Clintonian naivite

There are so many synctactic tricks in the neo-con playbook that it is not too useful to only discuss one of them. But this latest one has to be a dead give away of how fundamentally puerile their thinking really is. In fact, their main weakness seems to be that they suffer from an elephantine memory and a post-adolescent's fixation on a pet peeve. Or they don't forget much and they obsess about that that they don't or can't forget!!

Is there anything more puerilely naive than the neo-con approach to Iraq and the Middle East? But they facilely fasten (nice alliteration there!) on their obsession with Clinton & Co, which paid political campaign dividends for them last time out, to deflect our attention from their disastrous policies and execution thereof by reminding us how "ineffective" and even how "downright Un-American" the naive Clintonites were. They actually read and knew history! How naive of them!

The Shrub and his pretentious crowd of neocon intellectual supporters have never seen a book they couldn't ignore. And the world pays for their deliberate ignorance. Oh they say it's their strategic strength. Not getting distracted by all the trivial details is what makes for an efficient and hard-hitting executive!! The crassness of it all.

Their puerile hypocrisies may be catching up to them, but their commitment to and discipline about message are not going to go away easily, because that will mean they will be on their way out of political power.

Diogenes dixit!

Mafiae,

The main text below comes from Crooked Timber 7/23. I added a comment at the end. It summarizes my thoughts about US vs. China's foreign posture these days!! I contend that the US posture sucks!!

1. One other thing that tends to get forgotten is that the (Italian) mafia is a terrorist organisation. In the ‘war against the state’ the mafia planeted bombs, terrorised civilians, and generally did its best to impose its political views on the rest of the population. It also had (and has) strong links with the Vatican: in other words, it is a religiously orientated terrorist organisation.

   I am not even going to comment on the hypocricy of Berlusconi who has appeased (and, some say, worse) this organisation. I have also been searching for quite some time amongst the ‘pro-invasion’ weblogs for condemnation of Berlusconi’s corruption and appeasement of terrorism, perhaps even an acknowledgement that Chirac’s corruption (no small matter) pales into insignificance when compared to Berlusconi’s.

   However, of course, Berlusconi had the ‘right’ attitude to the invasion of Iraq, and like the Vatican, the pro-invasion blogosphere now has the ability to absolve him of his sins.

   Berlusconi’s antics also put the question of Turkey into perspective. Huge amount of ink has been spilled on the subject of whether Turkey ‘meets our Western standards of democracy’, avoiding the salient fact that there is some doubt as to whether the mafia ridden, Berlusconi owned state of Italy would actually meet the EC’s criteria for democratic process were it to apply for entry.

   Posted by Brendan · July 23rd, 2005 at 12:43 pm

2. In traditional China the state did not effectively guarantee law and order at the local level, which was maintained by vigilantes organized by the local gentry. There were also bandit gangs of the Mafia type which sometimes fought the gentry, sometimes worked for them, and sometimes cut deals with them. Sometimes they were Robin Hoods and sometimes they were Pinkertons. Ultimately they were a predictable part of the system. At one key moment in Shanghai, one of the big gangs allied with the Kuomintang and massacred Communists.

   I’d like to see the “monopoly of legitimate violence” definition of the state applied to XIXc China. The Ch’ing state seemed to subcontract legitimate violence. They only became alarmed when tax collection became impossible, or when someone set himself up an an Emperor (symbolic politics). And even in the best of times, local authorities skimmed a high proportion of the tax revenue.

   Posted by Bertrand · July 23rd, 2005 at 1:02 pm
3. Your comment is awaiting moderation.

   Well I wonder when some bright creature will undertake to analyze the current US govt in the same terms that the commentors above have done of Italy, France and traditional China?

   It is my modest contention that China today is freer than most Western states. But many will point to various Human Rights limitations and suppressions in China and I can’t deny that they exist. However, on the level of everyday life incountry and abroad my image of China is society, diplomacy and political force working to continue economic growth, harmony incountry and with other countries, even with Taiwan, their old bugaboo!!

   Now what can I say about the US, mired in Iraq, Afghanistan et al in pursuit of precisely what aims, other than legitimate violence???????

   I rest my case for now

There is serendipity!!

I went to the web site for quotations and found this random selection:

The way to final freedom is within thy self.

The Book of the Golden Precepts

This sounds somewhat biblical. I wonder if GW Bush reads enough bible stuff to have found this one!! In the end the only freedom worth considering is surely the "final freedom".

