A Farewell Salad, Well-Tossed

Meyer comments on the global straw poll, Beijing Olympics scandal, and book entitled American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Among other things, Washington nowadays more than ever presses the superpower's prerogative of judging, influencing, and in extremis, forcibly intruding upon, the domestic affairs of ostensibly sovereign states. And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it is hypothetically feasible for citizens everywhere to return the favor in a global straw poll. Downside risks of straw poll include the turnout abroad might be embarrassingly greater than at home and voters might credibly fear that local security police would seek access to registration rolls or identification records to track dissidents or undocumented immigrants. Even so, the potential benefits, at least upon first thought, seem to outweigh the risks.