Maybe I haven't been to the right places, but it seems to me that Chinese bookstores are filled with Chinese literature and rarely translations of non-Chinese works, not because they are censored but because maybe there is not a large enough market to make it worthwhile for publishers to stock the shelves. Who knows, maybe the modern Chinese reading audience, like many descendants of ancient cultures with a collective memory of past greatness, can't stand modernity and want to escape into a more idyllic past, where hindsight provides a sense of reassurance instead of the frightening unknown of the century ahead.
There is still a large enough print market in the US where books like John Adams stays at the top of the Bestseller List for months. Obama's books, whether or not you agree with his ideology, reinforces the CIVIC CULTURE of community politics and discourse. But Chinese in general do not want to cause a ruckus, to rock the boat. Demonstrators or protestors, no matter how just the cause, are seen as trouble-makers. The bomber-jacket-wearing Lincolnesque Joe Six-pack in the Norman Rockwell painting who stands up in a townhall meeting to speak his mind is seen in Chinese eyes as a neer-do-well who should go with the flow and not bring trouble to our small town.
Chinese Central Television usually likes to air the parliamentary brawls in Taipei, to demonstrate how dangerous and chaotic democracy is. Perhaps CCTV would also like to air the riots of construction workers whose fly-by-night employers with close friends in the Chinese Communist Party left them without months in back-pay? Perhaps CCTV would like to air but five minutes of the Taiwanese political talk shows (complete with hunch-backed, Larry-King-brand suspender-wearing hosts)?
Perhaps if the works of American union organizers and European anarchist agitators were translated into Mandarin? I respect the work of Mormon missionaries who speak FLUENT Chinese and preach the good word in China, but I think it would better serve the working class Han if translated copies of US Army Technical Manual TM-31-210 were passed around, to give a voice to People whom the Party is supposed to represent, but I digress.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Books II
I noticed as an adolescent that whenever I visited the home of an American friend, the shelves were filled with current affairs books, the tables stacked with National Geographic, Time and Newsweek. When I visited the home of Chinese friends, the bookshelves were full of VHS tapes of Chinese soap operas and pop music concerts. It seemed to me that only books were the textbooks from school. Granted that my Chinese friends were of first-generation working class families of modest means who focused on the practical subjects upon which to attain college and a career, and my Irish, Italian, Greek and Polish American friends came from the more middle-class families of Bay Ridge. One class seeks escape from the daily grind while the other sought the authenticity of other social realities.
And granted that many Americans today mostly read Stephen King or Danielle Steele while they're not watching Desperate Housewives or American Idol. Yes, within both peoples are majorities who prefer to ignore l’affaires d’etat and numb their minds with electronic entertainment (I myself am guilty of playing Rainbow Six for hours on end)
But keeping up on current affairs and politics is cultural survival. English literates have access to translations of ancient texts from every culture. We can learn lessons from the achievements and mistakes of others. To suggest that one’s culture has learned all there is to know is the height of arrogance, when we’re at the edge of the Transhumanist Epoch.
Will the Chinese every learn from the speeches of Livy? Will the Arabs every learn from Thucydides? Will the Russians ever learn from John Locke? Note that I exclude the Indians, because India is arguably the largest English-speaking country in the world and have a robust tradition of scholarship in both science and the humanities.
Thank god I speak and read English. Thank you, Mrs. Weinstein, in the 3rd grade, for patiently giving me this gift of English literacy, a most precious key which has unlocked a thousand doors into a thousand worlds. Paradise Lost. The Divine Comedy. Don Quixote. Romeo and Juliet. Anna Karenna. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Great Gatsby. Catcher in the Rye. Atlas Shrugged. On the Road.
And granted that many Americans today mostly read Stephen King or Danielle Steele while they're not watching Desperate Housewives or American Idol. Yes, within both peoples are majorities who prefer to ignore l’affaires d’etat and numb their minds with electronic entertainment (I myself am guilty of playing Rainbow Six for hours on end)
But keeping up on current affairs and politics is cultural survival. English literates have access to translations of ancient texts from every culture. We can learn lessons from the achievements and mistakes of others. To suggest that one’s culture has learned all there is to know is the height of arrogance, when we’re at the edge of the Transhumanist Epoch.
Will the Chinese every learn from the speeches of Livy? Will the Arabs every learn from Thucydides? Will the Russians ever learn from John Locke? Note that I exclude the Indians, because India is arguably the largest English-speaking country in the world and have a robust tradition of scholarship in both science and the humanities.
