trump reveals who we really are

Blogging serves me in many ways.  It helps me think and learn.  Sometimes, the posts are also bookmarks for me to use the materials in my classes.  And, yes, in the lonely life, the possibility of having substantive conversations in the cyber-salon ...

Above and beyond that, blogging, like any kind of writing, is therapeutic.  If not for the writing, I would have become a wreck from all the internal struggles.

Even when I have plenty of time, I usually post only once a day here.  It is all a part of the regimented life.  But then there are exceptions.  Like today.

I want to let go of an issue that has been bothering me for a couple of weeks.  Ever since trump shrugged away the brutal murder of a Saudi journalist, who was a permanent resident here in the US, by talking about the billions of dollars of arms trade with the Saudis.

Like many people, I too found that equation to be disgusting.  And tweeted in plenty.

But, there is more to it. 

America looking the other way is not anything new.  The US has a long and dirty track record of supporting thugs who abuse, torture, and kill their people.  We even affectionately called it the our-son-of-a-bitch policy, as in, "“He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

trump merely makes that SOB approach public.  As with everything else, he is the most transparent politician we have ever had, except when it comes to his own taxes!

When it comes to important trading partners, or allies in some strategic geopolitical arrangements, the US has more often than not looked the other way when those partners commit horrible abuses.  We have always done that, as a government and as businesses.

We were crass then, and are crass now.  trump has merely revealed who we really are.

I have blogged in plenty here on this issue. My favorite is about how we treat the Dalai Lama.

Because we "value" the trade with China, we have always prostrated before the Chinese and obeyed their commands on how we dealt with the Dalai Lama.  Back in 2009, I even authored an op-ed on this.

Remember who the President was in 2009?  Yep, the "liberal" and "principled" Obama.

I wrote there about "the remarkably under-reported news that President Obama has “quietly postponed an audience with the Dalai Lama until after he visits China in November.”

Why did Obama postpone his meeting?  Because he wanted to keep the Chinese leaders happy.  The very leaders who were making life miserable for the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans, the Uighurs, and, heck, the entire country.  Human rights and freedom were not what the Chinese leaders cared for.  And Obama said ok to them.

I wrote there: "The postponement of the meeting confirms, yet again, the triumph of realpolitik over principles."

That was a mere meeting.  With somebody who does not even have an army.  Whose only "weapons" are words of kindness and humanity.  Yet, Obama wussed out and did not want to stand up to the Chinese leaders.  Tell me again why trump's comment on the Saudi arms sales is different from Obama's behavior?

We have always played fast and loose with moral principles.  We were selective about morality.  trump takes that to a logical conclusion by revealing the stark nakedness of our situation.

Of course, the torture and murder of an individual is atrocious. Of course, we should rise in protest.  But, keep this in mind whenever a Democrat is in the Oval Office too.  Do not give her a pass just because she is from your party!

Like I said, getting all these out is therapeutic.  I can now go on about my day!

Contradiction of the day: Burma's junta and Gandhi!

The Burmese junta has been doing a fantastic job of screwing up the country and its peoples.  The regime's leaders, who ought to be tried at the ICC, can compete with the likes of Mugabe for the title of worst among the worst!

Like most countries that care not for ideals but operate with realpolitik in mind, India hosted the Burmese junta leader for five days.  And, gave the visiting couple a gift: "Burma's leader and his wife were gifted a fabric printed with Mahatma Gandhi's "Seven Social Sins" 

WTF?  As if recognizing the junta weren't enough, they had to give a gift--of all things, quoting Gandhi?


One of my favorites about Gandhi and his ideals is this: as Europe tensed and with the war about to break out, Gandhi was apparently lobbied by his followers to step up the anti-Raj efforts and go for the British jugular, as it were.  Instead, Gandhi reminded them about how the Nazis were way worse and defeating the Nazis was important. Now, that is leadership and not playing realpolitik.  


So, anything else of interest while on this trip to India?

Thousands of Burmese refugees staying in India are upset over the visit of Myanmar military ruler General Than Shwe and have urged the Indian government not to endorse the upcoming elections in that country. Than Shwe is on a five-day visit to India. He arrived on Sunday and went to pray at Bodh Gaya in Bihar.
India has been the home for a large number of refugees from Myanmar, most of whom came here to escape the human rights situation and suppression in that country.
"We feel outraged with his visit as India is the largest democracy in the world, and the land of the Buddha and tolerance," said Tint Swe, who was elected a member of the Burmese parliament in 1990 and is now a leading member of the Burmese Pro-Democracy Movement in India.

That it right.  Apparently the junta does not see anything bizarre in the general visiting the site where Siddhartha became the Buddha, the enlightened one--the Buddha who preached non-violence.  AAAAAAAAHHHHH!

The Dalai Lama Dilemma

I can't figure out this Tibet stuff.

I mean, yes, the Chinese were awful and brutal in the 1950s that led to large-scale ethnic cleansing of sorts with the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of his followers fleeing Lhasa and its vicinity.  And, yes, the suppression of a basic freedom to believe in whatever one wants to is a gross violation of human rights.  I written about these (like this one) and have blogged a lot as well.

