Democracy for Vancouver

Because even when writing about Jewish tribalism in the Caucasus in the latter part of the first millennium, he can gracefully reach forward more than a thousand years and smack Chimpy in the puss:

“War,” said Joseph Hyrkanos to the elephant. He spat on the grass and shook his head and pulled on the braided strands of his beard. The elephant snorted as if in agreement, with her usual air of stoic disdain, and went on ripping up sheaves of chess grass with her scarified trunk, and stuffing them into her mouth. Her own warlike career long past, she was a great, placid dame of at least 50, who had been captured by Normans decades ago in a raid on Muslim Sicily, and fetched home to Francia to be neglected by a series of improvident barons, until the day, six months ago, that she was absorbed, by way of payment, into the far-flung and arbitrary inventory of the Hyrkanos clan. “Bad for the Radanites.”

“Not always,” said his nephew, a would-be sharp operator who lacked for the satisfaction of his ambition only the quality of sharpness, and who expended all of his energies, as far as Joseph could see, on preserving his opinions from contamination by experience. “War creates opportunities, too.”

“In the short term,” Joseph said, and spat again. “Good in the short term is always bad in the long term.”

[emphasis mine.]

I heartily recommend it, along with all of Chabon’s other works.