Thank god I speak and read English. Thank you, Mrs. Weinstein, in the 3rd grade, for patiently giving me this gift of English literacy, a most precious key which has unlocked a thousand doors into a thousand worlds. Paradise Lost. The Divine Comedy. Don Quixote. Romeo and Juliet. Anna Karenna. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Great Gatsby. Catcher in the Rye. Atlas Shrugged. On the Road.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tech-schmech
Yes, yes, the Chinese developed gunpowder, but what did we do with it? Goddamned fireworks to entertain the peasants! It was the European metallurgist and guildsman who adapted gunpowder to shoot bullets at motherfuckers. The Han didn't catch on until we were dominated by the Manchus who had no qualms about using cannons.
The Chinese developed the compass, but what did we do with it? Sailed the world to arrogantly show the “foreign barbarians” our inherent superiority, with absolutely no curiosity for other cultures. Someone showed the Japanese how a steam engine worked in the 1850s and in less than a decade, they sailed their own steamship into San Franscisco.
Even in Chinese landscape painting, as wonderful as it is, the mountains and rivers predominate, rarely the ocean with its horizon line. Contrast that to the seascapes of JMW Turner, and vast blue yonder of promise and peril.
During the escalating tension between Chinese society and the colonial presence. The Emperor of China thought these big-nosed, round-eyed Lo Fan were just another foreign barbarian tribe like the Mongols who could be "managed" and kept at bay with wheeling and dealing. When British Ambassador MacCartney entered China with gifts of European technology in 1793, the Qiang-Lung Emperor said China has no use for such gadgets. Instead, this punk-ass bitch should have said: How many tons of silver would your technical professionals like to come teach in our schools?
Maybe open minds and open markets would've allowed the Qing Dynasty to prevent the Opium Wars, the Tai Ping Rebellion and subsequently the events that lead to the Boxer Rebellion and the Imperial Japanese occupation. But no, the Han were too set in our ways. Martial arts have worked for us for five thousands years! No need to worry about motherfuckers with Enfield rifles because we could make our own! (It's the NRA in my blood)
The Chinese developed the compass, but what did we do with it? Sailed the world to arrogantly show the “foreign barbarians” our inherent superiority, with absolutely no curiosity for other cultures. Someone showed the Japanese how a steam engine worked in the 1850s and in less than a decade, they sailed their own steamship into San Franscisco.
Even in Chinese landscape painting, as wonderful as it is, the mountains and rivers predominate, rarely the ocean with its horizon line. Contrast that to the seascapes of JMW Turner, and vast blue yonder of promise and peril.
During the escalating tension between Chinese society and the colonial presence. The Emperor of China thought these big-nosed, round-eyed Lo Fan were just another foreign barbarian tribe like the Mongols who could be "managed" and kept at bay with wheeling and dealing. When British Ambassador MacCartney entered China with gifts of European technology in 1793, the Qiang-Lung Emperor said China has no use for such gadgets. Instead, this punk-ass bitch should have said: How many tons of silver would your technical professionals like to come teach in our schools?
Maybe open minds and open markets would've allowed the Qing Dynasty to prevent the Opium Wars, the Tai Ping Rebellion and subsequently the events that lead to the Boxer Rebellion and the Imperial Japanese occupation. But no, the Han were too set in our ways. Martial arts have worked for us for five thousands years! No need to worry about motherfuckers with Enfield rifles because we could make our own! (It's the NRA in my blood)
Monday, September 14, 2009
John Liu = Goong Chon Gwai & Hoc Xia Wei?*
Wow. John Liu the Manchur....uhhhh.....Fujianese Candidate?
The Epoch Times reminds me of the Jewish commie papers rolled out of Bowery small presses in the 1900's at the dawn of the anarchist age.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22187/
Who Does John Liu, Candidate for New York City Comptroller, Represent? Self-styled defender of rights promoted by Chinese regime.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22436/
‘Tong’ Gives $70,000 to John Liu’s Comptroller Campaign.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22291/
Omissions, Inconsistencies Found in John Liu's Campaign Finance Disclosures. Fundraising by organizations with strong ties to Chinese Communist Party.
*Goong Chon = Communist
Gwai = Devil
Hoc = Black
Xia = Society
Wei = Organization, as in organized crime
The Epoch Times reminds me of the Jewish commie papers rolled out of Bowery small presses in the 1900's at the dawn of the anarchist age.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22187/
Who Does John Liu, Candidate for New York City Comptroller, Represent? Self-styled defender of rights promoted by Chinese regime.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22436/
‘Tong’ Gives $70,000 to John Liu’s Comptroller Campaign.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22291/
Omissions, Inconsistencies Found in John Liu's Campaign Finance Disclosures. Fundraising by organizations with strong ties to Chinese Communist Party.
