Friends, don't miss this week's Newsmaker Show with me and Brian O'Neil. There's a bumper crop of historical analysis, including the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the legacy of President Ronald Reagan, the D-Day landings in Normandy, the Six Day War in the Middle East, the ending of the gold standard in the U.S. in 1933, China's role in WWII, and the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations by China's PLA. In terms of current events, we cover President Trump's highly successful visit to the United Kingdom, and the Left's attempts to disrupt and discredit it. We also explore liberals' tendency to see themselves as intellectually superior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLIB2gI3b2Y&feature=youtu.be
Dr. Waddy: Tienanmen: I think a key factor was what Teng Hsiao Ping had suffered greatly at the hands of idealistic youth when Mao turned the Red Guards loose in the insane Cultural Revolution of the '60's. Teng was a veteran of the 6000 mile Long March in the late '20's, an almost incredibly arduous journey in which the Communists took 75% casualties including women and children. They fought very well against the Japanese invaders in the '30's. The Long March is seen in China much as Valley Forge is in the U.S. Deng took physical punishment and intense humiliation from rampaging youth, licensed by the sociopathic Mao;the striplings saw him as a "counterrevolutionary" (after the Long March, a counterrevolutionary? Really?) It is customary in China to afford great respect to the old and experienced and this must have increased his shame and anguish exponentially. I think, in 1989, that Deng, though the Tienanmen protestors had shown a peaceful front, could not be sure that if tolerated they might not degenerate into a overconfident, presumptuous and frivlous mob. They flew American flags and displayed a Statue of Liberty and he could have been aware of how the American flower children had quickly descended into violence, madness and treason. Besides, did he have any reason to admire the U.S., after our support for Chiang in WWII and afterwards? Above all, I think, he was firmly resolved that NEVER again would the unfilial young do to him or those of his age and accomplishment what the Red Guards had done to him. He didn't use all the force he could have mustered; imagine what Mao or Stalin would have done.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Japanese savagery in the Sino Japanese War and WWII is still painful to contemplate for anyone who loves the Japanese, as I do.Having some course work in and experience of Japanese culture, I think I may partially understand some of the origins of this terrible phenomenom.
ReplyDeleteI did not know that they had used gas against the Chinese and I would guess Roosevelt's warning implied at least that if they used it against us, we would do the same. The prudent in their leadership (eg. Admiral Yamamoto),even at that early date, might have counseled that an industrial power like the U.S. could have carried out such an implied threat with great efficiency and profusion.
Its plausible to believe that the leadership (at any level) which countenanced the rape of Nanking, would have allowed the use of gas. China has a key place in the historical development of Japan. The written Japanese language makes much use of purposefully adopted Chinese characters. The longtime Japanese capital of Heian - later Kyoto - was designed in admiration of the exalted Tang Chinese capital (I think Chang-An). But the Japanese were and still are in many ways an insular society; they borrow from other cultures that which they think beneficial but their resolute and successful resistance to Western incursion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries affirms their determination to preserve essential Japan. They had closely observed the rape of China by the West in the 19t hcentury and mistook this previously experienced period ( i.e.in other times) of Chinese dissolution as proof of Chinese pusillanimity and were greatly offended by Chinese resistance to their incursion. They thought their attempted takeover should be welcomed as an effort to expel the West. I think Chinese defense against this engendered in the Japanese a savagery caused by resentment of "foolishly misperceived" motives(though at core the Japanese were almost certainly motivated by national interest and a belief in their assured and just domination of the Far East)and by the contempt embued in most Japanese fighting men for the conquered.I conversed with Chinese people in Singapore who experienced terribly malevolent Japanese abuse. It appears that the Japanese enacted their worst atrocities, in wars in which they enacted consummate evil, on the Chinese.
Dr. Waddy: My guess is that a President Robert Kennedy would have been limited, by military necessity, to a staged withdrawal from Vietnam similar to that enacted by President Nixon. He had domestic goals after all.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: As for 1989 overall: If I had gone into a coma in 1988 and awakened in 1992 and been told of the fall of Communism, I would have asked: how many millions were killed in WWIII? The actuality would have been incredible to anyone, like me, who lived through the Cold War!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: My mistake on the dates for the Long March. It was 1934-35.
