Posted on 08/30/2016 9:14:06 AM PDT by pabianice
“What happened? What the hell happened!?”
asa663@verizon.net
These are the final words spoken by Jake Holman in the magnificent movie, “The Sand Pebbles.” Holman, played by Steve McQueen, serves as the protagonist in the 1966 movie, a movie about the Chinese Communist Revolution set in 1926 (although about Vietnam). Holman has just been shot to death by Communist soldiers as he gives his life to save his love interest and the lives of fellow crewmen from the gunboat USS San Pablo. Making the movie was a two-year ordeal and McQueen has said that making it “made up for all the bad things he had done in his life.” McQueen’s character – delinquent youth, poor fatherless family, sentenced to the military during World War I to avoid jail -- is a machinist’s mate first class (MM1) and in his Navy career has been obsessed only with being the best engineer he can be, to the detriment of human relations and political awareness. Upon reporting aboard, Holman goes directly to the engine room, looks around with a smile, and says, “Hello, engine. My name is Jake.”
Holman, along with the entire crew, is caught-up in the violence of the early Chinese Revolution and although the ship is stationed along Chinese back-waters, is soon involved. The story accurately depicts river patrol duty being done by the U.S. and European countries at the time. Because of his naiveté, Holman is unjustly accused of murder by the Communists and the following events spell his doom. But the bewilderment of the situation very well mirrors the state of the United States in this election year. “What the hell has happened?”
Today’s voters are far more bewildered by events than in the past. Politics has supplanted thought. Political affiliation is no longer to a party, but to whatever cult appeals more to the voter. Hillary Clinton, after 40 grasping years of avarice and congenital lying has her voters who are uninformed, bigoted, and want lots more free stuff from the government (re. us taxpayers). They are oblivious to fact or reason. Donald Trump, who spent 40 years single-mindedly amassing as much money and property as he could, now asks voters to “help make America great again” by essentially returning civic and government discourse to 1958. Trying to move a sense of country back in time is bound to allow progressive opponents call him every nasty thing in the book. From the relatively small number of independent thinkers we hear, “What the hell happened?”
At 240 years, the government of the United States is one of the oldest in the world. Is its time running out?
I don’t think it was the Nationalists, at least not the KMT. I seem to remember that it was a the troops of a local warlord of which there were a few and they fought each other, the KMT, and the Communists.
I watched it and then read the book and watched it again. I always liked McQueen and this was his best.
The failure of the Boxers allowed the various European & Japanese imperialists to expand their territorial franchises over the next decades and further weaken the Imperial control. Unlike the others, the United States claimed no ports but did participate in gaining most favored nation treatment to allow its US Navy to patrol and conduct anti-piracy missions on the Yangtze River from the 1860s and on.
A decade after the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing Monarchy fell to a coalition of ad-hoc regional warlords and western-influenced radicals (1912). Putative leader of this movement was Dr Yat-sen Sun M.D. (Sun Yat-sen), but with the size of China, control was extremely fragmentary. A brief resurgence of the Monarchy in 1915 didn't last but showed the fragility of the newly named "Republic of China" government.
Given the snakepit of regional rivalries and warlords, Dr Sun allied his power base of the China Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [KMT]) with the Communist Party of China and the new Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). Thus his new government had the entire stewpot, warlords to Communists but with the additional power, their armies were able to re-establish control over northern China. In 1923, Dr Sun named General Kai-shek Chiang (Chiang Kai-shek) as the chief of the National Revolutionary Army.
When Dr Sun dies of cancer in 1925, the stewpot boils over and the Yangtze River (longest and most strategic river in China) becomes an ad-hoc boundary and war zone. While the "Sand Pebbles" is fiction, the elements that are included were real. A multi-way battle within China for control made the presence of foreigners an irritant and quite precarious.
Both the Chinese and the sailors were pawns of forces and traditions that were rapidly changing. The cusp part of the novel, the Nanking Event, was, in hindsight, a reprise of the Boxer Rebellion. With warring armies eliminating local government, local populations seize the opportunity to loot hated foreign enclaves which brings foreign naval intervention by artillery and troops. Fun times if you like chaos!