*Goong Chon = Communist
Gwai = Devil
Hoc = Black
Xia = Society
Wei = Organization, as in organized crime
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Atlas Chugged
Someone put U2’s “Better than the real thing” on the jukebox. She wore a low-cut vest and a denim miniskirt; a most welcome encounter to end an otherwise dreadful workweek. As she operated the tap to pour my second pint of Magic Hat, she said that she loved classical music. She was no common tavern wench of the college-town variety.
Ach, mein wunderfrau! Mi bailllerina bella!
I was about to go into my spiel about Bach, when this unemployed punk-ass next to me started whining about federal drug prohibition policy and the need to legalize marijuana and privatize all functions of government under an Anarcho-Capitalist pogrom, so that he could find a job.
Bitch-ass punk, I came in here to ESCAPE the world of rationality and Faustian abstraction, not dive into it. Take your brain turd and dump it on the Internet, where people care about flame-bait. Dick Cheney is paying dudes $80,000 to drive a truck in Iraq! And why would an Anarcho-Capitalist need a job? I thought you were all globe-trotting entrepreneurs with private jets and Tag Heuer Chronographs.
But my brain box was ignited and a disparate phantasmagoria of think-tank papers assembled itself in my consciousness to unleash an analytical fugue:
My problem with capitalism is that the market has no mechanism to mitigate the demographic externalities that lead up to cascading failures at the macro-economic level.
“WHAT THE FOOK?!?!?!,” you ask?
For example, you could say that there are PLENTY of jobs in America, even in this economy, BUT to land a job, young unskilled worker, you must be willing to be paid equal or less that the $8.00/hour going rate for the services an undocumented Mexican day-laborer. And you must line up and down 18th Avenue at the crack of dawn every day for a chance to get on the van to God-knows-where. For the college-educated American, that prospect is met with: FUCK THAT SHIT! Well, bub, that’s the MARKET RATE of unskilled labor determined by market forces. Any lower and the Mexican won’t get into the van. Any higher and the extra expense gets transferred into the project’s final cost, which means the developer is going to hire another construction company.
Such is the way of labor arbitrage on this side of the border. The externalities are:
1. Decreased tax revenue from workers, whether they file income tax returns or not.
2. Over-development of an unsustainable housing market because of an artificially low cost of labor.
3. The underdevelopment of a viable middle-class that would in turn support the higher-skill economy of professional services and boutique-niche industries.
4. The inter-generational sense of community is replaced by a constant stream of transients and alien cultures. (Is it any wonder that gated communites and home owners associations are skyrocketing across this country?)
Well who can we vote for to turn around that trend?
By voting for Republicans, its corporatist-wing continues to have access to cheap labor, while its Evangelical-wing dispenses with any real-world solutions because Jesus is going to solve everything in 2012.
By voting for Democrats, its ethno-relativist-wing continues to soak the middle-class with newly arrived useless eaters, while its hipster-wing sublimates any outrage at the cultural dilution of our neighborhoods.
The Paleo-Con Pat Buchanan has made a social defense of industrial protectionism, that the communities that thrived around our manufacturing hubs are the backbone of traditional blue-collar American culture. Global finance and manufacturers are not exposed to the external costs of labor arbitrage when the factories are moved overseas: Deteriorating neighborhoods, drug addiction, violent crime, collapsing tax base, white flight, etc. Low-wage workers, undocumented or not, still use the same public services as everyone else, but without paying for it except through sales taxes. The tax burden then falls on those who do play by the book and file their tax returns. The tax burden becomes so great that moving to another state becomes a viable option. And one wonders why a steady flow of New Yorkers, Bostonians and Los Angelenos have been moving to Florida, Texas and Arizona recently.
As the middle class dwindles, cities fall apart. The “native” English and Germans could’ve made the same argument against the Irish in 1850 (and with the Protestant vs. Catholic spin too) but the public services and welfare system was nowhere near as extensive in the 19th century as it is now: Public schools, Medicare, Social Security, fire, police, garbage collection, etc. That is the ultimate “externality.” The economic eschatology of Marx predicted that capitalists will arbitrage the world into the ground in a race to the bottom to undercut each other. Henry Ford once doubled the pay of his autoworkers because he conceded that he wanted them to be able to afford the cars they built. The multi-national has no such concerns.
