“Or am I just dealing with a bullheaded liberal sister that refuses to admit that she’s wrong...”
Sigh.......I too have a liberal brother with liberal daughters who I love dearly and they love me. However, they appear blinded by TDS and SJW bs. Sometimes I can’t tell if they are brainwashed from NPR, CNN, Boston College, and Georgetown connection OR if they really believe the nonsense being fed them. Kind people, smart people. Smarter than they are acting. I think part of the problem is my sister in law’s brother who was a career diplomat for the State Department, last stationed in Italy. He and his hippy wife were married in the middle of UT Austin. He is a very nice man too but one of that generation of kind of revolutionaries who became the establishment and sought elite status. My brother was married on the campus of U of Arkansas, very nice, free spirited college kids. Now he is a well respected businessman and researcher in the nursery business. He travels worldwide including many trips to China. He talks somewhat admiringly of the Chinese and I know members of the CCP have treated him to lavish gatherings. I know the research is valuable. I am troubled by his friendliness but how many businesses like what China offers but ignore the cost/expectation? As Bannon says, they know the price of everything but the cost of nothing.
We have deluded ourselves, those of us who have assumed China has the same values and goals we have. I hope that is becoming obvious.
I have emailed a thing to my brother that submitted China may be about to start a war with US. He poo-pooed that as did another friend contact who tracks China. The other friend says China has been weakened too. It appears we may well be at war, silently.
I have unfollowed the daughters. They post some ridiculous stuff straight out of left wing politics. They probably are mad at me for what I post. Oh well. Brother hasn’t returned a phone call for a few weeks. I do wonder what his friend that works for Bill Gates in London knew and told brother early on. My nephew was living and working in Long Island but moved to Houston. He had a job change but was there more to getting out of NY? I can’t help being suspicious.
Re: leftist family members.
I’m soo blessed. In my fam and friends network, I’m the soft squishy.
my lefty leaning daughter who is slowly being red pilled, watched “out of shadows”.
She woke up after that video I mean really woke unlike anything I have seen. I think I have created a monster. :-)
The Chinese are more or the same as people the world over in most respects most of the time.
The old statistical truth still reins with them, too. Within group differences are greater than between group differences.
They love their families--mostly. Chinese New Year animosities, resentments, bitterness & fights can parallel ours at Thanksgiving & Christmas.
They love their country--at least their culture. Party members love the government or at least use it to climb the ladder of more power & success, if not corrupt money.
They prefer to be honorable yet individuals who fail to cheat when they can to advance themselves or their families are seen as terminally stupid.
A lot of them--probably a majority--really do believe that the Chinese culture is the center of everything and certainly the wisest, most deserving, etc. etc. etc.
Yet most also hate the totalitarian corruptocrats running things and would slit the throats of the rulers in a flash if given a chance they could survive.
Alcoholism is epidemic. Quality marriages are at least as rare there as here. Though it seems like even arranged marriages can turn out well when both parties work hard at it. They seem to be more stoic about marriage arrangements without Hollyweed type fantasies controlling that much of their thoughts & emotions in a marriage.
I would say that being human, they somewhat have similar values & the same values in some respects & contexts.
They used to ask me how I saw Chinese people vs American people as a psychologist. I'd say--mostly the same. Same fights. Same alcoholism. Same corruption. Same greed. Same arrogance. Same family dynamics in some respects.
That sometimes the cultural expressions of similar values might be different but that the underlying crap & the same underlying wonderful things were mostly quite similar.
While there, I took pride that the American political arena was not AS corrupt as the Chinese. And that the media were not AS controlled as that of the Chinese. I realized later, I was mostly exceedingly wrong on both counts
I do think that there are a higher percentage of evildoers in powerful positions there that will take ruthless advantage of an underling quicker than is mostly true in the USA.
Confucian ideals took a real hit under Mao. But the substrate is still there. Those ideals are not as robust as Christian ideals. They are not built on as solid a foundation with no supernatural underlying support.
Nevertheless, the Confucian ideals do serve to somewhat call the average person toward behaving honorably and with fairness toward all.
The Chinese do have a much more operative and strict handling of and response to authority. They are--on average--much less likely to not be compliant; to protest on the job; to rebel or throw a fit.
But even there, paradoxes abound. Tienanmen was a great example. But it took a huge groundswell to reach such levels. They are loathe to be the "duck that sticks its head up above the flock."
The heart of man--good & bad--is much the same the world over.