I don’t doomscroll, but I occasionally fall down a virtual rabbit hole.  One of the truly interesting things about being an editor is reading proposals from other editors.  China’s been a hot topic for the past several years and so I hopped on over to Wikipedia to find out who this Chiang Kai-shek was, after reading a proposal.  I’d heard his name from childhood on, but I’d never read any history of China.  For my entire life it has been a communist country, often with frosty relations to the United States.  One thing led to another and I landed on the page titled Warlord Era.  This sounded like something out of a fantasy novel, so I thought I’d see what that was all about.  When you scroll down to the Warlord profiles section, you find some really interesting stuff.  One of these warlords was a real eclectic guy known as the “model governor.”  Another was a strict Methodist who banned alcohol and dressed like a common infantryman.  Yet another was known as the “most well endowed man in China,” in the southern regions, that is.

Now, I’ve never read any Chinese history, but these guys sound a lot less threatening than anyone you’d find in a Mario Puzo novel.  They may have been terrifying in real life; Fidel Castro wore a common soldier’s uniform, but I’d have been frightened had I found him lurking under the bed.  Of course, I’ve never read any histories of Cuba either.  There’s a lot to learn in this world.  I enjoy reading history, but my writing projects tend to direct my non-work reading these days.  I’ve been acutely aware that my time on this fascinating planet is limited and that none of us can learn everything.  It saddens me that world leaders show so little interest in the planet they “govern.”  Even a little reading on Wikipedia should be enough to grease those wheels.

One of the strange ideas that occurred to me once while reading a different proposal was that China conducts business deals with, for example, nations in Africa, in which the United States is not involved at all.  When this thought launched I realized just how parochial the outlook of many of us is.  I lived overseas for three years, but still, the United States, in better and in worse, is my home.  It’s the place I know (or thought I knew).  Where some of my ancestors lived for over two-and-a-half centuries.  As appealing as Canada often seems, my fate appears to be here, along with my heart.  So I don’t doomscroll.  But I do read about China and realize how little I know.