This is a new century with new technologies that require a learning curve gets steeper with each passing year (lending credence to Singularity Theory, IMHO). Contrary to the CATO Institute's optimism, Puritan Middle America cannot be retrained to turn Norman Rockwellesque small towns into ultra-tech Silicon Valleys or hyper-literate DUMBOs or Seattle-Vancouver-plexes. The Creative Class is the future and will cluster together, abandoning places like Pittsburgh and Detroit. The cities are increasingly unable to sustain the market for the services of the suburban/exurban professionals. The Dust Bowl displaced countless Okies into California. Hurricane Katrina displaced half of New Orleans into Arkansas and Texas. How will the Great Unraveling displace Americans? The best and brightest into the Singapore-style Digital City-State Fortresses and the rest into the welcoming arms of the Soldiers of God?
Let's be honest. A crackdown on illegals and a moratorium on legal immigration is a means to this end: Artificially buoying the hourly wage of the American worker. And it is a very legitimate end because I am a cultural determinist. Immigration, unless tempered by assimilation programs, will and is already leading to the Balkinization of this great country. The US federal government slashed and burned its way through Dixie in 1861-65 because white workers had the political will to deny new states the comparative advantage of slave labor. The same political will led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The same political will bans non-Shanghainese from entering Shanghai without a work permit (Yes, China has INTERNAL immigration restrictions) Perhaps in the Great Collapse, an economic nationalist wing will emerge from each of the major parties and synthesize a new protectionist party. (I won't even go into the pros and cons of unionization here).
But protectionism too, leads to macro-economic implications: Let's say a Buchananist party wins the Presidency and Congress and restricts immigration and imports. Capital is electronic and can flow freely. Multi-nationals will simply divest and move overseas completely. There is ALWAYS another market. The factories that moved to Mexico post-NAFTA went to China's coastal cities. Now inflation has made coastal industry less profitable, and so Chinese firms are moving inland to the backwoods. Some are even moving to Vietnam and Nigeria. Every place that the arbitragers touch may seize on a global trend of protectionism. Such a scenario would spell the end of the globalist project. The end of Wal-Mart. The return of 70s-era crappy cars.
An aging population will drive away younger workers who don't want to bust their asses to pay taxes to support Social Security. And so Germans will have to hire Turks. And the French will have to hire Moroccans. And the English will have to hire Pakistanis. And Italians will have to hire Albanians. And Japanese will have to hire Filipinos. And Americans will have to hire Mexicans.
Back to this young, aspiring Ragnar Danneskjold sitting next to me in the bar. Legalize drugs? Sure. I can understand the Libertarian arguments. But there are implications for such a society that the legalizers fail or refuse to appreciate because they are too psyched-up after reading Reason magazine or Ayn Rand or something, an elated feeling that someone, somewhere has an easy dogmatic answer to contemporary human dilemmas.
Legalization of drugs has the same social costs that we already bear for legalized alcohol: Motor vehicle fatalities, domestic violence, a subculture of addiction, a generation of college grads lost to binge drinking. My problem is not with those who drink or smoke responsibly. My problem is with the cost of foster care and battered women’s shelters. And the cost of city morgues that will fill up with crackheads shot by card-carrying NRA members like myself. Such a society had better have a mechanism to handle the damage that legalization will inflict upon the taxpayer.
Such a society concedes that a large segment of its population is beyond redemption and cannot be trusted to function in society, much less respect another's rights or civic culture; a permanent prison/institutional population. We are way past the point where a voluntary sterilization project could have prevented their births in the first place, a la Margaret Sanger's proto-eugenics ideas. Are proponents of drug legalization prepared for streets littered with homeless addicts? We can't even deal with the homeless alcoholics we have now (my shout out to the pieces of shit buzzing the Bay Ridge Ave and 95th Street R train stations).
So punk-ass, even if we legalized drugs and went to a totally free-economy out of a Robert Heinlen novel, who would want to hire a dope-sucking anarchist who bitches about shit all day? How about some Darwinian reality? How about those who abstain from drugs have undiminished mental capacity are fit for economic survival and those to don't prove themselves unfit for survival? If Libertarians fully understand and accept that consequence, well shit, point me the fuck to the sign-up table! But those Libertarians that have the balls to think that won't dare say it, fearing public outrage that would further condemn them to Third Party status.
By the time this neer-do-well finished his rambling, I turned to see her on the far side of the bar, stacking glasses. The conversation on high Western culture, now a faded echo….
