packed with a
few notables and loaded with the best photo
equipment available anywhere, including a fabulous made-in-Shanghai
Shen Hao HZX-45 II A plate camera - a photographic
chamber that impresses negatives on a glass plate.
They had been camping there since 5:30 am waiting
for the sunrise.
So here was a graphic
answer to Mitt's proposed trade/currency war
against China starting on day one of his possible
presidency. The Chinese are cheating. They are
going to take over Bryce Canyon, then Utah, then
the rest, and we have to fight them. Of course
what they're doing is completely different. While
the West is fixated on anything vintage - at least
those relatively few Westerners who can afford it
- China is recuperating Western manufacturing
excellence to eventually sell it back to the West.
Mormon settlers arrived in this region in
the 1870s. In the Book of Mormon, published in
1830, God - which may, or may not, have started
the creation of Bryce Canyon 200 million years ago
- reveals to Joseph Smith, the founder of the
religion, that American Indians were the lost
tribe of Israel. They had traveled from Palestine
only 600 years before Smith's revelation. But they
had neglected true religion. So Smith believed
that American Indians - whom he called Lamanites -
were cursed with dark skin. If they could hear the
word of God, convert and become Mormons, their
white skin would become "white and delightsome".
And all their previous sins would be forgiven.
After hiking the Navajo loop I left Bryce
on the way to the Grand Canyon's North Rim and - what
else - a spectacular sunset. I was eager to
find a Navajo or a Hopi to test Smith's
proposition and to pose them the ultimate
question; how do you evaluate the consequences of
Mitt the Mormon possibly becoming the next
President of the United States (POTUS)? As for our
friends from Guangzhou, no need to ask questions;
they are going to take over everything anyway.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
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