Amid the splendor, it’s hard to ignore the clouds

IT is axiomatic that bad news manages to find you wherever you are.

Not that I am Joe Btfsplk exactly, that gloomy cartoon character with the dark cloud over his head who is haunted by grim expectations. It’s just that to someone who has been a journalist most of his life, bad news seems to be always at hand.

I made a vow while vacationing in a lodge at 7,000 feet in Sequoia National Park, for instance, not to watch CNN, even though it presents its worst news in a perkier style than it once did. No Wolf Blitzer, please.

When I watched television at all it was reruns of the “CSI” shows, which seem to be more frequent on TV than Starbucks in L.A. I suspect I even watched shows I had already seen, but in the semi-vegetative state of a vacation, who cares?

We were in a lodge called Wuksachi, which consisted of a main building with a gourmet dining room and three separate residential units, all set among the towering sequoias, near creeks that burbled and deer that wandered into view. It was almost like being on a movie set.

If you can’t relax in that kind of environment, there is very little hope that you will ever be able to completely let go. The thin sunlight of the Alpine setting and a sunset breeze that whispered through tall trees were constituted to let a guy like me forget about everything unpleasant, expensive or fattening.

So why am I writing about bad news today?

Well, I was sitting in an overstuffed chair in the main lodge reading a book and awaiting dinner when I glanced toward the door to see a torn page from the Los Angeles Times walking in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. While I stared in disbelief, it headed my way on little puppy legs and perched itself on a small table next to my chair. And then it implored in a tiny reedy voice, “Read me!”

I avoided it as long as I could, but then finally picked it up and began reading. It was torn out of page A6, and the headline was only partially there: “Anti-Americanism Is Provi.... “ An accompanying photograph was also only half-shown, but the half said everything. It was a depiction of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez smiling and reaching out toward someone or something.

I sighed and turned to the story by Washington, D.C., staffer Paul Richter and read of the growing alliance among those who hate us. I knew I should have left it alone.

Our unpopularity, rooted in the decision to invade, I mean liberate, Iraq is rising not only in the Muslim world but also in the so-called Third World countries of Latin America and among our allies. The Bush administration decision to go it alone has pretty much left us alone, isolated on Island America like sailors abandoned on a South Seas atoll.

Richter’s piece was the first time I had seen a story that laid out so clearly the predicament our cowboy leader has gotten us into. We can demand impeachment for a president’s embarrassing sexual dalliances but not for a president who has dragged a once respected nation into the slime. No one died when Bill Clinton reached out for Monica S. Lewinsky. Many have since George W. Bush reached out for Iraq.

Although I realize that doing the right thing isn’t always popular, one has to wonder if there might be something awry in policies that have stirred the world into an alliance opposed to our very existence. All those voices rising around the globe should be reason enough to at least pause and reconsider.

Military power and a dogma rooted in self-righteousness won’t be enough in the long run to protect us from the invasive persistence of universal antipathy.

When I finished reading what I could of Richter’s report, I sent it on its way with a slap on the bottom and walked outside, my appetite gone, to stare at the clouds gathering over distant peaks, moving toward us like ominous elements of a ghostly army. I guess I did feel a little like Joe Btfsplk at that moment, hunkering down under a cloud of gloom.

I sat on a log and began thinking about how great we once were, how America was the symbol of all that was just and honorable and beautiful. I know, as I travel, that the feeling still exists, but the power of hatred, pounded like drumbeats into global consciousness, is both pervasive and frightening. Respect for what we once were can easily disappear in the growing darkness of what we seem to have become.

Ever conscious of my moods, the wondrous Cinelli, seeing me brood in the pale sunlight of a fading day, led me back into the lodge, spoke of the glory that surrounded us and pulled me away from the dreary edge and up to the heights of a mountain martini. It was a good way to duck out from under Joe’s dark cloud, relaxing me to the point of near contentment.

As we talked of the wonder that surrounded us, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Richter’s piece had run off from the lodge, all right, but was still waiting at the edge of the forest.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.