Stop latte politics

Ihe other day I was strolling down Kirkwood Avenue feeling pretty chipper when I gradually realized that it has little in the way of redeeming virtues. It was not the mediocre cafes and substandard bars but the "Peoples Park" mentality that aroused my aggravation. \nTake the room-temperature opinion in your choice coffeehouse, and you'll notice that the one factor which everyone uniformly lacks is the remotest sense of reality. Their idea, condensed only slightly, is that if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, it did not make a noise. Thus, if we extract ourselves from the messy circumstances of the world, the problems will either be solved thereby or will simply go away. \nAnyone who has studied the world with any seriousness would pay short shrift to these idle "views" made idler by reoccurring pauses in order to sip from a venti latte. I myself have learned through intimate experience to chuckle rather than grow incensed and never waste too much time exposing their straw man (or is it grass?) arguments. But just this once, I will indulge myself. Latte-sippers, you have been warned.\n"Save the Planet" and "Make Poverty History." These tags are usually advocated by the same people who don't realize that they are conflicting. Few nations are doing more to accelerate environmental damage than those booming and polluting economies lifting millions out of poverty in China and India. It is those in the not-quite-developing world who are upright stewards of the environment -- by living (and dying) on a dollar a day (the international standard for absolute poverty). \n"When Clinton lied, no one died." Say about this what you like, but its advocates have a 100 percent morally rotten core. Perhaps this endorsement of lies told by a president meant to destroy women's reputations equips them to turn around to berate what was at worst a "noble lie" (though people rarely possess the courage or constancy to scream, "77 Senators lied!" in the authorization to attack Iraq) used to destroy a hellish tyranny. \n"Free Tibet." We have a little-heard-from IU Students for a Free Tibet, but the bumper sticker showing this plea is almost omnipresent. I believe I can guess what their reaction would be if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were to draw up battle plans for the liberation of Tibet -- the only way to achieve that fleeting goal. The "Free Tibet" stickers would be scratched off from every bumper or simply plastered over with injunctions to "Think Globally, Act Locally."\nI have a better idea. Have we not learned by now to think in a less-worn and more elevated manner? Might I suggest, "Think Locally, Act Globally." Now that motto, with its call to revive confidence in our own values and to export them abroad, would be a bumper sticker worth affixing to one's vehicle. In a time where very little hard thinking is being done, this is the kind of slogan that would do no harm at all -- and might also make strolls down Kirkwood a little easier to enjoy.