A couple weeks ago, Florida Frontier co-writers and I decided to hold a counter-protest against the usual Iraq War protestors at the Turlington Plaza on the University of Florida campus. Our sign said we supported our troops and we were winning the war. To my dismay, we were outnumbered about 10-1 and were faced with a strong liberal opposition. With spit and obscenities flying, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why aren’t more Americans supporting America?

            To many a disappointed liberal, the military surge has improved security, American casualties are down 71 percent since May and Al Qaeda in Iraq has become severely damaged. Attacks in Baghdad have fallen 80 percent in the past twelve months and deaths among Iraqi military forces and civilians have dropped by more than two-thirds.

            Yet the media repeatedly show us images of exploding buildings and carnage without context. They have no interest in showing the upside of the Iraq War and what the U.S. has accomplished since its occupation.

            Analysts at the Media Research Center have studied TV news coverage of the Iraq War from when the first bombs fell on Baghdad in March 2003. The record shows the networks have trumpeted bad news — setbacks for the U.S. coalition and allegations of misdeeds by American troops — while minimizing good news such as the success of the 2007 troop surge and acts of heroism by U.S. soldiers.

            Our liberal attackers on Turlington Plaza argued we’re not winning the war in Iraq and we haven’t made any progress.

            This assumption is clearly delusional. Operation Iraqi Freedom Coalition Forces have successfully liberated 25 million Iraqis from the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. In three years, Iraq has gone from enduring a tyrannical regime to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly — from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election — in defiance of terrorists’ threats and attacks.           

            If we retreat now, there is every reason to believe terrorists will fill the vacuum. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.           

            According to Congressman Jack Kingston, extremists in the Democratic Party have embraced a new strategy for the war on terrorism: Lose, leave and wait. They want us to dishonor the sacrifices of our soldiers. They want us to cut and run, and signal to the world that the United States no longer stands for freedom, democracy and the defense of human rights in the face of terrorism.            

           When did Anti-Americanism become the new Americanism?

            In Bernard Goldberg’s Bias, he reports that a 1996 Freedom Forum and Roper Center survey of Washington media found that 61 percent of journalists characterized themselves as “liberal,” compared to 9 percent that said they were “conservative.”

            In the 2003 American Freshman Survey conducted annually by UCLA, 28 percent of college freshmen nationwide identified themselves as liberal or far left while 21 percent identified themselves as conservative or far right. The year before, 30 percent had identified themselves as liberal or far left, the most since 1975.

            But the public is NOT overwhelmingly liberal like the media or college students. A 2006 Gallup poll showed that 54 percent of Americans surveyed identified themselves as “conservative” and only 34 percent said they were “liberal.”

            I used to believe college students were more liberal because the large majority of them don’t work. They don’t pay taxes. They don’t have families to care for. The majority of them have not yet voted. In other words, they have not been through the life experiences required to wipe away the idealistic view that everything should be equal. But upon my research I’ve realized it’s a more inexcusable reason for their ignorance: laziness and indifference. The correlation between a liberal press and a liberal campus is more than just a coincidence. College students tend to jump on the liberal bandwagon because they don’t take the time to explore different media outlets and simply just don’t care enough to think independently.           

            They’re not being informed. They’re being manipulated.           

            Instead of relying on a partisan press to balance its news, it’s time for college students to take responsibility in seeking alternative news sources. The 18-25 demographic needs to choose C-SPAN over Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” every once in a while.           

            Bad news in Iraq is promoted by most mainstream media. It is causing a division in the American people and is helping the enemy win. It’s time to take social responsibility back. Honesty in reporting is vital to an interlocking and free society. A partisan press combined with an uninterested public will cause us to lose a global fight.

* This piece was written for a non-existent guidebook in Okeechobee, Fla.

            In previous chapters we discussed the fine cuisine at Marybelle’s Good Eats and the $1 draughts at Shenanigans biker bar, but something that West Okeechobee is particularly known for deserves our No. 3 spot in top things to do: hog hunting.

