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Politics : Politics for Honest Conservatives -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (2555)	5/20/2019 4:15:28 PM
From: sense	Respond to of 3350

that China's South China Sea adventures are indistinguishable They are different.. Journey back in time a bit and think of what the Brits and Americans did to China.. Removed Japan as an occupier ? And, then by and large left China to sort out its own shit by itself ? It doesn't appear to me to make sense to bother ourselves much about history prior to that... whatever it was... beyond studying it to learn from it what we can. Choices made today will have zero impact in altering outcomes... or the impacts... of Europe's "opening" of China, or Japan. China and Japan today are not what they were then... and neither are Europe or America. They are only protecting their environs so far.. Not exactly... China agreed to join the world on the basis of the terms the world offered... and the world meant it... but China was lying to their partners while seeking an advantage in the lie. Certainly less bad than the US legacy.. so far.. wrt other countries.. in the last 300 years :)) Which does nothing to change what we HAVE learned from history, and what the trends already in tow now clearly mean for both the present and the future. You could say the same about Hitler and the Nazi's in 1933... or Imperial Japan as it modernized and industrialized in the years prior to "trade frictions" developing into a purposeful "trade war" with FDR... leading as expected inexorably into "errors" made... I do think it useful to parse differences between national boundaries at a particular time... and the proper use of boundaries in defining roles in assuming specific responsibility for events... for the choices made. Responsibility adheres most to knowing and intentional actors... The victim of a sleight of hand who ends up with another's wallet in his pocket ? The grifter, not his mark.. most responsible. I will not buy into any argument that the U.S. is responsible for the mess Europe is making of Europe, today... or that the ongoing difficulties in the de-Sovietization of the former USSR and its former colonies... makes us the bad guys because "life is hard". Like kids... they have to learn to make better choices. I see reason for optimism in Europe today... as they slowly recognize what they've been doing, and step back from the abyss they've been careening into... figuring out "they've been played"... by "American's" ? Also see no reason for the U.S. to apologize now for China's history of poor choices ? We didn't impose Mao on them, or the Cultural Revolution ? However... the current impacts of ongoing change in China we do bear significant responsibility for. China has not become what it is today in a vacuum. So I do think it proper that the U.S. (and that element in the west supporting and enabling China's change... still... ) should apologize to the world for that... but particularly to American's who have been forced into paying for it in taxes and in lost opportunity costs... for deliberately enabling and subsidizing the economic development of China since Nixon... on the known to be purposefully biased basis that has favored China, at others expense, to date. We are guilty of creating the "economic miracle" in China... and should repent of that and make it good. The same was true of "American" involvement in Europe and Japan prior to WWII ? We were correct to help Europe and Russia in taking Hitler down... but make the error of thinking that alone makes us the good guys... when we were also responsible for helping to create him... because.. "good for business". The COST that Hitler (and Japan) imposed on the world, the need to solve the problem... was a cost and a need that was CREATED of whole cloth in another "economic miracle"... enabled by knowing actors... because "good for business". The key takeaway should be... not that taking down Hitler (or Imperial Japan) was a bad idea... but that creating them in the first place was the OBVIOUS error... and that we should have been aware that those advocating "good for business" WERE THE PROBLEM... knowingly. Here we are again with China... Some will argue "we shouldn't get involved"... as they did prior to WWII. And, again, that's not a viable option. Others will argue "you broke it, you bought it"... or "we must rise to the challenge to save the world, once again, from evil"... Unfortunately, they will be correct... We've been maneuvered, once again, into that being unavoidable. And, so we must. China today is another existential risk that was created for the purpose of forcing us into saving the world again... because... "good for business". Just not equally good for everyone's business. Awareness of the fact doesn't alter that they HAVE already created this monster on purpose... However, awareness of the larger set of facts... does alter what we might think most proper to do about it. US/Canada.. did lots of bad chit to First Nations.. Blacks.. Yada, yada, yada... History does have a way of happening... that reveals errors made in hindsight more fully than in our anticipation of them. History doesn't make us responsible for the errors of our grandfathers fathers. It does obligate us to improve and avoid the SAME errors... over and over ? The U.S. is not evil... for having overcome slavery... for having crafted a liberal society that has been (until recently) mostly winning its battles with social ills like racism... Racists on the march... today... are those deliberately foisting the fraud of generational guilt... in a bait and switch enabling "paying for our past errors" by re-enabling them... as you see in the left's accelerating spiral into anti-semitism and the re-invention of racial segregation as the social ideal. China is the bogie man du jour.. as they are upsetting the status quo.. There might be a new global hegemon in town.. There is not a new global hegemon in town. As Russia, Germany and Japan before them... as Libya, as Syria... China is playing their assigned role, following the script... because it was predictable that they'd go stupid in the way that they predictably have and are... because... "good for business". I do not think so actually.. just teh global pie will be more evenly shared.. Plenty of reasons to make a positive moral argument of enabling America's China policy over the last four decades... The number of people lifted out of poverty while rescuing them from the economic evils of communism being all it can be... ? Sure, all good. But, that was no less true than the same... in the similar economic miracles enabled in Imperial Japan and post- WW I Germany... that took even less time to engineer ? But, that's not an argument intrinsically in agreement with a particular way of seeing the pie. See 'em up... knock 'em down... ? The pie... is full and welly baked... smells great... mostly in order to induce fighting over it... only after having shared a taste, a smell, ? Then, using it as a lure ? Growing the pie... not a universal good ? Ultimately, history is reducible to a series of pie fights. And, as always, to end goal isn't all and only "more"... but ownership and control. Your pie can shrink, too... and it can be shrunk... on purpose... to induce a response... so that some grow their share at others expense. The pie fight... not different than a staged paintball event. The fight engaged will have winners and losers... but only the organizers really come out ahead. And, they don't care if the pie shrinks... as long as they retain control... because they can grow more.. and do this all again in another 100 years. Conflict with China is made inevitable... .because China does not understand (does not want to understand) that their "growth" is being artificially enabled at our expense... and is unsustainable... China, like Japan and Germany before... poses existential risks to the western liberal and economic order... and, more importantly at this stage... to the western liberal, economic and military survival instinct...