But, on the other hand, I have always wondered whether we are idealizing Tibet, the Tibetan life, and overly glorifying the Dalai Lama.  After all, there is a long track record of Western countries celebrating the simple lifestyles of the poor, when many of that same poor would way prefer not to be poor and starving and ill and illiterate ....

The ever contrarian Spiked makes it all the more difficult to figure this out:

The first sounds that greet me as I arrive in Lhasa are the incandescent honking of horns as car-drivers and motorcyclists (some with three to a bike) negotiate the roads. My own Tibetan driver is wearing a Playboy jacket. Maybe he bought it in the Playboy shop that I later see in the centre of Lhasa. It’s near the Tibet Steak House (‘juicy meat for you!’) and the Lhasa casino, in which Tibetan men in leather jackets pile coins into slot machines. On the streets young men in Kappa and Nike sweatshirts (fakes, I’m guessing), with hair by Topman, flirt with casually dressed young women, one of whom is sporting hotpants that even Kylie would consider too risqué. How can they dress like this in the freezing kingdom of snow and Yetis, as made famous by Tintin in Tibet? Because that’s another myth of Tibet, at least in July, and at least here in Lhasa: I might be 3,650 metres above sea level, inside a mountain range and with the clouds so close by I almost feel I could touch them, but it’s so hot that I get sunburnt.

Of course, one could argue that the dreaded hotpants would not have been there, and the Shangri-La would have continued, had the Chinese government not interfered in Tibet the way it did and continues to do.  But, what if all that Shangri-La talk itself is a myth?

it is during that period of the self-serving Orientalism of British rule in Tibet that the popular modern image of Tibet as a mystical, cut-off entity takes shape - most notably in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), which invented the idea of ‘Shangri La’. As McKay points out, the writings of the British imperialists, and of their sympathisers, are still regularly cited in the propaganda produced by the Dalai Lama’s people, which is designed to prove that Tibet is a unique and special place that only they can and should govern. Some of those old Orientalist writings were available at that hippy-fest in Lambeth, too - British imperial paternalism recycled as anthropological New Age ‘at-oneness’. What connects the old imperialists with the new Tibetophiles is their desire to have Tibet as a ‘buffer state’ – only where the imperialists wanted to use Tibet to protect their material interests against China and Russia, the new lot want to use it to protect their emotional interests, to preserve an idea of innocent, childlike humanity so far uncorrupted by modernity.

Reminds me of that controversial book on Orientalism from my graduate school days.  Speaking of which, Rongsheng, who was a fellow graduate student, always argued that the Chinese government was trying to get rid of feudal traditions and ignorance in Tibet, and that the West was keen on maintaining those horrible systems that do not help the Tibetans themselves.

I suppose the only way I can figure this out for myself is to travel in and around Tibet.  Will you, the reader, please pay for this important educational trip? Please? :)

Meanwhile, the Economist dryly notes that:

China seems to calculate that the eventual death of the Dalai Lama, a charismatic and internationally popular figure, will make its job in Tibet easier. Each passing birthday brings that day closer. But it also offers supporters of the Dalai Lama and his cause a chance to sing his praises.

That is some realpolitik, eh.

Some more on Uighurs, and China

This time from the Economist:

The government, however, was unusually quick to restrict internet and mobile telephone communications. It has been spooked by the role of the internet during recent unrest in Iran. The Iranian opposition has sparked considerable online discussion in China, as well as disapproving coverage in the official media. Within hours of the Urumqi riot, internet access was cut across Xinjiang (the first time such a wide outage has been reported anywhere in China, even during the unrest in Tibet). International telephone calls were blocked. Within 48 hours text-messaging services were also suspended. A few broadband lines were kept open in an Urumqi hotel for the media .....

China can count on strong moral support from its Central Asian neighbours, with which it is co-operating closely to try to combat cross-border militancy. In the old alleyways of Kashgar, now being rapidly torn down as part of an urban-renewal programme that is fuelling yet more resentment among local Uighurs, official painted slogans condemn Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group calling for a universal caliphate. The group, which has roots across China’s borders, has started to gain recruits in Xinjiang, but is not thought to be widespread. China’s efforts to establish common cause with its neighbours, and to encourage them to stamp out Uighur militancy in their own territories, may partly explain the prominence that Kashgar’s authorities give the organisation.

America feels these closer ties with Central Asian countries are being forged at its expense. But it appreciates China’s quiet support for the anti-terror campaign, including intelligence-sharing. America has no interest in supporting Uighur nationalism and exacerbating instability in an already volatile region. Xinjiang for now is one unstable Muslim area of the world where America is not a public enemy, at least among its Muslim population. It will require a skilful balance between the preservation of crucial ties with China and support for the rights of an aggrieved minority to ensure that this remains so.

As has always been the case with America's foreign policy, realpolitik will end up triumphing over principles, which means that the US will screw the Uighurs and kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party. After all, they are our economic colonizers!