            Just past the Landing Strip Gentleman’s Club (No. 5 in this book) is a dirt road heading west. Follow the dirt road for about 15 miles and you’ll find yourself in hog heaven. Okee Hunt Club sits atop 7, 000 acres of hog country and churns about 250 members per year. There, a man named Lenny and a dog named Fizzle will take you on a buggy ride through the dry, rugged terrain to hunt for wild hogs. Forty-five pound Fizzle will do what hunters call “baiting the hog,” where she charges it out from the brush and takes it down by the ears so the hunter can get a clean shot. Hogs can be very temperamental so this is not always an easy feat. Fizzle is covered in scars from past hog fights and wears a bright orange collar so the hunter won’t shoot her. Guests are allowed to shoot with a bow and arrow, crossbow or shotgun, but if a hunter feels adventurous, it can be done with a knife on the ground while Fizzle has it pinned. Once the hog is dead and a few beers are cracked to celebrate the conquest, Lenny and his friend Jimmy will skin the hog meat as part of the overall fee of $200.

           Hog hunting is available year-round but is not the only hunting provided at Okee Hunt Club; The land is also used for bobcat, rabbit, raccoon, dove, quail, turkey, deer, and Spanish goat hunting which can be hunted during season. Though it may not be for the weak-hearted or animal rights activist, the Okee Hunt Club is a hunter’s paradise in this tucked away slice of real backwoods livin’.

I was researching a story I was working on about drugs on campus and after countless efforts in trying to find a local drug dealer to speak about the issue, I finally found a willing dealer to go about the interview anonymously. While finishing up, I asked him when his busiest times of the year were. “September and February,” he said, which seemed like an odd answer considering Christmas in December and graduation in May when students would be coming into some money. When I asked why, he said, “because that’s when kids start cashing in their Bright Futures Scholarship checks.”

             It’s hard for Americans today to turn on a television or open a newspaper without hearing of the War on Terror, political unrest in Africa or the 2008 elections. But the American public has vaguely acknowledged the United States’ threat of a new Cold War with the biggest challenger for U.S. hegemony: China.

             An article by William R. Hawkins, senior fellow for the U.S. Business and Industry Council, said the long term threat from China “is from the vast new wealth and array of modern capabilities that will be available to a regime whose strategic ambitions clash with those of the United States.”

            Equipping an empire of 1.3 billion people with modern industry, technology and capital gives the authoritarian government in Beijing immense resources to support its determination.  It is the spirit of nationalism and the energy of capitalism that drives it.  

            According to Hawkins, this combination will rock the world.

Smiling Diplomacy           

            In Parag Khanna’s “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony,” from Thailand to Indonesia to Korea, no country wants political tension to upset economic growth. But to the Western eye, it is a bizarre phenomenon: small Asian nation-states should be balancing against rising China, but instead rally toward it out of Asian pride.                                                                                                                                     

            According to Richard Halloran of the Washington Times, China’s “charm offensive” is integral to what may be a campaign to revive the China of yesteryear that dominated Asia. Beijing seeks to acquire such political, economic and diplomatic clout that major decisions in every Asian capital will require Chinese approval.           

            The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, Washington, said China’s ability to influence Southeast Asia “largely stems from its role as a major source of foreign aid, trade and investment.” China’s imports of Southeast Asian goods from 1997 to 2006 soared 674 percent to $89.5 billion.            

            China has provided the largest amount of aid to Myanmar, in addition to Laos and Cambodia, and helped build roads, railroads, airfields and ports. The Chinese have also provided up to $2 billion worth of weapons to the U.S.-shunned authoritarian junta that rules Myanmar.           

            According to Khanna, China is the new heavyweight player among the Stans — its manifest destiny pushing westward while pulling microstates like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as oil-rich Kazakhstan, into its orbit. If the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gathered those central Asian states together with China and Russia, they may eventually become the “NATO of the East.”

Lack of Transparency

            According to an article by researcher Peter McMahon, China is not as militarily strong as the U.S. yet, but it is catching up at an accelerating pace. The Chinese have embraced the current revolution from a low-tech to a high-tech military. They have strong ties to Russia, the second most sophisticated arms producer, and have been very successful in stealing military secrets from the United States.

