Link Banana

Though Friday’s entry was a tangential meditation on Los Angeles, last week’s Correspondent’s Diary at The Economist is rather good. Two quotes from visiting the Navajo, one of the few casino-less tribes. From Tuesday, on their relationship to the United States:

Just because Navajos are exceptionally good at negotiating between cultural worlds does not mean they do not make mistakes. A few weeks ago the Navajo Times carried a story about a move to create a Diné medal of honour for those who have served in the armed forces. The speaker of the Navajo legislature apparently thought this would be a good idea. Navajo veterans did not. Explaining that only Congress can award military medals, they crushed the plan by a vote of 34-0. Three of the intended recipients responded that they would rather have a sheep.

And from Thursday, on gambling in America:

Indian casinos exist because of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance and everyone else knows as hypocrisy. Americans wish to gamble. Yet they cannot bring themselves to liberalise gambling, which is, after all, a sin. So it is necessary to allow a few exceptions to the general rule. These include Nevada, riverboats (which are often little more than casinos surrounded by moats) and Indian tribes.

British citizen Stephen Hugh-Jones considers his relationship to his — or any — country.

I’m a patriot, unashamedly so. Not absurdly, I hope: I’m perfectly well aware that my country has done plenty of bad things in its time, as it has of good, and I see no reason to excuse them, nor even to hide them. In particular, I don’t think its acquisition of an empire one of the great benign events of human history, though certainly it might have run that empire a lot more nastily than it did.  […]

Yet, whatever its faults, its errors, its crimes, my country, right or wrong, it is.