Ach, mein wunderfrau! Mi bailllerina bella!
I was about to go into my spiel about Bach, when this unemployed punk-ass next to me started whining about federal drug prohibition policy and the need to legalize marijuana and privatize all functions of government under an Anarcho-Capitalist pogrom, so that he could find a job.
Bitch-ass punk, I came in here to ESCAPE the world of rationality and Faustian abstraction, not dive into it. Take your brain turd and dump it on the Internet, where people care about flame-bait. Dick Cheney is paying dudes $80,000 to drive a truck in Iraq! And why would an Anarcho-Capitalist need a job? I thought you were all globe-trotting entrepreneurs with private jets and Tag Heuer Chronographs.
But my brain box was ignited and a disparate phantasmagoria of think-tank papers assembled itself in my consciousness to unleash an analytical fugue:
My problem with capitalism is that the market has no mechanism to mitigate the demographic externalities that lead up to cascading failures at the macro-economic level.
“WHAT THE FOOK?!?!?!,” you ask?
For example, you could say that there are PLENTY of jobs in America, even in this economy, BUT to land a job, young unskilled worker, you must be willing to be paid equal or less that the $8.00/hour going rate for the services an undocumented Mexican day-laborer. And you must line up and down 18th Avenue at the crack of dawn every day for a chance to get on the van to God-knows-where. For the college-educated American, that prospect is met with: FUCK THAT SHIT! Well, bub, that’s the MARKET RATE of unskilled labor determined by market forces. Any lower and the Mexican won’t get into the van. Any higher and the extra expense gets transferred into the project’s final cost, which means the developer is going to hire another construction company.
Such is the way of labor arbitrage on this side of the border. The externalities are:
1. Decreased tax revenue from workers, whether they file income tax returns or not.
2. Over-development of an unsustainable housing market because of an artificially low cost of labor.
3. The underdevelopment of a viable middle-class that would in turn support the higher-skill economy of professional services and boutique-niche industries.
4. The inter-generational sense of community is replaced by a constant stream of transients and alien cultures. (Is it any wonder that gated communites and home owners associations are skyrocketing across this country?)
Well who can we vote for to turn around that trend?
By voting for Republicans, its corporatist-wing continues to have access to cheap labor, while its Evangelical-wing dispenses with any real-world solutions because Jesus is going to solve everything in 2012.
By voting for Democrats, its ethno-relativist-wing continues to soak the middle-class with newly arrived useless eaters, while its hipster-wing sublimates any outrage at the cultural dilution of our neighborhoods.
The Paleo-Con Pat Buchanan has made a social defense of industrial protectionism, that the communities that thrived around our manufacturing hubs are the backbone of traditional blue-collar American culture. Global finance and manufacturers are not exposed to the external costs of labor arbitrage when the factories are moved overseas: Deteriorating neighborhoods, drug addiction, violent crime, collapsing tax base, white flight, etc. Low-wage workers, undocumented or not, still use the same public services as everyone else, but without paying for it except through sales taxes. The tax burden then falls on those who do play by the book and file their tax returns. The tax burden becomes so great that moving to another state becomes a viable option. And one wonders why a steady flow of New Yorkers, Bostonians and Los Angelenos have been moving to Florida, Texas and Arizona recently.
As the middle class dwindles, cities fall apart. The “native” English and Germans could’ve made the same argument against the Irish in 1850 (and with the Protestant vs. Catholic spin too) but the public services and welfare system was nowhere near as extensive in the 19th century as it is now: Public schools, Medicare, Social Security, fire, police, garbage collection, etc. That is the ultimate “externality.” The economic eschatology of Marx predicted that capitalists will arbitrage the world into the ground in a race to the bottom to undercut each other. Henry Ford once doubled the pay of his autoworkers because he conceded that he wanted them to be able to afford the cars they built. The multi-national has no such concerns.
This is a new century with new technologies that require a learning curve gets steeper with each passing year (lending credence to Singularity Theory, IMHO). Contrary to the CATO Institute's optimism, Puritan Middle America cannot be retrained to turn Norman Rockwellesque small towns into ultra-tech Silicon Valleys or hyper-literate DUMBOs or Seattle-Vancouver-plexes. The Creative Class is the future and will cluster together, abandoning places like Pittsburgh and Detroit. The cities are increasingly unable to sustain the market for the services of the suburban/exurban professionals. The Dust Bowl displaced countless Okies into California. Hurricane Katrina displaced half of New Orleans into Arkansas and Texas. How will the Great Unraveling displace Americans? The best and brightest into the Singapore-style Digital City-State Fortresses and the rest into the welcoming arms of the Soldiers of God?
