Politicians and media outlets inhabit their own world, one that often has no relationship to reality. This world begs description, because it is impossible to understand Taiwanese politics without contemplating the sphere of existence that it inhabits.
We'll call this make-believe world "Lanlu Land" (
In Lanlu Land, the overriding concern of every human being and every foreign government is Taiwanese politics. Taiwan is the alpha and the omega, the center of the universe -- and Taiwanese politicians, who have their names in the paper and their faces on TV every day, are therefore the center of the center, the glue that binds our fragile world together. In Lanlu Land, all that matters is what these people say and think.
Lanlu Land is also characterized by its extreme political dichotomy. The scope of human endeavor, from weddings to solar-car races to international financial regulations, is somehow related to the battle between the two main camps in Lanlu Land -- the pan-blues and the pan-greens. In Lanlu Land, everyone cares deeply about which of these two camps has scored the most points in their daily sparring.
This is because Lanlu Land is a place devoid of ethics, of ideology and, most importantly, of perspective. Years of indoctrination by an authoritarian government -- using Leninist methods to create personality cults and cultivate unquestioning faith in People With Authority -- have combined with cultural traditions of deference and hierarchy to create a discourse in which blatant falsehoods flourish.
This is how Lanlu Land -- a place with no lines of distinction between right and wrong, between day and night -- came to be. Examine how the residents of Lanlu Land have treated recent events.
President Chen Shui-bian (
But for those in Lanlu Land, this meant nothing. It was enough that Chen uttered his fantasy for it to become the equivalent of reality -- for in Lanlu Land, there is no distinction between fantasy and reality, between truth and falsehood. So, everyone in Lanlu Land began to agitate, gesticulate and articulate over what the "change" portended.
Then -- predictably -- the US and China, seeing the commotion kicked up by the residents of Lanlu Land, felt it appropriate to reiterate their longstanding policies to try to get everyone to calm down.
But this is Lanlu Land, and no one will calm down for any reason. So Chen was not alone in his fantasizing: his opponents also got to fantasize. Washington and Beijing's "reiteration of longstanding policy" quickly became Washington's "strongly worded rebuke" and Beijing's "threat to invade."
To the residents of Lanlu Land, headline-writing, fist-pounding and indignant thundering are the equivalent of empirical substantiation. If you are in Lanlu Land and something isn't true, but you wish it were, then all you have to do is speak or put it in print.
Then, whatever you've said or written, no matter how tenuous or absurd or physically impossible it is, has come true. This is the wonder -- the power and the glory -- that attends to living in Lanlu Land.
So to those who say Taiwan's political discourse has detached itself from reality, there is only one response: No, it hasn't.
And now that that's been said, it's true.
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