Apparently, it was networking that exploded the Middle EAst dictatorships. Now China is being extra prudent and has closed down most social networking sites on the internet. Today even the business networking site Linkedin was closed down as part of efforts to prevent a "Jasmine Revolution". Many "charged" searchwords in Google (such as Egypt) are censured.
America continues is efforts to subvert the Chinese government. A Jasmine Revolution meeting was being organized when the American Ambassador in Beijing suddenly appeared on the site and started talking to the presents. Does America want 民主 (chaos) in China?
15 comments:
民主 (min zhu) means democracy (people's rule), not chaos and the answer is yes, we want democracy for all peoples - it is a basic human right.
混沌 (hum dun) is the formless void that existed before creation, not chaos in the sense of upheaval. Chaos in the civil/political sense is 混乱 (hun luan), which we don't want - who would make all that junk that fills our stores if not the Chinese?
K
Of course Min Zhu means "democracy" but the American interpretation of democracy means chaos for the average Chinese.
I humbly accept my (former) ignorance of the many kinds of chaos. The Hebrew Tohu VeVohu does not distinguish between political and cosmological disorder.
Hun dun is exactly the same thing as tohu veVohu as stated in the Torah - the formless void before creation, the same rhyming combination. (vohu has not other meaning - just a nonsense rhyme).
Modern Hebrew is a new , largely invented language and does not have the subtlety of expression of either English or Chinese. There were only a couple of thousands of words in Biblical Hebrew - not enough to express the full range of modern needs, even putting aside all the technological and scientific terms that were obviously missing. Ben Yehuda made up or repurposed a bunch of words but in the end it does not have the richness of a language that developed naturally over centuries and not in the mind of one man in the span of a few years. Maybe in another couple of hundred years it will be fully developed.
K
If America does not want "chaos in the civil/political sense 混乱 (hun luan)", why is the American Ambassador in Beijing fomenting it? Some Chinese feel that America is consistently criticising/subverting the Chinese regime. It cannot be ideological because the Chinese government has abandoned Communism, and its sole proclaimed goal is to ensure social stability and territorial integrity to the large Chinese nation.
I think the Chinese, in general exhibiting good judgement about these things, and having taken a good look at the world over the last decade or so, does not really want to take over control of it by stepping into the policeman role of the USA.
I think they will simply contract the US to continue to be the world's policeman, eg by forgiving some debt etc, and quietly pretend to have nothing to do with it as the USA under President John Bolton defangs Iran, bribes Egypt, keeps India and Pak apart, stamps on the Afghan heroin trade, manipulates the Congolese rebels, foments disorder in Venezuela, outmaneuvers the Brotherhood, and protects Israel.
It could be a marriage made in heaven.
Anon.
The only problem I see in Anon's solution is that the US cannot serve two masters: Japan and China. Both are ready to pay for protection, but they dont like each other.
China does not see itself contracting its foreign policy out to the US. They see themselves as a growing power and when they feel they are ready and rich enough to take on a bigger role, they will. They have no mission to spread peace and democracy, just to protect their own national interests.
The fact remains that the Chinese government is a repressive dictatorship. Americans are at bottom not cynical but idealistic. When push comes to shove, we favor democracy over dictatorship. The cynical realpolitik view that "they may be bastards, but at least they are our bastards" doesn't work out in the end - ultimately the bastards are overthrown with or without our support.
K
Democracies are overthrown too.
>Americans are at bottom not cynical but idealistic. When push comes to shove, we favor democracy over dictatorship.
Americans are at bottom as cynical and ready to cut throats for an extra buck or personal convenience as anybody else. Our world is permeated with glossed over brutality, from our slaughterhouses where Mexicans tear up the dead and living cattle alike for seven bucks an hour, to our rap videos (check out Flocka Waka Flame on YouTube for distilled awesome-I like Hard In Da Paint myself,) to our abortion clinics to our senior citizen homes (do some ridealongs with AMR for an eyeopener.)
We just have (for now) a functional system that lets 80-90% of the population interact with that stuff in a controlled and ritualistic fashion. Like Aztecs going to a ceremony every once in a while, to return to their peaceful and ordered homes. In that sort of controlled environment, it's easy to mouth idealistic platitudes and to actually believe them on some level.
Wait until the support system stops working.
It's very easy to be cynical about this stuff - Jefferson making grand statements about all men being equal while at the same time keeping slaves, etc. Hypocrisy will never be abolished. There will never be a world where you want to see how sausage is made. But words do count as statements of the ideals that we aspire to even if we don't always reach them. On paper, the Soviet Constitution was even better than the US Constitution - the difference was that we actually believe what is written there - if not 100% of the time, then mostly.
K
>But words do count as statements of the ideals that we aspire to even if we don't always reach them. On paper, the Soviet Constitution was even better than the US Constitution - the difference was that we actually believe what is written there - if not 100% of the time, then mostly.
The two sentences are mutually contradictory.
We believe what is written there until it steps on our cock. Then we don't believe it. All men are created equal? GTFO! Free speech? Until it offends me. Guns to protect from an oppressive govt? Ask the Ruby Ridge people how that one worked out for them. And that's without getting into the horseshit that the later amendments are full of. The constitution was no great shakes to begin with when you got down in the weeds, and the 200 years of lawyering since have hardly improved it. The bottom line is this: this country's greatness (what remains of it) is not based on some Magic Parchment but on the moral fiber of the average American. Which the elites of this country have been purposefully destroying with great success over the last 100 years. Go to the mall and look at the giant waddling masses of flesh towing along their nine year old slut in training progeny with booty shorts with "juicy" written across the back. Yeah.
The lower classes were always unspeakably depraved - if anything they have gotten better - have more teeth, more education than they used to. The real difference is that the elites have lost all confidence and no longer pretend to be elites - they are down in the mud, wallowing with the trash.
K
Judging by what I've read of the way things were in the US and Great Britain 50, 100 and 150 years ago, the lower classes were much better off by any standard. Teeth are probably better due to fluoride but worse due to diet, and the more American education you have, the more stupid and counterintuitive ideas you believe as dogma.
I am not sure that the lower classes were always unspeakably depraved, because they didnt write history. The writers were monks or other religious people, or members of the exploiting class, and I dont believe them.
We could also say that Rome's upper class was always unspeakably depraved, and Greece's even more.
In fact, our upper classes are quite depraved as well-they just don't make the news. The middle class is the moral anchor of this country, but it is being pushed into degeneracy and bankruptcy by the economic institutions and media. TV tells them to buy more shit, banks loan them money they won't be able to get back, the govt prints more money to bail out the banks, this devalues the savings the middle class has managed to maintain, then we import hordes of migrants across the border and export the middle class' jobs. Where's the moral fiber of somebody whose assets are negative and who's been raised by Jersey Shore, as their parents are both busy working 9-5's in cubicles?
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