Let's be honest. A crackdown on illegals and a moratorium on legal immigration is a means to this end: Artificially buoying the hourly wage of the American worker. And it is a very legitimate end because I am a cultural determinist. Immigration, unless tempered by assimilation programs, will and is already leading to the Balkinization of this great country. The US federal government slashed and burned its way through Dixie in 1861-65 because white workers had the political will to deny new states the comparative advantage of slave labor. The same political will led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The same political will bans non-Shanghainese from entering Shanghai without a work permit (Yes, China has INTERNAL immigration restrictions) Perhaps in the Great Collapse, an economic nationalist wing will emerge from each of the major parties and synthesize a new protectionist party. (I won't even go into the pros and cons of unionization here).
But protectionism too, leads to macro-economic implications: Let's say a Buchananist party wins the Presidency and Congress and restricts immigration and imports. Capital is electronic and can flow freely. Multi-nationals will simply divest and move overseas completely. There is ALWAYS another market. The factories that moved to Mexico post-NAFTA went to China's coastal cities. Now inflation has made coastal industry less profitable, and so Chinese firms are moving inland to the backwoods. Some are even moving to Vietnam and Nigeria. Every place that the arbitragers touch may seize on a global trend of protectionism. Such a scenario would spell the end of the globalist project. The end of Wal-Mart. The return of 70s-era crappy cars.
An aging population will drive away younger workers who don't want to bust their asses to pay taxes to support Social Security. And so Germans will have to hire Turks. And the French will have to hire Moroccans. And the English will have to hire Pakistanis. And Italians will have to hire Albanians. And Japanese will have to hire Filipinos. And Americans will have to hire Mexicans.
Back to this young, aspiring Ragnar Danneskjold sitting next to me in the bar. Legalize drugs? Sure. I can understand the Libertarian arguments. But there are implications for such a society that the legalizers fail or refuse to appreciate because they are too psyched-up after reading Reason magazine or Ayn Rand or something, an elated feeling that someone, somewhere has an easy dogmatic answer to contemporary human dilemmas.
Legalization of drugs has the same social costs that we already bear for legalized alcohol: Motor vehicle fatalities, domestic violence, a subculture of addiction, a generation of college grads lost to binge drinking. My problem is not with those who drink or smoke responsibly. My problem is with the cost of foster care and battered women’s shelters. And the cost of city morgues that will fill up with crackheads shot by card-carrying NRA members like myself. Such a society had better have a mechanism to handle the damage that legalization will inflict upon the taxpayer.
Such a society concedes that a large segment of its population is beyond redemption and cannot be trusted to function in society, much less respect another's rights or civic culture; a permanent prison/institutional population. We are way past the point where a voluntary sterilization project could have prevented their births in the first place, a la Margaret Sanger's proto-eugenics ideas. Are proponents of drug legalization prepared for streets littered with homeless addicts? We can't even deal with the homeless alcoholics we have now (my shout out to the pieces of shit buzzing the Bay Ridge Ave and 95th Street R train stations).
So punk-ass, even if we legalized drugs and went to a totally free-economy out of a Robert Heinlen novel, who would want to hire a dope-sucking anarchist who bitches about shit all day? How about some Darwinian reality? How about those who abstain from drugs have undiminished mental capacity are fit for economic survival and those to don't prove themselves unfit for survival? If Libertarians fully understand and accept that consequence, well shit, point me the fuck to the sign-up table! But those Libertarians that have the balls to think that won't dare say it, fearing public outrage that would further condemn them to Third Party status.
By the time this neer-do-well finished his rambling, I turned to see her on the far side of the bar, stacking glasses. The conversation on high Western culture, now a faded echo….
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Stranger in a strange land
I dated a Guangdong woman, a recent-arrival, who kept talking about how she missed Guangzhou. She was here because her parents dragged her here. If she was so unhappy and if America was such a culture shock, then GO HOME! Chinese parents who bring their kids to America in their teenage years ARE GOING TO FUCK THEM UP! They are going to feel alienated and retreat into Chinese pop culture (Andy Lau, blast that handsome devil!) The neural pathways of language will have been cemented and the kid will not speak or listen fluently. Permanent accent. These parents think English is just a simple language that anyone can learn but there are layers of nuance and syntax and dynamic vernacular and cultural cues that cannot be picked up unless one speaks and is spoken to constantly throughout the day, complete immersion.
