I am presently reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin over the holiday break. I have not finished it yet, though aim to do so tomorrow. But I wanted to talk about the character who so has interested me the most.
No, not Tom himself. Nor the infamous Simon Legree (who only appears at about the three-fourths point in the story) nor the pious Eva St. Clare. It is rather Eva’s father, Augustine St. Clare, and the many contradictions around his character. If there is a single word which can pervades St. Clare’s entire nature, it is “hypocrite.” And yet, St. Clare serves as a sort of example about how sometimes, being a hypocrite is not the damning sin which it has become all too often in modern society.
Volodymyr Zelensky delievered a speech yesterday to the United States Congress. This has aroused support from the general American populace. By contrast, anti-Ukrainian extremists, particularly on the right, seethe. Cathy Young with The Bulwark delivered an excellent summary of how these extremists seethed in anger, from criticizing his suit to calling him an autocrat to more obscene attacks created by Donald Trump Jr.
Why does the alt-right hate Zelensky and Ukraine so much? They do have ideological reasons. There is a general hatred of the liberalism and globalism that Zelensky purportedly fights for. There is also a hatred of the American-led global order in favor of the United States abandoning the rest of the world. But Young argues that:
“Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better.”
This is the main reason. Conspiracy theories about Zelensky blackmailing the US government were not popping up before the Russo-Ukrainian war began. But once the United States interfered, a wild-eyed array of conspiracy theories and rants popped in to explain things. The United States is helping Ukraine for nefarious reasons, whether it is because Ukraine has secret biological weapon labs or the secret 2020 ballots that conceal Trump’s victory.
But there is one argument coming from these people which I find to be revealing. This new argument says a great deal about the new kind of conservative and how it differs from more traditional Reaganite conservatives. That argument declares that the United States should not be funding Ukraine, but rather should be spending its money to help the American people. See the below image:
I generally do not care to write much about social, and really domestic issues. While I used to be greatly invested in domestic (that is, American) politics, I have recently decided to take a step back from it. It is easier to remain objective writing about the politics and affairs of foreign countries as opposed to your own, in part because there is so much less one knows.
Furthermore, it is not like capital punishment is a major political issue one way or the other. General political trends indicate that capital punishment is declining. The Death Penalty Information Center states that just five states conducted a total of 16 executions in 2022 so far, with Texas and Oklahoma each executing five. This is down from 43 in 2012. Furthermore, politicians in general, whether Republican or Democrat, barely talk about executions. Trump rambled something about executing drug dealers when he announced his candidacy, but even the most rabid Trump supporter acknowledges that Trump says much he doesn’t mean. They attribute it as part of his brilliancy.
So why write about such a non-issue? Because a lot of the arguments in this discussion, and especially from the pro-capital punishment side, are nonsensical. There are reasonable concerns with the death penalty, and I can sympathize with the idea of limiting capital punishment. But the idea of abolishing it completely? It is self-deceptive and hypocritical for reasons that will be explained.
This summer, 20 years ago, Yao Ming was drafted with the first pick by the Houston Rockets.
This summer, 13 years ago, the Houston Rockets announced that Yao would miss the entire 2009-10 season with another foot injury, and that was basically the end of his career.
As a Houston Rockets fan who grew up watching Yao, it is interesting looking back on his legacy both on and off the court. No one hates Yao, in the same way that a NBA fan might hate LeBron or Kobe or Luka or (especially) Harden. Go on any highlight video or Twitter thread about Yao, and you will quickly find the same sort of comments: that Yao transcended basketball, or that he could have been an all-time great if not for injuries, or how skilled he was.
It is that first point which I think should be looked at. Because as much as Yao transcended basketball, in a way he failed to live up to the promise off the court that he presented in the way that he failed to live up to the promise he presented on the court.
This is not Yao’s fault, any more than his injuries were his fault. But Yao Ming sort of presented a promise of a better world between the US and China, which today in 2022 and with the Taiwan strait becoming an ever-bigger problem looks ludicrous today.
In the aftermath of the Buffalo shooting, there has been a great deal more talk about the Great Replacement, the idea that liberals/Jews are outright seeking to destroy white Americans by subsuming them under the Hispanic hordes or something.