In 1927, future dictator and mass murderer, Zedong Mao (Mao Zedong) (b.1893), got his first prominent role in an armed uprising against the KMT in Hunan Province, the first battle of the Chinese Civil War. By the time of his death in 1976, by execution, imprisonment or forced famine, an educated estimate of 60-65 million Chinese deaths (10% China population) marks him as the greatest(?) murderer in history! FYI: In terms of world population however, no one (yet) has equaled Genghis Khan's (d.1227) record of 11.1% (40 million) from China to Eastern Europe.
Sorry, I got carried away on this reply - fascinating history!
“That has only been around for 65 years or so.”
So what? Has human nature suddenly changed in the last 65 years?
“And please explain why you think people need spectacles.”
I didn’t say the need them, I said they want them. If they didn’t want them, they wouldn’t watch them; nobody is forcing them.
“Shanghaied” was in use long before & referenced manning of ships by press gangs. Shanghai was probably used because that was a frequent destination for both commercial and naval ships back in the day and about as far away as one might expect to be from San Francisco or from Calais/London.
Being in China during that period made you a “China Hand” and actually staying there or serving multiple tours made you an “Old” China Hand - still did so 40 years ago & likely to this day.
Also; The nationalist revolution of that time was fueled by students & academics from multiple socialist factions with Sun Yat Sen as nominal leader. On Sun’s death the two major factions openly split into Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chaing Kai Shek and Cummunists (CCP)under Mao. Structurally, the two parties were very similar at that time and both opposed the war lord system in China (although Chang incorporated them into KMT when possible).
If Sand Pebbles took place after 1925 the KMT/Red split had taken place. I’d guess the fight at the boom was KMT based on their uniforms but the attack on a mission would have been CCP or a warlord, Chang was quite pro Christianity and, in fact, was baptized about the time of this story.
What the hell happened?
We let people who aren’t paying for the government decide how the government will spend our money.
We let the government take on powers that are not legitimately authorized to it, because somebody claimed it was a good idea.
We let government become the province of government professionals.
_________________________________________________________
A number of truly bad things have happened. The crony capitalists have bought off the representatives of the people so that they don’t really represent the people. The people have become ignorant of truth because the crony capitalists and the politician class are in bed with the Mainstream Media and hide the truth from us, by doing so they have control of the country. Power is money and they have much of both. The Millions that work for government try to please their political leaders and their unions to insure that they make plenty of money, one third higher than average citizens in the same type of employment. Everybody is featherbedding.
It is obvious that when a representative in the House who never made $100,000 in a years time comes out a millionaire like Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reed, it is a sick broken system.
The internet has helped expose much of the graft and crimes of the political cast. The elites who think they are so much smarter and better than the populace of just average workers, the proletariat are finally starting to be exposed.
Patriots are making facts available to the public through the new media, it is refreshing.
The Hillary Clinton Email scandal is a good example. The many thousands of employees of the State Department knew what was going but did nothing to protect America because they thought they were better, smarter and in a better place to make decisions for Americans.
The Clinton Email Scandal is bad as it hides truth but what is worse is to think that our “rulers” could be so audacious as to think it was Okay to hide truth. They continue to try to hide truth by taking many years to answer Freedom of Information Requests or even ignoring them.
The Clinton’s should be in prison instead of running for the White House. Obama should have been impeached a long time ago for ignoring the Constitution. Obama should have been dismissed as a contestant for President when it was found that he was an Indonesian Citizen in his youth.
There is much more I could say but I fear I would bore you, so I’ll just answer the question. Ignorance. That is what the Hell is wrong with our country.
Most of your post fleshes out my third point. Thank you.
We tend to forget that this old veteran came out of WW1 and carried on into the jungles of Vietnam! John Moses Browning was one real Son of a Gun, M1911 to the "Ma Duce" M2!
It must have been so exotic back then. Now, it is a giant cesspool.
Yes. It is the Jet Li movies that are about the Boxer Rebellion.
Actually, the saying goes back even farther in history.
In the days of sail (especially after the United States established the trade route to China), it was very difficult to obtain a full crew due to the horrific and brutal conditions aboard ship. Even mentioning "the Shanghai Run" evoked fear among sailors.
