Posted on 03/02/2018 11:39:12 AM PST by Mariner
“We got China wrong. Now what?” ran the headline over the column in the Washington Post.
“Remember how American engagement with China was going to make that Communist backwater more like the democratic, capitalist West?” asked Charles Lane in his opening sentence.
America’s elites believed that economic engagement and the opening of U.S. markets would cause the People’s Republic to coexist benignly with its neighbors and the West.
We deluded ourselves. It did not happen.
Xi Jinping just changed China’s constitution to allow him to be dictator for life. He continues to thieve intellectual property from U.S. companies and to occupy and fortify islets in the South China Sea, which Beijing now claims as entirely its own.
Meanwhile, China sustains North Korea as Chinese warplanes and warships circumnavigate Taiwan threatening its independence.
We today confront a Chinese Communist dictatorship and superpower that seeks to displace America as first power on earth and to drive the U.S. military back across the Pacific.
Who is responsible for this epochal blunder?
The elites of both parties. Bush Republicans from the 1990s granted China most-favored-nation status and threw open America’s market.
Result: China has run up $4 trillion in trade surpluses with the United States. Her $375 billion trade surplus with us in 2017 far exceeded the entire Chinese defense budget.
We fed the tiger, and created a monster.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The missionaries are as bad as any that went to China, read some Mark Twain
“Oh, we’ve defined away the problem?”
Words do have meanings and it certainly matter if you want to have a rational and coherent discussion.
“The problem indeed comes in that we were induced to “gladly pay for some Chinese made product.” For the sake of a merchant class.”
Oh please, not another conspiracy theory. The evil merchant “class” only sells what you and me are willing to buy. If you want to look at a villain, look in the mirror.
China enslaves the population to work in factories. Its like the confederacy having free labor and a higher standard of living (for whites) before the civil war. America is a cooked goose since labor unions, the eeoc, osha, the epa and the federalization of employment standards have made us noncompetitive.
Same argument was if we brought blacks up into middle and upper classes they’d be more like the traditional white American culture
Wrong again
The old south, before the civil war, had a standard of living propped up by slave labor. Look at the old civil war newspapers online at the library of congress or the many state historical societies. Imported goods from Europe were readily available in the south. There was a high cash flow from the slave economy. Southerners had more access to the best in education and goods and services than most northerners.
Today illegals and the permanent underclass are taking up the place of the chattel slave in economic history. Its just a matter of time till sharia law enforces the right to hold slave auctions in Detroit. It will be ruled aok by liberal anti christian judges who will rule that islamic cultural differences need to be respected.
Chinese slave labor is the tip of the iceberg that is sinking america.
You know I was in China just a couple of months ago. I didn’t see a single slave, but I did see a lot of happy people, gleaming skyscrapers, streets filled with cars including lots of Mercedes, Audis, Cadillacs, Porsches Lexus, Apple stores, Starbucks, etc.
You may want to take a trip there. I promise it’ll be an eye opener.
China is a very strange experience.
They have all the same stuff, but use it all very differently.
Have you ever been there?
They're doing pretty good as far as I could tell. They don't seem to be much different than what I imagine late 19th and early to mid 20th century America was.
What you imagine... Let’s stop there.
Fiction often reveals more truth than peer-reviewed journals. Swift and Twain skewered the elites with aplomb, and revealed the dark heart beating under the guise of polite society. Effective social commentary is rarely polite or factual, yet contains more truth than the combined history of nations.
Twain lied like a rug and presented it as fact.
There is a difference.
How could a writer of fiction, per your first post, present anything as fact? His newsman days were not long, nor did he pretend objectivity in his writings. He was a vicious critic, but I am not aware of his claiming ex-cathedra status for any of his works.
It is remarkable that his writings engender such vitriol among certain audiences so many years after his demise. It’s almost as if his so-called baseless accusations still carry some power. Is there one particular passage that offends, or is it just his scathing depiction of bigotry that causes such antipathy?
I remember conversations I've had over the years with a friend who refused to purchase any apparel made in Southeast Asia because it's made with "sweatshop labor."
I always asked the same question: "Were those people in Malaysia and Indonesia better off BEFORE these apparel companies opened their 'sweatshops' over there?"
And somehow you manage to answer your own question. Amazing!
It is one thing to spin your story and quite another to invent events out of whole cloth.
While he was writing for the newspapers he flat out made stuff up. Not little bits. He was the Steve Glass of the 19th century.
It is remarkable that his writings engender such vitriol among certain audiences so many years after his demise.
Vitriol?
LOL! My pointing out what he admitted and indeed bragged about is vitriol?
Is there one particular passage that offends, or is it just his scathing depiction of bigotry that causes such antipathy?
No, what offends me is when people take fiction and present it as fact. You know, like the NYT or well.. you.
Mark Twain was a fiction writer and while he spun amusing tales using him as a history book has it drawbacks.
But pointing this out apparently can send his worshipers into a fit of hysterics.
People who recognize that we can't fight a ground war with an enemy that can field 100 times their number.
Well that’s where other bomb types come into play.
Twain is a primary unbiased source?
Plus, that undermines the principle?
Lies may seem to prevail against Christendom but that is but for a moment. Truths stand glorious forever.
I worship only God, but can appreciate even an old reprobate who occasionally speaks truth. There was only one man who spoke only truth, and we killed him.
Twain’s comments on missionaries were not intended as factual, but still ring true today. The same people inhabit many missionary efforts today. Hundreds of years of missions and billions of dollars hasn’t saved Africa yet. Endless charity is slavery, and the crass commercialism of many supposed religious sites would have Christ grabbing a whip.
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