Delivered as remarks to Brown University’s Watson School during its “China Chat” series, Chas Freeman reflects on China’s return to global prominence and the United States’ accelerating retreat from the international order it once led – and asks what coexistence looks like as power shifts in the 21st century.
  • تحريرها كلها ممكن@lemmy.ml
    112·
    23 hours ago

    We are in the midst of a Great Leap Backward or Cultural Revolution-style assault on the domestic institutions that made America great – the rule of law, freedom of speech, academic freedom and scientific excellence, federal partnerships with research universities, openness to foreigners and their ideas, policies based on evidence and expertise rather than fake news and unsubstantiated prejudice, and the prioritisation of objectivity over political correctness.

    For the longest time US liberals used weasel words like opposing authoritarianism and supporting democracy to justify the US’s foreign policy from sanctions to war crimes. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East surrounded by authoritarian Islamist regimes”, “I don’t hate the Chinese I hate the authoritarian CCP and I support Taiwan because it is a democracy”. Never mind the claims being false, they were a good attempt at masking their national supremacism and cultural chauvinism. US conservatives have always been more honest about being racist and just hating Arabs, Muslims, Chinese and so on. So witnessing the US decay into fascism has been a guilty pleasure of mine. US liberals now will look really silly accusing others of what their government is guilty of, but I am sure they will find a way to spin it. They are already blaming Trump on Russia, Saudi Arabia and others. Denying the fact that Trump is the US at its rawest and truest form.

    • huf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      17 hours ago

      trump is going to be such a gift to american liberals going forward. they’ll blame everything on him and go back to brunch as shit falls apart around them.

      edit: eurolibs too.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      5·
      5 hours ago

      I particularly love the dynamic of libs blaming everyone else because the shining city on a hill could never, ever produce its own rot. The perfect system, handed down by demigods on parchment, is obviously flawless. So when a walking, talking monument to greed and grievance shambles into the Oval Office, the only logical explanation is that he must be a foreign saboteur. It couldn’t possibly be that he’s the logical end point of a political machine fueled by dark money and cultural resentment. No, that’s too boring. It’s much more exciting to believe he’s some secret agent, here to destroy the perfect union out of sheer jealousy. Because accepting that the city was built on a swamp, and that the smell was always coming from inside the house, would mean the storybook was a lie. And we can’t have that.