It’s worse for young Chinese males who arrive. Those with H1-Bs can at least be exploited by IT firms who don’t want to pay Medicare or Social Security taxes. But those who arrive around adolescence face an upward fight.
What happens when a Chinese kid cannot comprehend life in the American city because the TV set and radio sounds like gibberish? What happens when he feels he can’t communicate with teachers, the police, government agencies, employers and other people who are necessary for life in the big city? What happens when he feels he has no control over his destiny and that the only protection is to join other alienated males aged 16-35? You get packs of unemployable unskilled males preying on the population of productive citizens, A PARASITIC SURPLUS OF MALTHUSIAN PROPORTIONS!!!!
And I wonder why she stopped seeing me…
It’s worse for young Chinese males who arrive. Those with H1-Bs can at least be exploited by IT firms who don’t want to pay Medicare or Social Security taxes. But those who arrive around adolescence face an upward fight.
What happens when a Chinese kid cannot comprehend life in the American city because the TV set and radio sounds like gibberish? What happens when he feels he can’t communicate with teachers, the police, government agencies, employers and other people who are necessary for life in the big city? What happens when he feels he has no control over his destiny and that the only protection is to join other alienated males aged 16-35? You get packs of unemployable unskilled males preying on the population of productive citizens, A PARASITIC SURPLUS OF MALTHUSIAN PROPORTIONS!!!!
And I wonder why she stopped seeing me…
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Biblio-politik
PRC nationalists often tout the Middle Kingdom’s birth five thousand years ago as proof of her cultural longevity and superiority. I beg to differ.
The creative output of the PRC today comes nowhere near the West. I’ll just take the print industry for example. My favorite Barnes & Nobles in New York City’s Union Square has four stories of row after row of fiction, history, art, classical literature, political science and investigative journalism, and every manner of magazine and journal, completely uncensored, unregulated, unfiltered. Such openness is testament to strength of Western culture. It is censorship and the suppression of ideas that is the mark of a weak regime, afraid of transparency and accountability, afraid that open debate will allow the totality of all the legitimate grievances of the people to bubble to the surface, and all the fingerpointing at secretive Western agents and saboteurs will no longer fly.
When the Darfur tragedy entered the public mind thanks to an alignment of the evangelical movement and Hollywood’s Genocide Olympics campaign, the PRC nationalists on the free Internet offered only counter-accusations that the Americans exterminated the Native Americans during our westward expansion and therefore, we have no right to condemn China. Ahhhh, but the People’s Republic and the United States are not on the same moral plane.
I can go into any bookstore in the West and find books on the Indian Wars of the 19th century. I can freely access Internet sources on the Trail of Tears, Scorching Iroquoia, Wounded Knee, the Red River war, etc. Were I in the PRC, I would not find any books on the crisis in Tibet, Xinjiang or the Sudan, simply because they would not be available. Authors would not bother to research PRC’s past policies because they know that no mainland publisher would risk prison. Publishers who want to stay in business will not consider manuscripts that may offend the eye of a state censor. Is the regime so weak that the paper and ink of the Free World can defeat the steel of the State's armored vehicles?
Therefore, my academic and cultural experience in the West is vastly richer and superior to that of anyone from the other side of the Great Firewall. The “moderates” within the regime will offer a fifty-year program of slow, steady, gradual development of democracy. Very convenient. Plenty of time for the tyrants and their patrons of industry to maintain their grip on the people. The CCP claims to be the protectors of the People, but it is that very gang that has sent millions of Han to their deaths in pogroms and wars with every neighbor since its founding 60 years ago.
Censorship is no stranger to Chinese culture. 5,000 years of authoritarian "hydraulic" society has homogenized the Han. Even the folk Buddhism of ancestor worship requires that "Hell Money" be burnt at funerals, so that the dearly departed has enough cash to bribe the guard in the Underworld to permit access to the afterlife. The Emperor even rules in the afterlife! Is it any wonder that Sun Tzu's Art of War, written in a time of wars and warlords, is the most popular Chinese cultural artifact in the West, and not the Analects of Confucius or the I-Ching?
And why are PRC industries so good at imitating and copying products but must hire Western consultants to develop new, original products? Perhaps the Emperor's doors are still closed and will not let the peasants have their own ideas. Once in a while, a movie with an original plot comes out of Hong Kong and a wave of copies shall soon follow; Infernal Affairs, Young & Dangerous, Shaolin Soccer, but in fairness that can be said of the film industry around the world.
