When I was a teenager in Cuba, a year or so after then-Cuban president Fidel Castro’s revolution, a little boy asked me: “Why are you an imperialist?”
I felt it an unfair accusation. Communism was then taking hold in Cuba and its ideologies had commandeered the minds of the young.
In the US today something similar is going on. Only, it is the minds of an older demographic that have been hijacked, and by ideologies that are capitalist. US Senator Bernie Sanders saw this, as did the millennials supporting his bid to become the Democratic Party’s US presidential candidate.
However, failed Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s people rigged the party’s primary to crush him and them. Although she was so clearly in the race for herself, she would have benefited the US as well.
The same cannot be said of US President Donald Trump, the more malignant representative of her same establishment ideologies. He beat her by playing chameleon and camouflaging himself as an insurgent. With him at the helm the US begins its decline into imperialism.
EATEN ALIVE
Not “US imperialism,” that bugbear of the old-time communists I ran up against so long ago in Cuba. No, the US itself is today being eaten alive by imperialists in ways that enable us to see finally who they really are.
The sundry fossil fuel, Wall Street and pharmaceutical empires stand out so obviously, but there any number of related ones at work alongside them. Each has its super-rich emperor or emperors.
In the US, as in China, the class that now rules is a parasitic elite, intent on holding back history, no matter the cost to humanity, the planet, or coming generations, so it can get even richer, or become even more powerful, than it already is.
Instead of developing themselves as human beings its members have become addicted to success of the most selfish sort, endangering everyone by disastrously imposing yesterday’s profit making or power-extending schemes on a world in which these have become obsolete and harmful.
Political ideologies or religious beliefs in the hands of these people become toys with which they further their own aims over the general good.
TIPPING POINT
With Trump in the US and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm in Beijing, the takeover by a greedy elite seems on the threshold of a final victory over everyone else.
However, it will not happen. The world is at a tipping point. With Trump, everybody can see it has gone too far.
Communism collapsed and Russia went down. Now it is capitalism and the US that are coming apart.
What of China? Contrary to what it would have everyone believe, it has long been little more than a dictatorship propping itself up first with one European ideology — communism — and now with another — capitalism.
Neither will hold in the end. Like the US, China must find a middle way, its own indigenous truth, as Taiwan and Nordic nations already have.
Power, in the end, falls to the people as a whole, as was the revolutionary insight of the US’ founding fathers, and as is the present-day reality in Taiwan and other similarly advanced nations.
William R. Stimson is an American writer who lives in Taiwan. He teaches at National Chi Nan University and at Tunghai University.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
RSS