President Donald Trump spoke with lawmakers at the White House on the topic of gun control. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
01 March 18
If we can't do better than a draft-dodger president with hero fantasies, we should probably start learning Chinese.
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America's uncouth and unclothed emperor-wannabe fantasized about how he
would rush unarmed at a homicidal shooter, China placed imperial robes
on Xi Jinping. He is now the world's de facto chairman-for-life.
Vladimir Putin, meantime, flips America the finger. He
is helping Bashar al-Assad rain death on women and children. Pleased to
see useful idiots in the White House and Congress, he doubles down on
skewing elections.
North Korea, undeterred by empty threats, is shipping
chemical-weapon components to Syria, U.N. investigators report. For
other crises percolating toward long-term calamity, spin a globe and
point pretty much anywhere.
Hans Christian Anderson's beloved tale, “The Emperor
Has No Clothes,” seems apt for the moment. But more, think Lewis
Carroll. America today is loonier than anything he imagined down Alice's
rabbit hole.
As the nation recoils in shock from the Florida school
massacre, a tone-deaf Donald Trump dined with the devil. He emerged
from lunch with NRA leaders to tell us not to worry: “They are on our
side.”
You can't make this shit up.
Jared Kushner, Trump's point man on vital foreign
affairs, lost his top-secret clearance. He posed with Benjamin
Netanyahu, saying America has never been so close to Israel, as the
hard-line prime minister is charged with massive corruption.
Donald, Jr., flits about the world cutting shady deals to shore up the family's holdings. Robert Mueller's bloodhounds sniff outside the Oval Office. Rather than help them seek truth, Trump's response is, “No collusion.” It is all about him.
Donald, Jr., flits about the world cutting shady deals to shore up the family's holdings. Robert Mueller's bloodhounds sniff outside the Oval Office. Rather than help them seek truth, Trump's response is, “No collusion.” It is all about him.
Hope Hicks resigned as communications director after
saying she told white lies for the president. Stephen Colbert jumped on
that: “Telling lies to white people is what got Trump elected.” Now, he
added, the administration is truly hopeless.
The list is long, but China towers above it all. I am
no expert on the opaque Middle Kingdom, and neither is anyone with
clout in the Trump Administration. I listen to colleagues who have
covered Beijing over the decades.
James Pringle, for instance, says nothing can now stop
Xi's control of the South China Sea through which $5 trillion in trade
transit each year. He sees in Xi a better-packaged Mao Zedong, and he
fears a more sophisticated resurgence of the dreaded Red Guards.
Mao could sound reasonable. Remember, “Let a hundred
flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”? Or, “Women
hold up half the sky”? But don't forget the big one: “Political power
comes out of the barrel of the gun.”
“'Emperor' Xi must be laughing up his sleeve,” Pringle
wrote to friends. “He has said what he will do, but people don't want
to believe him…Islands to the south of China will all belong to Xi and
his cronies and, before we know it, American ships will not be allowed
to get past on danger of attack. One waits to see what the Japanese will
do. It will come slowly but the kindling for a new war is there.
Probably Japan is on the way to nuclear weapons.”
In 1971, Pringle replaced a Reuters correspondent who
spent more than two years under house arrest. “During the height of the
Cultural Revolution,” he wrote in a 2009 New York Times op-ed, “Red
Guards had broken into his home, pinioned his arms behind him, and
strangled his pet kitten inches from his eyes.”
During the 1989 uprising at Tiananmen Square, Pringle
found Deng Xiaoping eager to let the world know what to expect from
violent protests.
“Deng said that to get rich was glorious,” he wrote.
“But what happens when dreams of wealth stagnate? For a Communist Party
that brought China the famine of the Great Leap Forward, the chaos of
the Cultural Revolution and the brutal suppression of 1989, providing a
decent life for the ordinary people of China has become essential.
Without it, a regime that has so often discredited itself will lose the
mandate of heaven.”
Xi has taken China out of poverty. Big time. Everyone
on the Forbes 400 for China is a billionaire. A real estate magnate is
worth $42.5 billion, and Jack Ma of Alibaba is closing in fast. Life is
hard at the bottom, but enough wealth trickles down to mollify the
masses. Expect no revolution.
China is working on a hypersonic jet that reaches Mach
7 — 5,371 miles an hour. That could carry passengers, or worse, from
Beijing to New York in two hours. It pushes every area, from artificial
intelligence to the ocean floor to deep space.
Despite all of China's advances, Pringle told me in an
email, echoes from the past are unmistakable. Xi is now called Lingxiu —
Leader — an honorific not used since Mao. His portrait is displayed in
Beijing where Mao's used to be.
“Unbelievably,” he concluded, “it is all starting again, not just about to start — but already started.”
Meanwhile, back in America, a sizeable percentage of
voters seem not to notice, or care, and believe that plainly observable
facts are propaganda to discredit America's greatest president since
Lincoln, who is already running for reelection.
Two weeks after the Parkland massacre, newscasts focus
on little else. Trump's 2016 campaign received more than $30 million
from the NRA. His hardcore resists even minimum age limits for buying
weapons of mass murder.
And so Trump reminisces aloud about the good old days
when if you thought someone might be a deranged threat to society you
just lock him away in a mental
institution. If he read, he would recognize that as a favorite ploy in the Soviet Union.
institution. If he read, he would recognize that as a favorite ploy in the Soviet Union.
Our American rabbit hole is eerie beyond description. But small vignettes suggest how badly our society is now skewed.
The other day at Walgreens, I asked a cashier about
large warning signs over the cigarette rack. Anyone under 40 is asked
for ID. If he sells to anyone under 18, he told me, the store is heavily
fined; he is fired and might even end up in prison.
He wouldn't go to jail. But he was scared,
nonetheless. A state bill raising the age limit to 21 — even for
e-cigarettes, failed last year, but some towns have done that on their
own. Tobacco kills. It is far easier to buy a military-grade arsenal.
Obsessed with ourselves, we ignore real danger until it looms into our line of sight.
Then we can only adapt to fait accompli. If we can't do better than a draft-dodger president with hero fantasies, we should probably start learning Chinese.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents
as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International
Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from
global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
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