There is a huge market for independent films in the West. The number of Western films OFFICIALLY ALLOWED to enter the PRC each year can be counted on the fingers of two hands. (Not counting the massive deluge of pirated DVDs floating around public squares, no doubt with the pre-paid sanction of the local authorities).
And so I rise everyday in celebration of my ability to consume and express whatever I please. And I lament my countrymen who wish to do the same but have the boot of fascists on their necks. And I look down my nose at those patriots of the proletarian revolution who revel in their dark caverns of the mind, and point the finger at everyone else except themselves.
"Buddhism is a religion for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization. Christianity appears before civilization has so much as begun—under certain circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof. Buddhism is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it simply thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to why he suffers. (His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in silence.) Here the word “devil” was a blessing: man had to have an omnipotent and terrible enemy—there was no need to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—"
Nietzsche
The creative output of the PRC today comes nowhere near the West. I’ll just take the print industry for example. My favorite Barnes & Nobles in New York City’s Union Square has four stories of row after row of fiction, history, art, classical literature, political science and investigative journalism, and every manner of magazine and journal, completely uncensored, unregulated, unfiltered. Such openness is testament to strength of Western culture. It is censorship and the suppression of ideas that is the mark of a weak regime, afraid of transparency and accountability, afraid that open debate will allow the totality of all the legitimate grievances of the people to bubble to the surface, and all the fingerpointing at secretive Western agents and saboteurs will no longer fly.
When the Darfur tragedy entered the public mind thanks to an alignment of the evangelical movement and Hollywood’s Genocide Olympics campaign, the PRC nationalists on the free Internet offered only counter-accusations that the Americans exterminated the Native Americans during our westward expansion and therefore, we have no right to condemn China. Ahhhh, but the People’s Republic and the United States are not on the same moral plane.
I can go into any bookstore in the West and find books on the Indian Wars of the 19th century. I can freely access Internet sources on the Trail of Tears, Scorching Iroquoia, Wounded Knee, the Red River war, etc. Were I in the PRC, I would not find any books on the crisis in Tibet, Xinjiang or the Sudan, simply because they would not be available. Authors would not bother to research PRC’s past policies because they know that no mainland publisher would risk prison. Publishers who want to stay in business will not consider manuscripts that may offend the eye of a state censor. Is the regime so weak that the paper and ink of the Free World can defeat the steel of the State's armored vehicles?
Therefore, my academic and cultural experience in the West is vastly richer and superior to that of anyone from the other side of the Great Firewall. The “moderates” within the regime will offer a fifty-year program of slow, steady, gradual development of democracy. Very convenient. Plenty of time for the tyrants and their patrons of industry to maintain their grip on the people. The CCP claims to be the protectors of the People, but it is that very gang that has sent millions of Han to their deaths in pogroms and wars with every neighbor since its founding 60 years ago.
Censorship is no stranger to Chinese culture. 5,000 years of authoritarian "hydraulic" society has homogenized the Han. Even the folk Buddhism of ancestor worship requires that "Hell Money" be burnt at funerals, so that the dearly departed has enough cash to bribe the guard in the Underworld to permit access to the afterlife. The Emperor even rules in the afterlife! Is it any wonder that Sun Tzu's Art of War, written in a time of wars and warlords, is the most popular Chinese cultural artifact in the West, and not the Analects of Confucius or the I-Ching?
And why are PRC industries so good at imitating and copying products but must hire Western consultants to develop new, original products? Perhaps the Emperor's doors are still closed and will not let the peasants have their own ideas. Once in a while, a movie with an original plot comes out of Hong Kong and a wave of copies shall soon follow; Infernal Affairs, Young & Dangerous, Shaolin Soccer, but in fairness that can be said of the film industry around the world.
There is a huge market for independent films in the West. The number of Western films OFFICIALLY ALLOWED to enter the PRC each year can be counted on the fingers of two hands. (Not counting the massive deluge of pirated DVDs floating around public squares, no doubt with the pre-paid sanction of the local authorities).
And so I rise everyday in celebration of my ability to consume and express whatever I please. And I lament my countrymen who wish to do the same but have the boot of fascists on their necks. And I look down my nose at those patriots of the proletarian revolution who revel in their dark caverns of the mind, and point the finger at everyone else except themselves.
"Buddhism is a religion for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization. Christianity appears before civilization has so much as begun—under certain circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof. Buddhism is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it simply thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to why he suffers. (His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in silence.) Here the word “devil” was a blessing: man had to have an omnipotent and terrible enemy—there was no need to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—"
Nietzsche
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