Contrarian Robert

Michael Ignatieff, sometime Canadian, intellectual gadfly/interviewer in London and now professor at John Kennedy School says in the NY Times of June 26:

"There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson's dream must work. Its ultimate task in American life is to redeem loss, to rescue sacrifice from oblivion and futility and to give it shining purpose. The real truth about Iraq is that we just don't know -- yet -- whether the dream will do its work this time. This is the somber question that hangs unanswered as Americans approach this Fourth of July."

My own view is that there are dreams worth pursuing but since when is one man, GW Bush, empowered to pursue a dream by spilling the blood of thousands including American/British/coalition men and women, mothers and fathers many of them!!!

Pursuing the dream by fighting a tyrant in one's own country is one thing, but what is going on in Iraq is hardly worthy of "the pursuit of happiness for the greater number".

I don't hate Bush and his fellow travellers down that dreary path of death and mindless destruction, but I hate what they have done and continue to do in the name of freedom/liberty. It's dead wrong!! Very dead!!

I highly recommend one web site to you if you are interested in the authentic news perspective in and about China: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm Then if you want a China News portal go to China Digital Times which is hosted out of U of California in Berkely.

Yes, I am a nay-sayer, a contrarian about many things political whether they are what I see or don't see in China or what I read about in either Western media reports or in blogs that reference comments about politics from a Western media or western political perspective. My dear friends expect that I have a special perspective about "human rights" practiced or not in China.

It strikes me that most of us find it next to impossible to write about our feelings or views on politics without reference to some reference or set of values that we understand in our gut or in our experience. Many of us see things in our own emotional or intellectual frame of reference, which does not necessarily connect with or view other people's values. It is difficult if you were a fan of Jean Paul II to be indifferent to the fact that Chiina and Chinese people had little time for him or his recent death.

The reality is that China and Chinese people, like my wife Yuan, knew little about him or about what he represented and what he did in the greater world!! Strangely, China and Chinese people were much more interested in Camilla P-Bowles and Prince Charles than they were in Jean-Paul II. There is a wide and deep cultural chasm between China and Chinese and Westerners. The gap is a language/word gap and a values gap!! So it is with lots of scepticism that I read blogs by "westerners" who report on their impresssions about China and Chinese people. I feel specially careful when I try to do that myself. It's not that I want to be politically correct, but that I realize that I can't fully understand all the whys and wherefores of what I see and experience here. The fact is that my wife can't even help me figure out the Chinese used by Windows XP menus or even OS/X menus. The Chasm is real and almost unbridgeable at times.

So beware of all reports about China and Chinese people from so called expert Western witnesses living in China!!!!!!

Yesterday I met a US citizen who is working in Dalian teaching English Oral Work at Dalian University. Since I feel so uncomfortable how GWB was re-elected to the presidency, I had to ask him after preliminary intros were done whether he was a red or blue stater, specially since he said he was from Cedar Rapids IA or a red state if I recall well enough!! The language used by neocons in the Western World and not just in the US about freedom et al gets me riled from time to time. What is freedom anyway? Has it got something to do with US electoral rhetoric or with any rhetoric? Is there some universal practical litmus test that says that these people are free and those aren't?

Since I have been living in China and since I regularly read news from US/Canada and UK as well lots of blogs on the left and the right side of the political rhetoric, the question of what freedom is really about intrigues me.

Here in China I see people buying and selling financial instruments of many types and colors as well as real estate. Farmers sell their produce almost everywhere and there is lots of fresh produce available at a very good price in terms of Canadian Cost of Living standards. I see few police and those that we see are almost never carrying firearms.

There is lots of TV but a lot of propaganda also, but lots of soap opera too and it does show people protesting in public and private. And I have seen at least one public notice in the our apartment complex about a public meeting at City Hall to protest a projected limited access road building project here in Dalian.

Is this whole question about freedom and the flags of liberty planted by GWB and his soldiers just another case of the "Not invented by the US syndrome". It sure sounds and looks like it to me.

Or this another case of misplaced religious fervor? GWB does claim that he listens to the Father up there and it's been said of him that he feels that God picked him to be President for a greater cause on Earth!! Would that be misplaced or naive fervor?? Given the damage in human blood, mayhem and public asset destruction carried out by the US military in Iraq under his command, it certainly has the look and feel of religious fanaticism acting out on weaker victims!! And what has that kind of violent action got to do with planting flags of liberty? Liberty from what or for what???