We are not built for China

 Park Chung Hee was not a very nice man.  The ruler of Korea from 1963  until 1979, by the end of his reign his popularity was greatly waning.  Still, it is without question that during his reign he built Korea into an industrial powerhouse.  Korea's GNP increased by 2400%.(please check my work!)  Yet Korea is an American ally and today only has 50 million people.  

Now let's take a look at China.  Itself an industrial powerhouse, with an equally goal oriented leadership.  But with a population of 1.5 billion.  Yes, I deliberately overestimate the population.  And China today has a GDP roughly ten times larger than Korea's. 

We are not built for China.  We are not prepared for this.  Sure if China was say the size of......Peru it would be a different story, right?

China is a threat to our way of life.  To our existence.  This may not be a big deal to the great people of Holland or  Poland or Ecuador.  But the fact is, China is a big deal to America.  To its ego.  The Chinese government is led by party hacks.  People that espouse the Party Line.  However, no one knows what in the hell that is anymore right?  

Except I think we do;  The Party Line is not Marx or Lenin or whatever Ho Chi Minh or Trotsky believed.   The Party Line is unleashing Capitalism within China while at the same time  keeping its people in line.  It has not a damn thing to do with Socialism.  The good thing is Deng and Liu won.  The sad thing is the time is not 1961 but the waning days of Trump and 2020. 

The Chinese People, perhaps due to the large population, is quite frankly good at doing business.  And say what you will about the Chinese Leadership, in particular about XJP, but the top echelon of Chinese leaders are smart and talented.   They ooze with ability.  Yes they have weaknesses.  No, they haven't read Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird.  And they sure as hell haven't read 1984 or Animal Farm.  

But how many of us have read Lu Xun?  In effect we are "reading past each other". 

But they respect America, and the tenets of Western Civilization.  They'd just rather admire us from afar, to be left alone while they manage the Chinese People the best they can, within their own philosophical constraints.   To America and the West I say this:  If the Chinese Leadership did not like our System, they would not send their children to our universities....simple as that.  

But we are not ready for this "moment".   We as a free wheeling civilization are not built for this train.  This is a train running at full speed that never stops. It never slows down.  And it knows where it is going.  There are no Sunday picnics or frolicking on green grass.  No ice cream trucks nearby.  

As ignorant as we are about Marx, they are even more so about John Locke.  Why do I bring this up?  Because it means they are coming at us full speed, still rough around the edges.

But my society, my country in particular, the laughingstock of the planet, is not built to deal with China.  A country being dragged along by an elite, sure on where it is going.  I'm not saying all is lost.  I'm not writing this from despair. 

But the pandemic has not done us right.  We have ourselves to blame.   When a house on your street is on fire, you put the damn thing out.  Because if you don't it will spread to your house.  But if it is a slow burning fire does your sense of urgency decrease? Does it?

Of course not.  So when our own house somehow someway still manages to not only catch on fire but then rage out of control do you still have the gall to blame the owner of the first house for our inability to put out our own?  Trump does nothing.  It is clear to all that his "strategy" is to "let it burn".  That is, by herd immunity we will all get it and thus be saved.  Meanwhile he's busy reading the stock page in the paper.  

But the worst thing is no one will ever be held accountable or punished for our house burning down.  No one will go to jail. No one will be humiliated or fined.   By January 20, 2021, there will be 450,000 American dead.  The first death was in February of 2020.  In less than one year, all Coronavirus deaths will have exceeded all American WW2 deaths.  A war which lasted nearly four years.  

America made damn sure our enemies  were held accountable.  Right or wrong many people were executed and hanged. 

There will be no charges for "crimes against humanity" for the American Coronavirus however.  No one will be fined.  No one will go to jail.  

Meanwhile a few cases in Beijing of Coronavirus are found.  Not many.  Just a few.  And all the schools are shut down!  The city goes into damn near lockdown.   Because the leadership knows the consequences.  The entire European continent flattened the Coronavirus curve.  But that wasn't enough, was it?   And now they are in lockdown again.

These are all democracies!  Not one of them is a Communist country and none of them have secret police.  

What the fuck is America doing?  We need to "ask" people to stay home from Thanksgiving.  We need to "ask" people to not visit their families.   Folks, this is not a "democracy" problem, this is an "American" problem.    We are not built for this!   Why can't we "tell" people to stay home?  Close the airports?  

Because we are not "built" for this.   Our society is used to facing off against either like minded societies or quite frankly, smaller countries we can intimidate or others we can simply outspend.  

As I've said before we will not be outspending China.  Nor will we be intimidating China.  But judging their response with ours, can we not simply extrapolate a bit?  Their nation is rowing in cadence, towards the finish line.  We are simply rowing, with none of us in cadence, because however you may wish to row....well your speed and stroke speed is up to you.  You have the "freedom" to row as you wish.   Or you may not row at all.  It is up to you.  And when the other guy reaches the finish line before you, some of us in the boat will still have the nerve to call them a cheater. 

This is about saving lives.  A virus is a far more efficient killer than any ideology.

China's focus and discipline is scary.  We are not built to compete against a nation such as China.   Nor is your country, wherever you may live.   Alas, the Chinese will not "gloat" over your nation's response.   They will over America's.   Yes, our system is superior.  But the bottom line is which system killed more people?