Leftists have used the Buffalo shooter’s actions to show that we have a white nationalist problem, while right-wingers like Andrew Sullivan have pointed out that the left has openly exulted about the declining white population going back decades at this point. But I would argue that this talk of shifting demographics is in fact incidental to the real problem.
If you waste too much time among various political and historical parts of social media like I do, you have almost certainly encountered the Byzantineboo. This is a kind of person who seems to take an incredible interest in the Byzantine Empire. They will often loudly, annoyingly insist that you not call it the Byzantine Empire instead of the Roman Empire, and will talk about what a great, wonderful state it was. Perhaps most concerningly of all, I notice that sometimes like to pretend that Istanbul is still Constantinople, and there are not a few of these people who act like the West should launch some crusade to re-Christianize the city.
Byzantineboos, in my estimation, were more popular a few years ago, but there seems to have been a bit of a backlash like there was with their linguistic predecessor, Wehraboos. But as of late, I do think that this phenomenon has been transferred to the Austrian/Habsburg Empires. And I find this phenomenon much more interesting because I am concerned about what the US might learn from the Habsburg Empire.
Madeline Albright, the first US female Secretary of State, is dead. And people are celebrating.
I mean, the US government is mourning. Flags are being lowered at half-staff in certain government offices, and Bill Clinton is speaking of her great legacy. But go look at what people are commentating on social media, and her entire legacy seems to be centered around a single interview. An interview which as Newsweek states, has Albright stating that the death of Iraqi children was “worth it” as a result of sanctions.
I come not to praise Albright. I know very little of her career, and really not enough of U.S. foreign policy between the Cold War and 9/11. But I would argue that the fulmination of the humanitarian costs of sanctions is highly concerning given current events.
The latest book I have picked up is Douglas MacArthur’s Reminiscences, the memoir he finished just before his death. As of right now, I have finished the chapters of his life up to the outbreak of the Second World War. MacArthur was already 61 on the eve of the Japanese invasion, yet those first 61 years of his life only cover a little over a quarter of his biography.
There is a great deal to notice in his book. As is to be expected of a man with such an outsized ego, MacArthur spends much of the time defending his actions. He rarely criticizes anyone by name (Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain are the only ones to receive any such attacks, and those are both mild, qualified ones such as the fact that Petain was too cautious to take advantage of decisive moments), but he does spend a great deal of time talking about his accomplishments. Perhaps the most notable time is the Bonus March, where MacArthur declares that by not firing a shot, he dispelled a movement which why initially filled with discontented American patriots at first, was taken over by Communist radicals planning revolution.
There are times when I am reading Jay Taylor’s The Generalissimo that I do wonder about the author’s bias. Chiang Kai-Shek was a flawed man. I think his biggest detractors and supporters would say as much. But there are times where I think Taylor tries too hard to make excuses for the moments when he failed, whether we speak politically, militarily, or morally.
But what is most striking, having finished about half of the book and reaching the resumption of the Chinese Civil War after World War II, are the Americans and their continued, constant naivety about the Chinese Communist Party. Time and again, Taylor details how throughout World War II and even afterwards, the Americans consistently thought that the Chinese Communist Party were not, well, Communist. They were just an agrarian democratic party who wanted best for the people. Nothing more.
It was not just American leftists who talked about how wonderful Stalinist Russia was and now transferred that same love to Mao, though such individuals pop up every now and then in Taylor’s narrative. But plenty of people like George Marshall or Joseph Stilwell seemed to think that while the Russian Communists were bad, the Chinese Communists would be different and were not really Communists. And the Communists did everything in their power to make sure that the Americans thought that, even while Mao all but laughed behind their backs.
But why were the Americans so eager to believe? Taylor does not talk too much about this. His narrative focuses more on China, not America. But if I had to give an idea: Americans, and by extension American foreign policy, is constantly struggling with a desire for a better world not matching up to reality.
Latest chart of Japan COVID cases, courtesy of Worldometer
I originally intended to pen an article on Japan’s COVID efforts, but while doing so decided that there is something far more important to note from an American perspective.
Most Americans have little knowledge of overseas. It is hardly surprising. The United States is big and isolated enough that most Americans do not know nor really care about what is going on overseas beyond the broad strokes, and few of us ever actually go overseas besides an occasional two-week vacation.
East Asia Thought 