Stupid is as stupid does - MAGA-stupidity in China
You’ve heard some of the MAGA stories – that Trump is sent from God, that inflation is raging, that the government is coming to take your (pick your noun) guns, kids, bible, Way of Life. The Chinese are sending spies to walk across the border with the illegal immigrants.
No question but the number of such stories would explode were the orange-haired baboon to be re-elected. At the highest level, the government itself would promote some of the stories.
I wrote a bit about similarities between the US and China, physically, culturally, and in conjunction with the GOP, politically. See China-US: Some Similarities and More on Monkey See, Monkey Do
Now comes the wildfire stories from Guizhou, Guanxi and Yunnan, where hundreds of fires, promoted by drought and apparently mostly started from arson, are burning rural areas in the hills and mountains mostly to the west. Lei from Lei’s Real Talk has the story, extracting it from the censored social media posts in China. Why is China's Poorest Province Inundated with Fires? Why is China’s poorest province inundated with fires?
Lei sees the fires as frustration from local people at the sheer incompetence and ignorance of the village and township officials. The Guizhou government has different ideas, and has promoted three wildfire theories –
- That Chinese restrictions on selling traditional Chinese medicines to Japan caused Japanese to start fires in China, to burn the plants that are the source of the medicines. Sort of, “if we can’t have it, you can’t either.”
- That Japanese started wildfires in Guizhou to lower supply of traditional medicinal herbs in China, so Chinese would have to buy their herbs from Japan
- That Americans are preparing another super virus attack in China (after the US put covid in China) and are burning sources of traditional medicines first, to keep Chinese from being able to medically respond
The local governments have not only censored all stories about the fires, but have threatened local people if they post pictures or videos or even talk about the fires. This may be why we heard nothing about the fires in the western media.
Some Chinese believe the conspiracy theories. But they are inundated with misinformation, not so unlike MAGA Americans. From Truth Social - God sent Trump to Americans. Just one more way in which stupid humans are everywhere and without education and access to information, conspiracy theories and craziness can abound. We think of it as the Chinese curse, even though its origin is not China – may you live in interesting times. Seems true for both Chinese and for Americans.