In many ports (including Port Angeles, Washington), pubs and taverns were set out on the ends of docks, away from the shore. A crewman (who was usually called a "crimp") from a crew-starved ship would habit those pubs, looking for any healthy-appearing male who might wander in. The Crimp would chat the fellow up and buy him a drink. After distracting the victim, (usually with the assistance of the barkeep or other crewmen posing as patrons), the Crimp would spike the unsuspecting lad's drink with a knockout concoction, commonly referred to by sailors as a "Mickey Finn," or simply, "Mickey." The victim drinks, and down he goes.
These establishments had trap doors that opened to the water below. The unconscious man was lowered into a waiting boat and rowed out to the ship. By the time he came to his senses, it was too late to do anything. The Bosun and the "Bucko Mate" beat any resistance out of him and eventually all a man could do was accept his fate and try to survive the run to Shanghai, often lasting a number of years.
This is where the term "Shanghaied" originates.
It was a terrible, brutal era in our nation's history. Even after the Civil War, men were torn from their families and forced into slavery- and many did not survive the voyage. For the families left behind, the men simply vanished.
Our government (as would be suspected) turned a blind eye to the practice until the early 1930s when sailors finally decided they had had enough. Sailors were beaten, arrested, and even shot in the streets- by agencies of our own government- for simply refusing to sail aboard deathtrap ships under brutal officers.
As the docks of their port cities became battlegrounds, the public slowly became aware of the plight of American Merchant Seamen. The pace of shipping and cargo handling ground to a halt as the cry for the improvement of sailors' conditions grew stronger. The shipping magnates' bank accounts were taking damage, as were the pocketbooks of the lawmakers to whom they lobbied. Finally, after a number of congressional hearings, more dead sailors at the hands of police and federal agents, and a nationwide moral outcry, the government passed laws to provide redress for the brutality and injustice perpetrated by leading shipping magnates of the era, and to outlaw crimping and Shanghaiing.
I had a few uncles who were merchant seamen from the 1920s through the 1970s. Their stories and experiences led me do read about the history of the U.S. Merchant Marine. It's a fascinating and often saddening look at a vital element of our national trade and security.
Thank you for that very informative post.
Sorry, but this term actually goes back to the mid-1800s when sailors were kidnapped to serve on Pacific Sailing Ships. While I can't name the movie, I recall a scene where an unwary sailor is knocked on the noggin and dropped through a trapdoor to a rowboat underneath the pier. These voyages to Shanghai and other trans-Pacific ports could last longer than year and the sailor was legally bound to the ship.
“Today’s voters are far more bewildered by events than in the past.”
Speak for yourself. I am not the least bit bewildered.
Man is fallen and corrupt. Both parties are composed of fallen and corrupt men and women.
The globalists want an influx of Muslims to Europe and America in order to destroy the remaining vestiges of European/Western Civilization, which produced more freedom than any in history, and to destroy Authentic/Biblical Christianity, which catalyzed the development of that civilization. They want serfs and slaves.
Both parties have been infiltrated by these globalists, and therefore do nothing to protect their constituents from the assaults without or within, all the while making promises they have no intention of keeping.
Many rank-and-file Americans are fed up with the endemic corruption of the Uniparty.
As soon as Trump declared, I knew he could win the presidency - and I was immediately willing to vote for him - given two provisos:
1) That he simply stay the course regardless of opposition from both factions of the Uniparty..
2) That he prepare for unprecedented voter fraud to counter his unprecedented threat.
I am not bewildered. I am disgusted.
Because we are intelligent.
With that comes the desire to see, hear, taste and feel new things.
Because we are social creatures we like doing these things with other people.
For many of us the more people we can do things with the better.
We enjoy the vicarious nature of spectacles because they satisfy these needs but without expending the energy needed to engage in those activities ourselves.
Are there exceptions to these generalities? Of course.
That is why they are generalities.
But a great movie, I took my very first date to see it! :)
Thank you! I remember reading about one of the warlords who accepted Christianity and baptized whole masses of troops with firehoses...
My grandpa used to like to tell the story of how he and his buddies were bored one day and tried to use a BAR to chop down a tree.
They failed, but the upper and lower parts of the trunk of the tree were connected with what looked like a big bunch of toothpicks.
The people did not sow the corruption.
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