ROGER SIMON: The Democrats’ Chinese Communist Party Envy.
The key to our elites’ (hate the word but using it for convenience) riches and power is access to the giant Chinese market no matter how the CCP behaves.
This began with Kissinger and Nixon. The theory then, or the rationalization, was that if we opened to China, they would become like us.
Consequently, in the decades since, the U. S. government more or less looked away, doing little more than raising its eyebrows in UN conference rooms, as the CCP oppressed its minorities (If you can call millions of people minorities) in the Tibetan, Uyghur, Falun Gong, and Christian communities and simultaneously jailed, tortured and/or made life impossible for dissidents who evinced the slightest interest in democracy.
Even the horrors of Tiananmen were no more than a bump in the road. Just twelve years later China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization.
Only the uncouth orange-haired man dared to step in to stem this inevitable slide cum boondoggle for the elite. What a killjoy. Even Apple had to reconsider having all its iPhones made in China, at least for a while.
No wonder he has to be impeached—twice. And a third time if that becomes necessary. It’s not such a joke.
And you can be sure the same treatment will be given to Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida who appears to be a more sophisticated version of Trump who may know how to walk the walk more subtlety and successfully than the now former president.
In fact DeSantis already is being targeted, as our new administration is threatening to ban travel to Florida when his state—without lockdowns—fared far better against COVID than those that did like New York and New Jersey. Again—how very CCP.
What probably goes on somewhere in the head of the average liberal who once—it seems like decades ago—so ardently embraced civil liberties and the Bill of Rights is that the way of Communist China is the inevitable way of the future. As the digital empire grows and robots take over the work force, competing parties in a democratic republic will seem so old fashioned and just stand in the way of progress (read: getting rich).
Human freedom and liberty are passé 18th century ideas, the kind of thing that gets you banned on Twitter. Who needs it when the microchip in your sunglasses is telling you the right thing to do, what’s required of a “good citizen.”
When that infantile group of dumbbells invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6—calling that an “insurrection” was ludicrous; if you really wanted to overthrow the U. S. government you would do something that could have an effect, like bringing down the power grid—it was seized upon as an opportunity not only to smash Trump but to open the floodgates to a one-party system.
So what has happened to Nixon and Kissinger’s theory that the Chinese would become like us?
The reverse: We have become like them!
As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see, in a sort of prelude to what was to come the following year: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.