As for me, I seem to have a lot of faith in the power of humans looking after their own self interests. It's the greatest motivating force of mankind, and all other living things.
People ally with political parties, religions, regimes, industries, because they perceive that is where their self interest lies. In some cases (Islam, Communist Party in China a few years ago) it may be the only viable choice. Some people feel most comfortable allying with the status quo, the powers that be.
Others are visionaries. Wanting to bring capitalism to China is a vision. Wanting to bring religion to China is a vision. Wanting to rid the Arabic world of western influence is a vision. Wanting independence for your own country which is occupied by foreign powers is a vision.
I am an historian. I chronicle what is and what was. From that I can extrapolate what may be, but I am not a visionary. I can tell you that many westerners believed in the vision of the Soviet Union and gave much money, time and blood, but were sorely misused and disappointed, from my perspective. Maybe they weren't disappointed. I would have been.
Why did America "fail" China? Better to say that colonialism sucked, and racism sucks. Chinese immigrants to America were treated despicably. So were the Indians and the blacks and the Irish and the Slavs. Irish and Slavs are Catholic, by the way, which wasn't a good thing to be in parts of America. That's changed, but the KKK still has Catholics on their hate list. Edit: I forgot to mention Jews.
People used to call my mother's father a "hunky" - that was a derogatory name for someone of Slavic ancestry. My mother's mother's father refused to let his wife claim her fair share of Indian land because he didn't want anyone to know his wife was part Indian.
Honeychild, in most of the USA for much of its history, if you weren't white Anglo Saxon Protestant, you were dirt.
Shit happens. Get over it. That was then, this is now.
History is an avalanche. You can only watch it pass by, you can't hold on to any little piece of it. It doesn't mean anything out of context. |