            According to the 2006 Report to Congress, the People’s Liberation Army has formed a new doctrine for modern warfare, with reform of military institutions and personnel systems, improved exercise and training standards, and the acquisition of advanced foreign and domestic weapon systems.

            China’s leaders have yet to adequately explain the purposes or desired end-states of their military expansion. The outside world has little knowledge of Chinese motivations and decision making.

China’s Black Gold       

            According to political pundit Glenn Beck, just the increase in the amount of coal China will burn by 2020 will send as much CO₂ into the atmosphere as 3 billion Ford Expeditions, each driven 15,000 miles a year.

            China has done virtually nothing in the effort to slow global warming.

            According to an article by Keith Bradsher and David Barboza of the New York Times, China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas. In 2006, the government promised to close the illegal and most unsanitary of factories, but no one is talking about shutting the region’s coal-burning power plants that account for more than half of China’s pollution.

            According to a Science Daily news release, the carbon dioxide emanating from Chinese coal plants will last for decades, with a cumulative warming effect that will deliver a large kick to global warming.

            The release said China expelled about 22.5 million tons of sulfur in 2004, more than twice the amount released in the United States. In 2002, the Chinese vowed to cut 10 percent of sulfur emissions by 2005.

            Instead, they rose 27 percent.

            Academic experts say that if China acts quickly, sulfur emissions could be halved in the next couple of decades. But if China continues to do little, emissions will double, creating even more devastating health and environmental problems.

            As a realist, I firmly believe in the struggle for power. Countries are irrational actors on the World Stage, and this struggle has the ability to supersede all diplomatic relations and ideological thinking. I believe China will do anything to be No.1. Liberals have even advocated a U.S.-adopted Kyoto Protocol — a policy that would cost us $400 billion a year and deliver a serious blow to our economy. Americans obsess over how to save the rest of the world from certain climatological doom, while China continues to do nothing, getting richer and stronger until it reaches a point where it can imperialize the Eastern globe.

Funding Genocide           

            China is now insuring its second genocide in three decades. The first was in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the second is in al-Bashir’s Sudan.            

            According to an article by Danna Harman, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, Sudan bought $24 million worth of arms and ammunition from China in 2005, as well as $57 million worth of parts for helicopters and airplanes. Figures for years following 2005 were not available, but in 2007, China delivered six K-8 advanced trainer fighter jets used for air-to-ground attacks. All this after a UN-approved embargo was imposed on Darfur.                       

            Most AK-47’s the Janjaweed use to terrorize and kill African villagers are Chinese models, and the primary reason is oil.            

            China traditionally was self-sufficient, but since 1993 it has been a net oil importer. About 60 percent of Sudan’s oil belongs to China, and Beijing has a close economic and even military relationship with Khartoum.            

            Americans blame the Bush Administration for not intervening in Darfur, whereas China, our “ally,” continues to openly fund al-Bashir’s efforts.

U.S. Hegemony   

            This is not to say that China will simply replace the U.S. as a global hegemony. With the rapid rise of India and Brazil, the possible revival of Russia, and the enduring wealth of Europe, obtaining global power could become much more complex. But if a viable global governance system does not come forth to manage the shift, it could be a dangerous time. These are the planetary stakes of a new World Stage — a global, multi-polar battle.

            Aside from the philosophies of starting anew, what everyone alike looks forward to about graduating is the graduation gift: a new car, a cruise through the Western Caribbean, a laptop for college, your late grandmother’s inheritance. Through the generations it has become tradition for parents to reward their kids with an extravagant gift for their hard work. But extravagant gift giving has exposed a new phenomena: plastic surgery.   

            Every summer students, especially female, go into hibernation — boob job, nose job, tummy tuck, butt lift, knee lift, eye lift, lip injections, Botox — hiding their bandaged and bruised features hoping to reveal their new, sexy look by the time their college classes begin.

            As embarrassing as it is to admit, I am one of these women. In my younger years, it was not unusual for classmates to throw bread at me. In my older years, it was not unusual to be mistaken for Jewish or Italian. After graduation and months of persuading my parents, I finally decided to do the only thing I felt reasonable at 18: I got a nose job.

            Pre-nose job was unproblematic. I went to my surgeon for only two or three visits before it was time to cut me open. And with only a few embellishments from my surgeon, insurance paid for half. What’s a little white lie when eternal physical beauty is on the line?