ReplyDeleteJack, you should be working for the PR department of the Chinese Communist Party -- you explain away their rampages very skillfully... :) I jest. Of course, if I had been in charge of China at the time, I likely would have done the same thing. Plus, I'm a believer in sovereignty, so ultimately I see "democracy" in China as China's business, not ours. I'm not the fan of China that you are, but that's because I see China as a potential threat to America and the West -- not because I begrudge the Chinese the right to manage their own internal affairs.
ReplyDeleteJapanese barbarity in China is well-documented, but an interesting historical question is this: was Nazi and Japanese savagery irrational, or did it serve their ends? Hitler and his ilk believed that stern punishment dissuaded resistance. Maybe at times it did. My guess is that brutality works when the brutalized have little hope of redress -- but when Uncle Sam is riding to the rescue, resistance is not so futile, after all.
Ahh, what Bobby Kennedy actually would have done in Vietnam is anyone's guess. Telegraphing your desire to end the war, however, wouldn't have made the North Vietnamese very flexible at the negotiating table! I don't rule out the possibility, by the way, that his anti-war position was partly for show. Those Kennedys were sly.
I agree: that the Cold War ended with a whimper was deeply shocking. I suppose the Stalinists and Maoists did make their last stands -- but in the Soviet case the coup of 1991 just hastened their departure from the scene. In the end, I see the collapse of Soviet communism as an almost purely psychological phenomenon. Unlike their Chinese comrades, they lost the will to power -- and in short order they lost power too.
Dr. Waddy: It IS hard to say any good of Communists in any setting;evil is as evil does and their evil is unparalleled. I do admire the WWII courage of the Soviets and the Red Chinese resistance to the Japanese. Teng did do much good in,to some extent, freeing the real China to be itself. Because of the agony and humiliation China endured in the 19th and 20th centuries I am glad they are strong again. I hope we can get along with them but think your view of them as a potential threat to be very plausible.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I can see where RFK might have found himself badly handled by the North Vietnamese had he proved too eager to end the war. And that might have made him vindictive. The Kennedy brothers, all three, thought themselves way too smart.
Brutality does intimidate; the Nazis though were bent on extermination and I think the Japanese "just wanted a little respect" from the Chinese. Their willingness to use the subhuman methods they did was appalling.
No doubt you're right that the Japanese wanted respect; pity they never thought to lead by example! I assume that the Japanese also acted so brutally against even their fellow Asians for partly "racial" reasons -- racialism being all the rage in those days. I'll admit, though, that I'm a poor candidate to plumb the depths of the Japanese psyche. I still haven't figured out Hello Kitty, let alone Japan's war crimes in WWII...
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I have read credible accounts to the effect that Japan,being an exceedingly mannered and orderly nation due to its being crowded by its dominant mountains, affords the Japanese little guidance in understanding those outside their insular setting. This may have engendered in them an unempathetic contempt for the standards of other cultures.
ReplyDeleteJapanese racial animus is confirmed, though perhaps not comprehensively, by their contempt for their Ainu minority and their terrible abuse of Koreans, Korea being their territory from 1895 to 1945.
I wish I knew more about these things. Racial attitudes are, sadly, something that historians are not above misrepresenting, especially in retrospect. I know that the Japanese have the reputation of treating Koreans, Chinese, and many others with profound disdain and even savage cruelty, but on the other hand theoretically they were seeking the "co-prosperity" of all Asians. Maybe some of them could be decent to non-Japanese? If so, I don't imagine anyone is that interested in documenting their decency. The Japanese would prefer to forget those chapters of their history, and pretty much everyone else would prefer to demonize the Japanese.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I'm just glad that time is over for them and for those they wronged. They modernized in the late 19th century a manner most admirable but then overreached. They suffered greatly for it but had the good fortune of being conquered by a humane nation which delegated an intensely enlightened man to guide them for awhile. Now they are prosperous and,I trust, very much the wiser.
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