Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

All that shit going down in the China's western provinces, and Hong Kong, and Tibet decades before, even what's going on with their citizens (Tiananmen, doctors who disappeared when they alerted people about the Wuhan pneumonia in its early stages, etc.) is the very reason we need to damn care about this "racism" stuff. I'm not sure anyone here is really hating the Verum guy. They seem to be taking pity or hating his actions because of the product's merits.

China is laughing at the USA right now because of the BLM stuff. They are laughing because they think America has lost it's moral authority, that America can't keep it's house in order. Never mind the fact that China's internal peace, at least the appearance of it, is through secret police and star chambers that only answer to a central authoritarian regime. Yup, America's got its shit to take care of, an ongoing reckoning of the vestiges of slavery. Not saying everybody should be card carrying members of the BLM club, but people need to stand up for something, support what's right and refuse to support what's wrong. China has become powerful because somewhere down the line, American people said f**k it, we don't care about China's human rights abuses. Americans, being naive, assumed that when China got rich, it would become good and democratic. Well China didn't. Technically the big corporations and politicians (starting with Clinton) sold us out; but ultimately, we the people let them.

I long for the day when America had moral authority. Despite our imperfections, we strove to do better within and expected other countries to do the same. Sure many countries hated it, some may have thought "Who the f**k are you Americans to tell us how we should treat our people?", but the fact is the world bitches more when there is no American leadership. Moral authority, which must start from the inside, with the economic and military might to back it up. And by military might, that means containment, not constant wars.

Let's get our house in order so we can then tell China what they are doing is wrong.

 

We'll be in another Cold War, this time with China. It isn't Trump itching for one. It's China. Millions of Chinese are already imagining that they could have a freer society. In fact, the all the Chinese kids I know who have come here to study are like no fricking way I want to go back.

 

LOL, sounds like Huntington may be one of those academics that thinks too hard. I have an immigrant's point of view: there is definitely an American identity, but it's not so tidy, clear-cut, easily compartmentalized, and static as some folks would like it to be. Before I go on, I should point out that the Austria-Hungarian empire, Ottoman empire, Russian federation, etc. were essentially monarchies. And that they were different countries forced for whatever reasons to be under an umbrella.

The USA is pretty special. For all the shit that people complain about, "everybody" wants to live in America. I work in a multinational with a huge presence in the UK and France. When I ask the Brits or the French expats where they would rather be, they acknowledge that while they miss the old country, it's hell no to going back. As for Asian or Latino, or African immigrants, the answer seems double hell no. There is too much opportunity here. The land of opportunity is still very much true. For all the subtle racist that @sphinxvc points out that exists, the USA is much more a meritocracy than other nations. (Note that meritocracy can also be cruel).

As far as Huntington's worry in 2004 that Mexicans would take over America and f**k it all up, it hasn't happened. I remember discussions in high school history class, the one with the four ex-hippies as US history teachers who lived through the civil rights movement. There was this discussion of whether America was melting pot or salad bowl. The answer is even clearer to me now. It's neither or either. It's special.

I mean f**k, practically every white person under the age of 60 in every major city knows what Korean BBQ is and probably even knows what BiBimBop is. Huntington is an idiot. Catholic immigrants, the Italians and Irish, a hundred, two hundred years were viewed in the same way Huntington viewed Mexicans today (in 2004). I mean, f'ing holy shit, these Mexican American dudes who are generation younger than me all speak perfect English and only semi-decent Spanish. In fact, if they speak perfect Spanish, it's often a surprise.

The point is America is special. Immigrants contribute bits of their culture to the American identity, and by the second and third generations, they are "fully" American or would pass Huntington's litmus test of being "properly" American, capable of speaking English without an accent and embracing its institutions and customs. And the most beautiful thing? They know their heritage and are allowed to retain a big of part it: Irish-American, Mexican-American, Italian-American, Japanese-American, etc. Ha, I got into a conversation with nurse at the hospital yesterday. She was Korean and asked my daughter if she spoke Chinese. Not a single word I answered. Same thing as with her kids, they spoke absolutely no Korean.

It's 2020. There's no Mexican takeover of America. Successive generations of Mexicans have become more American while contributing to the American identity. Sure, there are subcultures at each other throats right now, but it will pass. We are at a juncture. Heck, even NASCAR banned the Confederate flag. You know why? Attendance and TV viewership has been falling like a rock since Tom Cruise's Days of Thunder. Things change. Get used to it.

And let's face it, every Brown, Black, White, and Yellow dude at work thinks the gas-guzzling near 500hp Dodge Charger is awesome. America f**k Yeah.

