Our Biggest Problem Isn't China

Remember this 1971 Pogo cartoon?

A recent statement by historian Andrew J. Bacevich summarizes why it's more important than ever:

For Americans, the defining problem of our time is not China. It’s us.

Source - https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-defining-problem-in-2021-isnt-china-its-america/

And here is the essay Bacevich quotes in the above review. Like him, I urge you to read it in full:

https://palladiummag.com/2020/12/14/chinas-real-threat-is-to-americas-ruling-ideology/

Although I agree with most of what Bacevich and Hanania have to say, there is a potential outcome to the US-China competition which they don't seem to recognize. What if the US adopts the China model instead of rejecting it? In many ways we're already there:

1. The US economy is controlled by a cabal of corporate CEOs and bankers whose power is comparable to that of the Chinese Communist Party.

2. The US population is subject to intense corporate and government surveillance which is at least as thorough and onerous as that conducted by China.

3. The US currently is undergoing its version of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, carried out with ruthless determination and likely to have similar results.

4. Public debate is now forbidden in the US. Dissenters are besieged and disappeared by woke mobs.

5. The US lockdowns and other extreme measures, allegedly imposed to control the COVID-19 pandemic, look eerily like what China does to its population.

6. Straying far from its democratic roots, the US has turned to rule by decree (e.g., the president rules by executive order, while Congress rubber stamps laws written in secret, not open to debate or revision, and voted on before anyone can read them).

7. Outgoing US government officials no longer can retire or fade into obscurity. They will be hounded, prosecuted, and imprisoned as a warning to their supporters, some of whom will suffer the same fate.

Doesn't this all remind you of the closing scene in George Orwell's Animal Farm?

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

You better think long and hard about the people you just "elected". Do you really believe their agenda (if you even know what it really is) will make your lives any better? I don't.