CASTLES IN THE SAND

A few weeks ago I was done in Sianhoukville, Cambodia's beach-bum area. (Of course it's named after the soon-to-be-former king, as his son is taking the crown on Friday, so I guess I should be a bit more careful in how I describe it.) It's a seaside town that has beautiful beaches and open water and hills that motodrivers drive a LITTLE too fast down. (And up, too, for that matter.)

There was a kid buried up to his neck in the sand, surrounded by a series of castles made of dirt. Must have taken a good little while to construct. And while I didn't see the boy stand up, brush off the sand, dive into the water and wash himself clean, I can bet that THAT whole process took no more than five, ten seconds.

Difficult to build castles in the sand. Easy to tear them apart.

Which makes me realize, in the words of 'lateral thinking' guru Edward Debono, that it's so much easier to take apart than to build. So much easier to put out a fire than start one.

In one week there may (or may not) be a new U.S.President. (This Canadian thinks that Bush will win by a nose, but what do I know?) My worry is, should Bush, in fact, strike gold and grab the election by the throat, we'll be in for 'four more years' of negative, almost desperate criticism that will border on the apocalyptic.

Which is a good thing. Don't get me wrong. We need that. God knows, Cambodia needs it. Here, if you criticize the government, publicly, you can get shot in the face. Literally. They don't mess around. We need to hold the government accountable, and we need to speak up when we see something we don't like, because we come from places where that's possible.

But that's not enough. The problem I have with Michael Moore and all the Bush detractors (and this is coming from someone who really, really likes Michael Moore) is that their whole philosophy, it seems, is about tearing things apart. It's about demanding change. It's about rebelling against a government regime that they considered corrupt.

All well and good.

But as Robert Redford says at the end of THE CANDIDATE: "Now what do we do?"
The danger of focusing all of that negative energy on Bush is that it prevents you from sitting down and figuring out how to get out of the mess that you're in. It leads us to believe, wrongly, I think, that the protest is the point -- that the dissent is the cause. It's not. What comes AFTER the dissent is what matters.

For years and years here in Cambodia they've been trying to figure out how to have a Khmer Rouge tribunal to try Pol Pot's men for war crimes. As well they should. And yet, it's dragged on and on, and my worry is, after all the waiting, all the money spent, all the time and emotion invested, at the end of it you will have a nation that will stand up and say: "Now what do we do?"

Protest has its essential place. It's a necessary part of democracy. But it needs to coincide with plans, strategies, actions that may well prove ineffective, but hey -- you gotta start. You gotta begin.

If you spend all your time tearing down castles in the sand, after awhile you may have a hard time remembering how to build them back up again.