Articles & Posts

We get the government we primped for … If we are what we eat, we are also what we vote for No other comment needed. This is a reprint of an entire article from China Thought Express, ctexp@substack.com, April 8 https://ctexp.substack.com/p/america-has-produced-a-taco-and-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2824601&post_id=179472358&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=grc&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email America Has Produced A TACO, And the Fools Here Deserve Exactly It By Zhou Han (周航） “TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out.” It is a mocking acronym used by the media and Wall Street to describe his fixed pattern: talk tough first, then back down the moment he meets real resistance. The phrase originated in a Financial Times column and was later widely picked up by multiple American media outlets. Every day, the moment I turn on the television or look at my phone screen, that man who makes me physically nauseous is there again. His face, his voice, that look of self-intoxicated smugness—it all clings like a film of grease that can never quite be wiped away. When I think that I may have to endure him for years to come, what I feel is no longer anger but fear—fear that this world will really allow him to keep occupying the spotlight, fear that humanity has grown so …

Some get tired or annoyed at my comparisons of China and the US, or CCP and GOP, or Xi and Trump. If you are part of that crowd, you may move on. Long ago I published the text of a speech by John Garnaut, an Australian journalist who spent many years covering China and Xi. The speech is from 2017. I’m sending now, again –  Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping’s China by John Garnaut  Garnaut looks to explain Xi’s policy motives in light of traditional CCP directives. The theme of Garnaut’s speech is to remind listeners that Xi is only following the script of the totalizing authoritarianism that is communism. Lenin, Stalin, Mao all promoted unwavering loyalty to the cause of communism and unwavering loyalty (at penalty of death) to the supreme leader. In that pursuit art, literature, journalism, all the arts are in service to the need to rewire the individual’s beliefs and morality, to engineer the soul toward proper reverence of the leader and the movement. Sending the Garnaut again because I am reminded that the real Trump derangement, the MAGA loyalists, seem as captured by a Trumpian engineering of the soul as any senior CCP Xi loyalist. Stalin, …

Forget the US has aggressively retired from competition in the global information race, the global solar power race, the  global EV race, the global environmental sustainability race, the global race for preservation of democratic freedoms of assembly, speech, thought and writing. And retired from about 50 other tech disciplines –  https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker/ What we really want to know is – Whatever happened to the shining city on a hill, the last best hope of mankind, the leading scientific and technological country for the prior 150 years, the leading economy of the last hundred years, the proudest achievement of the Enlightenment, the one country that – even now – people clamor to come to, the place that said “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Whatever happened to “I lift my lamp beside the golden door?” How many of you reading this have ancestors who didn’t get here this way? And whatever happened to “Love your neighbor as yourself”  (Luke 10:27) Or  “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute”  (Proverbs 31:8) Whatever happened to E Pluribus Unum? And that old standby – “Blessed are the poor …

We are lucky to have lived experience of 2025. In 25 or 50 or 100 years historians and writers of all stripes will want to know about 2025, another year that everyone will remember for its singular event in history – when the US gave up the “shining city on a hill,” the last best hope of mankind, the leading scientific and technological country for the prior 150 years, the leading economy of the last hundred years, the proudest achievement of the Enlightenment, the one country that – even now- people clamor to come to, the place that said “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” And to be fair to the US, we didn’t get beaten. We just … retired. Left the field, particularly in science and technology. You know the perspectives of the current president of the US. It’s hard to fathom. The US government has left the field in just about every discipline of policy, foreign and domestic. China is already leading the US in most fields of advanced tech. If you wish, you can peruse the report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute  ASPI’s two-decade Critical Technology Tracker  that finds China leading …

You remember “China speed,” right? When infrastructure and residential developments were going up so fast it was hard to credit. Plenty of caveats went unnoticed – workers with few or no safety protections, no rules about work hours or conditions, poor quality in lots of projects, lack of supervision or inspection, round-the-clock work at base pay rates, residential projects deemed complete when unit windows and entry doors were installed. Usually work was done by immigrants (rural migrants) and it was often hot, dirty, and unsafe. But millions did the work to build a life for their families back in the village and for themselves. It was “move fast and build things.”There was a time when the US worked at “China speed” as well. That was the height of the industrial revolution circa 1870-1920, when cities like Chicago were the fastest growing places in the world. Immigrants (immigrants!) were flocking here to build a future for the US, cities, their families and themselves. The work was hot, dirty, and unsafe. Millions did the work. You remember Carl Sandberg on that unfathomable upstart Chicago –… I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back …

Read More …

Some of you recall Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, the 1971 gonzo journalism piece by Hunter Thompson. This was a bizarre reflection on the culture of  the 1960s – disconnected, frightening, crazed, stupid for the sake of being stupid.Late at night I’ve encountered YouTube videos depicting German and Japanese prisoners of war in the US, circa 1942-45. The videos are based on letters sent back to Germany and Japan and reports filed during interviews at the camps and after. The videos are from several different sites, but all formulaic – prisoners arrive at some camp in rural Texas or someplace, half-starved, frightened, suspicious, minds convinced by home propaganda that America was starving, decaying, finished. Then the prisoners get their first meal, usually chicken or beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, bread and real coffee. More food per meal per prisoner than their military officers might get in several days back in the war. Three thousand calories per day, just like – always referenced –  as required by the Geneva Convention. America, it turns out, had such abundance that prisoners got hot water in showers and real soap and real …