            I was comfortably unconscious while they broke my nose, re-aligned it and chiseled away bone and cartilage that was once my “Jew hump,” slowly revealing the sweet, non-offensive slope-nose that would soon be mine. When I woke up, I felt like I had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. I also looked like a person who had just been hit in the face with a baseball bat. I spent the next two weeks in a Soma coma soaking up bad television through osmosis and buying every single useless contraption on daytime infomercials. Forget your daily housekeeping with these state-of-the-art feline duster slippers! Only $9.95! But the day I had been waiting for would soon arrive: the day where they would remove my cast and reveal my new look.

            Days of sticking gauze up my nose to stop the bleeding or toothpicks to stop the uncontrollable itching were over. Sitting there in the doctor’s office, the anticipation was building. What if they butchered me? My mind races of having to keep my nose in a small shoebox on my bedside table and creating little nose wardrobes for special occasions — the more prominent, hook nose for business meetings and the lifted, pinched nose for high tea. “Billy Jean” is my soundtrack.

            Then, the moment of truth. With just a few adjustments the cast came off painlessly and I was able to see my new face for the first time.

            According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 178,041 patients 18 years old and younger underwent rhinoplasty in 2007, with nearly 92 percent being young girls. But does that mean it’s OK? It’s been almost four years since my experience and there’s something very important that I learned from it. We need to support girls in learning and earning the real goods in life: self-respect, sisterhood, being self-sufficient, living a passion-filled life, having healthy relationships, having their voices heard and true self-acceptance.

            But my nose is awfully cute.

It’s 11 a.m. You walk through the towering, faux-stone pillars to be greeted by the court jester, only to be told that the woman you walked in with must have “very low standards.”

            The Alachua County Fairgrounds came alive with the sound of trumpets, minstrels and revelry celebrating the 22^nd Annual Hoggetowne Medieval Faire Saturday.

            Although it happens for only two weekends a year in Gainesville, the fair has gained a loyal following.

            “We’re expecting upwards of 50,000 guests this year,” said events coordinator Linda Piper. “Some people wait all year to come.”           

            After the jester’s heckling ceases, the Royal Pavillion will appear on the right where a green canopy shades the royal throne. Upon the throne sits King William and Queen Caroline surrounded by their guards and heralds.

            According to a press release, the Royal Pavillion is where more than a thousand children will become lords and ladies, dragon slayers and damsels of the royal court.

            Walking through the fair is like walking back in time, where kings, queens, knights and princesses have recreated an authentic Medieval marketplace.

            According to Piper, more than 150 artisans and craftspeople from all over the country traveled to Hoggetowne this year to display and sell a variety of goods. Many demonstrated blacksmithing, weaving, leatherworking and woodcarving.

            The Royale Procession started at 12:30. According to a press release, the king and queen lead more than one hundred actors, musicians and performers through the streets of Hoggetowne.

            The crowd was escorted to the jousting fields, where knights in full body armor charged each other on horseback to defend their honor and prove their worth to the king and queen.

            Scene one, “The Betrayal,” began at 12:45 on the living chessboard, where human chess pieces fought for their spot on the board. Here, Robin Hood’s merry men held a competition to battle against the Sheriff of Nottingham.

            It’s lunchtime, and at the food court, it’s not uncommon to see a young lord of the court happily munching on a turkey leg the size of a human leg.

            “The shows and games are fun and everything,” said Chad Zielinski, a University of Florida art education junior, “but the food is definitely the best part.”

            At 1:30, “Unbelievable Magic” began at the Pavillion Theatre. Here, mirthful magicians revealed their secrets for a small donation, including the traditional saw-a-woman-in-half trick.

            At 3:30, the Gypsy Guerilla Band played at the Royale Theatre. Here, musicians played medieval instruments like the hammered dulcimer, a stringed instrument that makes sound by striking the strings with a mallet.

            At the end of the day, while exiting the 12th century and entering the 21st, one should not be alarmed when the jester farewells from the tower with: you smell like a horse’s ass.

            The fair will continue through the weekend of Feb. 1.