by Brett Stevens on April 28, 2019

Democracy makes people insular. Their votes, statistically, do not matter; their concerns only rise above the level of background noise when made into special interest groups; there is no unity around simply preserving sanity, and so we all become tools of the system.

This alienation makes us selfish, distrustful, paranoid, and vengeful. We live in constant low-grade frustration, like a background hum, because we know that we will never get what we truly want, and to fix any day-to-day problem requires forming a special interest group.

As a result, we have inverted our thinking. We do not look to understand issues, but to find pieces of data that justify, excuse, validate, and rationalize what we want to do; this is the nature of democracy, much like jobs reward using business goals as retroactive arguments.

For this reason, few people understand history in breadth; they know only the parts that serve as useful talking points to beat back the other side and make their side look important. This gives them power, but more importantly “allows” them to act with protection from the crowd.

We think in terms of symbols for our special interest groups. Even if impractical, these symbols show our power: a cross at a war memorial, a gay married couple in public, smoking weed in public, a black president, or English as an official language.

Those symbols then become categories into which we group historical events and current issues, determining our perspective from the symbol instead of the contents to which it refers. We say wars are good or bad based on how they affirm or reject our intended symbolism.

People avoid off-narrative data because it threatens them personally. If their worldview is not universal and absolute, then it is not “objective,” and therefore they cannot justify it to the crowd.

Culture, on the other hand, lets you be arbitrary within the range of notions and behaviors endorsed by the group. In fact, culture does better if it is arbitrary, because it distinguishes its group from other groups more extensively.

We live in a time of political culture, where political ideas — the Constitution, equality, freedom, liberty, capitalism, consumerism, rights — replace the behaviors, customs, values, aesthetics, heritage, and ideals of a culture.

As part of our political culture, we are part-Leftist, or rooted in those philosophies which endorse equality. For this reason, we not only pair up with the far Left in many wars, but throw into the memory hole our wars against the far Left.

For example, most people do not know that we have already fought two modern wars against China. In the first, we killed over a half million Chinese and nearly started WW3:

The Chinese First Offensive (October 25–November 6, 1950) had the limited objective of testing U.S.-ROK fighting qualities and slowing their advance. In the battle of Onjŏng-Unsan along the Ch’ŏngch’ŏn River, the Chinese ruined seven Korean and U.S. regiments—including the only Korean regiment to reach the Yalu, cut off in the vastness of the cold northern hills near Ch’osan. The Chinese suffered 10,000 casualties, but they were convinced that they had found a formula for fighting UNC forces: attack at night, cut off routes of supply and withdrawal, ambush counterattacking forces, and exploit all forms of concealment and cover. Stunned by the suddenness of the Chinese onslaught and almost 8,000 casualties (6,000 of them Koreans), the Eighth Army fell back to the south bank of the Ch’ŏngch’ŏn and tightened its overextended lines. With a harsh winter beginning and supplies in shortage, the pause was wise. Another matter of concern to the UNC was the appearance of MiG-15 jet fighters above North Korea. Flown by Soviet pilots masquerading as Chinese and Koreans, the MiGs, in one week’s action (November 1–7), stopped most of the daytime raids on North Korea.

The war continued after this as mostly a test of strength between American and Chinese forces, with the Soviets participating up until the death of Stalin. Korea remains divided to this day, with North Korea predominantly supported by China.

That Sino-Soviet intervention paled in comparison to the next war against Communism, in which Chinese and Soviet personnel fought Americans while concealing their identities as a means of converting Vietnam to Communism:

China admitted today that it sent 320,000 combat troops to Vietnam to fight against U.S. forces and their South Vietnamese allies. In a report monitored in Hong Kong, the semi-official China News Service said China sent the soldiers to Vietnam during the 1960s and spent over $20 billion to support Hanoi’s regular North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong guerrilla units. The disclosure was made a month after military officials in the Soviet Union admitted that a contingent of Soviet advisers in Vietnam took part in combat against U.S. forces and helped shoot down American planes. Moscow had previously denied its troops played a combat role in the war. The agency report cited “The History of the People’s Republic of China,” published by the official State Archives Publishing House, as saying more than 4,000 Chinese soldiers were killed during the war. Fighting finally ended when victorious North Vietnamese tanks battered their way into the grounds of Doc Lap Palace in Saigon on April 30, 1975. During the war, U.S. intelligence reports said U.S. combat units had found soldiers dressed in Chinese combat gear and wearing Chinese insignia, but Beijing at the time repeatedly denied U.S. allegations that its soldiers were operating in Vietnam.

This article came out in 1989, long after the war ended, and confirmed what GIs had known but official sources did not vigorously confirm. For many, it was a shock to read this; for many now, it represents unknown history.

Has China changed? They have, like Europe and America, mixed socialism with a market economy. However, they still maintain their desire to have control over Asia — an ancient desire — and seem to view the totalitarian aspects of Communism as conducive to this end.

As it turns out, China still wants to take over the world:

In a speech on Wednesday to the Chinese Communist Party Congress in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, President Xi Jinping said, according to The Guardian, “it was time for his nation to transform itself into ‘a mighty force’ that could lead the entire world on political, economic, military and environmental issues”. “It makes clear that the CPC leadership is defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the greatest strength of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics; the Party is the highest force for political leadership. The Thought sets forth the general requirements for Party building in the new era and underlines the importance of political work in Party building.”

In other words, nothing has changed. In fact, China may be stronger than ever, thanks to its investment in American politicians.

Bill Clinton came to power in part because of Chinese money:

The complaint says Ng brought a suitcase full of $400,000 in cash to the United States on June 13 and later that day brought the suitcase to a meeting with “Business Associate-1” in Queens, New York. Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. Ng and Trie made a number of visits to the White House to attend Democratic National Committee-sponsored events and were photographed with President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. ABC News reported in 1997 that Ng had made six trips to the White House.

We have fought two wars against China, and it is entirely possible that instead of worrying about Russian collusion on the Right, we should be concerned with Chinese infiltration on the Left, especially as the ruling Leftist dynasty continues its close ties with China.

Tags: bill clinton, china, hillary clinton, korean war, vietnam war

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.