 

That's unfortunate and a cause of the polar politics. The people on the left really do live in a bubble, thinking they are always right, having very little conversation with people on the right. And really, this left and right thing is way too simplistic. A better but still simplistic model resides on two-axis: progressive to reactionary (or traditionalist) vs. statist to anarchist (libertarian). Both parties in the USA are statist. GOP politicians, despite claims to prefer a smaller government, are more than willing to support government handouts particularly when they benefit their constituents. That's because many in the GOP were once Southern Democrats. I dislike both parties because I dislike more state control.

Anyway, as I have said many times before: I basically keep my mouth shut when my co-workers talk politics because I will always be wrong, 100% of the time. It's California. It's Hollyweird. It's Creatives. Those who may have different views or vote different like me just grin and bear it. People just assume, no one ask ever asks. If I wanted to throw the progressive standard of acceptable workplace behavior in their face and call it a toxic environment, I could. But I would lose because my views are wrong. Shades of grey is unacceptable. It's black or white. The consequences of this leads to resentment, frustration, polar politics, and the eventual election of someone who may not be anyone's first choice, but rather a choice of "f**k it, what do we have to lose?"

While am I anti-statist, I am somewhere down the middle (or maybe all over the place) on the progressive to reactionary scale. I do have to admit that I totally get off when hard-core progressives, particularly the baby-boomers, slam the table in anger and disgust whenever Trump does something to piss them off. That's my silent revenge, and I don't even particularly care for Trump. I do give him credit for making Americans open their eyes to how China has not been playing fair more than two decades*, while every successive administrative since Clinton kept licking China's butthole in the hopes that one day China would be good. Anyway, Trump is what we get for American progressives thinking they are always right, assuming, and never having any kind of discourse with people who think differently. It's also a result of the progressives forgetting about the common man or the underdog. The Democrats turned their backs on the people who they were supposed to look after, instead licking the buttholes of large corporations and China. Clinton stole a page from the GOP playbook (and the GOP hated him for that), but at a cost to the soul of the Democratic party.

More later.

* Ya think this should have been obvious when Google pulled out and Zuckerberg couldn't charm China into allowing Facebook by trying to speak Chinese. We are allowed to import trinkets, but we can't export our ideas?

 

It will pass. Social media is fairly new and we are still learning how things work. News channels amplify the discord. In reality, things are much more nuanced. Progressives will actually get into arguments between "Chick-Fil-A didn't do enough" and "Don't be an impossible bitch because just they only did 60%." One day, when the millennial progressives grow up, they will find out that cancel culture can just as easily bite them in the ass too. Too many opinions. There bound to be someone else who doesn't agree. Heck, maybe as parents, Gen Y will teach their kids how dumb social media really is, or maybe their kids will recoil in horror: "that's gross mom, you are 50, why are you always posting selfies".

The height of our lack of humility was after the end of the first Cold War. The West had won and Americans believed that we could export on values on different cultures. I honestly thought we would appoint a benevolent dictator in Iraq rather than form some kind of convoluted three peoples' power sharing solution with a rotating presidency thing. The people over there in that part of the world aren't ready for democracy. Same thing for China - they are not ready for democracy either. Any idiot who has taken World Cultures in their freshmen year of high school would know this. The road to Western style democracy was a long hard road, littered with piles of corpses, going back to the Magna Carta, and ancient Greece before that. Democracies are hard like marathons, people need to train for them. Even France had to hit the reset button half-a-dozen times to get it right. Other democracies still aren't quite right: why do you think so many Mexicans and Koreans want to come here?

However, I don't for a minute think Americans should ever be ashamed of American Exceptionalism. If it weren't for the United States, the people in Taiwan would be speaking Japanese now. A lot of people around the world would be much poorer and less free. All the Muslims in what was Yugoslavia would be dead or have ended up like the indigenous people of America today. My grandmother, who barely spoke a word of English, thought America was the best country in the world, doing much more right than wrong, thus accumulating net positive karma. And Americans are the most generous people in the world. Heck, even GWB had the best of intentions with Iraq. I look into the guy's eyes and think he maybe partied and drank too much when he was younger; but also I saw a sincerity, a conviction, that what he was doing was the right thing to do. He just didn't have good advisors, was too clueless about the Sunni / Shiite power dynamics, and probably didn't pay attention in history class to let him know that his plan wouldn't work.

Too easy to get cynical and doubt American Exceptionalism. I'd rather have American Exceptionalism than Chinese Hegemony. The irony is that the Chinese press a decade or two ago loved to use the term hegemony in reference to the United States. The USA is what Gene Roddenberry envisioned with the Federation and Starfleet: aliens from all parts under one banner for good, except without the socialism I don't think most Americans realize how special this country really is.

As far as the materialism, that exists in all other countries too. People around the world aren't that different. It's just easier to be successful at materialism in the USA.

 

It’s official now. The second Cold War has started. Just read WSJ reporting on draft on Pompeo statement calling upon Chinese people to alter the path of the Communist Party from Xi’s bankrupt totalitarian ideology.

The China Communist is going to be mad. Can’t wait for the insults to Pompeo.